Spencer Heath Archives

Item 106

Pencil by Heath in a lined steno pad.

May 16, 1951

In the beginning:

All is waves (light)

Highest frequency  — Shortest Length

• Highest  Velocity

Polarity

Tendency towards — Greater Length

    Lower Velocity

    Longer period — duration

This tendency is the Creative Principle — Divine

Absolute — determining towards lower frequency, longer duration

Wave vs. Particle

    Taken statistically, waves tend towards lower frequency — towards being particles having greater duration, longer period (of existence or action) than the waves.

     Taken individually, the wave is indeterminate, unpre­dictable (uncertain) — from the point of view of an observer — as an object. But as a subject its change of frequency — duration — is either fortuitous or self-determined. If fortuitous, only the statistical result will prevail. This means that in a succession of similar waves, any one or indi­vidual wave may or may not come to have a longer duration (period) than its predecessors. But, owing to the general polarity of events towards absolute duration, it means also that the individual wave, under fortuitous or uncertain change from its predecessors is still under and certain of a higher probability of taking the general positive polarity, towards gaining a longer period than its predecessors and thus a higher probability towards becoming a particle and as such having lower frequency, longer duration or period, and less velocity than any (mere) wave. Thus the dominant tendency of the Cosmic Energy (positive polarity) is to transform itself into events of greater duration, longer period, lower frequency, than their predecessors.

     The basic and universal tendency, the actuality of events (action), is to change. And this tendency is polar, positive and negative, integrative and disintegrative. The positive polarity is that of change towards events having longer periods of organization (existence). The negative polarity is that of change towards events or organizations of energy, whether as particles or waves, having shorter periods (and thus a higher frequency — in any succession of them). Hence any positive event or organization (wave or particle) remains in operation when a corresponding negative event or organization has ceased to operate. The event or organization — whether wave, particle, atom or system of atoms or of stars — that takes place or operates under the positive polarity remains operative and extant when that which operates under negative polarity has become inoperative and extinct.

 

     Thus all the categories such as integrative and disintegrative, creative and destructive, good and evil, spiritual and diabolical, spring from the dual and opposite polarities of events and their operations — positive or negative as regards one another with respect to their longer or shorter periods of duration, or with respect to their lower or higher frequency of integration and disintegration than their predecessors in a series or succession of events, such as waves, or of organizations of events, such as particles, protons or atoms — or of lives.

 

     The Cosmos (Universe) is not chaos; it is organized. It is the organization of Energy-in-Action as happenings, occurrences or events under the general term, in physical science, of Action. Physical science is such because it is quantitative, because it takes account of what it can measure and can in that manner objectively and rationally experience. It does not deny subjective or metaphysical experience, that which takes place wholly within the indivi­dual, such as a sensation or conception, a thought or a dream; but it gives attention only to those events that constitute the objective side of experience. It examines these events primarily in their quantitative aspects rather than in their qualitative reactions, hence in terms of measurements as ratios, that is to say, in terms of ration­ality rather than in terms of the esthetic or emotional reactions excited by them.

 

     All reality is constituted of events, both simple and complex. Events are identifiable by reason of their discontinuity. Events taken generally and without respect to their discontinuity are called by the general term action. Action is reality, and action conceived in its totality and without limitations is called Absolute Reality.

     Physical science has discovered that any single or simple event is constituted of and may be analyzed into three and only three measurable aspects — three kinds of quantities that can be conceived and can be measured as though separate and independent but are experienced only as a unity, only as they are integrated into a single and simple or into a complex of single events. These three kinds of quantities constituting any event, when measured and numbered each in terms of its ratio to an appropriate kind of measuring unit are found to have three kinds of numerical dimensions. These are: (1) The dimension of mass or inertia (subjectively force). (2) The dimension of motion, length or distance traversed (subjectively space). (3) The dimension of discontinuity as duration or frequency (subjec­tively rhythm or time).

     The three units employed to ascertain these three kinds of dimensions of any event in the order named are: (1) The gram for mass or force. (2) The centimeter for motion or space. (3) The second for duration or time. (Duration and frequency, how long and how often, are reciprocals.)

