Spencer Heath Archive

Item 26

Typed pages with corrections and new starts, the original pages containing extensive pencil notes and corrections (not transcribed) by Alvin Lowi, Jr.

About 1961?

 

 

     The meaning of science lies in the Latin word from which it is drawn — scire, to know. This verb is transitive. It must have, as its object, something that can be known. That object is the physical (non-human) world, or, rather, such and so much of it as can be accessible to or impinges on the sensory system of mankind. These sense data inform the mind of certain uniformities of action, relationship and ratios — of a certain rationality, recognizable by a like rationality inherent in and native to the mind itself. This finding, by way of physical sense data, of a correspond­ing rationality in nature yields esthetic satisfaction — the joy and excitement — the wonder of discovery. Thus motivated, and taking the quantitative aspect of sensory data for premises, the rational mind reasons quantitatively, mathema­tically, upon these premises and so deduces general princi­ples and constructs hypotheses which, upon objective test and verification, are accepted into the body of physical science. The process begins with specific and particular sense data taken in their quantitative aspects. This is called induc­tion. By a rational manipulation of these numerical quanti­ties as dimensions it proceeds to an abstract generalization capable of specific verification and thus of being predicted and experienced throughout the entire phenomenal field from which the original specific sense data representatively were drawn.

 

     This highly abstract and generalized knowledge is called natural law and is of great service to mankind. It gives to the senses the power to discover and thus experience what had been otherwise inaccessible and unknown. Witness, for example the discovery of the planet Neptune or of the general field of electro-magnetic waves. And this kind of knowledge called natural law not only gives to the senses power to discover. It gives also to the imagination power to create. For it enables men to prepare knowingly in advance the conditions out of which a desired circumstance or event will with certainty ensue. Science thus gives to men, and to men alone, depending on whether they interact in consensual or coercive relationships, the material technology wherewith to build ever more order, life and beauty into their objective world or, alternatively, to degrade, disintegrate and indefinitely destroy.

     It is noteworthy that induction as here described is first analysis, the discernment of unlikenesses in the composition of phenomenal events. Second, the differing elements are ascertained quantitatively, dimensionally, in terms of numbers in ratio to compositional constant units discovered in or ascribed to the diverse elements of which the phenomenal act, action or event under analysis is composed.

     In the objective physical world, science knows just three unlike yet inseparable aspects or elements in the com­position of whatever occurs, happens or transpires. It mea­sures these three aspects in terms of constant units called grams, centimeters and seconds. These science measures in terms of dimensions in which the first two are taken ration­ally as ratios, for the number of grams in any case is that number of them which in the particular event is associated with each single centimeter in the event. The gram-centimeter magnitude thus depends on the number of centi­meters contained in the event. Likewise, the number of centimeters is that number of them which is associated with each single second contained in the events. Thus the centimeter-second magnitude depends on the number of seconds, just as the gram-centimeter magnitude depends on the number of centimeters. The over-all magnitude of the composite event therefore is the product of the respective magnitudes, grams, centimeters and seconds of which it is composed as a specific unitary event.

     It is in this over-all composition or integration alone that the particular objective event can impinge on the sensory system and evoke any consciousness of it or other response. The compositional elements of the event can be measured separately as different aspects of the unity but no one of them can be experienced except conjointly with the other two nor can any two of them without the junction of the other one. Subjectively the three elements of any event, such as one or any number of gram-centimeter-seconds (erg-seconds) can be entertained separately but in whatever be the magnitude of the event it does not come into objective experience as other than a fully integrated whole. Doubtless there are basic units of divisibility or discontinuity as to each of the three components of the events (just as there is a unit of action basic to the whole event) in less than which they do not integrate into an event, and the whole-number ratios of which determine the kind or quality and specific composition irrespective of the magnitude or quantity of the action or event. Quality cannot be measured by quantity, hence not numbers, but the quality of action or of an event is determined by the numerical proportion among the three elements or aspects — the gram, centimeter and second aspects respectively — of which it is composed.

     The compositional elements of action or of any event have been considered thus far only in terms of the conventional units in which they are measured and thus quantitatively described. This has been deliberate. Since physics per se is a quantitative science and thus basically rational in virtue of the numerical ratios subsisting among the quantities with which it is concerned, all other than its three customary terms for measuring quantity have been omitted in order to avoid the intrusion of non-quantitative and confusing concepts and terms such as mass, force, inertia, motion, length and time, and their compounds, work (gram-centimeters), velocity (centimeters/time) and energy, denoting at one time a rate of work or action and at other times a quantity of work or action. We will let the quantity words each represent the unit or units of whatever it is that has quantity in terms of that unit. Thus grams can properly represent quantities of that which is variously conceived of (but not experienced) as mass, force, inertia etc., these being but variant aspects (according to conditions) of that compositional element of action or work that manifests itself quantitatively only as grams. And centimeters, similarly, can represent unit quantities of whatever gives rise to the conception of motion or its derivative, length. Likewise, centimeters can denote quantities of that element or aspect of action or work which gives rise to discontinuity and succession as between equal quantities of action or work as discrete events.

