Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2171

Pages typed by Heath. Unedited but title supplied.

1930s?

 

 

 

The Nature of the World

 

In this attempted interpretation of the world there are but two primary postulates: the self and the not-self, the individual and the environment. When either of these is taken of itself and alone it is an abstraction, abstracted from the totality, and the other becomes like­wise an abstraction however great or small it may be or whatever their respective finite magnitudes.

 

     Since, by postulate, the self and the not-self are two it follows of necessity that the two are actually and always in being. Neither, there­fore, alone can possess total reality in any manner or matter of fact (literally any how or what of doing) except as part and in relation to the totality, to the total or absolute reality

 

     Notwithstanding that the two finite parts of the total or absolute reality when taken as a part the one from the other are thus wholly abstract and cannot experience or be experienced it is still possible for us ab­stractly and in thought to disregard all other or else than a particular abstracted individual or organization. Thus taken, each self is found to be peculiar and unique, according to its particular organization, and to have correspondence with the like subjective and abstract reality of other individuals only to the extent that the several individual organizations in their constitutions, intrinsic properties and inner or subjective ex­periences correspond. Although separately imagined the two abstractions are in reality united through their reciprocal relations. The energy of environment flows into the individual and the energy of the individual flows back upon the environment. Experience is thus a dynamical relation­ship between the self and the not-self. It does not involve any or either part alone; it is a process that involves the total reality. In this lies the validity — the reality — of experience.

 

     It must be remembered that what is considered to exist or occur alone and separately within the constitution of the individual is some­thing abstracted from total reality and therefore without any complete actuality or experiential reality. The conceptions or reflections of an individual regarding himself or regarding other individuals or organizations, or even regarding the not-self in its limited entirety, are never anything but abstractions. It is only in active relationships between the self and the not-self that any reality concretely and in actuality exists. For man, apart from nature, is abstract, and nature, all environment, all that remains of existence apart from man, is likewise abstract. Only in the unity of their inter-relations, only in experience, does any actual and complete reality exist.

 

 

     The relationships in which any two (or more) abstracted parts of total and absolute reality are continually and in being united is experience — ac­tion with re-action — a flow of energy in one form linked with a reciprocal flow of energy in another form (or sense or direction) — a double transforma­tion or metamorphosis of energy. The energy of environment flows into the individual and the energy of the individual, thus derived, flows back upon the environment. Thus experience is the process, the manifestation, of life in the individual and in the environment whence the individual is de­rived and therefore in the total reality. It is a dynamical relationship between the self and the not-self. It does not involve any part alone but is a process that involves the total reality. In this lies the actuality, the validity and the reality of objective experience.

     Consider now in what this actual energy of experience consists. It presents itself in the world of sense perceptions always in a complex of three aspects. Each of these three aspects may be separately apprehended by the subjective consciousness but they cannot be so experienced. It is always in their unity and not otherwise that they act — that they are experienced. In disunity and singly or in combinations of two they may be subjectively conceived, but except in a complete unity of the three they cannot be ob­jectively experienced. Any conception of less than this whole trinity as one is a mere abstraction, only a subjective experience at the most. Only when the conscious conception unites in some degree each of these three as­pects of energy as reality does the conception attain to any correspondence with the actualities that characterize the totality of the self and the not-self, the experiential, the ever-flowing world.

 

     The three aspects of reality which, taken in unity constitute the actu­al energy of the total, absolute and experiential world — the self and the not-self — are variously named. Among theologians, including, perhaps, philos­ophers, they are considered only in their absolute magnitudes, as infinite substance, infinite power, and infinite time (eternity). Among scientists, both theoretical and practical, they are taken as relative and finite magni­tudes in units of mass (as weight or inertia), motion (as distance or space), and duration (as interval, frequency or time). In both cases the three as­pects of reality are the same; the only difference is that of magnitude. The scientist takes them in ascertainable and measurable quantities and finds them thus susceptible of mathematical or quantitative manipulation and dis­covers techniques for the transformation of their respective magnitudes. These techniques, in their entirety, constitute the whole of technological process for the continual building and rebuilding, creation and recreation, of the environing world — the not-self.

