Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2084..

Marginal pencilings by Heath on reading Hans Reichenbach, Atom and Cosmos: The World of Modern Physics, Macmillan 1933. He also marked many places as either important or questionable, often with some small comment.

 

 

Inside cover:/

Particle and wave one basic conception – 155

(Velocity of light)², C² – p 147, 207

Photons, Needle-like, Einstein – 148

Energy and frequency – 144

Discontinuity of matter (mass) – 27

 

Preface page/  Two ways of thinking:

1. Based on precise objective data — How nature speaks
2. Based on a priori conceptions

25/  Discontinuity fixes units; units give numbers; from numbers arise ratios — rationality.

27/ “Appearances” deduced from non-objective data, geometrical, not arising out of objective sensory data in the world of objective experience.

27/  Ultimate absolute units of Mass or particle, force or inertia.

28/  So far as they /our concepts/ rest on non-objective premises instead of sense data — on geometry instead of Fact, on Euclid and company instead of Planck—on meta-physics instead of physics. “Portions of space,” portions of nothing — portions of absence.

29/  Demands a system of ideas—concepts—based exclusively on quantitative objective sensory data as its sole premises. These premises are implicit in all quanta as compositions or integrations of mass, motion and time as events having a constant uniform over-all magnitude, however variously proportioned or composed they may be.

29/  [That, then, is the frame in which I should like to place physics ..]  This is the “frame,” but its content is largely non-objective — traditional concepts not based on the three sensory data that, by definition, constitute the quanta — and multiples of them — as objective action or events, as factual reality. Hence not the content of this frame nor any of its derivative concepts can be verified in objective experience.

  S.H. Feb. 10, 1961.

33/  [the new doctrine of space..]  No definition of space, and no properties assigned.

33/  [..geometry, the science of space..]  Of nothing concrete.

34/  A valid science of the physical world must be based on physical events, as Planck’s quantum is, and not on axioms or other geometric abstractions.

34/  Straight line? Flat plane? All this is irrelevant to any physical or sensory experience or any understanding of it.

35/  None of these geometrical exercises of the mind have any necessary correspondence with physical reality, nor can they be verified by any objective test.

37/  [The curved surface .. is of a more general character, having macroscopic structure quite different from its microscopic one.] How? In magnitudes only. Not any otherwise definable difference. No qualitative difference — or discernible difference.

38/  [..we can conceive of Riemannian space as such a modification of the conventional type that nothing is changed in regions accessible to man, but that quite new geometrical conditions arise in very large domains. (Emphasis supplied)] How is this assumption verified or verifiable? Science, as opposed to fantasy and superstition, is founded on and accepts nothing unless or until it is verified in objective experience.

38/  [The world of previous experiences is not regarded as..] These “conceptions” are admittedly not experiences. Hence “the world of previous experiences” begs the question.

39/  Magnitude, quantity, is irrelevant to quality, composition.

39/  Experience, as a verb, must have an object. That which is experienced is called action, and all action must be interaction. It has three discontinuous elements or aspects: (1) Units of Mass, weight, force, inertia, which act through (2) Units of Motion, which act through (3) Units of Duration or Time.

39/  The so-called three dimensions are only directions. Only one kind of dimension is involved — namely, linear. Directions are either parallel or they diverge (or converge). The three perpendiculars are only the three utmost divergences of direction. They enclose nothing — space.

48/  There is nothing concrete about geometry, nothing to which the senses can react, nothing that can be experienced, nothing that can be measured. No mass, no motion, no time, much less any action, process or event.

54/  [Statements about reality have sense only if they can be  translated into statements about real things..] Unchanging ultimate units of mass, of motion and of time — the three quantum constituents in or with all numbers and all discontinuities begin. See p. 27 as to mass units.

58/  Since there /are/ ultimate units — discontinuities — there can be no zeroes of mass or of motion or of time. All are “granular.” There is no homogeneity in nature.

59/  Every event is a quantum complex of mass, motion and or some multiple thereof.

60/  Time is the rhythm of succession in cause and effect.

60/  Frequency is causal succession. Causal and temporal succession are the same. All the events of the Cosmos preceded and also caused all that are occurring now.

61/  Time is what objectives energy into action; it brings a mere ratio — a rate — into a quantity, as velocity into length.

61/  [..he will..achieve the great discovery that only thinking to the very end can open to us that sphere of ultimate understanding which we call full comprehension.] Yes, but he must “contemplate” and “think through” not merely axioms and concepts “and the “structure of reason, but the structure of objective physical events. Thus only can he attain any science or understanding of the physical world.

62/  All these are subjective, concepts, not verifiable by the test of objective physical experience. No part of any physical science.

83/  Geometry has no objective base; it is purely conceptual; it cannot be experienced or verified through the senses.

89/  This whole chapter presents a phantasmagorium of a priori assumptions and abstractions having no relation to concrete events which are integrations of mass, motion and time based on quanta of action of almost infinitely variable composition.

137/ The wave or waves in which there is, for each quantum of action only the least quantity of mass — only a single fundamental unit. Hence highest velocity — most units of motion per unit of time.

146/ Energy is the ratio of work to time. It is only an abstraction, a concept, not another entity.

146/ The quantum of action has only one over-all magnitude, but its composition of mass, motion and time is highly variable.

166/ Like imputing “uncertainty” to objective events.

167/ [..it is the very essence of physical comprehension to discover the common root of diverse phenomena, to find the unity behind the variegated interplay of natural forces.]  The fundamental unity of process at all magnitudes.

195/ When based on physical a priori, rationality discovers physical actuality. When based on metaphysical a priori, not drawn from physical experience, rationality discovers self-consistent metaphysical phantasmagoria.

195/ Space and time, as entities, all the geometries, uncertainty, probability, etc. — all of these are merely conceptual a prioris.

196/ [..these particles can .. not be said to be less real than the larger ones which could still be observed.]  Or fundamentally any different, despite everything to the contrary  on page 290.

202/ Felix Ehrenhaft

216/ What about neutrons?

 

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