Spencer Heath Archive

Item 86

Pencil by Heath. Original includes 4 pages requiring photocopying.

No date

     An Action or Event is, in the order given, dynamic, kinetic and rhythmic, not merely static or spatial. Each Action or Event is constituted correspondingly of three discontinuous and therefore measurable elements, or aspects, or dimensions, Mass, Motion and Time. Of these Mass is inseparably related to and dependent on Motion, Motion is inseparably related to and dependent on Time, and Time in its turn is inseparably related to and dependent on the rhythm — the discontinuity — of Motion and Mass. A measurement depends upon a unit of measurement, and a dimension is the number — the number of times — that the appropriate unit is repeated in what is measured. The conventional (metric) units for the measurement of Mass (inertial), Motion and Time are the dyne, the centimeter and the second. The number of dynes (number of Mass or force units, dynamic dimension) is taken as that number of them that is repeated through each unit of Motion. The number of centimeters (number of Motion-units, kinetic dimension) is that number of them that is repeated through each unit of Time. The number of seconds (rhythmic dimension) is that number of times that this unit is repeated in the course or process of the Action or Event.

     The dimensions of an Event, therefore, are three numbers: the number of dynes for each centimeter of Motion, the number of centimeters for each second of Time and, the number of seconds for the whole Action or Event. These numbers are the respective dimensions of the several aspects, elements or ingredients that constitute the Action or Event. Since each of these is in terms of its successor, the over-all dimension of the Event as a whole is the number obtained as the product of these three.^Footnote

/Footnote:/

There is much analogy here to the world of space. Space is made up of three elements or aspects: (lineal, surfacial and voluminal) line, surface and volume. We begin with a line or length magnitude (analogue of gram). Give it a motion magnitude and we have a surface. Give this a motion magnitude and we have a volume. A line is a succession of points. A surface is a succession of lines. A volume is a succession of surfaces. Length, breadth and thickness — dyne, centimeter, and second. Line, surface, volume. Force, Work, Action. Dyne, erg, erg-second. When the three movements are equal and perpendicular we have a cube. When they are equal as least, then we have the least cube — quantum of volume. The three magnitudes of space are similar to the three magnitudes of Action.