     The product of the three numbers found to be the three dimensions of any event is the over-all magnitude of that event. All single events are of the same magnitude. All complex events are compounds of whole numbers of single events. Single events therefore are not only of a single over-all magnitude but also they are indivisible and there­fore of the one least magnitude that can be experienced objectively as a happening or event, as action or actuality — reality. The conventional name for any least and indivisible event is the Quantum of Action. The mathematical symbol for it is “h.” It is an exceedingly small, almost infinitesimally small fraction of an Erg-Second, which is the quantity of action manifested when a force of one dyne (the inertial mass of a weight of one gram) moves through a space of one-half centimeter during the time of one second. When such force (l/98l of a gram) acts on a free mass of one gram it gives that mass a velocity (or change of velocity) of one centimeter per second. Hence any body that has been given that velocity (or that change of velocity) is said thereby to have been charged with or discharged of kinetic energy or energy-in-action by the amount of one Erg-Second per each gram weight of mass so acted upon. And at any other velocity the kinetic energy or action will be greater or less in the same proportion. From all this it follows that a known number of grams having a known velocity is possessed of the number of Erg-Seconds of action or kinetic energy expressed by the convenient and customary formula  E = Mv²/2  in which M is the weight or gravitational mass in grams (or, more correctly stated, the inertial mass or force in dynes), and V² represents the square of the velocity (or, more properly, the product of the velocity times the number of seconds required to attain to it from zero velocity). Hence V², being really velocity multiplied by time, represents a distance — the distance the mass would have been moved during that time at its final velocity. But since the average velocity during the time of acceleration from zero is only half the final velocity, then during its acceleration the mass moves only half the distance V². Hence V²/2 represents the amount of motion or the distance through which the force in dynes represented by M must have acted in order to impart the observed velocity to the mass. For each gram of mass there is a dyne of force and a centimeter of motion and a second of time — because a dyne, by definition, is the force that is requisite to impart to the gram of mass that amount of motion per second. To impart this rate of motion at the end of one second the force could act through only half that centimeter of distance because the average velocity during acceleration could be only one-half the final velocity.

    A dyne of force considered acting through a distance of ½  centimeter without reference to time is called an erg of energy — energy without motion or action, called potential energy, a pure abstraction. When a dyne force acts through ½ centimeter during one second it is a dyne-half-centimeter-second, called an erg-second of energy-in-action or kinetic energy. When a dyne of force acts continuously at the uniform rate ½ centimeter per second, then during any period of time the quantity of kinetic energy, energy-in-action or simply action will be as many erg-seconds as the number of seconds elapsed. Kinetic energy or action is stated usually as a rate of action, so many erg-seconds meaning not a quantity but a rate or ratio of action, as the number of action or energy units, such as ergs per, are related or in ratio to, a unit of time such as the second. The kinetic energy or action, as a quantity is ascertained only after its rate has been multiplied by its duration or time.

     The dyne-half-centimeter (like a pound-foot), called the erg, is the conventional unit of potential energy. It is a force times a distance, without reference to motion or time, hence does not constitute any action or event. It can be conceived but cannot be experienced.

     But the dyne-half-centimeter-second is a full-bodied action or event. It is called the erg-second or erg-per-second. Used as a mathematical symbol, it represents, as its object, the quantitative aspect of a definite amount of the energy-in-action called kinetic energy or, simply, action; and, being compounded of the three fundamental units of mass, motion and time, the gram, the centimeter and the second, — the three elements that constitute, objectively, an action or event — it is the appropriate unit for the measurement of energy in or as action — kinetic energy.

     Hence so many erg-seconds is the amount of energy that as energy in action or as action includes or is included in the period of a single second as the unit of time. This unit of energy-in-action, the erg-second, therefore, is usefully employed in the measurement of any uniformly continuous energy flow (such as that possessed by a constant mass moving at constant velocity). It is only necessary to multiply the rate per second which is the number of erg-seconds or ergs-per-second by the number of seconds of continuous flow. This gives the total quantity of action or energy as action during that given period of time as a quantity, not merely as a ratio or rate per second of time.

