Spencer Heath Archive

Item 317

Criticisms by physicist grandson Crawford John MacCallum, requested by Heath, of Citadel, Market and Altar, in both manuscript and galley proof, 1955 and later. Dates and order are unknown. Annotations by Heath are [enclosed in brackets, bold and italicized].

     

 

 

Dear Crawford,                              November 13, 1955

 

Many thanks for your several pages of comment and protest against the impropriety of my attempt to assimilate biological and social energy with physical energy. In some places you seem to say, in these words or in effect, that it is irrelevant and improper to attempt any such wide generalization and synthesis. But nowhere do you seem to give any reason for your objections. It is all very well to know of your objections merely as a matter of fact, but it would be much more satisfying to have some rationale (if there can be any rationale for a negative) or some more or less cogent reasoning that would impose the necessity of unqualified rejection.[1]

 

However, I am inclined to think it is really my own fault in not having made the matter as clear and explicit as I should have done. I have a theory that when one under­stands anything very well, he no longer encounters any in­surmountable difficulty in finding the proper words for it.

 

I realize that I got at this matter rather intuitively than rationally, and only by degrees developed the rationale. I have lately been working on it intently and have come up with a brief general thesis with which I plan to start off my magnum opus in the form of a prefatory note.

 

This prefatory note deals only with fundamentals. It does not make any specific applications of the customary principles of physical energy or any specific application in the biological or the social field.

 

I am exceedingly anxious to know whether (1) there is in this general statement anything that is specifically contradicted by anything in the established and verified physical science, and (2) as to such matters as do not seem entirely in accordance with fundamental physical theory, whether or not such matters are utterly or in any degree inconsistent therewith.

 

I think this Prefatory Note brings the whole matter into a much finer focus where you can get your teeth into it perhaps without being emotionally disturbed by what seems like wrong or heretofore unheard-of applications.

 

I notice it was hard for you to find time for all this matter; so, with the adage in mind, Money makes the mare go,” I am sending you that $100.00 now, which you can apply to your past efforts alone or including your further reply, as you wish.

 

Thank Betty for her jolly letter and tell her we admire her apparent impurturbability ‘mid domestic vicissitudes, not to say calamities.

 

Spencer has been shopping around a bit, and I think

The most important item he has come up with is some greeting cards that are edible — made of some kind of chocolate wafer paper which the recipient can read, mark, and also inwardly digest. That ought to be enough for nonsense; so, here we end.

 

 

Yours,

 

/s/ PD

 

PD/m

________________________________________________________________

 

Carbon of letter to grandson Crawford John MacCallum

and wife Cather (née Betty Cather), Ithaca, New York

October 25, 1956

 

 

Dear Crawford and Cather:

 

We are sending you a third set of galley sheets with a lot of pleasure. The reactions from the first two have been so very helpful and so stimulating of our cause.

     Spencer and I have read and re-read Cather’s previous letters. Her suggestions have been most valuable and have been adopted everywhere except where too much re-writing or re-arrangement would be required. I certainly wish we could have had these two letters before the original copy went to the printer.

     Her grasp of the whole thing, from its fundamentals on up, is truly remarkable, and the humor and facility with which she sets down her reactions is most intriguing. I am afraid I can­not at this moment adequately express myself upon the pleasure and helpfulness of what she has written. So we are sending this third lot in joyous anticipation of her further sprightliness and per­ceptive penetration. But we will be satisfied if what she next writes is only half as good.

     We have now warmly adopted the Santayana quotation. We certainly appreciate the promptness with which you have gone over these proofs so far, and hope it will be easy to find a place for the new lot without to greatly disrupting the domestic or other routine of either or both of you.

     We have carefully considered the three “false” statements in the footnote, and from what we have learned on the subject, we are not surprised that Crawford did not attempt to clarify the matter in any detail. Anyhow, the footnote does not seem to have any particular pertinency in support of the text to which it is attached, so we are thinking seriously of eliminating it as surplusage altogether. Amendment by cancellation is sometimes the best of all; so we are under quite a debt of gratitude for Crawford for this (even though he has not been very fulsome either in his praise or blame).

 

     We are leaving for New York today and will not be back until about the 15^th; so, anything you send to us had better come directly to 11 Waverly Place.

A whole lot of sugar plums for those three “monsters”, and something just as good, we hope, for their capable progenitors.

Affectionately,

       PD

SH/m

 

 

 

________________________________________________________________

 

 

Dear Popdaddy –

 

Well I got this one back a little closer to the promised time! I hope it is of more value to you than my previous effort, which apparently you read only in part. The work was considerably easier for me, due in part to a very considerable increase in precision of expression over your earlier manuscript. If any of that increase is due to my complaints, I am made very happy.

