Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2226

Citadel, Market and Altar, prelims through Chapter 2

1957

 

No original material

 

CITADEL, MARKET and              ALTAR

     EMERGING SOCIETY

 OUTLINE OF SOCIONOMY

           THE NEW NATURAL SCIENCE OF SOCIETY

SPENCER HEATH

THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY FOUNDATION, INC.

    ROADSEND GARDENS, ELKRIDGE

1502  MONTGOMERY ROAD, BALTIMORE, MD.

 

 

 

Prefatory Brief

On Energy in Action

This book approaches the subject of society in a wholly new and unprecedented way. From ancient times, men have reasoned and reflected on human life, its meaning and its destiny, motivated chiefly by their hopes and fears. Only in recent centuries have they estab­lished units wherewith to reason and numbers wherewith correctly to compare, and thereby gained the kind of knowledge that is creative power. And only in most recent times have men learned how to employ the energy of environment in variant forms to create the things their minds and hearts have dreamed. Despite all crude perversions of this creative power, the time has now come for men, in a like quantitative and thereby rational way, to go forward to new understandings of human energy, of the energy that constitutes the lives of men, and, most of all, that portion of it which they raise to the level of societal energy through the contractual and thereby reciprocal relationships in which they create, in mutual freedom, ever higher order and abundance in their world and so achieve more productive, more creative and ever lengthening lives.

 

 In all knowledge, the basic datum is self-hood, consciousness of self as distinct from environment, and of interaction between self and environment—objective experience. In this interaction, environment exhibits to experience interactions within itself — happenings, events. That which interacts, that which happens and is experienced, is called energy in action.

 

 Energy-in-action, or events, in their various magnitudes or dimensions and in their various qualities or kinds, constitute the subject-matter of all objective experience. But the human capacity for this experience is limited. It is not infinite or absolute. It occupies an ever-increasing octave, so to speak, between zero and infinity, be­tween two unattainable and impossible extremes. Because of this, there is a minimum magnitude in which, or in multiples of which and not otherwise, any event can be objectively experienced. This unitary event, this almost infinitesimal fraction of an erg-second, in its physical aspect, is called the quantum of action.

 

 Action, or energy-in-action,[1] is composed of three elements or aspects. These are conceived and considered separately, but are experienced only in their three-fold unity or entity as action or event. The elements of events as energy-in-action are separately conceived as (1) mass (2) motion and (3) time, whose units of measurement respectively are gram, centimeter, second; foot, pound, minute; etc. Note that the element of time enters twice, once to establish the rate at which energy acts, and again to measure a quantity of actual energy, or of energy-in-action, by multiplying its rate by its period, by the number of units of time through which the event continues or extends. Any number of units of mass (or of force inherent in mass) conceived as moving through some number of units of mo­tion (or of length) per each one unit of time, is called a rate of energy or of energy-in-action. The product of the rate of an event multi­plied by its period is called either energy, meaning a particular quan­tity of energy-in-action, or it is called simply so much action, using the more technical name.

 

 Energy-in-action, or action, as events, is not only composite, being composed of units of force and of motion in any relative proportions, acting at a rate and through a period of time; it is also to be taken as discontinuous in its least organizational units (of mass, of motion and of time) that can enter into the composition of an event, and in distinct whole multiples of these least units. It thereby ex­hibits waves, rhythms, cycles, recurring events and specific structures in succession or repetition of form, type or kind. All those actions or events, called quanta of action, which have the least over-all magnitude that can be objectively experienced are thereby, so far as human experience is concerned, objectively equal and indivisible. They are also called “atoms” of action or the “building blocks” of the physical universe. They may be conceived as those actions or events that take place at the border line between what can be ob­jectively experienced, as well as subjectively imagined or con­ceived, and that which can be only subjectively experienced or conceived — where the physical shades over into the meta-physical realm.

Nature is not only dynamic; she is also rational. Therein her creative beauty lies. She makes herself manifest always in units, in specific events and in forms and types of organization that are repetitional, as are waves, each giving succession to others of similar form, type or kind. As visible light is composed of units of energy organized in waves of only three primary colors, so nature exhibits her discontinuous objective actions, or events, always in numerically organized and proportioned three-fold compositions of (a) units of mass or of force per unit of motion (b) units of motion per unit of time (rate of motion or velocity), through (c) definite periods of time. This rationality is the foundation of all objective physical reality. The numerical ratios between masses or forces and their velocities determine the pattern, form or kind of the action, organi­zation or event. The time through which it continues and endures — its period of action at the given rate — measures the actuality, the actual quantity of action involved, the amount or extent of the reality (in the Platonic, the durational, sense of that word) in the organization or event.

