Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2038

Fragment of transcribed conversation between Heath, Alvin Lowi Jr. and others probably at the Lowi home at 2146 Toscanini Drive, San Pedro CA (this part of San Pedro later incorporated into Rancho Palos Verdes, CA), soon after the Lowis moved there from Torrance. Undated but subsequent to Item 2037 to which reference is made.

 

 

SPENCER HEATH:   So many grams means so many grams per unit of motion.

ALVIN LOWI:   That would be momentum . . .

S:   Yes.

A:   . . . in the mechanical sense.

S:   MV. Not forgetting that V means that motion is so much motion per unit of time, just as mass is so many units of mass per unit of motion. So multiplying these first two together, mass through motion, which means of course through space or length, we have something we call work. But we also have another aspect of time called frequency — how often does this quantity of work get performed, and how often does this happen in one second? Then quantity of behavior is obtained by multiplying by the durational factor, which is how long does it carry on?

A:   You know what I think we have here? I think we have at least an analogy in the physical sciences between continuum physics, which uses time as a continuum . . .

S:   Umm Hmm  (Agreement)

A:   . . . and you might say, statistical mechanics, which uses time and all the quantities as discontinuous units.

S:   And we’re pretty well assured now that all events are discontinuous. If they were not, we could not distinguish one event from another.

A:   Do you want to move this? Are you finished with it?

S:   Yes, thank you very much. I liked it.

A:   It’s not very tasty without the sauce.

S:   . . . But having a certain species of event — one following another of the same species, like light waves — we’ll get the quantity of action involved there by multiplying by how many units of time the thing carries on. That’s durational time. How many times it repeats itself is durational time. How frequently, or how many of these things happen within the unit of time, is called frequency . . .

A:   This is more descriptive of the lifetime, or the durability, or the structure of this event.

S:   Well the number of lives per year . . and now I’m speaking of men, though it sounds like insects, doesn’t it?  (laughing)

A:   No, it could apply to any . . .

S:   . . . number of lives per year. The insects might have a thousand generations in a year. And that’s high frequency. No insect lasts very long . . .

A:   No — or accomplishes very much.

S:   .. and that’s short periods. And whatever duration it has, however, must be multiplied by the number of time units through which it continues to repeat itself. That we call durational time. In your electrical and other things you have the frequency of the wave, not of the current. It is fixed by a large number, indicating how many of those waves are embraced within a single unit of time. Then when we find that this process, happening within a single unit of time, carries on through many units of time, and multiply accordingly, that we call durational time. And without durational time, we don’t have any event at all. We may have the proportions in which events are composed . . .

A:   We have rates, but we don’t have any integral.

S:   We have what is properly called energy, and it becomes what is properly called action. And that’s why some of our writers have pointed out so much and insisted so much that actuality, the actuality of the quantum, is energy multiplied by time. Now it is. All action is energy rate multiplied by time. Because energy is not action.

A:   This is a new concept to me, since I’m not familiar with the quantum physics, the concept of energy multiplied by time. This is called an event?

S:   The only difference between the quantum event and any other event is the magnitude. In their versatility, they can be composed in different proportions. But all events can. And the quantum is just like any other event, except it seems to be the border line between what human beings can experience, directly or through instruments, and what they cannot experience. But our sensory system doesn’t respond to certain things . .

A:   What’s the physical significance of the product of energy and time?

S:   Well you get us out of the abstract into the concrete, into something that we can experience with our bodies. The energy is simply a rate — how many times this one thing happens or exists during one unit of the other thing.

A:   Well, this is…

S:  It’s the rate.

A:   The rate of, say, doing work.

S:  How much you do, in one hour.

A:  That’s power.

S:   That’s capacity to do work. It’s called power, it’s called act . .

no. It’s called energy. Well we’ve got it all mixed up. You can find it

called all kinds of ways. But however let’s go back a little further. We

have force and velocity, don’t we. FV, or MV, same thing. And we have FD,

which is force through a distance. I should have begun with that. That’s

a bit of work, isn’t it. There’s no doubt about that being a bit of work.

A:  No, that’s right. But it’s not a rate, you could take . . .

S:  And work does not necessarily involve any time . . .

A:  It’s the same energy, whether this F traverses this D in a year, or whether it traverses it in a second. That’s the same amount of energy.

S:   Right. Same amount of work done.

A:   Yes.

S:   So time is no object . . . (laughing)

A:   According to the book.

S:   One event is just as good as another. (laughing)

A:   That’s what that says. That’s the classical idea of work.

S:   But when time is an object, then we ascertain how many units of mass are associated with a certain number of units of motion, during one unit of time. So you don’t get into the actual world, objective world, until you multiply by time. Time is the actualizer. And that means time not in the sense of frequency, which is how little time anything occupies, but in the sense of durational time, which is the large time that something occupies.

 

A:   The conclusion here is that the classical concept of energy, or work, is a pure abstraction, that energy . . .

S:   Energy yes, but not work — because force times distance is work, regardless of time.

