Arthur M Young
Arthur M. Young | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | November 3, 1905 Paris, France |
| Died | May 30, 1995 (aged 89) Berkeley, California, United States |
| Residence | Downingtown, PA, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Bell Model 47 helicopter; the Theory of Process |
| Awards | Edward Longstreth Medal (1949) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematician, Engineer, Philosopher |
Arthur Middleton Young (November 3, 1905 – May 30, 1995) was an American inventor, helicopter pioneer, mathematician, cosmologist and philosopher. He designed the Bell Model 47, the first helicopter certified for civilian use, and invented the stabilizer bar used on Bell Aircraft's early rotorcraft. In later life he turned to philosophy, developing what he called the Theory of Process, a cosmological framework intended to unify consciousness, physics and the life sciences, which he set out chiefly in his two-volume work The Reflexive Universe and The Geometry of Meaning. He founded the Foundation for the Study of Consciousness in Philadelphia (1952) and the Institute for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley, California (1972).
Biography
Early life and education
Young was born in Paris on November 3, 1905, the first child of the American landscape painter Charles Morris Young and Eliza Middleton Coxe, who were living as expatriates in France near Monet's water garden at Giverny. When Arthur was about a year old the family returned to Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, where he was raised on an 18th-century farm called Meadow Bank. He attended the Haverford School near Radnor, where he became known as an inveterate "gadgeteer," and spent summers at Mount Desert on the coast of Maine building and sailing model boats. He entered Princeton University in 1921, transferring his major from astronomy to mathematics and studying under Oswald Veblen, who created a special course in relativity of which Young was the only student. Young graduated from Princeton in 1927.
Helicopter career
After graduating, Young resolved to master mathematics and engineering before returning to philosophy, and searched for a concrete invention to develop. Late in 1928, after researching the files of the U.S. Patent Office, he settled on the helicopter, which at that time had a long record of failure. Working largely alone on his family's Pennsylvania farm, he spent roughly twelve years developing scale models, and by 1940 had solved the problem of stability using a weighted stabilizer bar. On November 2, 1941 he assigned his patents to the Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York, and joined the company to build full-scale prototypes. His Bell Model 30 led to the Bell Model 47, which on March 8, 1946 received Helicopter Type Certificate H-1, making it the world's first helicopter certified for commercial use. The design incorporated several of Young's patents, including the stabilizer bar, landing skids and the distinctive bubble canopy. In 1984 a Bell 47 was added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Philosophical career
Young left Bell in 1947 to renew what he described as a pact with himself to return to philosophy. Influenced by his reading of Theosophy, Zen Buddhism, Hindu philosophy and J. W. Dunne's An Experiment with Time, he became convinced that phenomena such as precognition and extrasensory perception lay beyond the reach of contemporary science and required a new "theory of process." In 1952 he established the Foundation for the Study of Consciousness in Philadelphia, and in 1972 the Institute for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley, California, both intended to build a comprehensive theory in which such phenomena could be integrated with existing scientific knowledge. Portions of the diary he had kept during the helicopter years were later published as The Bell Notes: A Journey from Physics to Metaphysics.
Young was married twice: to Priscilla Page, from 1933 until their divorce in 1948, and then, in June 1948, to Ruth Forbes of the Boston Forbes family. He died of cancer at his home in Berkeley, California, on May 30, 1995, aged 89.
Work
Young called his mature philosophy the Theory of Process, an attempt to integrate human thought and experience with science so that the concept of the universe would not be limited to what can be physically measured. Drawing on the calculus, he argued that classical mechanics uses position together with its first two derivatives—velocity and acceleration—but omits a logical third derivative, the change of acceleration, which is recognized in engineering as "control"; this term he associated with mind and free will as distinct from physical force. He held that reality unfolds in seven stages, which he depicted as a "fall" into the determinate constraint of matter followed by an ascent in which matter becomes free and indeterminate again. He drew analogies between this sevenfold scheme and the seven electron "shells" of the Bohr atom and the groups of the periodic table, and between the angular relationships of the physical measure formulae and the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Young set out these ideas in his two principal works, The Reflexive Universe and The Geometry of Meaning, both published in 1976, which seek to identify universal first principles and correlate them with modern science. Because it incorporates astrology, myth and psychical research, Young's system lies outside mainstream science; it nevertheless drew appreciative notice from figures such as the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, who called the Theory of Process "a serious candidate for a scientific metaparadigm of the future."
Honors
- Edward Longstreth Medal, Franklin Institute (1949)
- In 1984 the Bell 47 helicopter he designed was placed in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Books
- 1976 - "The Reflexive Universe" (Read in full)
- 1975 / 1976 / 1984 - "The Geometry of Meaning" (Read in full)