Spencer Heath Archive

Item 436

Taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath. Tragically, Matchette’s foundation was plundered by some academics. A very inadequate book was published about his philosophy, and when MacCallum attempted to locate and preserve Matchette’s original papers, the academics told him they had not been worth keeping and so had been destroyed. See also Item 2078.

1955?

     The Matchette philosophy is very much the same as mine, inasmuch as he bases all the world of experience on what he calls the “zero atom unit,” which he identifies with the quantum of action of Max Planck.

     My basic philosophy fits right onto Matchette’s because it also is based upon the quantum of Planck. But my philosophy analyzes the quantum into its three fundamentals, which I think Matchette never attempted to do. So my philosophy fits right onto his in the descending order, going down by way of analysis. He treats the zero-atom-unit, as he calls it, cumulatively, going up in organization. He is not quite as fundamental as I am. But his point of beginning is exactly the same, which makes his philosophy much more rational than any of its predecessors.

     Further in that he has the whole realm of human experience, human values and human interest ranging from his zero-atom-unit, the least common denominator of experience, so to speak, between that and what he calls the absolute, or infinite, the other extreme of magnitude comprehended within the range of human experience. He strings all experience on that scale, evaluating human affairs in terms of their “divergence” — a kind of back-handed way of stating it. Things are of value in accordance to their less and less divergence from the Absolute.

     He postulates a polarity that everything in general, the over-all trend, is toward the Absolute. But the minor currents or trends work backward, as the eddies in the current seem to flow upstream. But he makes the polarity of all things stronger toward the Absolute than towards the zero-atom-unit. So he builds his whole conception of the cosmos and human affairs on the basis of the proliferation, shall I say — the organization of quanta under the name of zero-atom-units. I don’t think he takes the trouble to be sufficiently analytical to point out that these units have to be unlike one another in order that they can be organized in more complex events. I’m not sure about that. Whether he goes into that detail or not, he does regard all events as being organizations of the zero-atom-unit, although I don’t think that he points out how the units have to be differentiated from one another in order that they can be organic in their relation towards one another.