Spencer Heath Archive

Item 234

Heath transcribed the following on long sheets from the accompanying notes but was not satisfied and decided to start fresh (MacCallum transcribed it again here from the long sheets onto standard sheets)

May 31, 1960

 

In physical science as elsewhere, what is examined, observed, experienced, must be a happening — -a short or long-term process, an event, or act, or a succession of events called action.

An event has two measurable but objectively inseparable elements or aspects, dimensions.

1. Mass, force, weight, inertia — measured in grams.

2. Motion — as length, distance, space — measured in centimeters.

3. Time or duration, as compared with the frequency of some succession of events (astronomical) taken as a standard.

Events in general are called action or work, often miscalled energy, which is the rate of action or work, the quantity that takes place during a single unit of time.

A particular event, occupying a particular period of time is an act, a particular succession of them an action, any part or quantity of the succession of events in general is called action.

All action is discontinuous, composed of discrete similar units or cycles. All action involves time.

The rate of action — work or action per unit of time — is called energy.

The least objective unit of action — the least to which the human sensory apparatus reacts or responds — is called the quantum of action.

The rate of motion, quantity per unit of time, is called velocity.

Energy and velocity are continuing terms denoting such quantities of work or of motion as may be associated with successive units of time.

All acts, all action that is not merely imaginary, or conceptual, but objective, being composed of all three of its elements or aspects in some proportions of mass, motion and time, is actual.

Mass, Motion, Time, Energy, Velocity, taken separately, and thus abstractly, can be thus conceived; but none of them can be thus experienced.

Not any abstraction but only action, in its three-fold unity and entirety, can be the objective subject-matter of human experience. Action, as happenings or events, constitutes the entire objective human environment. It and it alone can be experienced objectively, but it can also be subjectively conceived. Such conception may be mere consciousness of the action or of some element or aspect of it. When it is conceived quantitatively and analytically in terms of its three constituents, their numerical magnitudes and the ratios thus subsisting among them, the conception is then called rational or scientific knowledge or understanding of the action. Such understanding, through its one to one correspondence with the action, is the subjective homologue, or at least analogue, of the action itself.

A quantity of work or action — magnitude of an event — is measured by (1) the amount of mass, force, inertia involved (grams or dynes) and (2) by the amount of motion involved.

The amount of work or action in the event (or events) is the product of its mass or force and motion. This is irrespective of the rate — the ratio to time — or the amount of time involved.

Events in which the products of mass and motion are equal are actions or events of equal magnitude.

Among events of equal magnitude but of unlike composition as to mass (or force) and motion, their differences as to specific quality or kind depend on their respective proportions of mass and motion.

Where the motion is taken not as distance or length, but as velocity, then the magnitude, but not the quality or kind, of the action or event, is determined by the time through which it acts.

Events of equal magnitude are those in which the products but not necessarily the proportions of mass and motion are equal.

Where the motion is given as velocity — motion per unit of time — then the magnitude of the event is determined by the product of its mass and velocity and time.

Among events of equal magnitude — equal quantities of action during the same period or quantity of time — the relative quantities or proportions of mass and motion, force and velocity may be highly variable between very wide limits, so only that their products remain the same.

Hence, in any transformation of a given quantity of action or event during the given quantity of time, any increase of velocity must be compensated by a corresponding diminution of mass.

When the mass thus becomes imperceptible or immeasurable, there is apparently velocity or energy without mass.

But this maximum velocity with minimum mass involves acceleration and thus requires for each unit of acceleration an added unit of time.

Hence when mass is at the vanishing point — equivocal as between objective and subjective — then the total action or event must be expressed by, Mass (imperceptible) times velocity times time.

And since there must have been equal increments of velocity and time (in which to attain the maximum acceleration), the given quantity of work, action or event thus transformed (with diminution of mass) can be expressed as, Mass (at the vanishing point) times velocity squared.

Now, since velocity times time represents (or is) the amount of motion, distance, length or space, the mass or particle may be regarded as having been so far stretched over such great distance or length as to be wholly tenuous and imperceptible, so far as objective human experience is concerned.

Note: It should be noted in the above that if each unit of acceleration involved an added unit of time it also required also and primarily an added unit of force or mass. This is not a transformation but an increase in the given amount of action or event.

All of the foregoing is based on the premise that the actual subject-matter of physical investigation is not particles or masses or their motions or velocities or their periods of time, none of which can be objectively experienced either separately from one another or together to the exclusion of any one of them. Subjectively they may be conceived in isolation or in any combination of parts or of the whole, but objectively they can be experienced only as integrated into concrete action or event and thus alone /be/ capable of any objective verification in physical science.

Action or event therefore has been taken as the sole matter for rational (quantitative) analysis or investigation. And to ascertain what qualitative changes (changes in kind) or transformations (as opposed to mere quantity) are possible in the realm of physical action or events, it has been necessary to begin with a given quantity of action or event and hold to that magnitude throughout. Note: In the preceding example the constant quantity of action was not held to. With the added acceleration there was necessarily an increase in the amount of energy or action.