Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1731

Several pages typed by Heath with penciled amendments.

December 17, 1953

     Physical science assumes the actuality, the objective reality of physical events. A physical event exhibits to a mentality three measurable elements, aspects or characteristics. These are conceived by the mentality and in the order following as:

1. Mass — as inertia or as force.
2. Motion — as length, distance or as space.

 

3. Time — as procession or gradation, rhythm or discontinuity.

     The given order is the order in which the three characteristics of an event are physically experienced and psychologically conceived.

     The three aspects or characteristics of an event can be measured numerically, in terms of arbitrarily chosen units such as the gram, the centimeter and the second. The numbers of these units exhibited respectively by the three aspects or characteristics of the event are the three dimensions of those aspects or characteristics, respectively.

     The number of mass units in an event expresses the ratio of mass to motion, and the number of motion units in the event expresses the ratio of motion to time. The number of mass units is their number per one unit of motion, and the number of motion units is their number per one unit of time. Hence, the product of mass units times motion units in an event is the number of mass-motion units, ergs, per unit of time in the event, and the product of mass-motion units, ergs per second, in the event, times the number of seconds in the event, is the number of mass-motion-time units, erg-seconds in the event. This number of erg seconds is the over-all dimension of the event — the quantity of action in the event as a whole. Any given number of erg-seconds, as the over-all dimension or quantity of an event, may properly be called a quantity of action.

     Physical science has demonstrated and confirmed that, just as there is a definite bottom limit to the frequency (or the period) of vibration that can be experienced by the eye, so there are limits to the magnitude of events that can come into the realm of objective experience for the organism as a whole. There is a definite quantity of action, an exceedingly small fraction of an erg-second, a practically infinitesimal magnitude for an event, smaller than which, whether having any existence or not, cannot come into the realm of perception or objective experience. Events of less magnitude than this may be symbolized mathematically and subjectively conceived, but either they do not occur at all or, if so, they do not come within the range of perception or of objective experience of any kind.

     Those actions or events that, in their over-all Dimension, are the same and are the least that can be experienced, are called quanta.

     Action or events of greater magnitude than a single quantum are composed of multiple quanta, always in whole numbers, no fractional parts. The quantity of action in any event or series of events depends only on the number of quanta involved. The fixed and constant magnitude of any quantum is not affected by the proportions in which its three aspects or characteristics are composed. Differences among quanta are due to differences of proportion in which their three characteristics are united to constitute the action or event. These differences of proportion within the quantum involve no change or difference in its over-all dimension or magnitude. Such differences in composition are qualitative differences within the constant magnitude of the whole. All quanta are of the same over-all magnitude but they are widely variable in composition.

     Qualitative differences between actions or events are due to qualitative differences in the quanta of which they are composed. Thus compositions of quanta can differ in kind though they may not differ in size. In any multi-quanta action or event: (l) When the quanta are composed of least mass and of the least period of time, then the motion-time ratio (velocity) must be maximum — velocity of radiation, light. (2) When the quanta are composed of maximum mass-motion ratio and the maximum period of time, then the motion-time ratio (velocity) must be least — must approach to no motion or absolute zero. (3) When the quanta are composed of the least time period, then the mass-motion ratio times the motion-time ratio — the rate or work or energy per unit of time — must be at its utmost maximum, as in atomic explosion or the like.

     These three kinds of action or events …