Spencer Heath Archive

Item 398

Penned writing by Heath. Note that I slightly rearranged the wording of the opening paragraph. -Editor

23 April 1958

 

 

 

SUGGESTIONS CONCERNING THE

DIRECTION OF SCIENTIFIC ADVANCE

     Referring to the recent spectacular developments in Atomic Physics, de Broglie in his Physics and Microphysics lays it down that “scientific investigation is never finished, for as soon as questions concerning one stage of reality are somewhat clarified, others arise at a lower or a higher stage.”

    Until the twentieth century and for many centuries before, the concept of the indivisible atom was at the basis of practically all scientific investigation. Physical science concerned itself with organizations, from molecular to astronomical, in all of which the atom was the basic and irreducible unit. And biological science was in similar case. Every form of life, from monad to man, was either a single cell or an organization in which the unitary cell was the fundamental and presumably homogeneous protoplasmic unit. In both of these fields, the living as well as the non-living, there was a supposedly fundamental unit upon which the whole structure of the science was built.

     These units were not only convenient for the explanation of structural diversity; more importantly, they were the basis of all scientific rationality, for units are pre-requisite to numbers and it is only among numbers that any strict rationality, any definite ratios or proportions can obtain. And it is only through employment of statistically or otherwise uniform units that any mathematical analysis or description can be carried out.

     In our very modern age all the dogmas of finality have broken down. On the physical side, the atoms are found to be exceedingly, almost bafflingly complex and highly composite of organizational elements having a diminishing complexity all the way down to the quanta of action, which now are considered to be the ultimate physical units, the primal “building blocks” so called, of the physical universe. On the biological side the homogeneous cell has given way to a whole complex of interfunctioning unitary elements or parts resting presently on chromosomes and genes.

     Science, seeking always the rationale, not merely the what but also and especially the how of the phenomena it observes and describes, classifies its subject-matter — the objects of its examination — into basically similar specific forms and types. This segregation into classes demarcates the separate fields of the several sciences, and each science, within its own field, analyses its subject-matter more and more minutely into succeeding classes of similar units. It continues this process downward towards ever greater simplicity and uniformity until either actually or supposedly ultimate units are disclosed. And, so far as the ratios among its units — its rationale — is discovered, a rational technology can arise; the elements can be re-composed into substances, circumstances, processes and events that are desired. The rationale of a science or of any of its processes is discovered by the practical and precise verification of an intuitive, sometimes boldly speculative, hypothesis. This vindication of abstract theory is distinctively quantitative so far as method is concerned but as an intellectual adventure yielding esthetic satisfactions it is qualitative to an immeasurable degree. In like manner, practical applications of the abstract rationale are, in their method, wholly quantitative, yet as they accomplish ends and desires they are qualitative, whether for good or for ill, in all their effects. Esthetic motivation is what energizes both the abstract and the concrete.

     The purely physical sciences are concerned primarily with substances and structures, only lately with processes or events as objects of investigation; the biological sciences look more to processes and functions; but every science, whether it investigates substance and structure or process and event, postulates some kind of particle or event as the ruling unit of organization throughout all its field. In the case of the atom, all were of the same kind but not necessarily of the same indivisible magnitude; in the case of the quantum of action, all are of the same magnitude but, like any other equal quantities of energy, not necessarily of the same composition or kind.

/The portion containing Heath’s amendments ends here./

 

     But in every science the quest is towards the most simple and most uniformly similar units into which its composite subject-matter can be decomposed.

 

     In the advancement of sciences, as elsewhere, the principle of rhythm or discontinuity seems to obtain. A supposedly ultimate, such as the atom, is discovered. From here on, all advancement is in the realm of the organization of these units into more complex forms and much progress is made. But then a day comes when the supposed unit gives indication of being not ultimate and simple but highly complex. From then onward the direction is reversed. The examination is now downward into the aspects and properties, into more simple elements of which the erstwhile “ultimate” is composed, just as is recently taking place with reference to the atom and to the biological cell.

     (This process in science reflects its wider analogue in philosophy: the potential towards variety in the utmost homogeneity — condition of least order — leading to increasing differentiation and thereby away from the least in a direction towards the utmost order.)

     The nineteenth century brought into physical science the abstract concepts of force and motion as constituting energy or work acting between material bodies in contact or through some hypothetical and ethereal substance when they were at any distance apart. When it became realized that motion, when objectively considered or experienced always involved time, then the quantitative relation, the numerical ratio

    Thus force was considered always as associated with substance or mass and as acting immediately between bodies or through the mediation of some intervening substance

     The relationships between force and motion taken as quantities based on their respective numerical units had been formulated in the famous Galilean and Newtonian laws.

     Yet force was conceived as something apart from substance, and motion as something apart from anything to move and when it became realized that motion, taken without regard to substance or mass, always involved time, then the abstract ratio of motion against time was conceived under the term velocity as though a concrete entity or thing in itself, independent of substance or mass and velocity came to be treated as the principle attribute of insubstantial waves — at first as light waves and at length through the whole gamut of electro-magnetic manifestation.

     Yet the mass or particle aspect would not be completely downed. They were conceived as paradoxical instead of complementary elements or aspects of the same thing, namely, a unit or quantity of energy or work.

     Now energy or work can be conceived without regard to any discontinuity as interval, rhythm or succession as constituting time, but it cannot, other than in imagination, be so experienced. Energy does not come into the actuality of action except time also be involved — except by involvement of time.

     Mass, motion and time may be independently and in various combinations conceived but they cannot be objectively experienced as energy-in-action — actual and not merely potential — except each and every one of these fundamental elements of action be in some degree and in some definite ratio involved. However infinitesimal the degree or however diverse the proportions in which they may be combined, it is only in some synthesis of mass, motion and time that any objective phenomena can take place, any concrete action or event otherwise than imaginatively transpire.

     The three measurable aspects of an objective action or event can be taken numerically and thus as its dimensions in terms of the three kinds of strictly fundamental units such as gram, centimeter and second that the physical sciences imply. The dimension of mass is taken as that minimal quantity of mass units which is related to each single unit of motion. Hence the product of the mass dimension times the motion dimension is the measure of the total amount of work or action involved in the event irrespective of the number of time units that it may involve.