Energy & The Physics Of Work

In keeping with an 'integral view' on the matter of work I thought it apropos to consider the 'physics of work.' What is work, objectively speaking? How is worked defined in the realm of physics (which is considered the most fundamental realm of objectivity we are privvy to)?

According to physics, work is little more or other than the 'transfer of energy.' The application of force over a given period of time is said to be what 'work' is. The movement of objects from one location to anther is 'work.' Energy being transferred from one body to another is what work is.

For example, when we go to work in building a house we apply force to the head of a nail, via a hammer, in order to drive that nail through one piece of wood and into another. The work we do in that moment is a transfer of energy that results (provided we know how to drive a nail effectively) in connecting one piece of wood (object) to another piece of wood (object). After many such moments the result of so many 'transfers of energy' culminates in a house that a family can call 'home.'

Now, without work (energy transfer) there would be no house built to call a 'home.' Work is what makes our homes, our works of art, our highways and the automobiles that drive upon them. Work is like a ceaseless act of 'giving birth' by contracting muscles in order to generate force so that the generated force can be applied to various objects in the world (both for moving those objects around, as well as for creating new and novel combinations/syntheses of those objects).

Even sitting at a computer screen moving a cursor around is a form of 'work' that involves the transfer of energy in order to manipulate objects. These might look like words with a decidedly subjective side to them (as they convey meaning and significance in the form of information), but they are also objects that are generated through the application of force to a keyboard. Thus, even that which does not appear to involve a lot of intensely 'physic-al' effort follows the basic protocol of what physics dictates: that no work can be done without, and apart from, the transfer of energy from one body to another.

Perhaps such an understanding can lead us to ask, 'Then where does the energy come from in order for us to work?' How do we get energy oursleves so that we can then work by our transferring that energy to other objects/bodies? Does it mean that the question of work--through the lens of physics--is a question of energy?

It would seem to be the case to me. After all, how many times have you woke up in the morning without feeling the necessary 'energy' in order to go to work? Or, how many times have you experienced an afternoon lull, when your energy waned and you found it nigh unto impossible to be 'productive?' Do not those subjective experiences convey something as to the validity of physics objective definition of what work is? In other words, do we not have direct, subjective experiences of what science has come to discover about the world of 'objects,' and what Ken Wilber has termed 'Its?' That we can't do work--move bodies/objects--when we can't even move our own body/object!!

Work, in the objective sense, is not associated with personal feelings and dreams and passions as much as it is viewed as being the ways in whihc we apply force in order to move various objects.