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

Popdaddy

I am batting this off in haste so I can send Spencer the stuff he wants today. Section 3 is much harder for me to do and will be delayed a day or two. I keep rewriting as I under­stand more what you are talking about. There are no diagrams in that section so Spencer will not need it.

I am writing much more than you wanted me to because I find it very hard to separate out questions of pure physics from socionomy and philosophy. This makes it harder for you of course. I have tried to separate matters of English, prose style, and philosophy as well as remarks on socionomy I couldn’t resist from matters of fact by the following code:

 

Comments on matters of fact start with capital letters.

everything else starts with small letters and you can just not read them if you don’t like them.

C J M

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

 

 

Popdaddy—-

 

I have written two sections. Section I is the long harangue you asked me not to write. Section II is the nearest I could force myself to what you wanted. The long delay this summer was largely due to my psychological inability to write section II without section I. For one thing, I had to write section I before I understood what you had written. For another, I simply have not got the mental control to trim a hedge without landscaping the whole damn estate! I think you should read section I. It represents nearly a week’s hard work and, if nothing more, it should interest you to see how your work affects a methodically pragmatic mind, and how your ideas sound after passing through my reticulum. WARNING! ALL OF SECTION I IS EXPRESSED IN ABSOLUTELY DOGMATIC TERMS. THIS IS PURELY IN THE INTEREST OF CLARITY AND ECONOMY AND IN NO WAY REFLECTS THE AUTHOR’S TRUE ATTITUDE. Reader please season to taste with appropriate polite qualifications.

 

 

                         SECTION I

THESIS:

 

Your book is about one thing primarily and above all else: controlled interaction between man and his environment. Interaction may take place with the biological environment: metabolism. Or it may take place with the physical environment: agriculture, disease eradication, construction, etc. Or with the social environment: the distribution and performance of every kind of goods and services man’s ingenuity can conceive, for the mutual benefit of the individual and the society.

 

DEVELOPMENT:

 

First, the qualification controlled (which implies mutual, non­coercive, etc.) is essential. Uncontrolled interaction with biological environ­ment is disease, with physical environment is fire, flood, earthquake, with social environment is political duress, slavery, war. (The less control residing in the individual, the closer the approach to death, destruction, slavery.)

 

     Second, further qualification is needed. There are other types of interaction between individual and social environment which your book is not about: bio­logical-emotional on the family scale, moral-emotional on the tribal scale, intellectual on the universal scale (as the interaction between scientists all over the world), i.e. “sociological” interactions in the usual sense. The significant thing about these interactions is that they are not measured. The most important concept I owe you is that controlled interaction between truly social units is automatically and precisely measured; the market place evaluates every interaction and labels it with a number — of dollars and cents!

 

Third, a still further qualification is required if your science is socionomy rather than physiology or engineering. The interaction should be between social units (generally men, often factories, faculties, foundations). Basal metabolism is a controlled and measurable interaction, but an idiot child has a more positive rate than you. Obviously biological processes are not of socionomical sig­nificance. Interaction with the physical world can conceivably be measured in terms of entropy decrease if controlled, increase if uncontrolled; but if in the middle of a desert a man caused an orchard to bloom, the act would have no social value (or socionomical evaluation) until he came into contact with society. (If he then sold or rented the orchard or its products, a controlled interaction of definite magnitude between true social units would have occurred. If it were stolen from him, an uncontrolled interaction of immeasurable magnitude between asocial units would have occurred.) Evidently interaction purely between individual and environment, or between asocial units, is of no socionomical significance.

 

CONCLUSION:

 

Your book is about controlled and measured interaction between social units (henceforth called social interaction for short), just as another book on my desk is about electricity. And I am enthusiastic in believing you have made a science of society possible by discovering an objective and measurable quantity to study.

 

QUESTION:

 

Then in view of the last statements, why do Sections 3 and 4 of your Part I so antagonize me I can hardly stand it?

 

ANSWER:

 

Because in an effort to appear scientific you discuss society in a way which sounds like physics, but which is 1) unnecessary, 2) imprecise and confusing, 3) inappropriate. (Seasoning!!)

 

By the numbers:

 

 

1. Your main contribution to science is the discovery that social inter­action can be studied rationally and quantitatively. This discovery makes it unnecessary to drag in physical or metabolic interactions in order to treat social interaction scientifically. For example, the main point of section 4 is that increasing the average life expectancy increases the average rate of social interaction per individual, over and above any tendency merely to increase the number of individuals. But — this point follows immediately from the experimental fact that a man^’s earning power increases rapidly with age (especially in a complex society), as soon as you realize that annual income is society^’s evaluation of a man’s annual social contribution. “Energy streams” and “horsepower hours” are not necessary to make this clear and quantitative. I have put some examples in an appendix.

