Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2170

Pages typed by Heath. Note a small page of penciling originally pasted but now clipped to page two, which has not been transcribed.

No date

 

 

 

/A FORECAST OF SOCIETAL EVOLUTION/

 

Human beings are so (constituted and so) organized that their least ex­perience gives them an inner (sense or) consciousness of place or position and of points as the centers of things and events experienced or imagined.

 

     The primary consciousness is perception of self, with desire for self-existence. A disturbed consciousness of position — the consternation induced by falling — is said by psychologists to be an infant’s first and its only innate fear. Security of place, point or position is the first conscious desire. Position, then, is the primary sense of being, and change of posi­tion is the primary consciousness of experience.

 

      Experience builds into consciousness an order or series of conceptions that the self attributes to its experiential or objective world. These are:

 

  1. Position — as an attribute of the self and of any

          thing or event with which the self has experience.

 

  2. Motion — as change of position.

 

  3. Length — a succession of positions — extension.

 

  4.   Breadth (or width)— a succession of adjacent lengths.

          (Not extensions of extension.)

 

  5. Thickness — a succession of adjacent breadths.

(Not a broadening of breadth.)

 

  6. Volume — a composite sense of length, breadth and

         thickness.

 

  7. Mass — a sense of the resistance of volume to change of

         position or of motion — of velocity or direction.

 

  8. Motion — a sense of mass as change of position.

 

  9. Iteration — a sense of mass as undergoing successive

          or rhythmic changes of position.

 

 10. Energy — resistance to motion with change of position.

 

 11. Action — a composite sense of energy and duration —

   Mass, Motion and Duration united in conception in

   the same manner and relations as they are united in

   experience. A quantity or unit of experience. The

   first concep­tion that is complete enough to have an

   objective counterpart in experience. The least

   conception that corresponds with a world

   (environment) of objective reality. All lesser

   conceptions than that of Action (of energy and time

   — mass, motion and duration combined) are

   abstractions from reality, not to be found

   (perceived) and not to be created (objectified)in

   experience other­wise than in their unity as events

   or occurrences, as actualities, that is, in Action.

 

12. Organization — a conception of Action in its aspect of

   composition of heterogeneous quantities of Action

   into a composite unity of Action through their

   reciprocal interactions. This conception has its

   full counterpart in the objective, the experiential

   world.

 

15. Development — Evolution — Creative synthesis — a conception  

of organi­zation as proceeding from heterogeneous basic unities of quanta of Action into successive composite unities of Action having successively greater heterogeneity of its component organizational parts. Differentiation of com­ponent structures with accompanying integration of their functions.

 

      To accelerate a mass of one gram from zero velocity to a velocity of one centimeter per second it must be moved one-half centimeter in one sec­ond. This will be its average velocity in order that its final velocity shall be one centimeter per second. The uniform influence or force required to do this is called a dyne. Force multiplied by motion or distance is called energy. A force of one dyne acting through a distance of one centimeter is the unit of energy called an erg. In the scientific language of physics energy exists only in contemplation. When duration or time is included as a fac­tor, then the product of force, distance and time is known, technically, as Action. Since mass is known and measured by either of its two characteristics, gravity or inertia — gravity as grams, inertia as dynes — energy may be speci­fied as the product of mass and motion, and Action as the product of mass, motion and duration or time. When mass is taken as gravity or weight, then energy is usually expressed as pound-feet or gram-centimeters. When mass is taken as inertia, then energy is expressed as dyne-centimeters or ergs. The dyne is a force approximately equivalent to the weight of a thousandth part of a gram. A gram-centimeter is, therefore, about a thousand times as large as an erg.

 

      Modern physics is an intellectual development that deals with the ab­stractions known as Mass, Motion and Time, which three abstractions consti­tute, in combination, all concrete experience, called, technically (as also colloquially), Action. The science of physics deals with none other but these three fundamental conceptions and it has no actual or concrete experience but in the manifold finite combinations in which they unite. Mass and motion unite as energy, but energy cannot be experienced apart from duration or time. The inclusion of time as a factor is necessary in order to bring energy into concrete reality as Action. Action and Action alone can have the actuality of being experienced concretely as interaction between environment and mind.

 

      Modern physics is still largely mystical — abstract, withdrawn from experience. As it flows forward towards simple solutions of complex and concrete experience its inherited unconscious and unquestioned traditions that can never go forward give it a powerful backwash towards the meta­physical realm out of which it originally sprang — for all physics was once meta-physics, an abstract field unmeasured in concrete experience and un­known to objective thought. Subjectivism persists; the abstract but slowly labors to bring forth the finite and concrete. Mass, motion and time, all are relative, but their unity is always of the same absolute magnitude; al­ways an absolute unit of Action or some perfect multiple of the same.

