Spencer Heath Archive

Item 48

Penned by Heath in a “Scratch Book” notebook.

Not later than 1943

 

 

Original includes items 49 and 50.

 

 

/EXPERIENCE/

 

 

     We are so organized and constituted and habituated that we experience

 

1.  Points — as the positions or centers of things

or events.

 

      LINE       2.  Length: Least line or distance, proximity or

                     remoteness, between two points.

 

      AREA       3.  Width: Least line or distance between two lines

                     or distances.

 

     VOLUME     4. Thickness: Least line or distance                              between two widths.

 

     GRAVITY     5. Mass: That aspect of experience of volume

that we call gravity.

 

     ENERGY      6. Motion: That aspect of our experience with

(of) mass that we call change of position.

 

     ACTION       7. Duration: That aspect of our experience with

     OR EVENT       energy that we call time.

 

 

Being

Position

Motion

Time

Being — position — here

Motion — time

 Rhythm — duration — now

     The primary consciousness is perception of self with desire for self-existence.

 

     Security of place, point or position is the first conscious desire.

     A disturbed consciousness of position — the consterna­tion induced by falling — is said by psychologists to be an infant’s first and its only innate fear.

     Position, then, is the primary sense of being and change of position is the primary consciousness of experience.

     Experience builds into consciousness an order or series of conceptions that it attributes to its experiential or objective world. These are:

1. Position
2. Motion — change of position
3. Length — a succession of positions — extension
4. Breadth — a succession of adjacent lengths (not extensions of extension)

5. Thickness — a succession of adjacent breadths (not a broadening of breadth)

6. Volume — a composite sense of length, breadth and thickness

7.   Mass — a sense of the resistance of volume to change of position or of motion — of velocity or direction.

8. Motion — a sense of mass as change of position
9. Duration — a sense of mass as undergoing successive or rhythmic changes of position

10. Energy — a composite sense of mass and motion — persistence of position with change of position
11. Action — a composite sense of energy and duration —

mass, motion and duration united in conception in the same manner and relations as they are united in experience. A quantity or unit of experience. The only conception that is complete enough to have an objective counterpart in experience. The only conception that corresponds with a world (environ­ment) of objective reality. All lesser concepts than that of Action (of energy and time — mass, motion and duration combined) are abstractions from reality, not to be found (perceived) and not to be created (objectified) in experience otherwise than in their unity as events, as occurrences, as actualities, that is, in action.

 

      12. Organization — a conception of action in its aspect of              composition of heterogeneous quantities of action into a            composite unity of action through their reciprocal              interactions. This conception finds counterpart in the            objective, experiential world.

     13.  Development — evolution    Creative Synthesis: a                conception of organization as proceeding from heterogeneous          basic units or quanta of action into successive composite            unities of action having suc­cessively greater heterogeneity          of its component organizational parts. Differentiation of            component structures with accompanying integration of                     functions.