 

2. The main source of my confusion and frustration was that I could never really figure out what you were talking about. When on page 10 you say, “life on earth is a store and stream of energy flowing from the sun” I get a vivid picture of simple heat energy flowing (ergs per second) in and out (anabolism and catabolism) of living structures, be they men, animals, or plants with­out distinction. When on pages 12 and 16 you speak of “average rate of energy output per individual” and talk about transforming it so it will have “vastly higher functional capacity” I get confused. The average individual energy output rate is zero, except inasmuch as the structure is growing or deteriorating. Perhaps you mean “energy flow through each individual”, but even then most of it merely goes to maintain the structure. Maybe the bit left over is what you call “functional energy flow” on page 17: “the functioning of the social organism is the integration of the functional energy that through its individual members flows”, but I find no definition of “functional energy.” A man may truly be con­sidered as an energy “conduit” or “transformer”, but only a small part [Only a small part – Yes, only the part that is transmitted from one unit to another by contract] of the physical energy transformed is of social significance, and the quantity of social significance bears no relation to the quantity of energy. How much less confusion if you never brought in simple physical energy at all!

 

3. Far beyond being unnecessary and confusing, however, it is downright inappropriate and improper for socionomy to try to deal with quantities that are merely physical in nature. The essence of sections 4 and 7 is that a certain number of man-years of life entail a certain amount of energy flow or transform­ation whose socionomical significance resides far more in its (socionomical) “quality” than in its (physical) “quantity”. Now if you can discuss the “quality” of a certain amount of energy transfer then you are discussing some concept out­side of physics. If you can go so far as to measure this “quality”, as you do in section 7, then you are measuring some quantity, and you have a new science. It is as inappropriate to try to restrict [superadded — quality within the whole quantity] the new science to concepts developed in physics as it would be for Thermodynamics to deprive itself of temperature and entropy measurements because they do not have any meaning in Mechanics.

 

PARABLE:

 

Once upon a time it was discovered that if amber was rubbed against wool it became “qualitatively transformed”: mass, color, and texture remained the same quantities as before, but some “quality” had been added which caused nearby bits of matter to defy the law of gravity! Two millenniums later someone discovered that this “quality” was due to an objectively measurable quantity [within the total quantity] which he called electric charge, and the science of electrostatics was created. In this science, mass, color, and texture have no direct significance, and it would be highly inappropriate to discuss them at any length.

 

TRANSLATION:

 

Once upon a time it was discovered that if a collection of intel­ligent “energy transformers” joined into a community, the aggregate “energy trans­former” was “qualitatively transformed”; total energy flow (in ergs per second) remained the same quantity as before, but some “quality” (“higher functional capacity”) had been added which caused nearby environment to defy the “law of deterioration”! Six or eight millenniums later someone discovered that this “quality” was due to an objectively measurable quantity which one of his students called social interaction, and the science of socionony was created. In this science, physical energy flow (in ergs per second) has no direct sig­nificance, and it is highly inappropriate to discuss it at any length.

 

 

SECTION II

 

In this section I accept that you really want to talk about phys­ical energy. You must talk about it more carefully, however. Most of what follows depends upon questions of fact, and from here on “I” usually stands for all scientists.

 

Page Ten:  First sentence and first footnote sentence:

 

The question of what you mean by such terms as “energy”, “energy flow”, “population energy”, “functional energy”, plagues me on every page. Since I feel strongly about l) precision 2) retention of accepted meanings of words if feasible, I am going to belabor the point. Let me quote two definitions:

 

1. Energy (in Physics) is “capacity for performing work”, called kinetic energy if due to motion relative to the environment, and called potential energy if due to position relative to the environ­ment.

 

2. Energy (in English) is “internal or inherent power; capacity of acting, operating or producing an effect, whether exerted or not.” (“Webster’s Hew International, 2nd Edition, 1950)

 

In “both cases it is merely an attribute or potentiality of the relationship between object and environment. Now Mr. heath’s “object­ive events and experiences” are precisely the “action, operation or production of effects”, i.e. the exertion of Mr. Webster’s power or capacity, and should be called something such as “energy flow” or “transformation of energy”. Either one of these would make the first sentence acceptable to physicists. In fact you do seem to use “energy flow” most of the time in the text. I personally would prefer a more general term such as “action” (in a specifically non­technical sense), or even better “interaction” — terms which could apply as well to an event involving elementary physical units as to an event involving complicated social units. (There is also the point that events can occur in which there is a momentum transfer but no energy [action] transfer.) [Yes. Mass x Velocity in different proportions]

 

Now I realize that in the first footnote sentence you say that by “energy” you and Mr. Webster mean quite different things, but I feel strongly that you should use another word and give “energy” back to Webster. Reasons:

 

1. People who don’t know the precise accepted meaning of energy will fail to appreciate the radicalism of your footnote.

 

2. People who do know the precise accepted meaning of energy will find it almost impossible to remember to forget it. (I speak from experience.)

