Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3162.

Typed transcription by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath at Princeton.

Spring 1955

ON THE GROWTH OF BUSINESS AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

Many thoughtful persons attribute recent great advances to the technological power which the natural sciences have given men over the forces and materials of their physical environment. The truth of this is not to be denied, but it is equally and perhaps more importantly true that these technological achievements have been accom­panied by and in fact depend upon a corresponding achieve­ment of higher organization and interrelationships of the human individuals and forces necessary to put the technolo­gical powers over the environment into effect. The enormous elaboration of the system of credit and banking, insurance in all its phases, the growth of great corporate organizations — all such as these enabling people to practice con­tractual and thereby cooperative relationships on a vastly greater scale.

All this purely social evolution has been a pre-requisite and necessary development in order that the technological powers over the environment might be widely practiced and their benefits disseminated throughout the population as a whole. It is only by means of this elabora­tion of the contractual institutions that scientific engineer­ing has benefited mankind as a whole instead of providing more luxuries and indulgences for a small number of oligarchs and kings. The blessings of civilization arise not only by means of higher organization of the environment but also from the higher organization of men occupying that environ­ment and without which social organization, no amount of scientific knowledge could have prevailed. If the ancient brain of Aristotle had contained all the technical knowledge that is in the libraries today, they would still have had no power to put it to the service of mankind without the growth of social and business organization that has taken place in modern times.

It is important to delve into the relationships between atoms and molecules and similar organizations of things, but useless, even dangerous to do so without achieving a like understanding of the creative, free relationships, non-political, that are evolving among men. Let the social sciences illuminate not the relationships of men to their environment, but the non-political, social relationships among men.