A:   Exactly. Yes.

S:   The way time comes into it, and it always has to be there . . .

A:   But for this work not to take place within a certain span of time, is not sensible to a human being, physically.

S:   No, it doesn’t entertain negatives. They’re unwelcome guests, never

admitted. (laughing)

A:   Like for example, if I watch this clock over a space of time, I may hear it ticking but I don’t know it’s doing any work because I can’t see the hands move. So I don’t see any work being done here, and so I conclude no work is being done. But if I watch it long enough, in other words I increase my observational duration, I can see that the hand does move and that work is being done.

S:   The velocity is slow because there are many time units in relation to one motion unit. (Long pause) Let’s go back again. Force through distance is work . . (correcting himself) . . force through motion is work . . .

A:   Motion being a displacement.

S:   . . . because the centimeter measures motion the same as it does distance. In fact you don’t know anything about time or distance except in terms of motion. (chuckle) So force times distance is a certain amount of work. But you can’t exclude the time factor there, it’s part of what constitutes the event. As soon as you introduce the time factor, you find out force moves through a certain distance how frequently. And that’s called the rate of work.

A:   And the rate of work in engineering is called power.

S:   It’s called energy. (quickly) Yes also power. You’re right. Potential — and the rate is the potential. Now you bring time into it and find out how many of those events happen — through how many periods of time that particular event or series of events happens — and that’s durational time. That gives us body. Now force times motion alone has no . . as I said, has no time in it. Your body cannot experience it. So it’s an abstract conception called a ratio. So many units of force through so many units of motion. That’s a ratio, it’s not a happening. It can’t happen until the time comes in.

A:   This is the old classical concept of energy . . or I mean of work.

S:   There’s no difference in any concept, they’re all reconciled.

(pause) But if a certain amount of work occurs, during one unit of

time and your work extends over more than one unit of time, you

must multiply that certain quantity of work by the number of units of time through which it extends. That changes it from the abstract to the concrete, from the subjective to the objective. When that durational time comes in saying how long, that gives it substance. How long it operates. How long from the beginning to the end of this event. The event has a certain work rate, and that work rate multiplied by the number of units of time involved, gives you the totality of the work. That’s what you get . . you change work from being a mere abstraction. Force times distance is an abstraction, you can’t experience that. That is, without something else to be there. You have got to have periodicity there, or time. You’ve got to have so many time units or time periods there. So when you have, as an abstraction, force through a certain distance, is so much per unit of time, well how many times does that happen?  How much have you got? — Well find out how many units of time you have. And multiply what you started with by the number of units of time, and that gives you a definite, concrete quantity of action, or power if you want to call it, or event. So the quantum principle doesn’t involve anything new — which we discovered. A  kilowatt hour or an erg second, we talked about this before, I think, is a definite quantity of work occupying one second of time — one times one times one.

 

Rosie (?): Daddy, we have more company.

 

A:  Excuse me a second.

/Tape discontinued, begins

again when guests arrive./

 

_____________________________

 

S:   . . . respond to you in a certain way. And then after I heard him,

then I couldn’t respond. (laughter)

A:   Are you insinuating that I’m a distraction?!

S:   I would like to be so considered myself; if I couldn’t distract anybody I couldn’t have so much influence. (laughter) Anyhow you     _________without distracting, anyway. /Force/ and reaction are equal and opposite. If I attract you, why then . . .

A:   It’s bound to be a distraction.

S:   You are distracting me. (laughter) Am I right, literally right? Correct?

I think it is . . I haven’t thought of it in those terms before.

A:   Certainly!

S:   Newton was right, profoundly right. Not only in the physical world, but

in the biological world, the psychological, all the way around, everywhere.

A:   You realize this has implications in the social sciences? The First Law

of Motion? . . .

S:   Goodness, yes!

A:   For every action there’s an equal and . . .

S:   I’ll say.

A:   . . . opposite reaction? For every attraction there’s an equal and

opposite distraction?  (laughter)

Guest:   Subtraction too, maybe.

A:   This can be reciprocal or destructive . . .

S:   You can’t subtract from one thing without adding to another, can you?

A:   But you can . . .

S:   Can you add to one without subtracting from the other?

A:   But this combination of attraction and detraction can produce more than

what you started out with. For example, if I distract you in such a way that

you come to a conclusion out of things that you had been thinking of, without

actually contributing to this con­clusion, you have more than you started out

with. You have now a conclusion that you might not have had. So that this

distraction and attraction can be reciprocal in the sense that you use it.

S:   There are two aspects of an event. One aspect of it is composi­tional and highly variable. The quantity of force and related to the quantity of velocity. EVe = Energy, a rate of action, doesn’t it. If FV represents work, or action, but F..E = M or v² . . .

A:   Energy equals Mv²

S:   Yes. That’s not the square of energy in the literal sense, because you can’t reduce it back into a quantity, a rate into a quantum. _______ is a rate, a rate of energy or a rate of action — you can’t reduce it into a quantity until you multiply it by time. And then it’s called a quantity, and that’s why you have to make it Mv². E = Mv². And Mv² over 2 only means that you’re using double velocity, when you take the terminal velocity under acceleration.

