Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3070

Correspondence between Heath and Percy W. Bridgman, Lyman Laboratory of Physics, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

 

 

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Archival Item 1266, Carbon of a letter to Percy W. Bridgman,

c/o Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

September 5, 1939

 

Dear Dr. Bridgman:

Your contributions to the discussion on the Unity of Science seem to me very interesting.

To my mind, unification is never better achieved than in the application of substantially the same analytic technique that has proven fruitful in a restricted field to those wider fields in which no rational analysis has seemed possible before.

As an attempted example of this, I have sought to suggest simple standard units of population and social potential to which both quantitative and qualitative mathematical analysis of societal phenomena may be effectually applied.

Enclosed, herewith, you will find in what I have called “The Energy Concept of Population” a setting up of those functional units and a skeleton outline of their basic and immediate mathematical treatment. I hope it will afford you some degree of pleasure to read and consider this very brief outline. Its chief value appears to lie in the facility with which I have been able elsewhere to apply this functional analysis to specific social institutions.

It would gratify me to know whether these conceptions of population and its functions can be unified with your own in the same or analogous fields.

I have found much pleasure in meeting you personally even in the limited way that this Congress affords. May I have the further pleasure of your company as my luncheon or dinner guest, say at the Commander Hotel, on Thursday or Friday?

Very truly yours,

Spencer Heath

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Archival Item 1293

Carbon of a letter to Percy W. Bridgman,

10 Buckingham Place, Cambridge, Massachusetts

January 15, 1940

 

Dear Doctor Bridgman:

I am coming to Boston to talk to a selected luncheon group at the Chamber of Commerce next Thursday, January 18th, and will be in and about Boston for a few days.

I am going to talk on the Science of Society (and of History) as a discovery of its mode of operation — the formulation of its uniformities — precisely as the invariables (in the statistical sense) are formulated by the natural sciences.

By these invariables I mean the phenomena that are always operatively present and observable in history and, thus, independently verifiable. (It is really simpler than it sounds.)

I am going to forecast for the field of the common or public services (government) a successful engineering technique that in origin, principle and mode of operation will be precisely the same as that which in the mechanical, chemical and electrical fields has resulted in the superior means of transportation and communication and other material services that the world enjoys today. And I am going to predicate the new Science of Society and its practical application upon the same motivation of the individuals who shall practice it and upon far greater profits (fortunes) and rewards than have been won in the present-existing technological and engineering fields,

I know that this will be a matter of profound interest to minds like yours that are deeply stirred by the current signs of social decay, but still have an “irrational faith in the rational mind,” and a desire to examine those operative and verifiable aspects of social phenomena upon a knowledge of which an effective engineering will spontaneously and profitably arise as it has done in other fields. I am, therefore, bold enough to request an opportunity of setting these matters informally and in some detail before you and, if possible, also before several of your friends or associates who would be similarly interested. Your critical reactions will be highly valued and appreciated.

Please communicate with me at the Commander Hotel where I expect to arrive Wednesday night or Thursday morning of this week.

Sincerely yours,

                                Spencer Heath

SH:L

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Archival Item 2575

Letter Heath to Bridgman,

May 27, 1957

Dear Dr. Bridgman:

Remembering my pleasant meeting with you at the International Congress for the Unity of Science in 1938 and your great interest in social institutions and affairs, I take great pleasure in presenting to you with my compliments an advance copy of my Citadel, Market and Altar, in which I trust you will find scientific, not to say philosophic, support for the principles of freedom and free enterprise.

 Your Logic of Modern Physics and The Nature of Physical Theory have been my constant companions these many years.

Sincerely yours,

SH/m

Encl.

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1671

Extract from letter to Dr. Percy Bridgman

July 9, 1959

 

Particularly pleasing was your recognition with me of the human individuals as the basic organizational units (transforming and exchanging energy) the inter-functioning of which constitutes the organic society as a functioning whole.

I am wondering what would be your comment (if any) on the thought in my “Prefatory Brief” where quanta of action, in all their varied internal proportions as uniform small fractions of an erg-second, are taken to be the basic units that by their interactions constitute all the events of our sensible and thus ever limited objective world. Since this has been my basic approach to all objective phenomena, including that of human society, I should greatly value your comment in case of any needed correction, from the physical science point of view, in future printings or editions.

