Spencer Heath Archive

Item 305

     Any manifestation of energy, kinetic energy, as action or event, is an integration of three measurable elements or aspects by which it is capable of being ration­ally experienced. Whether an event has any fourth or further aspects, we can speculate but we cannot rationally or objectively know in terms of numbers or dimensions and their ratios because we have only three fundamental dimensional units wherewith to measure them and thus rationally to know and experience them. These are the three fundamental measuring or dimensional units of the physical and natural sciences: the unit of mass, force or inertia; the unit of motion in terms of length, distance or space; and the unit of time, as the rhythmic succession of events. The specific units most commonly used in scientific research are, the gram, the centimeter and the second.

     All dimensions are the ratios, ascertained by measure­ment, between the specific element or aspect of an event that is being measured and the specific unit employed in the measurement of that element or aspect. All dimensions there­fore are numerical magnitudes or quantities in relation, as ratio, to specific magnitudes or quantities employed as dimensional units. Thus we have the three dimensions of an event, mass, motion and time. And in any specific action or event each dimensional magnitude occurs once for each unit making up the dimensions of the other two. The number of units of mass in motion occurs as many times as there are units of motion, and the number of mass-motion units (work units) occurs as many times as there are time units involved in the event. Thus the product of the mass and motion dimensions is the quantity of work, the work dimension of the event. And the work dimension taken as many times as the number of units contained in the time dimension of the event gives the number of action units that constitute the totality, the over-all dimension, of the integrated event. Mass or force, as a quantity, is the mass dimension in terms of one unit of mass or force; as a rate (or ratio), it is the mass dimension as related to one unit of motion or length (or space). Work, as a quantity, is the work dimension in terms of one unit of work; as a rate (or ratio), it is the work dimension as related to one unit of succession or time.  This is also called the energy rate.

     Energy, as a rate or ratio, is the quantity of work that is related to one unit of succession or time. This is often called kinetic or actual energy in contradistinction to potential energy, in which the mass or force element is inactive and the motion element is imaginary instead of actual. Kinetic energy as a quantity (or actual as action instead of merely abstract as a ratio) is the work or energy rate multi­plied by the number of time or succession units involved in the event — by the time dimension of the event. This is the over-all dimension of the action or event taken in its entirety, taken in all of its three component aspects. These three aspects may he separately and rationally dis­tinguished, but no one nor any pair of them can be objec­tively experienced except in connection with the omnipresent third.

     The magnitude or over-all dimension of any action or event, in terms of action or objective actuality, is the product of its three kinds of dimensions as mass, motion and time. One event may be larger or smaller than another event according as its over-all dimension is a larger or a smaller number. This is a strictly quantitative difference; it involves no other aspect than the over-all dimension. But events may differ qualitatively as well, and this involves the compositional aspect of an event, the ratios or propor­tions in which its elements as to mass, motion and time are combined.  Thus events may be perfectly equal in respect to their over-all dimensions yet indefinitely variant in composi­tion. The elements themselves, except as they be unified in the objective event, are abstract and rationally subjective, mere proportions among abstractions, yet these proportions determine the objective character and quality of the event. Events are rhythmic and successional and are forever trans­forming themselves into events of different interior propor­tions. Those in which the element of time or succession is regressive are undergoing a negatively qualitative transforma­tion. Those in which the element of succession, in proportion to the mass and motion elements, is advanced are being positively transformed.