     For all its practical advances, modern science has not yet become conscious of the full trinitarian character of the universal reality with which it deals. It is still the custom to consider mass as something having an existence apart from motion and to consider mass and motion as having actual existence apart from duration, periodicity or time. Mass or structure is thought of as something capable of being experienced apart from motion or time; mass and motion together are thought of as constitut­ing energy and this “energy” is treated as though it could have actual ex­istence so that it could be experienced apart from time; and time is treat­ed as though it belonged to another and transcendent world. Modern science overlooks the fact that matter end energy thus conceived do not have any actual or objective realty apart from periodicity or time, since thus taken they are mere abstractions of the mind and cannot be objectified or exper­ienced without the inclusion of time. This illusion of the reality of “energy” in terms of matter and motion alone is still so complete that “mat­ter and energy” without time are thought to constitute the world of ordinary experience, whereas in fact they cannot be thus experienced at all but must exist in conception alone. So it transpires that when modern science finds atomic emanations of mass and motion in the manner of waves always associated with definite periods of time it treats this union of mass, mo­tion and time as though it were a sort of super-energy transcending the or­dinary energy of experience and is therefore constrained to give it a very special name — “action,” as it is called. Strange as it may seem, science, when it leaves the abstract and comes into the world of experience, assumes not that it is just entering but that it is passing out of the ordinary concrete world.

 

     Taking energy as it is commonly defined — as consisting of mass and mo­tion without reference to time, the “absolute” system for its measurement is based on the mass of one gram and the motion of one centimeter and the per­iod of one second. It is to be specially noted that although energy is not supposed to include time nevertheless its system of measurement is not estab­lished otherwise than by the employment of a unit of time.

 

     The absolute system is so called because the motion of a mass is related to its inertia, which is thought to be the same at all places and times, rath­er than to its weight which is dependent upon its proximity to the earth or to some other mass. The unit of mass in the absolute system is not determined by weight; it is the mass of a certain volume, a cubic centimeter, of water under standard conditions of pressure and temperature. Such a mass of water or its equivalent in any other substance is called a gram. A uniform influence that will impart to (or take from) a mass of one gram a motion of half a centimeter on one second is called a dyne. A dyne acting on a gram will therefore move it half a centimeter in one second and impart to it a terminal velocity of one centimeter per second. (The terminal velocity must be twice its average ve­locity of half a centimeter per second because the initial velocity is zero.) A dyne, taken as a weight or force, is approximately the thousandth part of a gram.

 

     The absolute unit of energy is the erg. It is the force or influence of one dyne (sufficient to move a gram half a centimeter in one second) acting through a distance of half a centimeter. It is also the capa­city of overcoming a force of one dyne through a distance of half a centimeter. An erg is a dyne acting to move a gram a distance of one centimeter during one second. It is an approximate milligram acting through one centimeter, the analogue of one pound acting through one foot.    It consists of a certain mass acting through a certain distance or combined with a certain amount of motion. This, then, is only an abstraction, for there cannot, in objectivity or experience, be any mass (inertia or force) and motion without time. An erg-second is an action; it happens; it occurs; an erg does not; it exists in conception only. An erg is not energy as action or in any actuality that can be experienced.

 

     Radiant energy is intermittent. It manifests itself in vibrations or waves. Each vibration is the integration and disintegration (growth and death or decay) of an organization. This takes time. The time taken is the reciprocal of the frequency. If the frequency is, say, one thousand per second, then the time or duration of each wave or vibration as an organization is one one-thousandth of a second. This is its organization inter­val or its life-span.

 

     As every separate wave in a radiant energy flow is an organization of energy having a term in accordance with its frequency of repetition, so all organization, organic and inorganic, that repeat themselves may be treated as energy waves.

 

     Atoms or masses that do not give out energy above that which they take on (as in temperature, heat, and electrostatic changes etc.) are organizations of mass and motion whose spans are indefinitely long — so long that we can know them only during a very small portion of a single one of their periodic or repetitional states. This accounts for atomic energy being so vast. It is because of the magnitude of the time element involved in its periodic change that atomic energy is not apparent in ordinary experience.

