Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1451

Carbon of letter from Heath at 11 Waverly Place, New York City 3, to Miss Marie Stephens, Florida State Hospital, Chattahoochee, Florida

August 24, 1948

 

 

 

Dear Miss Stephens:

    Your mother and I have been pen friends for a long time — something that began with the Saturday Review of Literature.

    This past spring in Florida I had a number of enjoy­able visits with your mother during which she told me many delightful things about you and your scientific and philosophic type of mind. I am myself considerably in­clined that way.

     Philosophy and science are like two angels, the one ministering to the mind, the other food, raiment and leisure to the mortal frame. The several sciences seek out uniformities of action within their respective fields. Philosophy discovers those uniformities that are general or universal over the several fields.

     I have been much interested in discovering the common basis underlying each of the several sciences. The sole subject-matter of any science — the reality with which it deals, is happenings, events, actions, each one of which events is a unification in definite proportions of the three aspects of actuality, namely, mass (or force), motion (or space), and time (repetition in rhythm, unifor­mities of discontinuity).

     A force of one pound acting through one foot during one minute is an action or event — not a mere abstrac­tion or conception, but an actuality. All events, however simple or complex, are multiples or fractions of this. Any succession of similar events is an energy flow, and all mechanical and all other technological processes are transformations of energy. And all these transforma­tions are, at bottom, simply changes in the relative proportions of mass, motion and time the integrations of which constitute the desired succession of events.

     Each human life is a very complex event. Their succession is an energy (or action) flow. A population, then, is a succession of generations as energy waves. And the rise or decline of a civilization is the length­ening or the shortening, the lowering or the raising of the frequency of the wave ….. (Tell me if you can make anything out of this).

     I enclose some printed material of mine that may be of some possible interest to your contemplative mind.

     I well know how prejudiced parents can be, but from your mother’s account of you I feel perfectly assured that I would enjoy an interchange of ideas and impressions. For I delight in fresh and original points of view, however casually, informally or incompletely expressed. ….. Will you forgive the presumption of my unsolicited solicitations?

     With many best wishes, I am,

Sincerely,

 

 

Spencer Heath

Enc:

Inspiration of Beauty

Socionomy — Correlations and Philos. Diagram.

Apotheosis

Plea to the Lord