A:   Kinetic energy is the terminal velocity . . .

S:   Yes.

A:   . . . that is reached by a particle which started out with a

certain potential energy.

S:   So if you assume uniform motion, E = mv², without any 2. Now v² is not v², if __________  — every working physicist will tell you it is. It just happens that in the unit that we take, there are the same number of units of velocity that there are of time. In your experiment by which you assume the acceleration of a gram at a uniform rate of acceleration, through one centimeter during one second, now in that the gram and the dyne go together, numerically, always. You might as well use one as the other. And velocity and time go together, because they increase or decrease in perfect unison. A unit of velocity increases the same as a unit of time.

A:   You mean a unit of displacement? Centimeters?

S:   Yes. Because when you have a falling body or any accelerating body, the velocity increases with every unit of time. There is an increased unit of velocity.

A:   In uniform motion.

S:   Yes, now when you multiply velocity by time, you get back to length, or distance, don’t you. So v² is velocity times time, not velocity times velocity. Otherwise you wouldn’t have your old force times distance. You’d have two kinds of action, or power. So the little economy device, to use the exponential method: Instead of saying vt, we say v². That’s how it works out, practically. Not many people have thought enough about it to realize that. It’s hard to conceive. But it’s absolutely demonstrable.

A:   That there is an equivalence between v² and vt.

S:   Yes. And if there were not, you’d have work or action consisting in a force through a number of units of motion — distance or length — and we know that’s action, that’s work completed. It’s all there, isn’t it. Except that we haven’t stated how much time. Time is there also. Now when we bring time into it, then we say not so many units of motion, but so many units of motion associated with one unit of time. Now then when we say how many units of time there were, and multiply by how many units of time there are, and that gives all the units of force and motion that there were. It reduces velocity to length. You can say that work consists in force times length, can’t you?

A:   Yes . .

S:   When you say force times velocity, times time, then you have said force times length. Force times motion times length.

A:   Well there is an equivalence here, because conceptually, force

times (velocity)²  is energy, and so is force times velocity times time.

S:   Exactly. And since time and velocity always go hand in hand, neck

neck, it doesn’t matter whether you call it v² or vt. Numerically, they’ll be exactly the same. And that product gives you what we call a quantum, or a quantity, which a large quantum. If many quanta, it’s

quantity; and if it’s only one, a very small quantity, it’s quantum. So this more complicated formula isn’t any more complicated . . it

appears complex only for the reason that you have used one symbol

for two different things. And you can do it legitimately, practically, because the same numbers of those things always appear in the event. It’s similar with the mass and motion. We take mass in so many units, and we don’t mean so many units absolutely, we mean so many units every time you have a unit of length, or a unit of velocity. Ten pounds means ten units of mass for every time you have a unit of motion — every time you have a foot — so you multiply them together. And that’s a ratio between a mass, or force, and a unit of motion, or distance. We’re not conscious that that’s a ratio, because it’s already multiplied when we say “ten.”  (laughing)

Guest:   Yes I see, your force divided by the acceleration, actually, or which is again velocity, or time it involved . .

S:   And when we come into velocity, velocity only means how much motion there is for each unit of time . . or how many units of motion there are for each unit of time. So velocity is a product of motion and time — how many units of motion you have per each unit of time. Now to get it into action, or work, you have to multiply it by how many times this thing happens, and that’s durational time, that’s not frequency; velocity is frequency, how frequently does this happen during one motion of time.

A:   . . What’s the frequency with which a unit of length is repeated.

Repeated.

Guest:   Continuously repeated.

S:   And then when you want to get your whole unit of length or your

whole unit of work, which include the _________, why then you multiply by the number of units of time that are involved.

A:   . . How long has it been going on.

S:   Through how many time units.

Guest:   In other words you integrated over the time range.

 

A:   Yes, that’s what we sense.

S:   And your bill isn’t written up until we take into that account the energy rate multiplied by the number of time units through which that rate was continued. Durational, or continuation time. And these

mathematically happen to be reciprocals _________. If the fraction, as I was saying a while ago, is 4 over 4, there’s no ratio at all. Ratios can only exist between two different numbers. If the numbers are the same you can’t say what the ratio is, unless you say one to one . . .

 

A:   You don’t consider unity a ratio.

S:   No, because unity is only one, and it takes more than one to make a ratio. One is not a number, in other words. One is the basis of number, but one is never properly considered a number. Because a number means a number, it doesn’t mean one!  (laughing)

Guest:   ____________ more than one.

S:   It means more than one. How are you going to have a number when you

have only one?  (pause)

A:   Yes, the generalized number has to represent quantities of digits.^

Guest:   That’s right, and one is just a unit.

A:   One is just a counting unit. (General agreement) Well what is a zero?

S:   Well that doesn’t come into our experience at all, so we might as well forget it. (General laughter) Subjectively yes, we can use it.

