Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1261

Carbon of letter from Heath to Frederick W. Roman, 214 Loma Drive, Los Angeles CA

August 22, 1939

 

 

Dear Doctor Roman:-

 

I have your letter of the 17th, and am pleased at the kind reception you gave to the materials I sent you. I am especially gratified at your favorable reaction to “The Energy Concept of Population.” I consider it the most fundamental and wide-sweeping of anything that I have put in writing. In working this out, it pleased me very much that I seemed to be able to bridge the philosophical abyss that lies so wide open between the quantitative aspects of nature and that which we recog­nize as qualitative in human life. Science being fundamentally quantitative, it is always necessary to discover workable units in any field of phenomena before the elements in that field can be arranged in any mathematical or otherwise rational order. I believe it is the absence of such units that stands in the way of the so-called social sciences taking any rank in the field of science properly so called.

 

I dare say you will observe that energy concept is implicit and underlying in my functional interpre­tation of the institution of private property in land. I feel that it may be of considerable utility to the analysis of other social institutions – possibly to all of them.

 

Since I am anxious to get the materials I sent you
into the hands of persons who can make use of them, I
am complying very happily with your request for further
copies to the extent of fifty percent beyond the numbers you have requested.

                     

It seems to me that the kind of public work you are doing must be of very great value and of interest and satisfaction to yourself, and to those who have the privilege and opportunity of being associated with you. I wish I might give you my more direct and intimate co­operation.

   

                Sincerely yours,   Spencer Heath