Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1224

Notes for a letter to /Harry Allen?/ Overstreet. Following this is a recapitulation omitting the personal references, preserving just Heath’s ideas, in his own words. -Editor

July, 1937 (?)

Dear Dr. Overstreet:

I have with pleasure many times remembered the hour I spent with you some weeks ago and the very kind hospitality with which you entertained some of the ideas which I expressed to you as being fundamental to a correct understanding of what social organization is and how it maintains itself and grows. Perhaps you will recall that these ideas were broad generalizations based upon the type of organization found in the inorganic and in the living world and still found to extend themselves into and characterize the associations of men in the organic groups that we call societies. I attempted to correlate all phenomena in terms of general processes observable and verifiable throughout all nature and no less discernible in social organization than at the other levels of nature where the dispassionate methods of science have been applied. I remember how you kindly suggested “At the Social Level” as a good title to a prospective essay in which this integration of the natural with the social sciences would be made. It was kind of you to suggest that I write out the matter as I had presented it to you and that you would be interested in reading it. I wish that I might have done so, for this might have carried your interest to the point of desiring to follow out some of the truly remarkable results and illuminating conclusions that are yielded by this mode of inquiry into economic, political and the whole of social organization. It puts the whole structure of society, of our business system, our economic structures, the relation of our political and public service systems to them, and, most remarkable of all, the nature and function of our system of proprietorship in the social territory and its relation to all of the rest in an entirely new and very revealing light.

You remember, we discussed the “transfer of energy” as the one universal phenomenon in this changing world — that this was the process by which every type of structure, living or non-living is developed and maintained, marking the atomic, molecular, all the mechanical and even the stellar systems, and being especially manifest in the organizations of living cells throughout the biological world in their taking on and giving off of energy in the two phases that constitute what is called their metabolism. We noted this metabolism is a description of the symbiotic relationship that has been evolved between the associated units prerequisite to any and all successful organiza­tion, the only other relationship, the parasitic, causing all structures to disintegrate and degenerate into some lower and less complex form of organization, towards the formless homogeneity of the primordial void. We found in this symbiotic relationship the key to the creative process that integrates the lesser units which constitute every structural form and by extension of which process all the higher forms are evolved. What eons of failure preceded the first successful biological cell we can only surmise, but with that achievement — a cell that could make internal adjustments to compensate external change and keep its race alive, both somatic and genetic.

 

_____________________________

/Recapitulation of the above without the personal references. -Editor/

What is social organization and how does it maintain itself and grow? We can make broad generalizations based upon the type of organization found in the inorganic and in the living world, and still found to extend themselves into and characterize the associations of men in the organic groups that we call societies. All phenomena can be correlated in terms of general processes observable and verifiable throughout all nature, and no less discernible in societal organization than at the other levels of nature where the dispassionate methods of science have been applied. “At the Social Level” might be a good title for a prospective essay on this integration of the natural with the social sciences. Some truly remarkable results and illuminating conclusions are yielded by this mode of inquiry into economic, political and the whole of social organization. It puts the whole structure of society, of our business system, our economic structures, the relation of our political and public service systems to them, and, most remarkable of all, the nature and function of our system of proprietorship in the social territory and its relation to all of the rest in an entirely new and very revealing light.

 “Transfer of energy” is the one universal phenomenon in this changing world. This is the process by which every type of structure, living or non-living is developed and maintained, marking the atomic, molecular, all the mechanical and even the stellar systems, and especially manifest in the organizations of living cells throughout the biological world in their taking on and giving off of energy in the two phases that constitute what is called their metabolism. Metabolism is a description of the symbiotic relationship that has been evolved between the associated units prerequisite to any and all successful organiza­tion, the only other relationship, the parasitic, causing all structures to disintegrate and degenerate into some lower and less complex form of organization, towards the formless homogeneity of the primordial void. This symbiotic relationship is the key to the creative process that integrates the lesser units which constitute every structural form and by extension of which process all the higher forms are evolved. What eons of failure preceded the first successful biological cell we can only surmise, but with that achievement — a cell that could make internal adjustments to compensate external change and keep its race alive, both somatic and genetic. . ^{1224 July 1937}