Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1353

Carbon of a letter to Jacques Barzun, History Department, Columbia University, New York NY.

February 19, 1941

 

 

 

 

Dear Doctor Barzun:

 

     I wish to thank you for your letter of February 11^th, and express my regrets for your having been laid up with the flu, and am in hopes that you are now fully recovered.

 

     I shall, indeed, be interested when the opportunity arrives in gathering some of your thought as to the advancement of the natural sciences — or rather their method and technique — into that area of relationships which we call the social field and which is now dominated by a method and type of thinking (if it may be so called) which is not only wholly at variance but is the very opposite and antithesis to the kind of thinking which prevails in the scientific world, and also to the kind and character of results obtained. In other words, in the scientific world, men seek to under­stand things as they are. With this understanding, it is possible to plan and predict — to practice the plan and realize the desire. By the contrary technique — that of wishful thinking and willful tinkering — no understanding is achieved, no plan carried out, and no realization of dreams or desire.

 

     Since you seem disposed to give some attention to my own efforts toward a contribution in this line, I am sending you, under separate cover, another letter in which I enclose in mimeograph form, the outline of my Energy Concept of Population.

 

     This Energy Concept you will find is the basic scientific approach constituting actually a method or basis for the scientific analysis of social institutions. If you look into it clearly enough you will not fail to discover that this method and basis arising out of the Energy Concept is the one employed (although not explicitly so stated) in my analysis of the basic societal institution under the title, “Private Property in Land Explained.” I am sending you this additional matter in the thought that it may enhance your philosophic interest in my functional explanation of private property in land.

 

     I expect to be in New York during most, if not all of the coming week, and will be pleased if our respective obligations and engagements will permit of a more direct and personal acquaintance and communication.

 

     Your manner of dealing with these matters suggests the operation of creative even though none too optimistic a mind, with whom I would find pleasure in further association.

 

     I will be at the Woodstock Hotel, 127 West 43^rd Street (Bryant 9-3000), and will welcome any message I may receive from you.

 

Yours very truly,

 

 

    Spencer Heath

 

SH:ML