 

Guest:   Yes.

A:   It’s an important abstraction.

S:   You know that star towards which the mariner points his prow is only subjective, he never can experience it. (chuckle) It gives him direction and helps him to navigate, the same as zero helps us to think. And infinity is the other star, the other end. We never experience it in any possible way or means, but it gives us direction.

 

A:   You experience it in the sense that it stimulates your retina.

S:   Can you see infinitely far?

A:   No, that star might not really be there, that’s true, but . .

S:   The fact that you never get to infinity doesn’t mean that you’re

not making any headway.

A:   Infinity might come to you, though.

S:   I think it would have to come a pretty long distance, probably, but I don’t know anything about that. I don’t pretend to tell you anything about infinity. I’m not so constituted that I can entertain conceptions that large. (chuckling) Nor am I so constituted that I can entertain quanta — events that small. I’m in a sort of an octave, and as our physiology develops, then we can expand that octave — or else we might be still amoebas.

Guest:   Well in the scale of things, man is just about in the middle isn’t he?  Of the scale of observable things, like ten to the minus C over twelve for the electron, and on the other hand it’s ten to the twelve centimeter for the observable scale of the universe?

S:   Yes, I read some books to that effect. Man is a kind of a “middle man.”

A:   Middle of the road again! We’re always in the middle. (General laughter)

S:   There are interesting books about that, man’s dimensions . . .

A:   Well I’ve wondered about that myself . . .

S:   He’s intermediate.

Guest:   Yes.

A:   That the smallest scale of measurables is about as far on the opposite side of the zero as the largest scale of measurements, mathematically speaking — same numbers of powers of ten.

S:   Yes, just as much minus as there is plus. And yet there isn’t any minus unless there’s something for it to be less of. Because a minus sign is a sign of operation.

A:   Well this isn’t minus, this is one the other sign of . . .

S:   Nothing.

A:   One. It’s on the other side of one.

Guest:   Actually a division, even.

A:   One is the division. Ten to the zero power, or one, is not zero. It’s

not negative. It’s below the size or magnitude of one by the same number of

powers of ten as the largest number is larger than one. It’s digits to the

right and left of the decimal point, the distance to the farthest star that

we can see, or galaxy, is the same number of centimeters to the left of the

decimal point as the size of an electron, the diameter of an electron let

us say, is in centimeters to the right of the decimal point.

Guest:   In one way you’re just adding the centimeters, you know, side by side, whereas in the other one you’ve taken a centimeter and started     chopping it down as small as you can.    (laughing)

S:   Yes.

A:   Yes that’s a good analogy.

S:   And we’re about as far one way as the other. That may be an accident, but more likely there’s some reason for it . . if we only knew the reason.

Guest:   There may be a teleological reason for this.

A:   A what kind?

S:   Teleological?  Yes, there could be.

A:   A what kind?

S:   Max Planck lays it down that it’s only reasonable to suppose that the

units involved in the non-reversible are just too small for us to understand

so far. When we understand what units are involved, then we’ll know what

numbers are there, and then we’ll have the rationale. But we don’t know these

universal events in nature, just because we can’t measure them. That can be

because the unit employed in those events is below the magnitude to which we

respond.

A:   Our experience . . .

S:   There again is a place for a metaphysical world.

A:   Once again our experience prevents us from concluding that this isn’t also rational. In other words to presume that just because we can’t . . .

Guest:   Understand

A:   We haven’t yet experienced it or understood it, doesn’t mean that it

isn’t rational . . .

S:   Precisely.

A:   . . . and epistemologically within understanding.

S:   And that’s the huge mistake, the vast mistake, in Werner Heisenberg’s

little book, The Philosophy of Science, with an introduction by philosopher

F.C.S. Northrop, a long introduction, urging that below a certain — or

uncertain — magnitude, uncertainty prevails. One of the most drastically

irrational things that you ever could conceive, and it’s accepted by everybody

so far as I know . . there may be books against it. But I’ve annotated the

margins and on additional leaves stuck in right on through. It’s the most

irrational thing I ever encountered.

A:   It’s typified by the statement you hear often, “Don’t look for reason where there is none.”

S:   Yes.  Well having assumed that there is none, don’t look there. (chuckle)

 

Guest:   Is this Heisenberg you’re talking about, the one who came up with

this complementary idea, or the principle of uncertainty?

A:   The Uncertainty Principle.

Guest:   Yes.

S:   Sometimes called the probability . . statistical probability.

A:   He’s talking about some kind of rationale, anyway.

S:   Think in terms of events. When any event happens, or has happened, was

it certain or uncertain? After it’s happened, is it certain or is it

uncertain? Before it’s happened you can say it’s certain or it’s uncertain,

but that’s how you feel about it; it can’t be any less certain before it

happened than it was after it happened. Except for your limitations — you

impute that to it.

A:   So you can’t predict it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not certain to

happen.