     Any concept of quantity that is based on a unit of that quantity is necessarily a number, and this number is the measure of that quantity as a dimension, and that dimension is the ratio of that quantity to its unit. Thus every dimension is a rationalization of quantity — bringing it into the realm of reason and understanding (as distin­guished from the realm of impulse and feeling). Thus a quantity denoted as grams is a dimension, a rationalized quantity — a rational description of whatever in any guise is measurable in grams and thus has objective identity.

 

     All science is knowledge — perception and conception — but not all knowledge is science. For perception comes through agency of the physical senses while conception is a process that goes on within. It springs from the conscious­ness of the self — self-conception — acting upon perceptions of the not-self, perceptions that originate in and are the reflex of sensory experience. Knowledge is the product of organization by the consciousness of particular sense perceptions into general conceptions. Sense perception is the raw material, as it were; knowledge is the product — the subjective image of objective experience.

     The consciousness has two modes of reaction to the sensory data, the perceptive process, which constitutes objective experience. One of these modes, much the older, is the mode of feeling, emotion, from which springs action immediately and without thought. If (or when) the sense data implies only danger the emotion ranges between fear prompting to escape and anger prompting to fight. If the sense data implies predominately security and growth, then the unthought emotion ranges from intuition to inspiration and the resulting action is either prudential or creative, giving rise to positive religion and to all creative artistry — the embodiment of inspiration in unique concrete sensuous forms.

     The other of these two modes of reaction to sensory experience — and very much the younger — is the mode of the mind in contrast with the mode of the heart (feeling). Here under a sense of security the reaction is delayed. Contemplation gives birth to concepts in place of percepts, to ideas in place of impulses or reflexes. And when the sense data are perceived quantitatively, in terms of constant units and multiples of them as numbers, then rational think­ing is achieved and objective science is born — the kind of knowledge which is not mere data perceived but is a rational understanding of the quantitative (or quantified) data. And this is in virtue of the ratios subsisting between the numbers in which the various kinds of sense data are quantitatively perceived.

     For the perception of objective sense data in numerical quantitative terms, physical science employs standardized dimensional reference units such as the gram, the centimeter and the second, for its examinations, analy­ses and descriptions of objective events as sensory experience. These events, the sole source of sense data and subject-matter, of all objective experience, manifest themselves to the consciousness as composed of three measurable elements or aspects; in that which is measurable in grams, in that which is measurable in centimeters and in that which is measurable in seconds. And physical science as rational understanding of physical events is three-dimensional, for it knows and employs only these three kinds of basic dimensional units and not any fourth or other unit differing from these fundamentally as these three differ each from the others or from either of them. These three elements or aspects are found always fully integrated in the discrete (discontinuous) unitary event. Each may be measured separately without reference to the others, but they do not impinge on the senses otherwise than in three-fold integration as a discrete event or as a succession of them.

 

     The three elements or aspects of an event are peculiarly interrelated. The number of gram units is the number of them that is associated with each single centimeter unit. Hence the number of gram-centimeter units is the product of gram times centimeters

     The three measurable elements or aspects of an event are peculiarly inter-related. They are also discontinuous into discrete distinguishable units. This makes them measurable in numbers (dimensions) and thus related ration­ally by reason of the ratios between these numbers. The gram element in an event is related to its centimeter aspect in the proportion that

     The gram-quantity in an event is related (rated) to each of the centimeters in proportion to its number, hence the gram-centimeter quantity (work) as a number (dimension) is the product of the grams times the centimeters (ergs). This gram-centimeter quantity, though a component, is not identifi­able as any specific or unitary event, for it does not include the aspect or element that is measured in seconds. However, just as the gram-quantity is rated to each centi­meter in proportion to its number, and the gram-centimeter-quantity is thus the product of grams times centimeters, so, this gram-centimeter quantity, likewise, is related (rated) to each of the seconds (involved in the event) in proportion to its number (dimension). Hence the gram-centimeter-second quantity of the specific event (its dimension as a number of ergs) is the product of the gram-dimension, times the centimeter-dimension, times the second-dimension embraced in the specific event as a quantity of action.

 

     This quantity of action, constituting a specific and particular event, is the numerical magnitude, hence the over-all dimension of the event — the full integration into concrete objective actuality of its three component abstract and non-objective (not separately experienceable) elements or aspects.