 

3. Scientists have literal unimaginative minds and when they read your first footnote sentence will simply reject it, thinking it incomprehensible or meaningless, or at least too broad to have any scientific meaning. (I speak from experience — not only my own).

 

4. You have trouble keeping to the new definition yourself! You often use “energy flow” when (I think) you mean (your kind of) “energy”. And you often use “energy” in a context where only Webster’s kind of energy seems sensible:

 

Pl0 — “energy flowing from the sun”

p42 – “life-years of infancy absorbing energy”

pl2 – “average rate of energy output per individual”

pl4 – whole of bottom paragraph.

                               etc.

 

Second footnote sentence:

 

This is not true.

 

First, kinetic energy is defined above; it is merely an attribute of a relationship just like potential energy. Furthermore, kinetic energy and action are not even measured in the same units and they have entirely different physical meanings. (Ten ergs of energy is no more the same as ten erg-seconds of action than ten miles per hour is the same as ten miles. “Kinetic energy” must go out.

    

Second, action has a strict definition, namely        where p and q are “generalized momenta and coordinates”. It is a rather esoteric quantity which has no simple physical meaning or definition, but which plays an important role in modern physics, principally because it is relativistically invariant. It may possibly be significant to relate “energy in this actual and experiential sense” to “what is called in modern physics ‘action'”, but I cannot allow so flat an equation.

 

Second paragraph, last sentence:

 

l) “What do you mean (here and elsewhere) by “potential they

possess”? It doesn’t mean anything to me.

 

2. If you multiply “the number of units .. by the mean velocity .. and also by the duration of their flow” you get the total distance moved by all units during this time. Is this what you want?

 

2. Strictly speaking you should say “speed” in every place that you now say “velocity”. Mean velocity is in fact zero. [Not of an automobile. It is distance divided by time.]

 

Of possible interest:  After dozens of readings this paragraph meant nothing to me. In context with the whole book your meaning finally seeped through, but many people will not have a strong urge to con­tinue. The concept is however not so difficult that it cannot be ex­pressed in a paragraph.

 

Page Eleven:

 

Footnote:

 

The distinction between inertial mass and gravitational mass is as follows. The acceleration of a body under any applied force is given by the ratio of that force to the body’s inertial mass (acceleration = force/inertial mass), while the force acting on a body due to gravity is directly proportional to its gravita­tional mass (force = g X gravitational mass). The fact that in a vacuum all bodies fall with the same acceleration g shows that the two masses must in fact be the same. In any case, mass is a fixed attribute of a body independent of its position, and is measured in grams, kilograms, or slugs.

 

A dyne (pound) is that force which will accelerate [When that acceleration of any mass is going on, there is the same number of force units, dynes, as of mass units, grams.] a mass of one gram one centimeter/second each second (one slug one foot/second each second). Force and mass are different kinds of quantities [?] (as different as, say, energy and distance). Since, at sea level, a gram mass accelerates 980 cm/sec per second, there must be a force of 980 dynes acting on it. This is a gravitational force (due to the nearby presence of the earth) [And not of the mass?] and is called the weight of the one gram mass. Thus “one dyne is the sea level weight of a little more than one thousandth part of a gram”. Your last three sentences are not correct.

 

Middle second paragraph:

 

“If it gave also the time average rate of motion of each unit … one could calculate the average kinetic energy per individual”.

 

1. You would need to know each person’s (time) average velocity,

Not just an overall population average, because, for example, it would make a difference if the higher-than-average velocities were generally associated with the higher-than-average masses.

 

2. From these data you could calculate the average kinetic

    Energy per individual. From considerable more data (such as

height above sea level, electric charge, etc.) you could calculate the average potential energy and by adding find the average energy of an individual body. This however would bear no relation to the aver­age rate of flow of energy between the individual and his environ­ment. The latter would require a census listing metabolic rates.

 

It is important to understand this point. If you knew the po­sition, velocity, mass, charge, etc. of every particle in a body you could calculate the energy of that body. This is totally unrelated to the rate of energy flow between that body and its environment, and would not be appreciably altered if the body died or were turned to stone. From here on I assume that you meant to calculate the latter quantity, particularly since you call it “rate of energy out­put per individual” on page 12. (By the way, “rate of energy” — page 10 line 19 – is meaningless. So is “energy rate” — page 12 penultimate line.) This latter quantity is simply the metabolic rate.