 

      The obvious and near has seldom the lure of the recondite and remote. Only through their investigations of radiant energy and its waves did phys­ical scientists become really aware of concrete experience, of the inseparableness of energy and time. In ordinary and familiar fields of action they seem scarcely yet to have become conscious of this inseparability.

 

      However, it happens that meticulous experimentation with incandescent materials revealed that the radiant emanations from incandescent atoms are not smoothly continuous. The energy flow is interrupted and divided into “packets,” as it were, each packet comprising a “long train of waves.” It was the great discovery of Prof. Max Planck that the energy (mass and motion) involved in one of these trains of waves when multiplied by the time dimension or period of one wave (or divided by the wave-frequency) gives as the product always the same quantity or quantum of Action.

 

      It seems that for the emanations proceeding from each of the ninety-two different kinds of atoms there is a different and definite frequency of wave vibration and a definite amount of energy in the trains of waves between the successive interruptions, and these quantities are such that their pro­duct is always the same whatever be the differences in wave frequency or in the wave trains.

 

      The length in centimeters of one wave is a certain very small fraction of the number of centimeters contained in 186,000 miles. The wave length, then, is 186,000 miles reduced to centimeters and divided by the frequency. That will give the length in centimeters of one wave. Multiply this length by the number of waves in the “long train of waves” and we have the length or motion involved in the energy packet. Then, since we know how much ener­gy is in the “packet,” we can divide this energy by the amount of motion involved. This gives the number of dynes as the mass, weight or force element (in milligrams approximately) involved in the energy “packet” — the energy being taken in dyne-centimeters otherwise called ergs.

 

      Dividing this mass element by the number of waves in the “packet” gives the mass element or whatever it may be in a wave that corresponds with mass, weight or inertia in a particle.

 

      Thus, if we can ascertain the number of waves contained in the “long train” or “packet” (of Eddington) we can then know the full characteristics of the single wave in terms of the mass, the motion and the time involved in and constituting the wave. We will have then a full quantitative analysis of the single wave emanating from any atom.

 

      From this we can arrange in a series or table the various waves of Action that appertain to the several atoms as structures, basing the ar­rangement on the respective contents or constitutions of the respective waves in terms of mass motion and time.

 

      If, however, we arrange a series or table in which we employ not the single wave but the “packet” of waves that emanates from each of the several atoms as quanta or “atoms of Action” then our table will disclose the pro­gressive organizational differences between the respective atoms in terms of the “atoms of Action” that emanate from them.

 

      If we regard these packets of waves or “atoms of Action” as the kinetic analogs or aspects of their respective chemical atoms as structures we may, in this view, regard the trains of waves comprising the atoms of action as corresponding with the protons and electrons that constitute the chemical atoms. The positive and negative phases of the wave-trains would then correspond to the balanced electric charges within the atoms themselves and thus exhibit the principle of conservation of energy also in the atoms of action or trains of waves.

 

      If the series or table of action-atoms be set up as proposed, each mem­ber, being a quantum of action, will be identical with every other, so far as magnitude or quantity is concerned. The progressive differences disclosed by the series will therefore be differences not of quantity but of kind. The differences disclosed will be qualitative differences among the several atoms of Action or action-atoms that appertain to and emanate from the struc­ture or mass atoms of the several chemical elements. And these qualitative differences will be in terms of the respective proportions of mass, motion and duration comprised within the constant quanta.

 

      From this it appears that quantitative differences among the constitu­ent elements within equal quanta or atoms of action account for there being qualitative differences between the various quanta emanating from the differ­ent chemical atoms, notwithstanding that there is no over-all quantitative difference between any one quantum and any other. Therefore, qualitative differences between equal quantities of action are due to quantitative dif­ferences of composition within the respective equal quantities. Qualitative changes are quantitative changes in the composition, pattern or design within a quantity of action without any necessary change in the total quantity itself.

 

From this it follows that unless there are basic limits to the minute­ness of divisibility of the mass, motion and duration factors of which a quantum as least quantity or any other quantity of action is composed, there can be endless differences of composition between any two equal quantities of action and unlimited changes of composition within the same quantity of action, however large or small. And these high possibilities do not depend upon all of the components of action being indefinitely divisible; it is still true if so much as one of them be so divisible. If, for example, there should be no top limit to the possible frequency of vibration and thus no bottom limit of minuteness or brevity of the period or interval of time, there would still remain the possibility of indefinite qualitative variation in composition, even though neither mass nor motion should have unlimited divis­ibility or, for that matter, any divisibility at all.