 

 At every level of organization, there are basic individual organi­zational units. For the entire realm of objective physical reality they are the quanta of action — in all their three-fold ratios and compositions as to mass, motion and time.[2] At the level of atomic structure and organization, they are electrons and nucleons. For all chemical organization, they are the individual atoms—during their periods between birth and decay. In all living things, the basic units are the indivisible individual biological cells—between their birth and decay. Likewise, the individuals of the higher plant and animal forms of life have their own periods. And in the integrated organizational groups of living forms, in colonies, schools, flocks, herds, families, clans and tribes, the basic units are the discrete and indivisible unitary forms during the periods of their individual lives.

 

 At every level, all that was fundamental in the lower is included in the higher, and all that is functional in the higher was potential in the lower forms. Even in the simplest of living things, physical, chemical and biological energy are interfused. And as the inorganic is carried over into the organic world, the plant processes into the animal, the physiological into the psychological realm, so there is no real dichotomy between the sciences of his environment, the sciences of himself as an individual, and the science of man in his over-all aspect and organization — the authentic science of society.

 

 With all the humbler organizations of life and in all pre-societal groupings, including pre-societal men, the only over-all function performed is that of maintenance, the mere keeping alive of the race or kind. Their only vital technology is adjustment, in a state of de­pendency. Behavior, in the main, is necessitous, subsistence chiefly what the environment primitively and precariously provides. Ex­tinction is warded off mainly by fecundity, by high frequency of re­placement through reproduction — all this for want of sufficient productivity to raise the subsistence and thus extend the periods and abundance of better-nourished lives.

 

 But when we come to the societal organization of men through their engagement in contractual relationships, voluntary, impersonal and thereby universal among them — distinguished alike from primi­tive and familial and from political and coercive relationships — we enter into a wholly new realm. Here again the units relate themselves reciprocally and thereby constitute the beginning of a new organic unity, a new entity, the societal life-form. But this new organic unity, so far as it has developed and evolved, is unique above all others. It transforms a portion of the biological energy of its constituent units into societal energy. It quantifies — and thus rationalizes — this energy in a system of value units in the exchange of which each member is rationally and reciprocally served by all — and in due proportion as he contributes to all. The non-political, organic society thus liberates, lifts and lengthens the average life of its units and thereby establishes its own energy rhythm and achieves perma­nent duration in its successive and ever-lengthening generations of liberated lives.

 

 Human life is more than biological — in the ordinary sense. In its societal manifestation, it is a special, a unique kind of organization of energy arising out of the biological. In an interfunctioning popu­lation, a societal organization, the least energy-in-action unit is the whole indivisible individual. The period through which this unit acts determines its whole biological energy-in-action — the total energy or action of the individual life, springing from and returning to the environment and in some manner and degree affecting it with change. In a like manner, the energy or action of a societal popula­tion, as a more complex event and form of life, is also discontinuous. But it has no limited life-period, as do its constituent units; it persists indefinitely in successive generations or waves, which similarly, but productively, impinge on the environment. The portion of this energy that acts during a single unit of time is its energy rate. This rate — population per year — multiplied by the period of its rhythm, the average life span of its constituent units, is the total energy, as action stated in life-years, for that generation or wave.

 

 A single individual life is a very complex organization of energy, depending, qualitatively, on the proportions between the forces and the motions in which it consists and of which it is composed and, quantitatively, as action, on its rate or quantity of energy per unit of time, multiplied by its duration or period of time. Thus, the average individual life, taken in connection with its period or span, corresponds to the physical quantum of action. For it is, when taken statistically, treated as a constant quantity and is the least organiza­tion of human energy that can function in the societal realm, just as the quantum of action, in all its varieties, is the least objective unit of action in the physical energy realm; and it may be similarly con­sidered and employed.

 

 It is only in the newer civilizations of the Western and predominantly Christian lands that societal and contractual organization — as distinguished from tribal and familial and from governmental and political — has been notably developed, and any considerable por­tions or proportions of adult life-years[3] thereby achieved. With all this Western advance, however, only a portion of the vital energies so liberated and available is as yet transformed into societal energy and thus creatively employed. Yet every extension of the productive, free contractual relationships tends to extend the length of lives and therewith increase the adult energy available to be socially trans­formed. Upon a further great development of the existing, non-political system of free contractual engagements,[4] and thereby much further transformation of biological energy into societal energy, the future security of the Western and of world civilization necessarily depends.

