Spencer Heath Archive

Item 485.

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Physical science is quantitative; it deals with happenings, actions or events. The term for actions or events in general is action or energy, also called work, when considered without any reference to the time involved. /”Rate?” inserted here/ Every action or event has three distinguishable and measurable aspects, mass, motion and time, each divisible into units and thereby capable of measurement. A property of mass whereby it imparts or resists motion or change of motion is called force or inertia. It is a property of force that it involves direction, and a property of motion that it involves both direction and time. It is a property of time that it (also) is discontinuous, that it involves repetitions, succession, frequency, rhythm.

    These three measurable aspects or elements of action or energy are each of them measurable because they have the common property of being divisible and discontinuous. They are therefore measurable numerically in terms of the number of some units of measurement in which their dimensions may be by measurement ascertained.

     The dimensional units most generally employed in physical science are:

 

The gram, as the unit of mass, gravitational,(and its accompanying inertial unit, the dyne)

The centimeter, as the unit of motion

The second, as the unit of time.

 

These are called and treated as the three fundamental units of physical science.

     Just as mass, motion and time, in their respective dimensions are separately distinguishable, so are their over-all dimensions when taken together separately distinguishable as particular actions or events.

 

     There is a rational order of succession in the three-fold composition of an event. The number of mass units is the number of them that is related to one unit of motion; the number of motion units is the number of them that is related to one unit of time. The total of all units, the over-all dimension of the event is thus the product of the dimension of its constituent elements of mass, motion and time.

 

     The ratio or relation between the two first determines the kind, character or nature of the event. The third determines its duration, its quantity or amount, according to the number of units of time through which it acts.

     The first and second, mass (or force) units times the number of motion units is the quantity of work. The quantity of work per unit of time is the rate of work, commonly called the energy rate or, most often, simply the energy, although meaning the rate of energy. The energy rate times the number of time units of the action or event is the quantity of action or energy, called kinetic energy to distinguish it from “potential energy” in which there is no action or event.

     Each measurable aspect of a quantity or amount of action or kinetic energy as an event can be separately considered or conceived but cannot be separately experienced — no one of them without the other two, and no two of them together without the other one — for only the act of measure is an objective event and none but objective events can be the subject-matter of experience.

     All such conceptions therefore as mass (or force), motion or time, work or rate — energy as a ratio or rate — or a motion or velocity rate, are abstractions of the mind involving only one, or at best only two of the three essential elements of an objective happening or event capable of being experienced.

Kind or quality — nature of events

The Cycle of an Event

 

All events are interrelated. No event occurs in isolation. The event takes place within the environment, a vastly greater event to which it is related and of which it is a part. It springs from and reverts to its environment. It is, essentially, a body or mass, simple or complex, having motion, simple or complex, at some rate with the rhythm of its environment — time and continuing through some duration or period of time as measured by the rhythm of environment. In its mass, body or particle aspect, it is measured by some distinguishable unit in its environment, such as the gram. In its motion aspect it is measured by reference to some recurring length or distance of its environment or a convenient fraction thereof, such as the centimeter. In the rate or manner of its motion — velocity — it is measured by the rhythm of its environment or some convenient fraction thereof such as the second. In its durational aspect, the event is measured by the accumulation of periods in the rhythm of its environment or of some convenient fractions thereof such as seconds.