 

     Whatever be its level of complexity, organic or inorganic, energy so organized as to have very long duration — very low frequency of its change of state or repetition of organization or disorganization — manifests itself as substance, mass, or material. When so organized as to have very short duration — very high frequency of its change of state or repetition of organization and disorganization — it manifests itself as vibrations or waves. The difference is not fundamental but only relative, only a change of fre­quency or interval between repetitions of corresponding states.

 

     The apparent difference between inorganic and organic organization is that the inorganic is non-functional; that is, the energy of the atom has been organized within it for an indefinite time; it is a closed corporation, so to speak; its continuity does not depend upon any extraneous relations. Its internal organization is but little affected by environment.

 

     But the biologic cell depends for its continuity upon a practically contin­uous intake of energy from its environment and the transformation of this energy into structure as maintenance or growth and back into the energy of environment upon disintegration of structure. In all life forms life manifests itself in continuous increase of structure by addition, new and active structure being superimposed upon the old by accretion rather than by maintenance and replacement. [Describe metabolism here] In animal life there is increase of structure only up to the state of full reproductive maturity. Beyond this there is little if any in­crease of structure, the new taking place of the old and the disintegration of the old affording the transformed energy for the interfunctioning of its organs and parts (and for its over-all functional unity through return of energy back to environment) during its period of organization or life-term. In the societal form this exchange of energy as services not only maintains the organism but gives to it a further function — to create its own environment.

 

     In plant life the general tendency of its growth and disintegration is to make its environment more organic, more favorable and propitious for further plant and animal life. But below the human, and especially below the societal form of organization the tendency of animals is to exhaust, deteriorate and destroy the life-giving resources of the environment on which they depend. The social organization alone is pre­eminent for its power to transform the energies and reorganize the structures and thus re-create the environing world from which its individuals are born; upon which their development depends; and under which their evolution proceeds.

/Diagram/

Mass, motion and time are mutually dependent. In action — in both the ordinary and the highly technical sense of that word — as in actuality, no one of these is ever manifested without the other two. Apart from the sub­jective, conceptual, imaginative or metaphysical realm they are mere abstrac­tions having no existence within but only beyond the world of objective ex­perience. It is only in their complete unity that any experiential reality is manifested or found. Mass and motion are defined in physics as energy and thought of as reality, but action, and action alone, which includes time, manifests itself and is experienced in the objective world.

 

     Gravity and inertia are regarded as fundamental properties of mass. It would be no less correct to regard mass as the fundamental manifestation of gravity and inertia. Gravity is the property of mass that induces motion; its property of inertia resists all change of motion in either its direction or its rate. Inertia is the counter-force of gravity. It is due, doubtless, to this relation between gravity and inertia that a change in velocity or direc­tion effects a change in the gravitational mass, the mass being increased or decreased upon acceleration or deceleration of motion. This is exemplified in in the planetary and atomic motions in both of which the gravity of the energy-charged bodies is balanced by their resistance to change of motion — their in­ertia. It seems probable that in the whole realm of nature gravity and inertia are opposite and equal in direction and amount. They are at least analogous if not identical with positive and negative electricity.

 

     A pound or a gram or a dyne is a unit of that aspect of energy (action) organized as structure that is manifested as gravity or inertia.

 

     A mile or a foot or a centimeter is a unit of that aspect of energy that is manifested as motion, distance or space.

 

     Any constant periodicity might be used as the basic unit of time, and all other changes, as time, referred to and measured by it. The periodicity of the earth’s motions on its axis or about the sun, or some fraction thereof, is commonly taken as the standard to which all other changes or repetitions are referred and by which all other changes are measured as time. Time is dynamic; it is no more static than rotation or vibration; it is the periodic­ity of events. Time is only known or perceived in the conjunctions and repe­titions of events such as rotations, cycles, vibrations or other rhythmic change. The vibration period of the light given out by hydrogen or by any of the chemical elements when in the incandescent state could well be taken as the basic periodicity or time for the measurement of other frequencies, changes or events. All seconds, minutes, hours etc. would then be determined as definite multiples of the chosen vibration period. To take the divisions of time as multiples of a certain atomic vibration period, instead of frac­tional parts of the earth’s solar or sidereal day, might afford a basis for time lying, in Professor Eddington’s words, “more nearly at the root of world-structure and not a casual detail in the mechanism of the atom.”

