Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1266

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Percy W. Bridgman, c/o Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

September 5, 1939

 

Dear Dr. Bridgman:

Your contributions to the discussion on the Unity of Science seem to me very interesting.

     To my mind, unification is never better achieved than in the application of substantially the same analytic technique that has proven fruitful in a restricted field to those wider fields in which no rational analysis has seemed possible before.

     As an attempted example of this, I have sought to suggest simple standard units of population and social potential to which both quantitative and qualitative mathematical analysis of societal phenomena may be effectually applied.

     Enclosed, herewith, you will find in what I have called “The Energy Concept of Population” a setting up of those functional units and a skeleton outline of their basic and immediate mathematical treatment. I hope it will afford you some degree of pleasure to read and consider this very brief outline. Its chief value appears to lie in the facility with which I have been able elsewhere to apply this functional analysis to specific social institutions.

     It would gratify me to know whether these conceptions of population and its functions can be unified with your own in the same or analogous fields.

     I have found much pleasure in meeting you personally even in the limited way that this Congress affords. May I have the further pleasure of your company as my luncheon or dinner guest, say at the Commander Hotel, on Thursday or Friday?

Very truly yours,

Spencer Heath