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Letter to Percy Bridgman

May 13, 1960

Dear Dr. Bridgman:

I expect to be in the neighborhood of Cambridge for a week or more, early in June. I am wondering if my many thoughts of spending a bit of time with you again, either as your luncheon or supper host or during some part of an afternoon, could be realized conveniently at that time.

As far back as the Congress for The Unity of Science in 1938, 1 have been admiring your position on public questions as much as I have your re­searches in the physical world. I should like to have more of your views on many things and am sure I would enjoy you at first hand as much if not more than I did so long ago.

With many best wishes, and looking for­ward,

Cordially yours,

        Spencer Heath

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Letter Bridgman to Heath

May 18, 1960

Dear Mr. Heath:

I much appreciate your letter of May 13. I would be a great pleasure to meet and talk with you during your week in Cambridge in June, and it is therefore all the more disappointment to me that this will not be possible, because if present plans carry through I shall have left Cambridge the last of May for my summer place in northern New Hampshire.

Most sincerely.

/s/ P. W. Bridgman

 

/Further contact information penciled by Heath/

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Letter from Bridgman to Heath

June 16, 1960

 

Dear Dr. Bridgman:

I am writing to express to you my appreciation of the delightful visit to you in your “lodge in a vast wilderness,” where my grandson and I sought you out somewhat more than a week ago. You and Mrs. Bridgman were exceedingly kind and it was a great satisfaction after so many years to be in touch with you again. I am looking forward eagerly to reading your The Way Things Are, which has been ordered but not yet received. I hope to have it with me in Montreal where I shall be visiting through the first week in July.

      I feel great sympathy with your general ideas on public affairs. My grandson is sending you some information concerning the work and purpose of The Science of Society Foundation. We are happy at the possibility of making you one of our Trustees along with Dr. Hocking and Dr. Pound, who have given their kind consent. In case you should not have a copy of my Citadel, Market and Altar at hand in New Hampshire, my grandson will be glad to send another to your summer address for your convenient reference.

      With much pleasant remembrance,

Sincerely yours,

SH/m                                 Spencer Heath

 

I wondered afterwards how the pleasant company of Mrs. Bridgman failed to remind me of the many happy references to her by Mrs. Clifford Kendal of Summit, New Jersey, with whom and Mr. Kendal I was a frequent visitor for many years.

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Letter from Heath, The Science of Society Foundation,

1502 Montgomery Road, Elkridge 27, Maryland,

to P. W. Bridgman at Randolph, New Hampshire

July 24, 1960

 

Dear Mr. Heath;

The various literature about The Science of Society Founda­tion sent me by your grandson reached me early in July. Since then I have had to attend several meetings and have not been able to seriously attend to the matter until quite recently.

There are many aspects of your general approach with which I am in great sympathy, such in particular as the modern tendency toward the Welfare State and the discouragement of free enterprise. I find, however, that the general tenor of your approach accepts more than I am able a Christian philosophy of society and individual responsibility. Since my views on religion in general and Christianity in particular are unconventional and even scandalous according to the general temper of our times, I feel that I must decline your invitation to become one of the Trustees of the Foundation, much as I appreciate it.

The recollection of your visit in early June still gives me much pleasure, and I hope if you are in this neighborhood again that you will drop in.

Most sincerely,

/s/ P. W. Bridgman

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Letter Heath at 512 Halesworth Street, Santa Ana,

California to Mrs. P. W. Bridgman

August 14, 1961

 

Dear Mrs. Bridgman,

Remembering our pleasant visit with you and Dr. Bridgman at your home in the mountains about a year and a half ago, my grandson, Spencer MacCallum, and I are shocked and grieved at the announcement concerning your husband today.

We shall always regard your husband as outstanding in physics and especially in his advocacy of the operational test and point of view — and for his forthright resist­ance to the attempted Communistic infiltra­tion into the American Physical Society.

We enjoyed your and his gracious hospitality upon the occasion referred to above and can assure you of our at least partial participation in the grievous loss that has come to you.

