Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1804

Two sets of notes on different-sized sheets of notepad paper (penned and penciled) by Heath for a letter to Lee Alvin DuBridge. Because they borrow from one another, I could not take the time and study to reconcile them into one coherent document. Because I did attempt to do so, however, the transcribed versions are mixed and do not follow one another exactly. So this is a puzzle left to the reader. -Editor

Around 1958

Dear Dr. DuBridge:

     I have just finished reading your thoughtful and very interesting group of essays under the general title, The Inquiring Mind.

     My attention (thought) is most arrested by your discussion of the “population problem” as posed long ago (1798) by the Reverend Thomas Malthus and, up to now, very much postponed.

     Should we assume then that the order of nature is not self-realizing but is forever self-defeating, in the realm of the life of mankind? To do so I think we must accept without examination that gentleman’s hidden premise that the place of mankind in the order of nature is essentially no different from that of the lower animals. Had he applied his theory to these only or to man only in his animal nature and capacities his theory could never have been gainsaid. For the animals, including uncivilized and unregenerate men, are not the creators but are creatures of their environment, parasitic and dependent on that which they deplete and destroy.

    But civilized men, so far as they enter into and practice the balanced relationship of reciprocal exchange, transcend the limitations of mere animal life.

    By the unforced meetings of their minds in contractual concord they constitute an organic society. They constitute, all for each, a socio-economic environment in which by “division of labor” and invention they create myriad materials and facilities, all the necessary technologies, necessary for the transformation of their material world.

     The Reverend Malthus, for all his divine profession, took none of this into account. // Nor did he observe that fast breeders are never long livers or, conversely, that the shorter the lives the faster they must and do breed. Nevertheless, the “population problem” still remains. For, with whatever low birth rate, any population with indefinitely improving environment and increasing length of lives must eventually over-populate the earth despite all artificial control, unless there is in nature some general compensating principle not dependent on the conscious prudence or caprice of particular men.

     Fortunately, there is such natural control. For, as Prof. Eddington makes plain (Nature of the Physical World, page 180), there is no significance in the mere numbers of a population unless the average number of units be multiplied by the average life span, just as any energy, merely as a rate, becomes objectively actual only when multiplied by time. And with biological energy as life-years (Prof. Eddington’s “man-years”), it is the same: for any given quantity of energy, such as a generation of men, the longer the time element the lower will be the rate. (In quantum theory h = fc.) In any condition of abundance or state of being biologically secure, both the need and the instinct for frequent reproduction go into abeyance.

     Any form of life

     Abundance and biological security

     As the need for biological security declines so does the instinct for it

     As the vital energy flows more and more into productivity its reproductivity declines

     As the life form

     As dearth of subsistence or other insecurity comes upon the life form, both the need for a high rate of reproduction and the

     As dearth of subsistence reduces security so does the need and the instinct for

     As depletion of subsistence raises the mortality rate so does that insecurity increase the mortality rate. Fast breeding counters fast dying.

     But men who are organized reciprocally in the Golden-Rule equality of contract and exchange. /sic/ On the contrary, they increase it.  /their subsistence?/ This lengthens their lives and the vital energy thus conserved into abundance and length of days

 

 

 

 

As depletion of subsistence raises the mortality rate, so does that insecurity increase the reproductive rate. Fast breeding counters fast dying.

     But men who are organized reciprocally in the Golden Rule equality of contract and exchange. /sic/ On the contrary, they increase it. This lengthens their lives, and the vital energy thus conserved into abundance and length of days by social productivity is not required for and is in fact withdrawn from mere biological reproductivity. This is why those whose lives are more serene and secure are notoriously less reproductive than those who live meaner, shorter and less abundant lives. It is only by ignoring, as did the Reverend Malthus, the creative spirituality potential in man that the ineluctable providence of Nature or of God for man can be impugned. In unregenerate men, lacking the divine relationship among themselves, the vital urge, soon or late, must outrun

 

 

_______________________________

// B      Dear Dr. DuBridge:

     I have just finished reading your interesting group of essays under the general title, “The Inquiring Mind.”

     My attention is most arrested by your discussion of the “population problem” as posed by the Rev. Thomas Malthus a century and a half ago and seemingly unsolved to date although considerably postponed. Should we assume then that the order of nature is not self-realizing but is forever self-defeating, as far as the life of mankind is concerned? To do so I think we must accept without examination that reverend gentleman’s hidden premise that the place of mankind in the order of creation (evolution) is essentially the same as that of the lower animals. Had he confined himself to them, his theory could never be questioned. For they are creatures of their environment, dependent and parasitic and subservient thereto. As their numbers deplete subsistence they become mutually inimical and the Malthusian “positive check” maintains a balanced biological non-progression.

     The life of unregenerate, merely animal men follows the same Malthusian pattern. Their heritage of dominion over all lesser creatures is only potential. Only as they come into the practice of a unique and distinctively human relationship can they

     But civilized men, so far as they enter into and practice the balanced relationship of reciprocal exchange, transcend the limitations of mere animal life. “Division of labor” enables them to create myriad materials and facilities for the advancement of their lives. They constitute, all for each, a socio-economic environment in which by “division of labor” they create, each for others,

     By unforced meetings of their minds in contractual concord they constitute an organic society, a social and spiritual milieu, above the bonds of conscious, mere animal kinship, out of which spiritual relationship alone, by invention and “division of labor” there comes the necessary technology for transformation of the material world.