Spencer Heath Archive

Item 262

Pencil notes by Heath inserted in Hans Reichenbach, Atom and Cosmos

March 22, 1961

 

The quantum unit of ACTION, process, event, is a least integration in which

 The processes — events — that constitute the objective physical world (nature) and impinge on the human sensory system are discrete, single and unitary in their impact but three-fold in their composition. They are composed — organized of three basic and always inseparable elements or aspects distinguishable in thought but always united in some propor­tions in the physically perceptible objective process or event.

 

 These three basic and primary constituents of every physical process or event are called (1) mass (including inertia, force, resistance), (2) motion and (3) time. The first is protean in its manifestation, including inertia, force, resistance etc.

March 23, 1961

Through his sensory perceptions — percepts — the physical world reveals itself to the conscious mind of man in two and only two always inseparable primary aspects which together objectively constitute objective concrete events, acts, action or work — the objective subject-matter and ground-work, the physical side of or element in all con­scious subjective experience.

 

 These two aspects of objective action or events are always conjointly and never separately experienced or perceived. As percepts only, they are united, concrete and indivisible. When, however, by a mental process they are drawn apart or abstracted the one from the other, then they are no longer experienced concretely or conceived as acts, action or events. They have become now the separated abstract concepts or conceptions — the two unlike and different aspects of objective acts, action or events — (also called work) — which are known first as mass (includ­ing inertia and force, measured usually in grams or dynes) and then as motion, a dependent and ever-present property of mass, measured usually in centimeters or similar units.

 Thus the unitary act or perceptible event is analyzed and mentally resolved into its two primary aspects which are not separately accessible to or perceivable by the senses as percepts but are, as concepts, accessible to the conceptual power and faculties of the mind — the orderly imagination