Sincerely yours,

 

Spencer Heath

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Letter to Heath from Robert W. Bridgman,

The Barn, Randolph, New Hampshire

August 25, 1961

 

Dear Mr. Heath:

 

My mother has asked me to thank you for your letter of August 21^st. Your thoughts are much appreciated, and your letter has brought comfort.

 

Sincerely yours

 

Robert W. Bridgman

 

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Archival Items 2092 and 2095

Marginal pencilings in Percy W. Bridgman, The Nature of Physical Theory (New York, Dover Publications, 1936). Bridgman’s words in quotes, Heath’s in italics.

No date

/Pencilings inside front cover

 showing pages and subject matter:/

Mathematics subjective, experience objective   61

Mathematics without physical counterpart      116

Page 19/        “We have seen how meaningless is the contention that principles exist independent of the mind in which they are formulated. What Jeans might have said is that Man is a mathematician, and reflected that it is no accident that he forms nature in his own image.”

He is formed in Nature’s image.

123/           “We have seen that the unanalyzable probability which wave mechanics introduces as elementary can be a property only of the mathematical model, because the concept of probability is logically never applicable to a concrete physical system.” (Emphasis by Heath)

 

In retrospect the action is a certainty. Probability is a matter of how we look at it beforehand.

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Archival Item 28

Verbatim notes by Spencer MacCallum during conversation with Heath

 

 

Percy Bridgman is right, natural law is that which operates, that which cannot be changed, which is ineluctable, to be discovered. It cannot be prescribed. Men can act in accordance with natural law, having discovered it, and thereby become creators of the conditions under which they live — unto abundant life. Without this knowledge, men remain as creatures, slaves to and not rulers or masters of their world.

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Spencer Heath Archive

Item 97

 

 

ARTICLE

Dear Dr. Bridgman —

In all sentient beings there is but one impulse to action. That impulse is feeling — emotion; and there are two kinds of feelings, positive and negative, a craving to understand and thereby to create, and an instinct to preserve ourselves or our accustomed condition, under which negative emotion we seek either to flee and escape whatever we feel cause to fear or to attack and destroy whatever, rightly or wrongly, we feel cause to hate.

The positive emotion arises upon a sense and contemplation of those aspects of our condition that are favorable to the accomplishment of our dreams and ideals, and of the cosmic beauty and beneficence whereby despite all trials /?/ we have so far risen from primordial dust. In this inspired state we seek the ravishments of abstract understanding, seek the order and beauty of the heavens and earth and thus find the power, as artists and engineers, to realize our dreams and ideals — whether they be under inspiration to create or, under negative emotion, to destroy.

The negative emotions possess us in degree as we are blind to the prepotent order and beauty in nature and are prepossessed with pious hate or morbid fear. In the rude upward climb from the animal to the partly socialized man these negative emotions at best have served only to preserve — only as means to escape or to destroy and thus only to survive — hence necessary and not inimical to man in his pre-social state.

But with the slow emergence of the widespread exchange relationships, reciprocal services without duress or coercion, rational because measured, impersonal because indiscriminate, upon which all we enjoy of a non-violent social order rests, the negative emotions are not useful in this new field. Only in a negative way and through injury to others have they served the individual, the particular tribe, the dominating, enslaving or governing group. Hence all human relations springing not from inspiration but from negative emotions have long kept the tribes and nations of man chronically at war, always in a motion of defense or offense or preparations therefor. But as things are, inspiration is not for the many, nor can inspiration alone and of itself change the energies of destruction into creation and peace, even if most men were inspired. Not inspiration itself but its fruits in beauty and use are what liberate men from the necessitous and crude into the spontaneous, creative and free.

The inspired works of creative art which mirror in particular forms the hidden beauty and beneficence towards which men inveterately aspire, these awaken positive emotions and thus stimulate the search for beauty in its abstract as well as concrete forms. Thus the rational mind seeks the counterpart of its processes in the universal whence it has evolved. The result is pure or esthetic science — knowledge for its own and for its beauty’s sake. And from this esthetic knowledge beauty springs into use and by its applications, its technologies, endows the hand of man with mighty power, power to create or, in fields of beauty still unexplored, to destroy.

Science formulates the uniformities observed in the procession of events. Its formulations are rational in that they rest upon measurements and upon the ratios in which the measured elements of events combine.

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