S:   That’s what they call vitalism . . now what’s the word for it that Aristotle called it? Animism. You think this event has some kind of a reasoning capacity something like yours, and no more. Well I can’t think of anything more repugnant to my mind, than that a thing becomes certain by happening and was uncertain before it happened — if it’s the same thing. You say at once, accidents happen. And we can often trace the cause. And if we can trace it — it comes within our understanding — then we say it was certain to happen. Now if it transcended our understanding, and we didn’t know whether it was going to happen or not . . .

A:   Can’t find the cause.

S:   . . . then we say it happened by accident. Chance. Now when things happen

many times prevailingly, statistically in a certain manner, we then assume here

must be some cause there, and that’s statistical certainty.

 

A:   And then that’s an excuse for not understanding . . .

S:   Exactly.

A:   The root cause.

S:   And so we call it statistical certainty, meaning that it hasn’t become certain to us yet. But in those statistics it was certain; those statistics knew what they were coming to, or whether they were going to come out. (laughing) If they didn’t, then they’d come out in great variation.

A:   I think it’s quite unfortunate that such a powerful tool as statistics in the hands of some people becomes an excuse for poor reasoning.

S:   ___________ the saying is, there are three kinds of lies? Plain lies, damn lies, statistics. (laughter) Plain lies, damn lies and statistics. Or numbers . . .

Guest:   Sophisticated lies. Numbers don’t lie, but liars can. Let’s see . .

A:   Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure. (laughter) There’s an awful of

that, but you don’t blame it on statistics, I don’t think. Nor do you use

statistics as an excuse to stop looking for causes, which is what a lot of

physicists do. It’s still a tool . . .

Guest:   ________________ a mathematical tool which is properly used, I can see where you would probably derive some advantages from it, but . . .

S:   Yes.  Oh, greatly.

A:   It’s a damned good substitute for explicit cause and effect. But it’s

only a substitute, the way I look at it.

S:   We haven’t ascertained the cause. And when we haven’t ascertained the

cause, yet we know that prevailingly things have to happen a certain way, we

assume a cause.

Guest:   We sort of try to make it fit the facts.

S:   And that’s what we call statistics. We assume an unknown cause, like the

unknown god, you know, by its effects. We assume the unknown god by his effects

— as the Greeks did, you know. So we assume the unknown rationality by the

effects — that it comes out statistically in the same way always. Statistics

came into a little experience I had one time. Dr. Klinger, Professor of physics

at Johns Hopkins University, invited me to talk to his group, a physical society,

about social organization — we being the atoms or the quantum units and so on, or

whatever your unit is, and interacting with one another.

A:   The individual as a unit.

S:   And so I spread my stuff that the physicists ought to study society, the individual same thing as though he were an atom, and finally perhaps as though he were a molecule, and get the statistical results — the whole society as though it were a mountain perhaps, or some big structure. And so I gave my ideas, which were looked at of course with somewhat skeptical eyes, and when I finished my plea, that they should proceed in social science in the same manner that we are proceeding in physical science, by assuming a unit and getting the numbers and all that sort of thing, as I had put out in some detail under what I called “The Energy Concept of Population,” which makes it possible to use all the simple arithmetic that we use in counting any other objects . . .

A:   /Aside to Guest/ It’s very elegant, you should read his book on this.

S:   Then Dr. Klinger wanted to ask the first question. And he said, “Dr. Heath,” . . . some of those people are so used to doctors they call me a doctor; I missed it by a year or so . . Doctor of Civil Laws it would have been in another year. And so I don’t claim any title to that effect, but I tried to quote it literally. He said, “Dr. Heath, in view of the unpredictability of human action, or behavior, is it possible to have a science of society (which is the title of this book of mine), in the same sense that we have a science of physics?” And I said, “No, Dr. Klinger, I am sorry to say, but in view of the unpredictability of human behavior, it is no more possible to have a science of society in the sense of physical science, than it is possible to have a science of physics, in view of the unpredictability of your electron.” . . The “No” was an ironical “No.”  (chuckles)

A:   It was no more possible to have a science of society in view of the unpredictability of the individual, as it is . . .

S:   It’s just as possible.

A:   It’s just as possible because of the unpredictability of the fundamental units of both.

S:   I put it in the negative, “No, Dr. Klinger . . .”

A:   You put in in the negative.

S:   “No, Dr. Klinger . . .”

A:   But yours was sarcasm!

S:   . . . in view of the unpredictability of human behavior, it is no more possible to have a science of society than it is to have a science of physics, in view of the unpredictability of your unit.” (laughing)

Guest:  In that sense, sometimes I wonder whether, like a while ago we brought out the fact that it is Schroedinger who claimed that life is a tendency toward decreasing entropy, but on the other hand when you look at it in this respect, individuals’ unpredictableness and so forth, it would seem like you could look at it the other way, as tending toward an increasing entropy.

S:   Yes . . .

A:   Except for one thing . . .

S:   . . . when events mingle and commingle and cross-current and converge and

diverge and form new events, when that’s happening, the elements of mass,

motion and time are being modified — reproportioned is what I mean to say. And

so some of the ensuing events from the next instant, or next motion, the next

period of time, will have a greater element of time in them at the cost of the

other two features.

