Spencer Heath Archive

Item 94

Penciled by Heath on lined notepad paper. The first two paragraphs occur at the end of the original, but a note by Heath says to begin with them.

January 12, 1951

 

 

 

     Experience gives rise to three kinds of consciousness: (1) Touch, and out of touch, (2) Motion, and out of motion, (3) Succession. From these three kinds of experience as consciousness we derive three kinds of concepts: (A) Out of touch – Mass, force or inertia, (2) Out of motion – distance, length, space. (3) Out of succession – continuity, duration, time.

     These concepts we entertain, by a process of feeling of them, without any process of quantity as number or ratio — without rationality. But when out of our experiences we have established standard units of measurement for mass, motion and time, then we can have a quantitative consciousness of them and thereby entertain rational conceptions concerning them and rational processes manifested in them.

 

 

     Start with a unit of motion as primary in an event. To any unit of motion is attached so many units of mass, and also so many units of time

 

     Start (now) with a unit of time. To any unit of time are attached so many units of motion (velocity) and to each unit of motion there are attached so many units of

       Time units     1

V

   Motion units    10       1000 units of time-motion-mass

                          =    1 x 10 x 100 = 1000

       Motion units    10       Kinetic Energy — Action

    E      

      Mass units     100         

 

      

     Then suppose it to be

 

Mass units    1

Motion units  10

Time units    100

     Every event (action) must be of itself a unit. If it occurs less than once — one time — it does not occur. If it occurs twice — two times — it is two events. If it is “repeated” it is not the same event. The same event cannot occur less than nor more than once — one time. Time, therefore, is what identifies any event as a unity. And a uniform continuity of time consists in a succession of events having each the same magnitude, same mass and motion — energy — as in a pendulum. Here the time is uniform. For each event it is unity. The motion also is uniform — when the motion imparted to the molecules of air is included or compensated — and the mass of the bob, gravitational as well as inertial, remains the same.

    

     An event is singular, not plural. It is an act; and a succession or continuity of events is ACTION (in the technical sense).

    

     An event or act is distinguished as such by its identity, its sameness, in being itself and nothing other or else. It is a one-time act. It cannot include or involve any division or succession of time without losing its identity in a succession of events.

    

     To make any rational or quantitative analysis of an event, it must be taken as happening but one time. Its time element must be taken as happening but once. Now if the time scale or time units employed for the analysis should be based on a uniform succession of such events (as in the analysis of a pendulum) then, the mass-motion content per unit of its own time, the magnitude of ACTION throughout the succession of time (times) will be the product of the mass-motion content by the number of times.

    

     But if a standardized and conventional time scale is employed, the unit of which is based upon a periodic succession of astronomical events such, as the second, hour or year, then, the mass-motion magnitude of the event being analyzed must first be numerically ascertained per unit of its own period or unit of time, and this divided by the number of standardized time units in a corresponding period on the conventional time scale. This quotient will be the quantity of mass-motion or energy units in the event being analyzed per unit of conventional time. This will be the energy rate in any uniform succession of the given event in terms of conventional time. And this energy rate multiplied by any number of units of conventional time gives the total of energy in action during that ________ period of time.