 

 Human energy is energy yielded up by the environment and trans­formed into the specifically human type and form. This human energy, like all other merely biological energy, does not raise but tends to degrade, to cause less order for itself in the environment on which it depends. To become creative and thereby secure, this merely biological energy must be further transformed into social-ized or societal energy. For it is only the energy that flows interfunctionally without conflict or opposition among men that enables them to specialize and cooperate effectively and thereby favorably transform the conditions of their lives. This raising of the merely biological energy into productive and creative power is effected by a psycho­logical process — the free meeting of men’s minds — that is called contract. This process establishes relationships of exchange that are creative, completely contrary to the political and coercive — not a difference in degree but a wholly new kind of dispensation. And these societal relationships, impersonal and thereby of universal scope, are intrinsically fruitful and harmonious because the energy involved is quantified numerically and thereby rationally balanced and exchanged. Thus, the primarily biological energy, through be­coming quantified and thereby rational, is transformed into societal and creative, and thus into spiritual, power.

 

 The concept of population as an energy flow, and of social-ized energy being freely exchanged, is fundamental to this volume and to the authentic science of society that it attempts, despite its many imperfections, objectively to describe.

 

 The three main divisions of the book are commended respectively to the analytical, to the practical and constructive, and to the esthetic and reflective faculties of the well-rounded mind. The Appendix is, in effect, a recapitulation of the whole.

 

S. H.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

General Premises

All the sciences are human. But their genesis takes the order of their abstractness — of their remoteness from human values, vices or vicissitudes.

 

 The first is simple number — invariable quantitative and numerical relationships between abstract units and their numbers as magnitudes or dimensions. From this the objective and concrete sciences evolve, in the order of their remoteness from human volition and desires. Counting the seasons by the recurrent positions of sun and stars; then, observation and examination of the earth itself apart from man, astronomy, geography, geology, general physics, chemistry, biology — all have won for mankind fields of dependable knowledge less and less remote.

 

 And the sciences of man himself have in a similar order advanced. For substance and structure he has anatomy, for the interactions of his organs and parts, physiology. For his integrated reactions to the events of his environment, he has psychology. And for the understanding of his social order as a general system of interfunctioning men, he must have socionomy,[5] the objective science of society.

 

 Thus, socionomy is to the evolving system of mankind as as­tronomy is to the system of the stars. It is the systematic description of the energy manifested in the structure and activity, the mass and motion, of men as organized in the balanced and unforced, the re­ciprocal relationships of mankind. Just as astronomy describes the grandeur and the glory of the systems of the skies, so must socionomy reveal the peculiar power and glory of society — of the societal sys­tem, the cosmic order evolving among all mankind.

 

 This science, newest and nearest to man, thus has its analogy in the oldest and most remote. And the analogy extends even to its name; for, as astronomy, the rational science of the stars, was barred by an earlier pre-emption from taking its most aptly descriptive name, so the science of society also must depart from its earlier and etymologically most appropriate name — and for reasons very similar if not precisely the same.

 

 This volume treats of society as in no wise a “problem” but as a superbly fascinating field of discovery, as a field of beauty and of benefactions, both active and potential, in the system of nature that in no wise excludes mankind. The method employed — that common to all the natural sciences — has won signal success in other fields, and now, being boldly applied, shows splendid results here. Breaking long fallow ground, it discovers basic social processes where least expected, least appreciated or wholly unknown. Themes and theses in numbers are proposed, yet no completeness is claimed; only the broadest outlines are laid down. It is an adventure in discovery, pregnant of new harvests of life, of riches and power.

 

 As in other sciences, the real subject matter of this volume is the functioning of structures — of organizations — as action, happenings or events. These are conceived in their threefold aspect as mass, motion and time. The primary conception, the basic abstraction from the whole, is that of substance or mass, having a property called force, whereby motion is generated and work or activity, through time, performed. The second abstraction is that of motion as related to time (velocity). The third is that of the time or duration through which the mass-motion activity extends.

 

 The composition of an event, the proportioning of the mass and motion of which its energy is composed, determines not its magni­tude but its kind, whatever be its size. And among similar structures — all that form and dissolve — those are dominant and most real which have the greatest continuity, the greatest duration of their type or kind.

 

 Among the units of any organization, the manner of their motion is qualitative, positively so if they act reciprocally, negatively so if they clash or collide. Only the positively qualitative is functional and endures, and infinite duration is the ultimate qualitative manifesta­tion.

 

 In a population, as elsewhere, motion gives power and vitality to the mass. If there is but little order, much collision, then there is less motion, power is canceled, dissipated, and duration is short. Where there is less collision there is greater order, continuity of function, more power, much duration.