Guest:  (Agreement)

S:   And so the ensuing events, those which most prevail will be those which contain the most time. So time is a qualifier of reality . . it gives us the quality of reality. That’s why you multiply your electric rate, your power rate, by time to get some reality when you pay your balance.

A:   This is not the continuum time but the interval time.

S:   Yes.  Time with relation to whatever unit you’re talking about: Planck’s quantum unit, an erg second, a kilowatt hour, or whatever it is, the amount of time embraced in that unit gives it the amount of reality that there is there. Now that doesn’t qualify it. The quality of it /is/ to satisfy human desires. And that’s what all quality is. It depends on the ratio between the force and the motion; that is, the higher level of frequency . . .

A:   You don’t think time enters in as a characterizing feature of the quality.

S:   Except in the sense of frequency it does. In the sense of how often, but not how many times. Duration there means how many times. But how often — frequency — is the qualitative characteristic, because /an/ event changes its nature, its quality, without its quantity being changed at all. And any change of an event of a given magnitude, like a quantum or an erg second, any change of (pause) . . of a given size, as I said, a fixed size of event . . .

A:   Magnitude.

S:   Then time determines nothing but its magnitude, right?

A:   The presence of it, the quantity of it.

S:  How long it takes it to happen. But the other two elements, the force

— the gram element — and the centimeter element, they can be highly

 variable. And that’s frequency.

A:   You’ll find that . . .

S:   How many centimeters per unit of time . . (pause) . . of time, yes.

Guest:   ___________ time units.

A:   These always could be talking about the reciprocal relationships

between men, these are reciprocal events rather than destructive ones.

Unless you qualify it, you usually mean that, don’t you?

S:   No, because what we call destructive events are those which are running into higher frequencies. The collision results in things coming up into radiant energy, you know. And it’s the conflict of collision between the elements in the radium that causes it to send its energy out into high frequency rays. And so with men, it shortens our lives. When we collide with one another we live shorter lives, and it takes the same quantity. And it takes the same quantity of human lives, a larger number of short lives, to make up the same as a small number of long lives.

A:  (To Guest) It’s one of the conclusions of his book that the reciprocal

relations, the ones that are non-destructive, result in an increasing

duration, or lifespan. And this is in harmony with the decrease in entropy

that goes along with creation, whereas the destructive . . .

S:   Destroying is higher frequency.

A:   . . . events are tending toward the counteraction of the decrease in entropy due to creation.

S:   Let me give you another little anecdote which actually happened. (pause)

I was riding on the train between Detroit and Lansing, and a professor of

physics sitting on the seat with me wanted to talk. I like to talk with

professors of physics, I like it very much; but I was much absorbed in an

article in a magazine I had, and I wanted to finish it. So I fended him off two

or three times while I finished my reading, and then I turned to him and

engaged in conversation, and learned that he was a physics professor . . no,

of chemistry . . in the University Michigan. It was Michigan College then. And

we talked along casually and nodding, making similar observations to agree with

one another, until he made some mention of this doctrine of entropy. By that

time he knew that I had read some in that field of course. And I said, “Well,

that’s where I can’t go with you. I agree with you up to this point, but that’s

too much for me.” “Why,” he said, “do I understand you correctly?” “Well I mean

what I say.” He said, “You confound me. You seem like a man of reading and

scholarship. I wonder at this; I can’t understand it.” And I said, “Well I’m

having the same kind of trouble with you. I don’t seem to be able to understand

you. But there was a time in my life when people used to tell me that water

always runs downhill, and I believed them.”  He said, “Well doesn’t it?” “No,”

I said, “I don’t believe them.” That’s where he said, “I can’t understand you.”

I said, “You do believe that water always runs downhill?” He said, “Why

certainly.” “Then please tell me how it gets up there.” (Laughter) “Now,” I

said, “they used to believe that energy always ran downhill. The time came . .

Professor Schroedinger, he’s found that it goes uphill part of the time. (Some

laughter) If you would read Schrödinger’s little volume on that called What Is

Life, I think you might get some light on the subject of what is life.

A:   I’ll have to read Schroedinger. He wrote a masterpiece in 30, 40 or 50 pages, not much more than that, on statistical thermodynamics, which is a real masterpiece.

Guest:   Who did?

A:   Erwin Schroedinger.

Guest:   Oh.

A:   I haven’t read this philosophical . . .

S:   I said, “I can explain this to you, I think, because just as in my young life water always ran downhill, it was only for one simple reason, they didn’t see it going up.” (Chuckles) “If they’d seen it going up, they wouldn’t have said that. But it happens to be trans­parent as it goes goes up, and so they thought what they didn’t see didn’t exist. And maybe you feel that way about this — you don’t see it!” (Laughter)

A:   Of course the analogous thing to this in economics is Bastiat’s book,

That Which One Sees and That Which One Does Not See, in coming to the major

conclusions of the classical economists.