 

     Mass Motion and Time, or any of their units, can be imagined separately or in any union of two or more; but only in some unity of them all and in no other mode can they be objectively experienced and quantitatively described in terms of their several units and respective magnitudes. This is the foundation of all scientific analysis of what in action and in actuality is found to exist, and of all scientific synthesis of what it is desired to create. The synthesizing in apt proportions of these three fundamentals of reality is the basic technique for the assured realization of plans, dreams, desires, aspirations, ideals — the creative and, in that sense, the spiritual world.

 

 

W O R L D   B U I L D I N G

Postulate:

 

The Universe is constituted of Mass, Motion, Duration, in ever-changing mutual dependence; a Trinity of Elements in a Unity of Action and Actuality.

Organization of ENERGY — (Subjective, conceptual only, abstracted from Reality).

1. MASS — Gravity, Inertia, Force.
2. MOTION — Distance, Amplitude, Space.

Organization of ACTION — ACTUALITY — (Objective, concrete, capable of being experienced).

  1. MASS — Gravity, Inertia, Force.

  2. MOTION — Distance, Amplitude, Space.

  3. DURATION — Interval, Period, Time.

Suppose the three elements of ACTUALITY can be of any magnitudes or di­mensions, so the product of the three quantities be always the same:

 

     Then, when Mass is infinite, Motion and Duration must be each infinitesimal. When Motion is infinite, then Mass and Duration must be each infinitesimal. When Duration is infinite, Mass and Motion must be each infinitesimal.

 

     All objective experience shows that Mass, Motion and Duration exist always in mutual association and inter-dependence. (Like the Christian Trinity, they are but different aspects of the same Unity.) Separately or in any com­bination but complete Unity, they exist only as abstractions in the subjective experience or consciousness of mind and not in any objective experience of the external world. The objective world is thus constituted of a synthesis of these three abstractions of the metaphysical mind. In these three abstrac­tions of the metaphysical realm, out of this spiritual origin, springs the entire objective, “natural” and experiential world.

 

     Modern physicists acknowledge the abstract nature of Mass Motion and Time — the only fundamentals with which they mathematically (abstractly) deal. Their failure even to attempt a diagram of the world of reality in terms of its three fundamentals instead of in terms of three “dimensions,” so called, with only mass and motion annexed, has led rather recently to the discovery of periodicity or time as inseparable from mass and motion in the phenomenon of atomic radiation.

 

     This discovery was made by Prof. Max Planck in 1900. He found that energy, in terms of mass and motion, was discontinuous; that it flowed out of an incandescent atom not in an unbroken radiant stream but as though in a succession of pellets. Moreover, these bundles of energy were of equal magnitude only for the particular element emitting them and their magnitude was related inversely to the duration or time period of a single one of the associated radiant waves. It was further discovered that when the energy of each pellet, taken as its mass-motion product in ergs, is multiplied by the associated wave-length or interval in terms of its duration or time the product is always the same. When the energy pellets are large the wave inter­val is small and when they are small the wave interval is large, so that the product of mass, motion and time, when taken in their least possible dimensions, is constant for all transfers of radiant energy, when they are accept­ed as active and actual events by the inclusion of time into the concept of energy. This quantity of energy, taken as a temporal event, of which all other events are either equals or multiples, is called the fundamental unit or quantum of action. It is the basic unit of actuality, of reality as occurrence or event, of action as distinguished from abstraction; it is the reality from which the abstractions of mass and motion are drawn when taken separately from the universal and indivisible complex of Mass, Motion and Time.