 

 In its political relations, as in its pre-societal state, a population is mass with motion but with much collision, therefore with low social functioning, short lived. At the societal level, that of voluntary re­lations, it is mass with motion but without collision, therefore with increasing continuity or duration — a higher qualitative mode of action. In the ultimate social evolvement there can be no collision, therefore no less than indefinite functional continuity, the highest qualitative manifestation.

 

 Such are the broad and general considerations upon which this attempt toward a veritably scientific social analysis proceeds. Let it speak for itself.

S. H.

Acknowledgments

 

 

This book owes its being to the author’s inveterate desire to know the forward ways of nature, whether of molecules or of men, for the fulfillment that comes with new awakenings of the mind, and for the contemplation of creative power in the knowing application of nature’s steadfast laws, whereby the dust is fashioned to the dream and new whole worlds are wrought.

 

 On the personal side, this author owes to Dr. Pyrrha Gladys Grodman grateful acknowledgment of her many inspiring discussions and her unfailing insistence over a long period of time that this some­what reluctant writer set down his discoveries in permanent and publishable form. The same is due to John Chamberlain for his fine friendship, for his many encouragements and for the generous fore­word with which this effort is adorned.

 

 Also, much gratitude to Ian Crawford MacCallum by whose kind­ness the drawings and diagrams have been redeemed from their original deficiencies and to whose artistic talent all the excellencies of the diagrams and illustrations are due.

 

 And to Spencer Heath MacCallum much appreciation for his fine diligence and skill in preparation of the Index and for his searching criticisms and the quiet energy and perception with which he has helped the author to strengthen and improve the manuscript and shape it to its final form.

 

 Beyond these warmly personal appreciations, a still deeper and a wider debt is due to those searching and devoted few who have sought not blindly to re-order or reform but have been inspired to love and understand the abiding mind of Nature or of God, shown by the myriad lesser organizations of energy in structures and in living forms. For they and they alone have been objective, their method rational, thus universal. They have shown the shining way to a widening wisdom of the evolving social cosmos, the creative organization of mankind — that oft-reviled yet all sustaining, that modern, almost undiscovered wondrous world of man.

 

Contents

          Page

Foreword……………………………………..

Prefatory Brief……………………………….

General Premises……………………………….

 

 

PART I    THE SCIENCE

Method

1. Basic Method and Positive Procedure……….     

2.Delimitation of the Field………………….

Analysis

3. The Energy Concept of Population….. ………
4. Qualitative Changes in Population Energy………
5. The Energy That Re-creates Environment………..    
6. Freedom the Technique of Eternality………….

 

7. Creative Transformation of Population Energy…..
8. A Century of Lengthening Life………………      
9. The Democracy of the Market………………..    

 

10. The Energy of Exchange…………………….         
11. Property the Instrument of Freedom …………
12. Citadel, Market and Altar …………………    
13. The Social-ization of Government……………    
14. Climate and Conquest………………………    
15. The Tragedy of Public Works………. ………
16. The Basic Social Pattern…………. ………
17. The Order of Societal Evolution…… ………
18. Public Services by the Community Owners ……….
19. Societal Development Through Extension of

  the System of Contract and Exchange ………..        

 

PART II    THE APPLICATION

Introduction

10. General Observations on Reduction to Practice ..

The Social Process and Basic Institution

10. Value and Exchange,

      A System of Social-ized Energy Flow………….  

22. Private Property in Land Explained —

Its Public Administrative Function…………..

Proprietary versus Political Administration of Public Services

23. The Business of Community Economics …………..   
24. Questions for the Consideration of Land Owners….   
25. The Administration of Real Property as

   Community Services…………………………   

Forecast of General Results

26. Towards the Utopian Dream

A Hypothetical Distribution of National

Income Under Proprietary Public Administration…   

 

PART III GENERAL SURVEY

Spiritual and Psychological Implications

27. The Qualitative Transformation ………………..   
28. Mind and the Cosmos ………………………….
29. Society the Crown of Creation ………………….
30. The Inspiration of Beauty …………………….

Appendix

On the Meanings of Principal Terms, with Index ……   

Bibliographic Note……………….. ………….

Philosophic Chart………………… ………….   

General Index……………………….. ………….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART I

The Science

I think it probable that Civilization somehow will last as long as I care to look ahead — perhaps with smaller numbers, but perhaps also to greatness and splendor by science. I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be, that man may have cosmic des­tinies he does not understand. And so beyond the vision of battling races and an impoverished earth I catch a dreaming glimpse of peace.

JUSTICE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1

Basic Method and Positive Procedure

Science is the description and measurement of phenomena mani­fested in events as integrations of mass (substance), motion (space) and duration (time). In whatever field of observation or experience, science describes structures, organizations and their sequences of motion in time as events, in terms of measurement — in terms of their dimensions as to mass, motion and time. In this manner, science dis­covers uniformities of mode in occurrences, and applied science brings about those concurrences and sequences of events that realize desires.