 

(( Of course the metabolic rate in ergs per second of a para­lytic idiot is not significantly different from that of a poet, poli­tician, or ditch digger, so I think it would be more intelligent to measure a more general rate of interaction between that body and its environment in poems per month, or ditches per day. This is still not very intelligent because the poems might be unpublished and the ditch dug in the wrong place, and because there is no way to con­vert from poems to ditches. I suggest measuring rate of interaction between that individual and his social environment, in dollars earned per day or year. But this I have belabored before.))

 

End second paragraph:

 

l) Presumably you are using the word “motion” on this page in some sense unknown to physics (although on page 14 it definitely means distance traveled and on page 15 it apparently means speed!) because if “motion” means speed, velocity, distance travelled, or anything I can think of, then the product of mass, “motion”, and duration represents nothing whatever known to me — certainly neither energy, energy flow, nor action. Apparently you want the product of mass and “motion” to represent rate of energy trans­fer [Yes] to or from environment. It is true that the product of “net force exerted on a body by its environment” times “component of velocity of body in direction of force” represents rate of mechanical energy transfer from environment to body. [Heath indicates by penciling “OK” that these five lines are all right.] Of course living bodies get their energy from heat or chemical sources.

 

(I am afraid you must give up this “mass, motion, and time” business. There is just no way of twisting their meaning so a product of the three gives a sensible quantity (except metaphorically). It may interest you to hear that I have recently forsworn the “tri­nity”. Nature is seldom impressed by man’s wishful mysticism: the number of heavenly bodies is not five, the number of primal elements is not four, and the number of fundamental quantities is not three. My convictions on the subject of their number are presented in a very condensed appendix for your entertainment.)

 

2. In this paragraph you seem to use “motion” and “rate of motion” interchangeably. They cannot be the same. [True] (Same remarks hold for “energy flow” and “rate of energy flow”. Actually “flow” is a bad word, because to some people it already connotes a rate. Trans­fer is safer.) [Yes]

 

2. I do not understand why you multiply by the average life-time of the individual. (I know why you did; it’s that damn Eddington again.) I agree that a “real” event is the total interaction or flow of energy during some finite time, and that this quantity is the product (number of subunits) X (average rate of interaction with or rate of energy flow through each subunit) X (length of time

D in question). But I don’t understand why D should be the lifetime

of the subunit rather than, say, one year. [N stands for so much action per year. ND is the whole life of the individual as an amount of energy or action.]

 

Most of man’s activities are governed by “clock time”, he gets hungry three times per day, not so many times per generation, and if he lives longer he simply has to eat more. He goes to work about 300 times per year, not so many times per generation, [?] and if he lives longer he simply has to work more. If a society were ima­gined which somehow kept the total amount of energy flow or inter­action per generation a constant, while the duration of a generation steadily increased, then eventually the amount of energy flow per year would become too small to maintain the society against the steady erosion of natural destructive forces.

 

In order to consider a “constant quantity of energy flow per year” instead of per generation you would have to consider a popu­lation of constant number. This creates no difficulty in your dis­cussion of “qualitative transformation” of the population. If the life-span increases, the fraction of the population beyond the age of biological maturity rises sharply. And so on.

 

As for the desirability of multiplying by the life-span in analogy and reference to the quantum theory of radiation, I am uncertain whether a fruitful analogy can be made but certain that the analogue to the period of the radiation is not the life-span of the individual. I have put something about this in an appendix.

 

Page Twelve:

 

First paragraph:

 

1. Average mass is not really constant. While it has not doubled in the last century it must certainly have increased 10% or 20%. And there is certainly that much difference between the average mass in the U.S. and in, say, Japan. Does this mean that if all other factors, including “quality” were equal the American population would be, man for man, some 10% to 20% more creative than the Japanese merely by virtue of size?

 

2. In the second sentence you have “… average motion or

rate of energy output …” Are they the same?? In the

next paragraph you say “velocity”!! What are you talking about?

 

3. When you dismiss the “average rate of energy output, per

individual” as historically approximate constant, I think you lose sight of something which is socially far more important than any amount of change in life expectancy: man’s capacity for technological advance [springing from extension of contract]. In a few hundred years the rate of social interaction per individual — what I think you would call the “quality” of the rate of energy output per individual — has been fantastically in­creased. [How?] For example, one hundred years ago in this country a much smaller population required the energy output of a much larger number of farmers to keep itself fed — and it didn’t eat as well! Surely the farm population of today represents far more “functional energy” in spite of fewer numbers, and not entirely because of lengthened life span. [Because of a technology that came from contract, division of labor — specialization of functions — all due to freedom of contract.]