S:   Well what statement can we make, of any certainty, about what we cannot

see? I had a disturber in a discussion group one time who was always saying,

“Now I can’t see…so-and-so and so-and-so.”  And he got to be a little . . he

wasn’t very vociferous or _________ and so he didn’t cause much trouble, but

you always knew what he was going to say. Mr. Mosher was his name. And so on

one occasion I said, “Now Mr. Mosher, I think everybody in this room

understands that there are a good many things that you don’t see. You’ve been

telling us for some time about them. Now won’t you just as a favor to me, on

this occasion, tell us something about the things that you do see?”

(laughter) “Because,” I said, “I’m sure that it can’t be but what there are

some things you do see.”  (laughter)

A:   The positive approach. (laughter)

S:   ____________________ speculations there.

A:   It’s the things you don’t see which always turn out to be the most important things.

S:   No . . .

A:   It’s the things you don’t perceive directly but have to conceive of, that

turn out to be important.

S:   Yes, because that makes you a creator, you have to use your power of imagination, your conceptual powers, and often you use them mathematically, and by that mathematical process you see things with the eye of the mind that your eye of your body can see also — for the first time.

A:   Because it knows where to look.

S:   Yes . . well that showed them where to look for Neptune. Neptune was

discovered by the eye of the mind. It showed . . Faraday’s next man . . it showed . . Faraday’s data was taken over by one mathematician . . .

A:   Einstein?

S:   No, no. He was a contemporary, a Scotsman . .! Always know the name . .

A:   Of Faraday?

S:   Yes, he discovered the electromagnetic spectrum by mathematics.

Guest:   Maxwell?  Maxwell the one?

A:   Maxwell, yes.

 

S:   Maxwell, exactly. Maxwell took the quantitative data — it had to be

numerical to be used mathematically — and he manipulated it mathematically,

according to the uniform laws of mathematics __________ laws of the mind, as

you know — also the laws of the atoms and the levers and the gears and

everything like that — and he dis­covered the whole field of the electromagnetic

spectrum. And some thirty years later Hertz in Germany discovered it, not with

the physical eye but with the physical senses. So we didn’t discover Neptune by

this eye, we didn’t discover electromagnetism . . .

A:   Well the discovery of Neptune . . was it Neptune or Pluto that was

discovered by applying Einstein’s mechanics to some observational data on

. . Uranus? No, Uranus is a farther star . .

S:   Uranus was the way it did it . . through Uranus’ perturbations that

they discovered Neptune, and it was through Mercury’s perturbations that . . what else was discovered?

Guest:   Pluto was the latest planet, some people don’t know whether it’s

really a planet . . .

A:   Yes, okay. It’s the discovery of Pluto that was the ultimate

confirmation of relativity.

Guest:   That applied there?

A:   Relativity was used to deduce the existence of another planet of a

certain mass that would be in a certain place to produce those kinds of

perturbations in the orbit . . .

S:   I don’t want to be a spoil-sport in this field, but I want to remind

folks that once in a while under the Ptolemaic system we predicted eclipses

and a whole lot of things and carried on navigation, all on a wrong theory.

Guest: You mean this epicycle thing through which . . .

A:   Yes.

S:   All on a wrong theory.

A:   (Laughing) All on a wrong theory! Well what’s wrong with ________

S:   Einstein had predicted things, and they’ve been verified. In the same

manner that Ptolemy predicted things. But that’s no more guarantee that

Einstein has the right theory any more than that Ptolemy had the right

theory. We should remember that. I believe in Planck as the fundamental

foundation. I must say this to you:  . . .

/Conversation interrupted

by arrival of more guests/

 

 

______________________________

Guest:   (As new arrivals come in) Big night!

A:   Oh no!

New guests:   Look who’s here!

Guest:   Well I haven’t seen you for a long time!

A:   How have you been?  You’re looking good! Mr. Spencer Heath, this is Mr.

Lou Safer.

S:   Mr. Lou Safer?

L:   How are you.

S:   Not Lucifer?  (laughter)

L:   Well, that’s what they call me sometimes.

S:   (Laughing)  It sounds pretty bad.

A:   Sit down, Lou.

S:   Well let me show you something I think is very fitting, on the foundation of what I’ve been saying. That every event is made up of so many units of mass, so many units of motion and of so many units of time, in some proportion. The quality of the event — whether it saves our lives, shortens or lengthens our lives — is dependent on the frequency, which is the relation between the mass, or force, and the velocity — the first two elements — and the motion. The magnitude of the whole work or works — the whole works, if you like (chuckling) — is established by ascertaining the number of time units through which the whole thing extends. So you multiply the grams by the centimeters by the seconds, to get the magnitude of the action. Is that right?

A:   (Agreement)

S:   Now if that’s a very small product, we can’t experience it, directly at

any rate. But if there are any fundamental units of mass, motion and time —

like gram, centimeter and second — if there are, and I think I can pretty well

show by deduction that there are . . I have done so I think . .

