Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1279

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Rudolph M. Binder, Department of Sociology, New York University, Washington Square, New York, New York,

October 30, 1939

Original is missing.

 

Dear Doctor Binder:

Assuming your interest in the possibility of invoking the methods of the natural sciences in the analysis of social phenomena, I am inviting your attention to the enclosed brief outline and formulations entitled, “The Energy Concept of Population.”

Science seems to teach that nothing is static, that all phenomena are manifestations of time, considered as change, and that all change, however intricate, is basic­ally energy flow.

The life-year, as the unit of population, corresponds with the physical units in natural science. It takes into account linear dimensions, mass and duration, as in the c.g.s. or the English system, although it takes these statistically of the population as the average of linear dimensions, average mass and the average duration of life for the individuals.

For statistical results, the average linear and mass dimensions of individuals in a population are taken as unity; the average duration is found from its vital statistics. Thus the single life-year may be taken as the unit of population, expressed in terms of energy, and the sum of the life years becomes the quantitative expression, as in natural science, for the population as a whole.

Since numbers and duration are variable within a constant total, qualitative changes within the population and qualitative differences between two or more population groups having an equal number of life-years immediately appears, and these qualitative differences are mathemat­ically expressed.

Anticipating you will find this approach interesting, I am calling it to your attention as a promising key to the analysis (with respect to their functioning) of such important social institutions as private property, and especially private property in land. I am attempting some steps in that direction.

 

I am enormously interested in your “New York Times” review of Chugerman on Ward.

                          Very truly yours,

 

Enc.

“The Energy Concept of Population”

“Private Property in Land Explained”

“The Inspiration of Beauty”