Spencer Heath Archive

Item 918

Penciling in a notebook

Fall 1950?

Original -> 912

 

 

In the light of Science all things happen or occur, nothing merely exists.

The Cosmos is dynamic, not static. It is essentially Energy or Action — Energy in action — a limitless complex of happenings or events. It is Energy as events ever occurring and recurring and constantly changing in their magnitudes, their complexities and transformations.

Physical Science shows that a body, particle or force, moving with respect to its environment, is a succession of discrete and separable events, each composed of some whole number of least or indivisible actions or events called quanta of action.

Now, Just as an object, when taken grossly (instead of as a complex system of energy) yields to our experience always three principle dimensions of the same kind, namely linear or motion dimensions, so any event, whether it be a single quantum or composed of any whole number, however large, of indivisible quanta, presents to our experience three different kinds of measurable properties or constituent aspects or elements, and in these it has not merely three dimensions but three kinds of dimensions, and the over-all dimension or magnitude of the event is ascertained by combining its three kinds of dimensions together into one dimension, which is the numerical magnitude of the event as a quantity of action — of energy in or as action.

To ascertain in quantitative, numerical or rational terms the several constituent magnitudes or dimensions of any event, science employs its fundamental units of measurement in which to take dimension of the three kinds of magnitude that constitute any event. These three, fundamental measuring or dimensional units, whence all others are derived are:

 

(1)  A unit with which to measure mass — gravitational or inertial mass, or force. There are in use various units of mass or force, all based on some specific observation or experience such as reference to the weight or inertia of a particular block of very durable metal or other material carefully and officially preserved for the purpose, such as the pound or the gram or some fraction or multiple of these. When the gram is used for measurement of the mass element in a rate of energy or quantity of action in an action or event, the inertial and not the gravitational mass of the gram is employed. The inertial mass of the gram is called the dyne.