Spencer Heath Archive

Item 415

Taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath at Princeton, New Jersey

June 1955

 

 

 

 

Concerning the Two Worlds of Experience

 

So far as experience is considered, it recognizes nothing but action or events. But all action or events are composite, compound of three kinds of elements or aspects which can be conceived separately but are experienced only in some unity of the three. Experience is limited to unitary action. Conception is limited (bounded) only by the three elements of which objective action is composed. It is therefore possible to conceive of action in its separate elements or aspects — in any one aspect, disregarding the other two, or in any two aspects, disregarding the other one. But it is not possible to experience action otherwise than in the entirety of its three elements or aspects unitedly compounded and composed.

Experience has only one element, namely, action, which is composite. Conception (imagination, psychology) has three elements or aspects, no one or any two of which, without the other three, can be objectively experienced. Action belongs to the world of experience, its elements only to the world of contemplation, conception, imagination.

There are in effect two worlds or universes. There is a world of experience which is objective and concrete or physical, and there is a world of concept (or imagination) which is subjective, metaphysical and abstract. Considering the world of conception apart from experience, we have 1) The concept of Mass, force, inertia, 2) The concept of motion, distance, space, 3) The concept of duration, lapse or extent of time. We can conceive each of these separately. We can conceive the first as related to the second; we can conceive the second as related to the third; we can conceive the first two as related to the third.

/Aside:/ There’s an ascending order there; you notice it?

It is when we are considering all three together, it is then and then only that we are considering the content of objective experience.

We have units of mass — as related to motion — such as the gram …

“Is there a difference between ‘related to’ and ‘in terms of?’”

(Whenever we consider gram, mass, we _________  implicitly it is something that moves, and we always mean that unit of mass or force repeated for each unit of motion.)

… We have units of motion — as related to time — such as the centimeter. We have units of time — not related to anything beyond — such as the second. We have a unit of energy or work when we conceive of mass as related to each unit of motion — such as the erg. We have a unit of velocity when we consider motion as related to each unit of time. We have the unit of action, or experience, when we consider ..

 

/Aside:/ Velocity’s the devil in there; it’s the intermediate that always mixing things up. It’s the second without the first. It doesn’t have the fundamental — it’s extraneous.

 

.. energy as related to time: such as the erg second. We have a quantity, magnitude or dimension of any action when we multiply the rate of action by the period of action, by its continuance through time. Such a quantity is a total action or objective event.

 

/Aside:/ If your period of time is the same as your unit of time, then and then only is your erg second an objective instead of a hypothetical quantity.