Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1359

Carbon of a letter to Waldemar Kaempffert, Science Editor, New York Times, West 43^rd Street, New York NY

February 24, 1941

Dear Mr. Kaempffert:

You and your associated science writers are doing a fine job, not alone in publicizing and popularizing the sciences, but also and, perhaps, more importantly in an intellectual clearing house function which probably none of the scientists themselves are in any position to perform.

Science, like the Sabbath, is made for man, but the character of its intensely specialized departments tends to focus the scientific minds of their members upon a limited range of phenomena leaving them as emotional and jittery outside of their narrow range as is the popular undisciplined mind. This disqualifies them from seeing science whole and especially of realizing the universality of the method of the sciences and its uni­versal applicability.

Men like yourself have the advantage of perspective which reveals the possibility as well as the great and crying need for a Science of Society. You are able to realize that intellectual growth like every other, pro­ceeds not from circumstances of destruction and death, but from a condition of stress without distress — from the liberating functions of human powers. You, therefore, grasp the significance of inspiration as the condition of discovery.

All scientific method is, first, merely descriptive of structures; second, descriptive of functions and change and, finally, reduced to quantitative formulation in terms of standardized units such as the c.g.s. system, or units referable to them.

In the “Energy Concept of Population,” I have pro­posed a quantitative unit of structure (or mass), times, velocity (change or time) derivable from the c.g.s. units, and which I have designated as the life-year. From the accompanying mimeographed brochure, you will observe how this is derived and how it is capable of quantitative or mathematical manipulation. You will also observe how the qualitative aspect depends upon the preponderance of the time or velocity element over the mass or number element in an energy stream.

My friend, Crane Brinton, refers to this Energy Concept as “a most promising method of social analysis.”

The enclosed, “Private Property in Land Explained,” is an application of this analysis in a functional description of the institution. I think this explanation is unique and revealing as to the ground work of social organization and its manner of function. The Energy Con­cept is implicit in this functional description even though it is not explicitly referred to.

The significance of this Energy Concept in its application to the basic institution of society, should be more apparent to a wide-ranging mind like yours than to any specialist’s myopic view.

Discovery of the process in any field usually leads to an applied science or engineering technique. The social engineering that arises upon a scientific ana­lysis of property in land in its functional aspects, is set out in the two pamphlets entitled, “Real Estate, How to Raise and Restore its Income and Value.”

The discovery that proprietorship in its functional operation is the basis of all social life and growth should, and in fact does, open up a new and fruitful approach to an understanding of society and, thus, to a rational advancement of its life and growth.

The general principles employed in the brief pub­lications I have enclosed and referred to can be reached from several other directions of approach — biological, evolutionary, historical, etc. most of which I have, to some extent, in written form. I believe in these matters some important new ground has been broken by me and more yet remains to be done.

Please let this letter have more than your mere casual attention, and give it and its enclosures some of the intellectual consideration that they obviously deserve. I am sure you are interested in the emergence of a valid Science of Society. I should like very much to talk with you about the possibility of such a science and the method and principles through which it may be expected to emerge.

I am at present in New York City at the Woodstock Hotel, 127 West 43rd Street (Bryant 9-3000) where I spend much of my time, and where I shall be very happy to be in communication with you. I expect to leave here next February 28th, but will be returning from my home in Maryland probably March 15th.

Very truly yours,

Spencer Heath SH:ML