Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1284

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Carl G. Hempel, 317 West 100th Street, New York NY

November 13, 1939

Dear Dr. Hempel:

Thank you for your comments on “The Energy Concept of Population” that I sent you.

     You are right; we cannot carry on any very complete or satisfactory discussion of such matters by correspondence, but I hope we may have the pleasure of talking together at some length before very long. Please let me know if you expect to come in this direction at any near-future time. I should like to have you drop in at my country place, or I could pick you up somewhere in Washington or Baltimore, both of which cities are easily accessible to me. For my part, I do not expect to be in New York again before very late in November or early December.

     I certainly do not mind your frankly uttered doubts; any quick credulity of new conceptions, however meritorious, would be intellectually abnormal.

     No, the magnitude that I assumed to measure is not an energy measurement in the precise sense of the word because the time or frequency dimension is the only one that is specified in variable terms. The linear and mass dimensions of the units or energy waves are not definitely ascertained. They are highly variable, as among individuals, but there is bound to be a hypothetical average where large numbers are involved. A symbol might be employed for this average manifestation of energy in the individual, but I have preferred to take it as unity for greater convenience. Taking unity thus as the average rate of energy manifestation, the total amount of energy taken on and put out by a population must be the aggregate of individuals times their average duration. This being expressed in terms of time only (the average rate of energy flow being taken as unity) does not measure a specific quantity of energy, but it does give us a numerical expression that throughout its whole range must be proportionate to the specific amount of energy. This, of course, assumes that the average rate of energy input and output does not considerably change.

     My method of measurement does not undertake to measure socially relevant or other achievement but only the possibility of it or, rather, the very high probability of it, because those changes in organization and conditions that increase the duration and abundance of life are themselves a sociological achievement of primary significance, and one that bespeaks not only quantity but also for a high quality of life. The higher social organization achieved by the populations of the Western World expresses itself functionally in the more efficient use and improvement of their environment and the consequent lengthening of their average days. The Orient exhibits /say here, in editing, “until recently exhibited?”/ no such achievements in social organization, no corresponding environmental modifications and control and therefore a far shorter average length of days. These factual contrasts supply an inductive correlation between social progress and achievement and the average duration of life.

     Of course, social achievement is not “in all cases” proportional to D – 20. The quantity D does not refer to individual cases but to the average for a whole population. But even if correction should be necessary on account of a certain average period of senility this would only be the same as though it were found necessary to increase the period of infancy from twenty to twenty-one. The method and principle would still be precisely the same. If the formula is “somewhat too simple” it cannot be so because of any lack of fine precision in the numbers used; for it would be precisely the same formula after all corrections were made — and no less simple then than before.

    Over-simplification is all-too-facile a charge — a charge that can be laid against anything that is at all elementary or fundamental. Addition and subtraction might be said to be too simple because of failure to take fractions into account. Even arithmetic itself might be criticized as being too simple because of the fact that its solutions are specific and not of universal application. Science is always seeking for the fundamentals, and the fundamental is always simple; complexities are never anything but the elaboration of simple fundamentals.

     The optimum qualitative condition may seem absurd when carried to the logical extreme of reducing N to 1 and D to infinity. This, of course is the theological ideal of highest power and efficiency — the deistic conception — and I hold no particular brief for it. It should be remembered, however, that my thesis contemplates social organization as the means for achieving this kind of an end with respect to its individuals. It is not logical to suppose that a given end could become so far extended as to become independent of the means necessary for effecting it. We must get together and try how far the good ship (or raft), Energy Concept, will carry us; not whether she leaks a little.

     My best compliments and regards,

                               /s/ Spencer Heath