Spencer Heath Archive

Item 91

Pencil by Heath on notepad paper.

No date

Original => Item 90

     The authentic work of science is to find the simplest quantitative and thereby rational explanations for the widest possible ranges and varieties of phenomena. It postulates such reality as can be objectively experienced and where various aspects can be measured and their ratios thus ascertained. It analyses past and present events and thereby predicts future events.

     The three aspects of reality with which science primarily deals are mass, motion and time which, wherever found united in a special relationship constitute an event. Since these three aspects of an event can be measured, an event has three kinds of dimensions. The units most employed in taking these dimensions are the gram, the centimeter and the second. These are called the fundamental units of physical science.

     Perhaps the simplest and most fundamental event with which physical science deals is the erg-second. This is an organization of mass, motion and time as a particular event in the manner indicated by the expression 2 x M/2 x (l x t)/t in which the mass dimension, M, is in terms of the inertial mass of one gram, called a dyne, l is the motion dimension of the event in terms of the centimeter, and t is the time dimension in terms of the second.

     Mass and motion, taken together, without respect to time, are called energy; motion and time, without respect to mass are called velocity. These are subjective conceptions. But the three, taken together in the manner indicated constitute an objective event that can be in some manner experienced. Such an event, taken in succession or continuity is energy-in-action, called kinetic energy.

     Taken as a particular event, the erg-second may be constituted of mass, velocity and time in various proportions without any effect on its dimensional magnitude as a unitary quantity. Such proportional changes affect not the quantity but the quality — the character and characteristics of the event. When the mass, velocity and time are organized in the proportions of two units of mass and one unit each of motion and time then, since velocity and time are equal, the formula for kinetic energy may be written as E = MV²