 

From these considerations we are powerfully assured that the possibil­ities of qualitative composition, of the creation of new designs, of planning and transforming action in accordance with desires, are not bound by any quan­titative limitations that may exist within the field of action, actuality, occurrences or experience within which the compositions, creations and realizing of desires are performed,

 

Let us now reverse our direction of thought as to magnitudes and con­sider integrations instead of divisions. Then what has been said suggests that the atoms of structure may be specific organizations of mass, motion and time and that molecular and molar structures are integrations of these specific organizations. Under this hypothesis the term or period of a molecular structure would be the interval of time elapsed between its integra­tion and its complete disintegration, however long that might be. If this cycle or process be thought of as continuing in a repetitional series then we have a succession of molecular structures corresponding with a succession of radiating wave structures or waves but having vastly longer periods and similarly lower frequencies than any of the waves or wave structures commonly known, — although the period of disintegration of certain of the radioactive elements is known to be brief.

 

From this point of view it may well be that a non-radioactive element is so called only because the period of its formation and disintegration has been too large and its frequency of repetition too low to be easily if at all observed. These long periods of integration and disintegration may be regarded as cycles of atomic growth and decay in which the successive inte­grations repeat with configuration unchanged, having, in common with the higher frequency waves, a heredity of virtually one hundred per cent.

 

It may be, then, that the fundamental unit of action, the quantum, is also the fundamental unit of structure; that singly (singularly) or succes­sively it is manifested only as a least discrete emanation from incandescent structure when that structure either transforms and transmits energy (action) or when it is disintegrating into energy (action). In this view, what we call structure or mass is a high plurality of action units without succession integrated into a virtually closed system having a relatively very long period of formation and reformation, capable of taking on and transmitting some forms of environmental energy, of transforming such energy and thus modify­ing its environment.

 

Incidentally, it would be of great interest to ascertain by experiment the effect of exposing an element, sodium for instance, to emanations from the same element having, perhaps sufficient intensity to bring both up to a temperature of incandescence. Would the second atom be completely transpar­ent to its own characteristic emanations or might it absorb those emanations into its own structure, or might it be disintegrated by them.

 

If atomic structure consists of a high plurality of quanta or action units we may infer a high degree of homogeneity in the atomic, molecular or molar masses of the respective elements and a considerable degree of hetero­geneity in the many chemical compounds, both inorganic and organic. But in none of these does the stability of the compound seem dependent upon any ab­sorption and discharge of environmental energy. This may well be the reason for their relatively long if not indefinite periods of dissolution and repeti­tion.

 

But when we come to the world of living organisms there is an absolute dependence an environmental energy. These must have access to energy in spe­cial forms by the absorption and transformation of which the essential pat­tern of the organism is maintained while its structure for the period of its span is constantly dissolved and renewed. But the essential configuration persists in the progeny beyond the individual term. The dependence of life upon environment is complete. When the needs of the organism are not thus supplied it ceases to function, its structure disintegrates to a lower level of heterogeneity and both individual and race cease to exist.

 

There is, however, one type of organism — the social organism — that is not so strictly limited and bound. The individual seldom if ever improves the environment in and upon which it must live and subsist. On the contrary, almost every organism tends to make its environment less favorable while its numbers increase. As environment continues to deteriorate it modifies its own habits and structures to the utmost and then becomes in most cases extinct.

 

But the human organism is the most versatile of all. Having the highest nervous coordination, it has modified habit more than structure. And in its unique habit of social or exchange relationships with its fellows it achieves, above and beyond all blood and biological ties, the social organism.

 

The practice of civilization is the function of the social organism. It consists only of human beings in a reciprocal exchange relationship by the con­tractual rendering of services and administration of property to the advantage of others and for all the recompense that, in accordance with the individual and the social will, the at-present very limited freedom of contract in the market provides. Under this free contractual relationship and this alone and only so far as free, the social organism, through the individuals comprising it, draws energy from its environment, coordinates and redistributes autonomously this energy into property and services and so transforms the elements of nature and creates and rebuilds progressively, and with permanent effect, its environing world. The social organism thus transcends the limitations of all other forms of life. Through the interfunctioning of its constituent units and its institutional organs and parts it dominates all environment and leads its members, under the golden rule of exchange, into a kingdom of righteousness and into their inheritance of the earth.

 

As this rule of exchange is more widely applied, especially in public as in private services and affairs, so will the earth become increasingly inhab­itable. Social-ized mankind will be no longer creature but creator of its own world. Environment will still dominate and determine man, but only such environment as he himself determines and creates. Man will become thereby, though indirectly, self-determining. The social organism will endow him with creative powers and increasing numbers with increasing capacities and ever lengthening days.

 

As a complex of mass, motion and duration, the stream of action that is made up of the successive generations of civilized mankind must ever evolve into higher durational and hence qualitative and creative forms.

 

The forecast of social evolution just made is but a specific example of the whole Cosmic trend. As the eye of physical science looks backwards towards assumed Cosmic origins the world is seen as less organic and more and more homogeneous. But followed forward from any point, the Cosmic Process is seen as constant differentiation of substance into increasingly complex structures and the converse attainment thereby of ever higher functional integration and consequent organic unity — a cosmic self-realization into ever expanding organic unity of self-interfunctioning — an endless evolvement continuity into transcendent duration, metaphysical time.