A:   Yes, we did that.

S:   If there are, then there is a magnitude of mass less than which will not

enter into motion. And if the product of the three must remain constant – as

it always does in any event . . .

A:   It sets a limiting value.

S:   . . . whether it be a quantum event or not (h has the same magnitude the

same as erg has the same magnitude), the product of those three has to be

always the same. Correct?

A:  (Agreement)

S:   That’s the Planckian unit, the building block of the universe and so now

this is the picture. Now, let’s draw a certain conclusion from that picture by

assuming that in this particular integration there is only one unit of mass —

the fundamental unit of mass, the ultimate unit of mass.

A:   Below which you can’t have a combination . . .

S:   Below which there wouldn’t be any combination. And I’ll say for his

benefit that we have to assume that, or we assume there is a world without numbers. Because we would be in a world with no field of phenomena that would be rational . .that there would be an irrational field; some portion of our cosmos would be chaos. Because if we didn’t have an ultimate number we couldn’t have an ultimate event. We couldn’t have any rationality below that. There has to be a bottom unit in order to have a point above which you can have numbers. And a point ___________ you cannot have numbers, can’t have any rationality. So it leads to the conclusion that this is only part cosmos and part chaos, if it’s not fundamentally the same, and that contradicts our reason. Now getting back to this picture, we’re going to assume an event that has a certain . . a class or kind of events, like Planck’s quantum, or like an erg second, like a horsepower hour, like a kilowatt hour. Those events are all the same magnitude, are they not?

A:   Given a kilowatt hour, then . .

S:   Then all kilowatt hours are the same.

A:   The same. (Agreement)

S:   Given a Planckian unit, then all other Planckian units are the same, in

quantity at least. Not that the kilowatt hours are all the same in

composition; they highly vary. You’re transforming your currents all the time.

And it’s a constant aspect of the Planckian unit that h is always the same

magnitude, it’s the same particular fraction of an erg second, and no other.

Isn’t that right?

A:  (Agreement)

S:   Very good now, if we have a particular instance of a quantum, in which

the mass unit is at the bottom, it’s the absolute…

A:   It’s the absolute minimum.

S:   The absolute minimum. We don’t need to say that in absolute terms

exactly; anyhow, it’s below which it will not unite with any other elements of

an event, and therefore you can’t have an event — because you can’t have any

ratio. No number. So then let us go back and assume once more that the

particular event that we have . . the par­ticular class of events, all having

the same over-all magnitude, but this one happens to have only one unit, the

ultimate unit, of mass in it. Well then in order that the product may be the

same, there must be a very large number of units of motion, which means a high

velocity. Is that obvious?

A:  (Agreement)

S:   And then how can there be any larger number of units of motion without

diminishing your mass? — your over-all ____________.

                         •

A:   Presuming the mass to be your constant, letting the quantity of . . .

S:   Presume your erg-seconds all being the same.

A:   Presume a quantity of energy, letting the quantity of mass approach a

minimum, then the quantity . . .

S:   The velocity has to . . .

A:   The velocity has to approach a maximum.

S:   Well now that’s why you have a maximum velocity of light, derived and

not assumed, as Einstein does. Einstein takes it as his basic datum.

A:   A postulate.

S:   Postulate; a priori. Now you see he’s taken a derivative conception

for a fundamental one. And when he bases his theories, so far as he does,

on that, he’s basing it on a non-fact.

A:   So you have a more elementary postulate to make.

S:   Yes, which physics . . .

A:   That the world is rational.

S:   . . .which physics is always demanding, too, to get at the rationale of

the cosmos. Because if it doesn’t have a rationale, it isn’t a cosmos; we’ll have to call it a chaos. And how do we recognize that? How do we know? How do you distinguish cosmos from chaos?  Well we have a very nice answer for that, because /unless/ we haven’t been organized out of the same elements that all of the rest of the cosmos is, one of those elements is rationality. We’re a chip off the old block, we’re the same kind of wood. And there’s nothing in that block /but/ what’s in this chip. If it were not so, I wouldn’t know rationality when I see it! (laughing) Some say this is a chaotic universe, that man is sort of a chip adrift, a bit of rationality . . .

A:   Random matter.

S:   He has rationality in a hostile world — cynics say that — because everything else except man is irrational. You’ve heard that often, haven’t you?

A:   I’ve heard it put the other way, everything’s rational but man, who’s irrational.

S:   That’s what they say, in effect, that man has a monopoly on rationality, only they don’t know where he got it, if he ever did. His whole self, he got it from the cosmos. And if there’s any rationality in him, it’s in the place where he came from. (laughing) He couldn’t come from a place that he couldn’t bring it from . . (laughing) . . which is the whole cosmos. We’re segregated units as it were, abstracted from the whole cosmic whole. And if we have any such quality as rationality, there wasn’t any other place for us to get it from. And that’s why, when we see it outside of ourselves, we recognize it by the fact that it’s in ourselves. Or the religionists might say, the theologians might say, that’s at-one-ment with God.