Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1130

Penciling in a notebook. Ninth line down, is “fourth dimension” a mistake? Why is it not ”third dimension?” This must be a draft of the “Energy Concept of Population.”

1939?

White envelope has items 1130-1139 and 1113.

In the preceding paper (chapter) population has been treated, not merely as a physical entity or as a structural mass, but as a relatively stabilized structure and organization of energy into material form into and through which unstabilized, fluid or radiant energy constantly flows and is constantly transformed. For purposes of just and quantitative comparison, the total manifestation of energy that was taken under consideration in both its structural (material-static) form or state and in its fluid (functional — involving the fourth dimension, time) form was held at a constant amount. Thus by maintaining the combined total energy content or quantity as constant, it was possible to view this fixed quantity in its purely qualitative and creative aspects as a determinant upon its environing world. And this creative capacity was found to depend upon the proportion of functional or creative energy remaining above that consumed in the constant or continuing replacement (reproduction to maturity) of the physical and material units as they undergo mortal disintegration out of their relatively stable and fixed condition as parts of the physical structure of the population. The sociological efficiency was discovered as being the percentage of total energy available in functional form above that requisite for structural replacement and repair.

In all the preceding analysis there is postulated a fixed and given total quantity of energy as manifested in the structure and in the functioning of a given population. This has not been more than a description of a given quantity of organized energy manifesting itself variably as between its structural content and its functional flow — between its physical aspect and its creative or spiritual power.

Taking a genetic or evolutional view and looking backward towards the origins of things, it is possible to observe, through the eye of biologic science, how the given organization of energy into the structure of a functioning population — an effective society — can and probably does come about. Here the prime postulate/is/the single organic animal cell — an organizational form having the power to receive energies, both fluid and structural, from its environment and to synthesize these into itself in a process called growth. Since the cell can have only peripheral contact with its environment, this process of individual growth is limited at a point of enlargement where the cell structure or mass has become so much greater in proportion to its peripheral surfaces that it can no longer take in sufficient materials for further growth if, indeed, sufficient to replace those which must disintegrate and (be excreted) pass out incidentally to the vital functioning of the cell itself. At this crisis, if it lives it must in some manner increase its surface area. This it finally does by dividing into two similar parts, each having but half the volume and therefore more surface in proportion to volume.