Spencer Heath Archive

Item 668

“Reflections on Mass, Motion, Time by Spencer Heath, Reading article on ‘Mechanics,’ Encyclopedia Britannica.”

February 1, 1948

MECHANICS

 

The physical fundamental Trinity (same as the theological) is Mass, Motion, Time. Physical science treats of them in finite, measurable magnitudes, such as grams, centimeters, seconds. (Theology comprehends them in immeasurable magnitudes: infinite “Substance, infinite Power (mass-motion), and Eternality.”)

Mass is primordial, both in conception and perception

Its properties, characteristics, are implicit, intrinsic, in itself.

In its infinite magnitude, its basic Reality — completely general characteristic — is ACTION, ACTIVITY, ACTUALITY, EVENTUATION.

In its finite magnitudes (necessarily plural) its basic characterization is inter-action. (Only finite magnitudes can inter-act.)

Mass is explicit to us, we being finite, only as inter-action between our finite mass with its action and other finite masses and their action — the Self and the Not-Self, Total Cosmos.

Since none but finite magnitudes can be known as experience, Physical Science has concern for Reality, Action, Actuality only as the interactions between and among finite magnitudes.

 

The prime perception (and thus prime manifestation and prime conception) of finite reality or action is Mass.

As perception broadens, motion is perceived thus secondarily as a property or derivative of mass, and these two together are conceived as Energy.

But still wider perception discloses that Energy is discontinuous and thereby rhythmic and in this rhythmic discontinuity Time is perceived and finite actuality experienced as well as completely conceived.

Thus Reality is both experienced and conceived as the integration of mass, motion and time into finite and thus measurable events, into Action, into the actuality of events in which the infinite Reality consists.

Physical science deals analytically with ultimate Reality as manifested in Action as actuality in the succession of events.

Separating (in imagination) the components of action, of events, they are found to be mass, motion and time. Science separates them objectively only by measurement (instead of subjectively, only qualitatively, by feeling, sentiment,

without measurement).

To do this it employs definite quantities as standards of reference, universal units of measurement based on experience and having constant significance among persons, places and times — (within all known realms of human experience)

These units of objective analysis by measurement, by which the dimensions of actuality are ascertained, are of three and only three kinds; all others are derived from and dependent on these, the fundamental dimensional units of Physical Science — the units of mass (as force), motion (as distance, space) and time (as mass-motion in rhythmic succession). They may be of any convenient magnitudes, so they be kept constant throughout the same analysis or investigation; those most widely employed are the gram, the centimeter and the second.

Now it is a peculiarity of mass, motion and time that, being all inclusive, the properties of any one of them can be discovered and stated only in terms of the other two and only in the order given.

The constant characteristic of mass is that it moves and thereby possesses force or inertia (resistance to change of motion). The unit of mass in grams is characterized by its one-to-one ratio with the dyne, the unit of force that it thereby determines and identifies and which it absorbs or yields per each unit of motion it acquires or gives up.

Motion always implies something that moves and some time, duration or rate at which the motion takes place. And motion is always implied in the proceeding, the successions and rhythms that constitute time.

Mass has the property of force is, in fact, the embodiment of force. It has the property of motion and the taking on or giving up motion concomitant with force. It exhibits no such property as rest.

All masses are in motion, molar, polar, molecular, atomic, and all masses, in their interactions, are reciprocally moving and being moved. The influence one mass or body (or organization of them) has upon another mass or organization tending to change the amount and or direction of its motion is called a force. Whatever changes the motion of a body is force. A force tending to change the motion of a body but prevented by other force or forces from doing so is said to be a potential force and the body is said to possess potential energy.

Molar motion displaces a body as a whole. Polar motion displaces a body as a whole about some axis passing through its center of gravity or mass without other displacement.

Molecular motion is agitation of molecules in a body independently of the motion of the body as a whole.

Atomic motion is (probably) polar motion within the structure of an atom, including polar motion of the atom as a whole.

Every mass, body, structure is an organization, and it maintains itself by balance of its internal energies and resistance to external forces or influences. So far as its internal energies are unbalanced or collisional it is in process of disintegration, radioactive.

Every organization that maintains itself by interaction of differentiated organs and parts utilizing and dependent upon constant receipt and discharge of energy for its maintenance is an organism. The simplest organisms (unicellular), when they attain to such critical maturity they can no longer receive and discharge sufficient energy suitable for their maintenance, divide into two parts and thus initiate new developments towards critical maturity.

Higher organisms have somatic structures that function, without further development, far beyond reproductive maturity, and also genetic structures that maintain their own continuity by division (fission) and initiate the development and succession of new somatic organizations.

Non-living organizations (inorganic) maintain themselves by resistance to environment. Organisms are creatures of and dependent upon favorable environment. Social organisms, as societies (not as families like insects and animals, including men in their pre-social state) have the potential power to be creators, by transformation of their environment and thus secure themselves and their members into continually higher development and length of days. No other organisms — none below the societal possess this creative power.