Spencer Heath's
Series
Item 315
Penciled by Heath on notepad paper.
Transcribed July 7, 1958
/THE VALID UNDERSTANDING OF NATURE/
Science is the valid understanding of Nature. It may be said to consist of a body of hypotheses drawn from sensory experience of and found to be indefinitely verifiable in the objective world. These hypotheses are diverse, as is human experience. Many of these hypotheses have been verified in fact. The simplest and most definite of these proved hypotheses are quantitative, stated in numerical terms based on specific fundamental units of magnitude or dimension. They thus have a rational self-consistency in terms of their numerical ratios both within and among themselves. They are called laws of nature, since they reflect some of the rationality of the objective world whence they are drawn — of the universe whence man’s rationality also is derived.
These natural laws involve numerical ratios, and these involve units, for there can be no numbers without units, and no true ratios between numbers except each unit be of constant magnitude, however inconsistent and variable in other respects. This dependence of rationality upon units accounts for the fact that in all the rational sciences standardized conventional units have been devised wherewith to measure numerically the fundamental aspects or elements of the particular phenomena, happenings or events with which they are concerned.
In physical science these fundamentals are: (1) mass (or force when the ponderable element is obscure), (2) motion (with respect to the general environment) and (3) discontinuity, commonly called time. The units by means of which these aspects or elements of an action or event (or succession of them) are measured (and thereby have numerical significance) are respectively the gram, the centimeter and the second. When the elements of an event are thus measured the number of mass units (grams) is taken as the number of them associated with a single unit of motion; the number of motion units (centimeters) is taken as the number associated with a single unit of time. The product of these two numbers is the rate of energy or work, and this rate of energy or work multiplied by the total number of time elements involved in the event gives the total amount of energy or work — the numerical magnitude or over-all dimension of the particular action or event. Thus any event that can be measured in units of mass, motion and time is rational in virtue of the numerical ratios involved in the event. The ratio between (1) the number of mass units in an event per each unit of motion and (2) the number of motion units per each unit of time fixes the specific character or quality of the event, while (3) the whole number of time units determines not the kind or quality but only the magnitude of the event.
Ultimate numerical units are such as are so constituted that they exhibit to objective experience only a single aspect or characteristic.
The sole characteristic of mass is motion — any motion, positive or negative, towards or away from, any other mass (circular when positive and negative motions are transformed into circular or rotational motion, as in a couple).
The sole characteristic of motion is discontinuity, frequency, periodicity, rhythm.
The sole characteristic of discontinuity is frequency.
The sole characteristic of time is period or duration, the inverse of discontinuity or frequency.
When an event of given magnitude has more units of mass per unit of motion, it must have less units of motion; and, inversely, the less mass the more motion.
When it has more units of motion per unit of time, it must have less units of time; and, inversely, the less motion the more time.
Assuming that there are absolute least units, then when an event of any given over-all magnitude has but one unit of mass per unit of motion, it must have more units of motion per unit of time (velocity) and, when it has only one unit of _____________
/The preceding partial sentence was not crossed out, but I assume it was to have been discarded in favor of the following paragraph as a new start. -Editor/
If we assume that all nature is rational in the sense of numerical ratios, we must assume the existence in nature of absolute least units of mass, motion and time. Then, in any action or event of a given over-all magnitude or dimension, when such an event has only one least unit of mass per unit of motion it must have the greatest possible number of units of motion per unit of time (highest velocity) and thereby the highest possible energy rate.
When it has only one least unit of motion per least unit of time (least absolute velocity) it must have the greatest possible number of units of mass per unit of motion (lowest absolute temperature).
Prominent among these natural laws is the law of composition of energy (or energy-in-action) — the organization of simple mass, motion and time into events as energy-in-action. Here the fundamentals are: simply mass, motion and time and the mathematical relationships in which and in which alone they are or they can be combined.
The ancient atomists were materialists. To them matter alone and of itself was the ultimate Reality. To the Platonists it was abstract geometrical form, matter having only the garb in which the Reality was clothed. To Aquinas and the medieval churchmen, the Reality was even more abstract, yet possessed of personal attributes similar to the human but infinite in degree. To the 18th and 19th century materialists the ultimate Reality was matter plus force and motion and plus an all-embracing natural medium, ether, through which force and motion were supposed mechanically to act.
Nineteenth century physical science inherited the materialism of its predecessors in an attempt to blend the atomism of Democritus, the geometry of Plato and Euclid, the Personal Spiritism of Aquinas and the mechanics of Newton and his successors.