 

    Now, since action and reaction are always equal, any given flow of energy as action implies a corresponding resistance and counter-flow — the same quantity or magnitude of action as re-action. A flow of energy therefore is not a loss or exhaustion but merely a transformation of action from one form or kind to another kind or form — or other kinds and forms. When energy is bought and paid for it is the amount of transformation that is paid for. Work is never anything but the transformation of energy or action

 

    The human organization functions and is sustained by transformations of energy. It is only because energy is highly capable of being transformed that any life can flourish or even exist. We will therefore examine the transformation of energy in its simplest form.

 

     We have seen that the conventional unit by which energy-in-action is measured is the erg-second; that this amount of energy is contained in a gram of mass when it is moving at a velocity of one centimeter per second; that such velocity is imparted to such mass (in the event of one dyne of force moving it) through a space of one-half centi­meter during one second; that the erg, as merely potential energy, is the product of this force times this motion or distance; that the erg-second, as energy-in-action, is the product of this unit of potential energy times the unit of time during which, as kinetic energy, it acts. The product of these three units of mass (the dyne as the inertial mass of one gram), motion, and time is the conventional and customary unit of energy-in-action as kinetic energy, the erg-second. Just as the product of these three units is the unit of kinetic energy, energy in action, so the coinci­dence of any other three quantities of mass (inertial mass, dynes), motion and time whose product is unity or one, also will be of the magnitude of one erg-second. But such an erg-second, although equal in magnitude, will be different and may be extremely different in composition. Thus any action or event composed of energy acting through time may be different in composition or in kind from any other event without being any different in magnitude, the difference being only in the relative proportions in which the three elements are composed. There are or may be, in fact, as many kinds of events as there are different proportions in which their constituent elements may be composed; and this whether or not their over-all magnitudes be the same. The magnitude or quantity in erg-seconds of any simple event the components of which are known is ascertained by multiply­ing together the respective numbers of units of mass, motion and time of which it is composed. The kind or quality of an action or event is determined by the proportions in which its three elements are combined.

     All energy or action is known to be in a process or state of flux, of transformation from one quality or kind into another, of qualitative change. All transformations that promote human life, that serve human needs and welfare, are positively qualitative changes. All life consists in the preponderance within the organism of positively quali­tative transformations, those that proceed into greater relative proportions of time — greater duration of life. All objective or environmental technologies, whether empirical or rational, whether affecting men as creatures or effected by men rationally as affecters and creators, consist of qualitative transformations of environmental energy. And the circumstance that those transformations that most proceed into greater proportions of time in relation to the mass and motion elements of events must preponderate and prevail beyond those that less so proceed, and when those that reversely recede have become static and thus extinct. Thus it is the element of time, being always cumulative or successive, that entering increasingly into the composition of action or events marks the Cosmos for its intrinsically evolutionary nature and endlessly progressive trend.

     The unit of energy or action thus far examined is arbitrary. Had we taken the horsepower-hour, the poundal or any other combination of definite or measured quantities of mass (force), motion and time the result would have been the same. It is not certainly or directly known whether there is in nature any magnitude of mass or force so uniformly constant that it is never less than nor more than a certain amount and hence all greater mass /masses are? check original/ whole-number multiples of this. Similarly, there is no certain or direct knowledge of a least unit of motion in whole numbers of which all greater quantities of motion must consist. Nor is there any certain and direct knowledge of any uniform and indivi­sible interval of time in whole numbers of which all other magnitudes of time must consist.

     But there is in the present century certain (and direct) knowledge of a very small, discrete, least and indivisible magnitude of kinetic energy or action in whole numbers of which all other quantities of energy flow and are transformed and all specific actions merge in the entropic succession of events.