 

Page Thirteen:

 

Footnote:

 

1. Erg-seconds and kilowatt-hours are as different as miles and

miles-per-hour.

 

2. Eddington wanted to multiply by some number of years (not a

life span) because as he says only four-dimensional quantities are “real”. His “man-years” are somehow analogous to erg-seconds or kilowatt-hours-hours. [So they can’t be so different.] Your “life-years” represent as you say a certain energy flow, and are measured in ergs or kilowatt-hours. The two of you are talking in completely different worlds, and never the twain should meet. [But do they, not should they.]

 

Page Fourteen:

 

Continued paragraph:

 

     I don’t know what “high potential electric flow” means. It’s probably not important — the idea comes across.

 

First new paragraph:

 

A pound is a force, not a mass. [And a dyne is a force, not a mass. And a dye is a weight, part of a gram? Top of page 9]Page Fifteen:

 

Continued paragraph and footnote:

 

     The amount of time involved in the transfer of the one horsepower-minute of physical energy is irrelevant. If the one pound force moved 33,000 feet in one second, and the 33,000 pound force moved one foot on one century, the two [events] energy transfers [as events] would still be equal: one horsepower-minute in either case. [Equal amounts of energy but different kinds of events.]

                                                         

Second paragraph:

 

     The portion of this paragraph on page 15 is gibberish. With all due respect, I am sending you a freshman physics text, If you insist on discussing quantities and concepts peculiar to physics it is absolutely essential that you accept the precise and constant meanings assigned them.

 

1. Whereas on page 14 your “mass-motion” product comes out in

horsepower-minutes, or energy, on page 15 it comes out in horsepower! You have got to decide what “motion” means.

 

2. If a mass with sea-level weight 150 pounds were moving with a

constant speed of ten feet per minute it would have kinetic energy of about  .06 foot-pounds. There would be no power involved since no energy is being transferred.

 

Actually the molecules in a man’s body move with average speed of the order of 1000 feet per second, and with average velocity zero. [None?]

 

If a man weighing 150 pounds were moving vertically upwards from the earth at a rate of ten feet per minute, he would be transferring energy from some source into (potential energy of) his body at a rate of 1500 poundsfeet per minute, or about .045 horse-power.

 

I have had to make statements at random because I don’t know what you are trying to calculate. After reading the definitions of mass, force, energy, power etc. you can fix up the paragraph yourself. Apparently what you want is the metabolic rate, which for a typical adult is roughly 1/10 watt.

 

Page Sixteen:

 

Middle line:

 

Once more — energy transfer is not equivalent to some certain motion of a mass. A moving mass contains kinetic energy, but is not transferring it. The finite motion of a force involves the performance of work, i.e. the transfer of energy, provided the motion is in the direction of the force. A force moving with high velocity involves rapid transfer of energy: large power.

 

Antepenultimate line:

 

It sounds as though you say the individual rate and total amount of energy transfer per generation can be kept constant while the life span varies. [1 mil x 25 yrs, ½ mil x 50 yrs – Same amount, different rate]

                                                         

Page Seventeen:

 

Line 14:  typographical. (This is the only one! You had a good proofreader.)

 

Page Eighteen:

 

First paragraph second sentence:  I disagree. A fixed number of life-years can “draw from, transform, and return to its environment” radically different kinds of energy, depending on the technological level. Of course this energy does not all flow through the human bodies, but may flow through animals and machines. [True. Statement is: – The amount at the given rate is proportionate to the number of life-yrs.]

 

Page Twenty:                                 

 

Line 13:

 

Replace “mass or volume” (which you have already speci­fied to be fixed at “about two million slugs or one million cubic feet”) by “cross-sectional area”.

 

Page Twenty-One:

 

First new sentence:

 

Same correction as above. Total quantity of flow, in cubic feet moved past a fixed point, is given by (cross-sectional area in square feet) X (velocity in feet/second) X (duration of flow in seconds).

 

Line 9:

 

“charge or motion” means nothing to me. However the idea comes through clearly enough.

 

Lines 16-18:

 

I think the statement is untrue if meant in a precise physical sense. I can’t be sure because the wording is so vague. Statement of physics: if a current is maintained in a circuit which consists of two paths “in parallel” ( -==- ), the current will divide itself between the two branches in inverse ratio to the electrical resistance if each, independently of the potential dif­ference between the terminals and the magnitude of the current.

 

Line 19:

 

It is impossible to speak of the “potential” of units in a stream if by potential you mean either electrical potential or potential energy. The only thing that makes the stream flow is the fact that this potential is forever decreasing along the path of the stream. I guess you mean something else, but you never say what. Speed, perhaps?

