The Standard Model has a strong focus on particles and the interactions between them: energy is the driving force.
Particles with half-integer spin are called fermions, and those with integer spin are called bosons. Fermions are matter constituents and bosons are assumed to be force carriers.
However, there is no focus on energy in the Standard Model.
Energy itself is the notion of ability to do something in between particles which are exposed to this property. For a naked particle, it is a potential. Therefore, energy is also often referred to as the ability to perform “work”. In physics, energy is one of the basic quantitative properties that describes a physical system or an object’s state.
In 1961 Richard Feynman made the following statement about the concept of energy:
There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing all natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law—it is exact so far as we know. The law is called the conservation of energy. It states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same.
It is not possible to handle energy in isolation. It always relates to interference by forces on particles that will cause adjusting in metrics of properties of these particles.
Energy is difficult to comprehend as an attribute because it has to do with transformations of particles and objects from one state to another.
We normally assume such an object to have a material nature. It is difficult to visualize how energy transforms properties of point particles. It transforms apparently the manifestations of such point particles into metrics of their manifestations. We can make calculations and model some of these calculations towards what we perceive as reality. These models are usually most of the time related to what we call concrete physical objects on which we exercise forces.
A concrete physical model shows itself in such a mode, due to the Pauli exclusion principle. If the matter is in a solid-state phase, then we can touch that object with our hands or tools and exercise these forces on the object. Because of the exclusion of electrons in the same quantum state, we experience this “pushing” towards other, we “feel” resistance and we exchange energy with the object. The same applies to the matter in a liquid phase, but the principle begins to become a bit strange when gaseous phases are involved.
Although scientists are working in line with what Feynman states and make observations regarding transitions also in non-tactile mode, this human understanding of energy, as it relates to tactile impact on objects is deeply ingrained in our thinking.
Bosons are called force carriers and are assumed not to have mass. However, it is not easy to visualize a force carrier as a point particle that has potential to interfere with its manifestations.