Spencer Heath Archive

Item 855

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath

December 13, 1955

 

 

/THE QUANTUM AND THE HUMAN LIFE/

 

There is much evidence that the entire cosmos is rational. This means that all organization must be the organization of units. The elements of organization must be single units, simple units or complex units. Otherwise, their association one with another cannot give evidence of numerical relationships. Only units can be stated in numbers, and only numbers can have ratios. So all the rationality of the cosmos depends upon there being specific units of organization.

 

     The fundamental unit of the physical world is Planck’s quantum. This is supposed to be invariable in its magnitude, its magnitude being made up of energy multiplied by time. But the energy itself is made up of two elements, namely force, as an aspect of mass, and a second element, which is motion, or velocity, force always being taken in terms of so much force per unit of motion, and velocity always being so many units of motion per unit of time. These two things together constitute energy. And when force and velocity are multiplied by time, then we have actual events.

     Now the quantum itself is regarded as uniform in dimension, also that it is at the borderline of experience. It is the event less than which does not enter into the realm of experience. That being so, the quantum is not necessarily uniform in itself, but only uniform so far as our experience is concerned, because nature does not register in our experience any fraction of a quantum. So that any quantum could be less than the standard of Planck and not come into our consciousness. It could exist in minor degrees or it could exist in a whole unit plus a fraction of a unit. But we are so constituted that we could not take any account of the fraction, whether it stands alone or whether it is an addition to a whole number of quanta. So, for practical purposes, quanta are all of the same magnitude, but in themselves, it is quite possible that they are as highly variable as anything could be thought.

     So if we take the human individual as the unit of social organization, and look upon all human individuals as so much force and motion continued for a certain period of time which is the average life span, we find enormous inequalities in them. But that is due to the fact that the scale of magnitude is such that we can distinguish fractions of a human life, whereas we cannot distinguish fractions of a quantum of “action.” But taken statistically, if we take them in million numbers, then individuals, their inequalities all smooth out, so that the total result of a human organization is the same as though all our individuals were equal.

     So the legitimacy of the analogy between the quantum and the human life is not impaired by the fact that human lives are known to be unequal. The only difference is that the quanta are not known to be unequal and cannot be known as being unequal, although they might very well be so greatly unequal with respect to one another as human lives are unequal with respect to one another.