Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2238

Pencil and pen notes by Heath on four note pages from a box of Law School notes and personabilia of the time (1903-1906) including check stubs, receipts, accounts from Single-Tax events, and a few newspaper clippings. These were the only items from the box that seemed to relate to Heath’s philosophical thought.

 

 

Postulate

Subject and object

     Definitions and explanations

  Phenomena

     Character of Phenomena

     Experience as phenomena

  Action and reaction

     Particles and masses

     Radiation — convergence

       Complementary and reciprocal actions

       Formation of organic groups

       Powers and conditions of organic groups

         Survival — extinction

       Life — Complementary and reciprocal association

       Impressions and Emotions

         Incoherent and unorganized impressions — consciousness

       Will — Tendency to self preservation and development

       Reason — Coherent impressions highly organized with

voluntary activities between the various parts of the organism which have been modified by impression

       Memory — the calling up of past impressions

       Imagination — past impressions modified and amplified by

present influences or desires

 

The mind as a whole —

     Complexity

     Likeness to other mechanism

     Predication of mind

     Quotations from Tyndall etc.

 

Origin of consciousness and function of mind

including reason — shown

This is the real foundation — the physical basis of knowledge

 

Character of knowledge

     Derived from phenomena called experience /?/

     Scope of acquired knowledge

         Confined to experience

         Folly of the “Ultimate”

         Breadth of scope

     Reliability of knowledge

 

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                                 /Penned page:/

Standpoint of self

     phenomena and experience

     Higher order of reality phenom.

Summary

     Origin of all knowledge true and false

     Superstition

     The test of experience

         Theorem — The foundations of knowledge have their base

in the phenomena of matter

        

 

The function of reason is to reconcile the conflicting

impressions of experience within the organism

The emotions are incoherent impressions derived from habits or experiences in the line of descent impelling the will but not reconciled or controlled by reason

Will is the force set in motion by the desire for self preservation and development impelling the organism to seek the state of greatest adaptation between its parts and to its environment

 

_____________________________

/Page of penciling:/

Molecular energy a quality or attribute proved by science and experiment to be inherent and immanent to matter

     Excited by heat — light — electricity — magnetism which are forms of the immanent energy

Organization

      Crystals — Organization proceeds as heat is removed

      Crystals one of the simplest forms of organization

      Vegetable and animal forms more complex

      Organization exerted by combinations of heat, light etc

and nerve energy. Probably many forms and degrees of nerve energy as dissimilar as heat and light etc. An ascending scale of refinement of energy ad infinitum. Higher orders of energy produce more and more complex forms.

 Crystals manifestation of inherent molecular energy of a relatively simple form

      Life forms manifestations of inherent molecular energy or

energies of more complex forms including light, heat, electricity etc and perhaps other and unknown forms