 

Page Twenty-Two:

 

First paragraph last line:

 

This is not true. The efficiency of an engine has nothing to do with its cycling rate or power output. Efficiency equals work output divided by work input — no mention is made of how long it takes to put out the work. For this reason power, not efficiency, is usually the prime consideration in specifying an engine. There was an interesting article in American Sci­entist about a year ago discussing the relative importance of power and efficiency in various types of systems under various conditions.

 

Page Twenty-Three:

 

Last lines:

 

Won’t you say “a measure” instead of “the measure”?

 

 

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APPENDICES

 (Note: The graphs or formulas on the following Appendix pages are deleted for difficulty of transcribing (each place of deletion indicated by “X X X”), but a photocopy of the original page is inserted after each corresponding page here. Find the originals in the white Originals Envelope. -Ed SHM)

 

On the Number of Fundamental Quantities:

 

Space and time form a perceptual framework in which man exper­iences objects and events. Spatio-temporal coordinates specify po­sitions of objects and events; physical quantities specify natures of objects and events.

 

Man’s ingenuity in extending the scope and complexity of his experience forever compels the invention of more and more quantities. Man’s divine desire to”comprehend the chaos” forever impels the re­solution of these into fewer, and more fundamental. Out of the fire of this conflict have gradually crystallized a few hard-fought “fun­damentals”; the first was mass, the second electric charge, the third intrinsic spin, the fourth intrinsic parity. Magnetic moment is even now in the fire, and at the edge of knowledge more nebulous concepts are slowly condensing. Yet it may still be hoped that some or all of these will eventually be reduced, becoming merely different aspects of some one more absolute fundamental.

 

The number of space-time coordinates is four; one of the four plays a unique but not separable role. The number of physical quan­tities is probably never to be known; one may aspire, with Einstein, toward a minimum of one.

 

 

On the Quantum Theory of Radiation:

 

Electromagnetic radiation represents a flow of energy in the sense that physical energy is transported from one point in space to another with a fixed velocity c. A human society represents a flow of energy in the sense that the society maintains itself by contin­ually absorbing physical energy from the environment and continually returning it (at a roughly fixed rate of approximately 1/10 watt per human). The physical organization maintains its identity as long as it does not interact with its environment — transfer of energy to or from the environment is of necessity accompanied by the destruc­tion or creation of a photon. The social organization maintains its identity as long as it does interact with its environment — failure to transfer energy to and from the environment is of necessity accompanied by the destruction of a human life. [Seems a big contradiction]

 

Electromagnetic radiation is composed of a large number of over­lapping independent photons and the resulting organization is a simple statistical aggregate [Then how is it organized?] of its constituents. Society is composed of a large number of overlapping interdependent human lives and the resulting organization [organism] is far more than the statistical aggregate of its constituents. (In fact the social individual would be well nigh incapable of existing independently of the social organization — as a cell of his body is incapable of existing independently of the bio­logical organization.)

 

A single photon, like any other stable non-living object, has no definite duration. It may be annihilated [transformed?] at any time after crea­tion or it may exist indefinitely. A human life has, statistically, a very definite duration. By favorable modification of its environ­ment a society can increase the statistical duration, although there is good reason to believe the increase is inherently limited.

 

A single photon has at a fixed point in time a nearly periodic structure in space, which may be visualized as follows:

 

X X X

 

 

The distance between crests is called “wavelength”.

 

      By virtue of its motion with velocity c a single photon as it passes a fixed point in space shows a nearly periodic structure in time, which may be visualized as follows:

 

X X X

 

 

The time between arrival of crests is called “period”.

 

      The human life has various approximately periodic rhythms with per­iods of about one day, one month, and one year. These periods have no true analogue in the period of the photon. The human body shows periodicity and definite duration in its energy exchange with envir­onment, but no periodicity in the structure of its parts. The photon shows neither periodicity nor definite duration in its energy exchange with environment but has periodicity in the structure of its parts.

 

      If an analogy is forced, the analogue to the period of the photon would seem to be the day. The arbitrariness of the analogy is demonstrated by the fact that a photon without period is a cont­radiction, while life can and does exist (in deep caverns and on sea-bottom) without periodicity.