 

     For there has been discovered in nature a fundamental unit of kinetic energy or action called the quantum of action. The over-all dimension or magnitude of this fundamental unit of energy-in-action is an almost infinitesimal fraction of an erg-second. Taking it in its concrete and objective aspect as an event, and not merely as an abstract measurement or numerical dimension, it has an over-all magnitude /expressed/ mathematically as 6.55 x 10^-27 erg-seconds. This is its dimension in terms of and as a fraction of the erg-second as the unit of measurement. Correspondingly, instead of the arbitrary erg-second, we may take the quantum-of-action itself, nature’s least and fundamental unit of energy-in­-action, as our unit of measurement, and we find that in terms of this natural unit any concrete erg-second has an abstract over-all dimension, a definite but almost infinitely large number of quanta of action, the reciprocal of the exceedingly small fraction that is the numerical dimension of the quantum-of-action in terms of the erg-second as the arbitrary unit. This taking of the arbitrary unit in terms of the unit exhibited as such by nature may perhaps rightly be considered as “getting down to fundamentals,” so far as the whole objective world and the world of concrete experience are concerned.

     But parallel to and in a sense the obverse of the objective world as the concrete side of experience, besides the physical world, there is also a meta-physical world. Besides the outer world of energy-in-action, there is a world of abstra-action, a world drawn, or withdrawn from action, a world of sensation and contemplation and imagination and ratio­cination.

    With respect to any individual, this subjective world of feeling, conception and mind may be taken as the kinetic reflex of that individual’s entire objective experience. As such it operates as of two levels or modes that bear a general similarity to the kinds of action denoted by the active and passive, transitive and intransitive, forms of verbs. So far as the individual is organized in a basic pattern or type that is uniform among and common to an entire class of creatures, such as the whole animal world, his reaction to the impact of objective action or events as experience is either wholly subjective within himself or in a standardized behavior response that is determined upon him, as upon all his type or class, by the objective impact. In this intransitive mode the individual, as determinee instead or determinor, is merely the creature and in no degree the creator of his objective world. He not so truly acts as he is acted upon. He becomes and continues the object under subjection to and not dominant upon his objective world.

 

    But the subjective reactions or reflexes of the human individual are under no such necessary limitations. He can react in ways that are distinctively human in that by them he and all his kind are sharply distinguished from the non-human or the sub-human. In them he exhibits the capacity to become not merely the creature but increasingly the creator of his environing objective world, in the pattern of his sub­jective ideals and dreams. For Nature has endowed man, the creature, with the potential of a joint and conscious sovereignty, a creative dominion, over all her works and ways; that the world may so minister to the generations of men as to yield to them ever increasing measures of that immortal life towards which they all aspire.

 

     This inner, subjective and metaphysical world of man, although the reflex of his objective world, has its own processes. So far as these reflect the processes of the outer world of experience they are called knowledge. So far as they are independent of immediate experience they are called fantasy or imagination, and when the normal power of distinguishing fantasy from objective experience is lost it is called hallucination. Notwithstanding that the objective side of experience consists always of happenings or events as action, yet the imagination can entertain and conceive separately — by analysis, as though separable in experience — the three constituent aspects or elements of an action or event, not only of actual and experienced but also of hypothetical actions or events, as mass, motion and time. Such separate conceptions when reflecting an immediate experience are limited in their magnitudes to the dimensions of mass, motion and time that the event presents. But just as the hypothetical event is under no limitations, maximal or minimal, so the concepts of mass, motion and time as hypothetical abstractions are free from all dimensional and quantitative limitations. Since these constituent elements may be of any magnitudes, however small or great, then their relative proportions and hence the qualitative character and variety of hypothetical actions or events is also of unlimited scope and range. But the events which constitute actual experience are of limited magnitudes, both minimal and maximal. The minimal is set at the quantum of action and the maximal is limited by the finite dimensions of the organs and of the organism that interacts with its objective world of events. And since all experience must be of action or events of minimal and maximal dimensions, neither infinitely small or infinitely large, so the three elements of mass, motion and time must each have a least possible dimension below which it does not unite with the other two to constitute a quantum of action