 

     This quantity of action is the numerical magnitude (dimension) of a definitive event. It is a quantity in itself and not a ratio, not any relation between quantities

     In practical engineering, as elsewhere, where often there is little regard for philosophic precision, the term energy is commonly employed to designate such quantities of work or action as in practice is related (rated) to a single second, hour or other conventional unit of succession — of what is commonly called time. The term is generally used for the rating of devices employed in the conversion or transformation of action or work from one form into another, as from thermal into mechanical, mechanical into electrical etc.

     From the foregoing analysis of that which constitutes the sole and whole subject-matter of that quantitative and thereby rational mode of understanding which is called physical science

     The foregoing is a basic rational analysis in general terms of the succession of discontinuous acts, happenings, cycles or events that constitute the sole and whole subject-matter of that unit-based and thus numerically quantitative and thereby rational mode of understanding which is physical science.

 

     It takes for prime a priori the two-fold fact of consciousness — that of self and that of other, and for basic premise the three-fold data of sense perception impinging from the outer world as acts, happenings, phenomena action, events. These it perceives in three inseparable yet dis­tinguishable discontinuous aspects or elements as mass (including inertia and force), motion and time capable of measurement by reference to such conventional discrete units as gram, centimeter and second, the relative proportions between the first and second — grams per centimeter and centimeters per second — determining the kind, quality or character of the event and the third determining its over-all magnitude.

 

     This qualitative character of the event is illustrated in the two contrasting cases of

 

10 grams per cm x 1 cm per sec x 10 sec  =  100 ergs

and

1 gram per cm x 10 cm per sec x 10 sec  =  100 ergs

 

Here in both cases the magnitude of the action or event is precisely the same, namely 100 ergs, but the organization or composition of the action

10 x 10 x 1    1 x 100 x 1    1 x 1 x 100

     Here are represented two hypothetical events having precisely the same over-all measurable magnitude — numerical dimension — namely 100 gram-centimeter-seconds (ergs). They are composed alike of grams, centimeters and seconds, the one in the proportion of one gram per centimeter to ten centimeters per second; the other in the converse proportion of ten grams per centimeter to one centimeter per second, both events alike taking place during a period of ten seconds.

 

“Relativistic invariance”  ?

     Consider any given constant quantity of action, happen­ing or event such as a gram per centimeter-centimeter per second-second (one erg-second), taken as a constant unit, or any large multiple of this unit, such as a kilowatt-hour, or any minute fraction or division thereof, including the Planckian unit of action.

 

     All the constant units are, by definition, composed of the same three measurable elements or aspects. Notwith­standing their extreme divergence as to magnitude, they are, otherwise, in their over-all aspect apart from total magnitude essentially the same, differing only in scale.

     But each of these unitary events as a constant quantity of action is capable of being experienced in extreme variety as to its composition and form.

     The three measurable elements of which it is organized or composed may be in their respective proportions highly diverse. The ratio or proportion subsisting between what is measured in gram-centimeters and that measured in centi­meter-seconds (mass, motion) determines the specific kind, quality, character or properties of the action or event (the manner of its interaction with other action or events). And the combined quantity of these two dimensions (grams per centimeter and centimeters per second) is the quantity of work or action (dimension of it) that is rated to the third element or aspect of the total quantity as a unit of action, which third aspect is measured in seconds. The first two elements therefore determine two things, namely, the kind /or/ quality of the action by their relative proportions, and that quantity of the action which is related to each second (of time) that is involved in the whole action taken as a unit or particular event.

 

     It is thus apparent how nature rations or proportions in manifold variety what we call action, process or events which constitute so much of the physical environment as our sensory systems (as now developed) directly or indirectly perceive and thus constitute our objective world

     Since any single simple event, as a unit quantity of action, can be taken as the standard for the measurement of other events and the 1 gram (per centimeter) times 1 centimeter (per second) times 1 second, or erg-second, is commonly so used, we will look at the possible transformations of this unit as regards the proportions in which its three constituent elements may be combined. Its simplest form numerical, is:

 

1 gram (per cm) times 1 centimeter (per sec) times 1 second

 

It is notable that the first is inversely related to the second. Of these three constituent elements, the Gram is the unit of that which resists change of motion.

Time is the measure of motion

Action and reaction are equal and opposite or reciprocal

The world of objective

Action is that to which Action and reaction are

 

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Commentary by Alvin Lowi, Jr.

III  B

 

SUBJECT:  “All science is knowledge but not all knowledge is science.” Introduction to scientific method. Differentiation and measurement.  The psychology of science.

 

REMARKS:  Association of mass and length is unclear as abstraction. Procedural usage is explained but needs further analysis. First indication that Heath recognized an inconsistency.