Spencer Heath Archive

Item 99

Penciled by Heath on letter-size (8.5 x 11) sheets.

No date

 

 

 

 

     There are just three aspects or manifestations in which physical science conceives the reality with which it deals and which it investigates by a process peculiar to itself which consists in the rational procedure of taking measurements and thereby discovering the ratios implicit for rational minds in a rational world. It finds this reality discontinuous and thereby rational in the fact of being composed of separately distinguishable occurrences or events which taken generally it calls action.

 

     Science finds that these actions or events have measurable magnitudes and that these are the combined magnitudes of the three manifestations which unite to constitute the action or events — the reality with which it deals. These manifestations are called, (1) Mass, inertia, force etc., (2) Motion (rate of), length or space per unit of time (unit of velocity) and (3) duration, period, repeti­tions (times) frequency, time. And for rational examination of these three aspects of actions or events, science has devised three standard universal /?/ units of measurement called the fundamental units of physical science. These are (1) the unit of mass, called the gram, (2) the unit of motion or length called the centimeter and (3) the unit of time, duration, frequency, called the second.

 

     These three are given in the order of their priority, mass, motion, time. Mass is the prior conception, motion is conceived and experienced as a property of mass, and time proceeds from the discontinuities of motion and mass. However, in all action or events these three are interdependent and mutually involved.

 

     The accompanying tabulation shows the order and relationships among the three fundamentals of the composite reality, action, actualities, events, with which physical science deals.

 

     Science has two great departments. The first is research and discovery — the searching out of uniformities of process in nature and formulating such uniformities, in terms of the fundamental quantities and ratios involved, as rational and general laws. The motivation here is not utilitarian but emotional, the aspiration for dependability, order and beauty, the hunger to be thrilled. The procedure consists in the quantitative examination and description of events, ascertaining the magnitudes and proportions of their three-fold integrated elements or aspects in terms of the standardized units of mass, motion and time. Such descrip­tion is quantitative and analytical but its results and satisfactions, no less than its impulse, belong to the qualitative world.

     The other great department of science /is/ not analytic but synthetic. It is the putting together of measured mag­nitudes of mass motion in quantities and proportions that serve needs and desires, that transform environment, liberate men from the bonds of necessity into the pursuit of ideals. This is science on its technological and creative side. All its processes and applications consist fundament­ally in the transformation of events, the reproportioning of mass, motion and time. And here too procedure is wholly quantitative and thereby rational, but its results are the fulfillment of needs, aspiration and desires, and these belong to the qualitative side. But science does not discri­minate. She serves the soul of man. With power to create she gives also the power to destroy — if so he wills.

     In the year 1900 a great discovery was made. It was proved that mass, motion and time unite only to form events equal to or in even multiples of a single minimum over-all magnitude. The product of the three elemental factors is always equal to or some even multiple of an almost inconceivably minute event — one definite and very precise fraction of an erg-second of action called the quantum of action of Max Planck which is indicated by the symbol h. This does not mean that all quanta are exactly alike in all respects but only in respect of their over-all magnitude. Just as erg-seconds may be variously composed of mass, motion and time, so may these very minute but exact fractions of erg-seconds differ one from another in all respects but that of their common over-all magnitude. Science has thus found in nature a limit to disorganization, a least organization of events that cannot be diminished or impeached, and with /?/ ample variety of organization among the equal units to provide for unlimited development in the evolution of multiple and complex organizations of action and events.

     Besides this assurance that there is in nature a level of events of minimum and equal magnitude but having among themselves qualitative differences in highest variety, the quantum discovery has shed clear light on much that was for long obscure and confused. Since h represents the least possible product of mass, motion and time, it follows that when in any event time is at its minimum then the mass-motion product (energy) must be at its maximum. Such event manifests itself as explosion. Similarly, when in any event mass is at its minimum then the product of motion (as velocity /?/) and time must be at its maximum. This is exhibited in radiation or waves with velocity uniform because maximum and the actions or events equivocal as between particle and wave. This explains the speed of light as a limiting velocity and the seeming anomaly of particles and waves.

     If for a third example rate of motion be taken at minimum and mass-duration high, we seem to approach descrip­tion not of event but of absolute condition in which by ultimate theory no motion or action, hence no frequency operates or exists, — only an infinite density of mass and absolute zero of motion and frequency or time. It seems that if motion as the middle term be taken at minimum it is not then a sufficient nexus between mass and time to constitute any action or event.

     A further peculiarity of this middle and connecting term in any action or event is that it is a vector quantity having direction as well as magnitude. Mass and time being only scaler neither can be compounded upon itself to any result but mere change in its scaler magnitude. But motion, being a vector magnitude can be in imagination compounded in at least three directions. When imagined in two direc­tions, the product is imaginary surface, a mere formal construct without any action or experiential or objective content. And when conceived in three directions the subjec­tive product is a merely formal and empty conception of volume that can be conceived but cannot be experienced without importation of mass and time. It is to be remarked that these so-called three dimensions are only one kind of dimension — namely, linear dimension — void of any mass or time content and thus not constituting any objective actuality as action or event. Space in the abstract is merely static and void — an absence of action, just as cold has no dimensions, being merely the negation and void of the action called heat. Motion seems to serve as a kind of mean proportional, an action link between mass and time.

     The great quantum generalization has been employed in many fields with brilliant results yet in some it has not been applied with success. Time’s verdict will tell, perhaps soon, whether this is due to its not being sufficiently basic and profound or to the confusions and prepossessions of less fundamental and more abstruse and metaphysical and better publicized theories preventing it from being boldly applied. In any case it is compass and chart to vast fields of phenomena at all scales of magnitude, atomic to nebular, for those who in humility of spirit and simplicity of mind seek out all the implications in this simple generalization of mass, motion and time.