Spencer Heath Archive

Item 442

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath.

See related thoughts in Item 433, and note penciled commentary by Alvin Lowi on the originals.

November, 1955

 

 

 

And I got it out by going back to Eddington. I got the clear conception. I’ve had it before, but I thought that the physicists did not support it. Now I find that they do support it. I had abandoned it at one time, when I put into my book, “wave or train of waves.” I did that because I had it first that population waves had certain things. Then I straddled it by saying, “wave or train of waves,” because I hadn’t distinguished definitely between a wave and a train of waves. Now that I identify the wave with the quantum, and know that it takes a certain number of waves to make up an event that we can experience, then I have resolved all paradox there. There is a short paragraph in Eddington which does make that identity but which, before this, I overlooked, a short calculation there in which he identifies the magnitude of the wave with the magnitude of the quantum — in which it appears that we can never experience a single wave but only trains of waves.

 

/You mean that we can never experience a single quantum?/

 

Yes, that we can never experience a single quantum. But that’s equivocal, because if there’s only one wave in the train, then the train of waves and the wave become the same thing. Get that? We can only experience quanta or multiples of quanta. Now that’s common knowledge. Now, if that wave is a certain kind, it requires ten of them to come into our experience. But if it is a longer wave, so that only one of them occurs in a second, then the single quantum can be experienced. How many quanta of action can come into different kinds of experiences? Well, if it occurs with high frequency, many of them make up a unit of experience. If it occurs with low frequency, few of them occur in a unit of experience. If it occurs with a frequency of one, then one quantum makes up the train. See that? I’m getting close to that query I had some time ago with your brother about are there sub-quantal units? Is there a unit of mass, a unit of velocity and a unit of time less than which will not enter into the composition of the quantum? I’m getting right on that scent now, and I think this is going to bring me out to the establishment of definite sub-quanta, compositional units in the quantum, because it is relating them to the big event known as the solar year. When I say relating them, it is relating them by a certain, specific number, or certain, specific numbers. I have opened up a whole new world that unites the physical and the astronomical. I got this fresh start by a correct interpretation of Eddington’s relation between the quantum and a train of quanta, the quantum of action being the unit which makes up the train. If this is a small unit, it must occur with high frequency, because it takes many of them to make up the train. If it is a large quantum, it ________________ we can’t say “large” quantum. It must be different in some respects, according to the number of them required to make up a train that can be experienced. And that difference is in their composition. If the quantum is composed of a unit of time, or an element of time, such as the second, then it takes only one to make up a train; it’s a coach on the train that’s just as long as the whole train. This doesn’t mean the magnitude of the quanta, it means its “time magnitude”, its period, because it has three magnitudes: the durational magnitude — This is the durational magnitude; if it has long duration, it takes few of them to make up the train. Now that’s where my correction comes in; it’s not any changing size of the quantum itself, but it’s the change in its directional factor or dimension. That quantum which has long duration, of such a quantum only a few are required. Possibly only one could make up a train. If the duration of the quantum is shorter and shorter, then the train must get longer and longer. Yet the quantum, while it differs in its time dimension, does not differ in its over-all dimension, because the other two are proportioned differently to it. You see that? The quantum is made up of small mass and motion, but we have a large time element in it. If it has a large time element, or period, then only a few will be required to make up its train, which is its frequency. If it has a small time element or frequency, then many of them will be required to occupy the length of the train, the length of the train being always one second, because the frequency is so many per second. The difference is in their time dimension, that makes the difference in their frequencies.

 

/Do you think this is the third big discovery you have made?/

 

Yes, I think I have had a tremendous illumination. Things that have seemed unrelated heretofore, I have found the relationship in them. And when I say relationship, I don’t mean subjective, I mean the objective relationship. I mean that kind of relationship which can be measured by the repetition of units, or numbers — measured numerically, which we call rational relationships. I could feel that there are relationships here and there, but until you can put down numbers to correspond with it, you can’t objectify it, and I can’t make you know what I mean either, except in a very vague and nebulous sense. You know what I mean, but I can’t tell you in numbers how hungry I am, can I? Or I feel sad, or I feel happy. Or I feel that I’m going like hell in the automobile. But until I can state it in numbers, I can’t tell you anything that you can understand with any definiteness. Is that right?

 

So if I can find a numerical relationship extending all the way from the composition of the quantum up to the solar-year, I have found the rationale of the human cosmos, that is, the cosmos which we can experience — that portion of the mystic cosmos which is objective to us, falling within the realm of experience.

 

Do you get that thought? We find numerical relationships all the way from those elements which comprise the quantum all the way up to the solar year, the repetition of which comprises time, beyond which we cannot have objective experience. ALL experience multiples of the solar year at the maximum, and all experience is some multiple or one of the quantum event, or wave, which is the minimum.

 

Gee, I wish I had a philosophic physicist, like Whitehead. I wish I could call up the ghost of Professor Whitehead and have a nice little “set-to” with him. Nothing I have said would clash with standard physics, so far as I can understand it. Heretofore, I had thought that there could be a clash, and your brother thinks there is a clash.

 

/Well, is the Relativity a part of standard physics?/

 

They’re trying to make it a part of the standard physics. And, here is an interesting thing. Fred Hoyle says that Relativity takes us into the astronomical world, whereas quantum mechanics takes us in the world of lesser dimensions.

 

/Now, you’re carrying the quantum mechanics right up into the astronomical./

 

And relativity is very unsatisfactory. Who was I quoting the other day who said that — was it Fred Hoyle? — that it wasn’t being given nearly so much attention as the quantum was? Almost everybody has some kind of apology for the Relativity. Yes, I think the Relativity is barking up the wrong tree, running up the wrong alley to catch the thief.

 

Yes you said that very well, Spencer, that I have projected the quantum conception into the astronomic realm. And I have done it by that numerical relationship between the double second and the day, and between the day and the year. 360 is the ideal relationship …

 

/telephone interruption/