 

     Physical scientists were constrained to this discovery of the fundamen­tal unit of action or event by their inability to make satisfactory measure­ments of either mass or motion without the conjunction of time. They found mass affected by motion and motion by mass and were baffled in their attempts to fix both the position and the velocity of a particle or the simultaneity of instant — meaning timeless — events for two observers having different veloc­ities (involving different times) with respect to the events. In this exi­gency they gave over their traditional emphasis on energy as mass and motion alone and engaged themselves in resolving the intricacies of another equally abstract world, that of motion and duration — the space-time continuum, as it is called. But here also satisfactory measurements could not be made. Time was found dependent on motion — length, distance, space etc. — and these in turn were found to be dependent on time. These difficulties could be resolved only by the discovery inductively by objective experience of discrete least combinations of mass and motion in wave radiation from the several chemical elements and that these are so linked and related to the various wave periods that the product of the mass, motion and time is invariably the same.

Thus time, so long taken as a passive bystander of energy, was discovered — and by so round-about a process — as a fundamental element and not a merely incidental circumstance attending the operations of the objective and experiential world.

 

     But the traditional practice persists: that of regarding mass aid motion, either separately or combined, as possessing concrete and objective or exper­iential reality. The customary terminology and definitions predispose to this. The mass-motion complex is defined as energy or work as though it possessed an actuality that could be experienced without regard to time. An erg, for exam­ple, is thought of as actual energy instead of the abstraction that it is.

 

     This conception of mass-motion as energy in a concrete sense has led to a curious impression that this abstract or metaphysical energy (so called) is the energy with which we commonly deal and that therefore the actual energy or action that includes time as an element — the only energy that is experienced — must be recondite, elusive to the ordinary senses and difficult to apprehend. Doubtless this misconception is what led to the adoption of the term action for the actual energy that in its triune unity manifests it­self objectively in the natural and physical world.

 

     The matter has been further confused and best progress delayed by a naive retention of ancient and classical conceptions concerning space. Just as the ancients attributed mystic and magic powers to certain pattern-arrangements of numbers which they devised so do present day scientists still impute to space the characteristics of a certain geometric pattern that has been traditionally conceived and bequeathed. They thus come to be­lieve that space has the peculiar property of being always divided off for their convenience in three mutually perpendicular planes of reference so that the position of any point with reference to these planes can be stated in terms of the perpendicular distances from the point to the planes. This artificial notion of three planes and three lines comes down from high anti­quity as representing an inherently and peculiarly “three-dimensional” quality and character in ordinary space and by analogy they believe that the realm of nature affords a unique and peculiar kind of multi-dimensional space for every kind of geometrical pattern that they have the mathematical wit to de­vise. If there were any reason to suspect or suppose that ordinary space accepts the traditional “three-dimensional” design it would doubtless be equal­ly hospitable to any other and more complex pattern that might be devised. The notion that ordinary space apart from any event has dimensions is such a hoary tradition it is a marvel that the absence of any fact or experience in support of it was not long ago observed.

 

     The idea of space is only a generalization of the motion aspect of ac­tions or events, just as gravity and inertia are generalized in the concep­tion of mass, and the periods or intervals of rhythmic motions are general­ized in the conception of abstract time.

 

     An action, occurrence or event has only three fundamental aspects or elements — mass, motion and duration or time. Action is the only objective reality; hence action alone and nothing else can afford us the experience of measuring it and ascertaining its dimensions. Action is integration into reality of the abstractions of mass, motion and time. The magnitude of these abstractions when unified in an event are the only fundamental dimensions that there are; all others are derived.

 

     The great importance of action as actual energy lies not in the mere discovery of action itself, for in all practical or objective procedures the so-called energy of mass and motion is always multiplied by time. The im­portance is in the discovery that the constituents of energy, mass and motion, are not indefinitely divisible to any degree of minuteness — that they do not unite and act together in less than certain definite and measurable quanti­ties peculiar to the radiations from the several elements and that this union takes place always within the interval of time marked off by the vibration period of the particular element. And most significant of all, it was found that although these indivisible least quantities of mass and motion inseparably combined in the successive emanations from the different elements in their incandescent state are not the same but are different for each element, nevertheless, these discrete quantities of combined mass and motion called energy are so related to the vibration period of the particular element’s emanations that the product in terms of action or actual energy is always precisely the same. This is the fundamental “atom” or lump of actual en­ergy, the least that can be measured or otherwise experienced and thus the ultimate building unit of the entire objective world.