Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1658

Carbon of a letter to Dr. Ralph D. Lillie, 3707 Calvert Place, Kensington, Maryland

September 18, 1958

Dear Dr. Lillie:

Some two years ago I read your General Biology and Philosophy of Organism with a great deal of interest. In the same spirit as Dr. Sinnott, you seem to have penetrated further into the veil between the living and the non-living than anyone whose works I have read before. I marked many passages for further reading, and somehow circumstances kept me from giving it further attention until the month that has just passed. During this time, I have read and re-read page after page and chapter after chapter and find myself more and more deeply impressed and inspired by it. The breadth and thoroughness of generalization exhibited in your last three chapters seem to me a marvel of bio-philosophical creativeness.

I am especially intrigued with your suggested identification of the biologic genes with quantum “particles” or, as I would prefer to say, quantum ”actions” or “events.” Here it seems to be that the world of causation (determined invariance of process) joins hands with that side of nature which provides freedom and flexibility and dominates the invariant, preventing it from degenerating towards an absolute homogeneity. This suggests a world of sub-quantal action, a world of such quantitative refinement as to be beyond the realm of objective and physical experience.

The dogma is, or at least has been, that there is no sub-quantal world, it being assumed that nothing in nature can transcend objective human experience — a biased and unbased assumption, it would seem. I am thinking it likely your mind has been penetrating the presumably existent sub-quantal world; if so, or indeed if you have been exploring elsewhere, I should be happy to learn of it and procure whatever may be available.

Meantime, I am happy to present to you a report of my own findings as to the prevalence of the quantum principle among the units of which the human society is composed. So I am sending you under separate cover an inscribed copy of my Citadel, Market and Altar, in the hope that you may be affected by it, at least in some small degree, as I have by yours. There is, perhaps, no more beautiful experience than to join with another in profound explorations of the hitherto unknown.

With highest compliments and sincere good wishes,

Very truly yours,

SH/m

Citadel, Market and Altar under separate cover.