This essay gives a short account of the development of the concept of energy and modelling of energy in physics and biology and the ways it leaked out across various disciplines to shape both art and work (both terms used in the broadest sense). The history of these developments is helpful for understanding the ever-intensifying ›mathematization of existence‹ we are presently witnessing, by which accounting, quantification and measurement dominate our daily lives, but also for delineating a pattern of expansion, crisis and limit which crosses science, mathematics, economics and philosophy.