Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1245

Carbon of a letter to Harry D. Gideonse, Department of Economics, Barnard College, Milbank Hall, 119th Street & Claremont Avenue, New York City

May 15, 1939

Dear Professor Gideonse:

Through the kind offices of Miss Marie Leighton, I have the suggestion that it might be possible to enjoy the pleasure of your company and acquaintance at luncheon upon my early return for a brief visit in New York. I am particularly appreciative of this opportunity because of having read various articles by and about you which place you in my mind as a person of highly construc­tive intelligence, who is directing his attention toward the field of social phenomena with a view to the develop­ment of an objective Science of Society. This is a matter which has been engaging my attention for some time, but strictly as an amateur in the best sense of that rather poorly used word. I am now arranging my affairs so that I will be in New York and at the Kings Crown Hotel some­time late in the day of Tuesday, May 23rd. I shall be delighted if I can have the pleasure of your company for luncheon Wednesday, the 24th at the Kings Crown Hotel, or at any place that might be more convenient to you.

From what Miss Leighton has told me of you and your friend, Vasil Dimoff, I should be very glad if he could join us also, but I understand he is abroad. However, I should be delighted if you feel like bringing any other additional guest of similar interests.

/In/ “War in Our Time” as it appeared in the Saturday Review of Literature of April 8th, I was particularly pleased with your review of “Judgements that Define Error without Revealing the Yardstick of Truth.” /It/ is a penetrating one, and this is certainly a time for someone to put in a word for the beneficence of a free market as antidote against public as well as against private monopolies. Scientific research I believe to be the basic technique for the transformation of human affairs from the low plane of blind tradition and raw empiricism to a rational dominance of the human environment. I believe that in the direction of such research to the phenomena of social organization and relationships rise all the hope there is for intelligent growth of the social environment.

As a foundation for scientific research into the phenomena of society, I am proposing what I call “The Energy Concept of Population” in which concept it seems possible to distinguish at the very beginning the qualita­tive aspect of energy from its merely quantitative manifesta­tion. I have found this a very fruitful basis upon which to begin, and would be much interested in your appraisal of it. I accordingly enclose a brief monograph in outline of this theory, and I am enclosing a little printed pamphlet which it seems to me sets out the psychological foundation of a creative energy as expressed in the aesthetic arts, and scientific investigation.

Anticipating very great pleasure in meeting you, I am,

                     Sincerely yours,

 

Enc. 1. “The Energy Concept of Population”

     2. “The Inspiration of Beauty”