 

 Science first describes, defines, divides. Then it combines, con­structs and creates. In the first, the will of man is dispassionate; it accepts humbly the results of its objective analyses. In the second, in its synthesizing, the merely quantitative becomes qualitative, creative; for in this the Creative Will in man is realized and fulfilled.

 

 The analyses and the syntheses of the sciences, their descriptions and constructions, discoveries and applications, depend upon the employment of standardized units of measurement.[6] Science analyses events objectively, appraises them dispassionately. It diagrams experi­ence quantitatively, in terms of the invariable ratios of these units within a particular objective context.

 

 These uniformities, discovered by observation, are formulated as scientific principles, natural laws.

 

 Any mode of investigation not employing units of measure or standards of reference derived from or directly referable to the com­mon units of the natural sciences is a mode in which no quantitative analyses are made and therefore no principles or laws disclosed. On such procedures no rational syntheses can be based, no plans or aspirations of the creative will of man positively and knowingly ful­filled and enduringly achieved. Such are the “social sciences” so called.

 

 The unit or measure of energy employed in a scientific analysis of the societal life-form is the life-year. It is the amount of mass and motion manifested in the average life during one year.

 

 This analysis takes no account of the organizations that constitute its units, of the individual lives of which the society is composed; for the societal life-form, as distinguished from its constituent units, exists only in the combinations, associations and relationships among the interfunctioning individuals of which it is composed. The con­stitution of the individuals themselves belongs to anatomy, physiol­ogy and psychology. Socionomy, the science of society, deals with individuals only in respect of their interfunctioning in an organized life-form, only as their common nature expresses itself in the fact of their organization and their interfunctioning therein.

 

 And for the purposes of this science, individuals are considered primarily in none but their statistical effects. For, as in physical phenomena, the social formulations likewise must represent the in­variably consistent statistical results of the myriad constituent phe­nomena. The social functioning, like the physical, is the numerical integration of the individual activities. Its basic unit of measurement or analysis, therefore, is not any individual or particular life, but the average life for one year.

 

 This unit, the life-year, is constituted of, and corresponds to, the customary units in physical science, such as the erg-second, the horse­power-hour, or the kilowatt-hour. Its combinations and transforma­tions constitute the dynamic subject matter of this new natural science of society.

 

 This science, like all its true predecessors, delineates none but its own special field. It does not treat of the nomadic barbarism out of which civilization, meaning society, has so far emerged, nor of the master-and-slave, the ruler and subject relationship upon which its higher functions have so far supervened; nor is it concerned with the present energies of conflict and confusion that still persist and remain to be transformed. It sets forth rather the processes and operations that nature, in her inherently evolving social order, does presently accomplish, has in fact achieved. It is concerned not with evils to be resisted or destroyed, but with the actual and positive, the creative, though far from complete functioning of the societal life-form. It discovers a realm peculiar and exclusive to man, in which man alone and none other can dwell. It fills the eyes with wonders to be seen, beauty with which to be inspired, bounties wherewith to be blest.

CHAPTER 2

Delimitation of the Field

In this new science, socionomy, the phenomenon to be ex­amined and analyzed is not the “natural” and physical or the environmental world, nor is it primarily any relationship between mankind and the “natural” world. Nor does it sprawl. Not every­thing that is human, or related to the human, comes within its scope. It has its own special and sharply delimited field.

 

 Atomic physics deals with nucleons and electrons and with energy organized, time- and space-bound, into atoms, but not as yet with the constitution of nucleons and electrons or of quanta themselves. Chemistry deals with molecular organizations of atoms, not with that of the atoms themselves. General biology examines the or­ganization of living cells into the multicellular plant and animal forms. In this general field cytology deals with the arrangements of complex molecules within the organic cells, but not with the specific organization of the molecules themselves. Anatomy and histology deal with the mechanical structures and textures of animals and plants. Physiology is the part of biology that treats of the interfunctioning of cells and of the highly differentiated and specialized cellu­lar structures that constitute the organs of the plant and animal forms. Since psychology treats of the varying reactions or responses of the whole organism to diverse environmental stimuli, it may be regarded as an extension of physiology. The field of socionomy (also an extension of general biology) is the organic relationships and functional processes between and among the individual organisms that thus and thereby constitute the societal life-form. It describes its own special organization or organism. In so doing it has no more occasion to describe the internal organization of its units than physiology has need to take into account the interior constitution of individual cells, or than chemistry has to describe the structure of the atoms of which its molecular organizations are formed.