 

One of the finest achievements of modern physics was the discovery that in a very real sense all photons are intrinsically ident­ical. The energy carried by one photon depends on the state of motion of the observer who measures it (just as the energy carried by a speeding baseball is one thing to a stationary batter but another to a man who carries it on a train). The period of the photon depends on the state of motion of the observer who measures it (just as the period of a train whistle is different when the train is approach­ing or receding). Neither the period nor the energy of the photon then have any absolute meaning, but it turns out that their product is always the familiar constant h when measured by any observer. Thus every photon is intrinsically “one quantum of action”, while its per­iod and energy are mere extrinsic characterizations. This is a beauti­ful simplification for which one pays by the abstractness of the con­cept “action”, which has no simple definition nor any intuitive phys­ical meaning.[2] It is merely the product of two seemingly unrelated quantities whose relativistic transformations happen to compensate. These quantities are l) the total energy carried by the whole photon (which energy may be transferred only upon annihilation of the pho­ton, whereupon it is transferred entirely) and 2) the time it takes one wave (out of ~ 10⁷ which form the photon) to pass a given point.

There is no analogy to this fact in the human life.

 

 

Quantitative Measurements of Social Age and Efficiency:

(1)  In a nomadic society a graph of “earning power” versus age might look like this –

X X X

     In a simple agricultural society it might look like this –

                                  X X X

     In a technological society it becomes more like this –

                                  X X X

     In some future society with no manual labor and no hardship the curve ought to extend even farther to the right, and perhaps remain always on the rise.

Implication: The maturity of any given society can be measured by some such simple number as, say, by the percentage of area under the curve to the right of age 20, or, by the age at which the curve reaches a maximum.

(2)  Suppose two graphs were available:

          Average earning power versus age –          X X X

          Fraction of population units of

          Given age versus age –                      X X X

 

Then multiplying corresponding ordinates together would give a new curve:

 

          Total earning power versus age –            X X X

 

Now if the area under the first curve be adjusted to value one (as that of the second curve has been), then the area under the last curve is a number less than one representing the efficiency of the society. This sounds complicated, but I think it is just the number you yourself calculated in Section 7 (?) with various approximations to the average earning power versus age  curve:

 

X X X

 

And with two different assumptions as to age distribution:

 

X X X

 

(My numbers may not be the same as yours and I am not sure you called it “efficiency”)

 

 

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PAGE 1

 

Title:

 

I gather that you consider the quantum, the erg-second and the life-year as merely different amounts of the same kind of thing, namely action. The horsepower-hour is of course a different kind of thing, namely energy. Perhaps this is intentional on your part, however.

 

Third Paragraph:

 

You almost seem to imply [Might state it but don’t mean to imply it] the existence of a fundamental unit of energy. While energy is indeed sometimes quantized, there is no smallest unit of energy which may be transferred. A given system, an atom for instance, can absorb or emit a discrete set of energies. This set is, however, infinite in number, and includes energy values ranging right down to zero. The set for the hydrogen atom is, partially and approximately, 1, 1/4, 1/9, 1/16, 1/25,… etc.

 

Energy transfer may be produced by the action or a force through a distance, but on the quantum level this concept has no meaning. Energy transfer there is the result of mass annihilation or photon emission. Transfer of radiant heat or light energy across a vacuum is another example of the latter process.

 

Can you make more precise “is taken in connection with” (I guess you mean “is multiplied by”) and “associated with it” (I don’t know what you mean)?

 

PAGE 2

 

Line 2:

 

Should you interpolate “…least quantity of energy and time taken as a unit…”?

 

PAGE 3

 

The first sentence is (as it stands) flatly contradicted by the accepted definition of energy, “ability to do work”. Energy is a static attribute of a particle or system. A suspended weight or a whizzing bullet has “ability to do work”, and will continue to have it indefinitely. No particular time is “associated”. There are, of course, special cases where a certain time interval is incidentally associated with the energy — e.g. the earth as it moves around the sun has a certain amount of energy and its motion involves one-year period, a photon carries a certain energy and (with respect to certain kinds of measurements) demonstrates a wave motion with a certain period. But these are exceptional cases. [From what?]

 

From our past conversations I judge that the sentence really means “the duration of any measurable event is finite.” If so, you could say “energy transfer“.

 

In any case, you must define “associated with”. [Vide Eddington!]

 

The third sentence seems out of place in this paragraph, but that is not a question of physics. I do have two quibbles, however.

 

1. Most events are not repeated periodically. [Waves?]

 

     2) “..takes place or is recorded…”!

 

The first is the frequency; the second is what I (possibly erroneously) say it is. “The quantity of the energy is…without reference to any period of time” is pretty confusing in conjunction with the first sentence! [1^st sentence plus 2^nd: Time is only the measure of the energy. Time does not have to be included unless it acts and thus becomes kinetic energy or action.] “But energy is known to be discontinuous.” Not always! Only in bound states (systems where the component parts are bound to a finite region of space) are the energy levels discrete, otherwise they form a continuum. Example: the (idealized) hydrogen atom can exist with 1) any positive energy (here the electron can recede to infinity), 2) any negative energy given by the formula E = 1/n² where n is an integer  0 (here the