An Irresolvable Argument?

The basic dichotomy in the Philosophy of Science

How many dimensions are they in Reality?
	The answer is three!
Ah yes, you mean the three dimensions of Space, but you must not forget Time!
	Why?
Because clearly, the World is not static, it changes over Time, so to include that you have to raise the number of dimensions to four.
	Why?
Well, how else can we include it: you do agree that time does pass and must be included, don’t you?
	Yes, but why include it as a 4th dimension? You could consider a set of three-e-dimensional Spaces with one for every moment of Time!
But, Time doesn’t come in gobbets: it is continuous, just like Space. So your set will be like a sequence of stills, attempting to represent a wholly continuous Space & Time and will therefore be completely inadequate. Do you see?
	Ah! I see you are really talking about representing Reality as we do in Graphs, and NOT the nature of Reality itself!
No, you are mistaken. I am only insisting upon a wholly continuous union of Space & Time!
	And why is that so important?
Well clearly, it is within such a context that we can solve the relations between things and arrive at equations.
	But, isn’t that just Graphs again? Are you not making the Representation tail wag the Reality dog, because all your relations and equations are predicated upon such an abstract space-time continuity as the Stage upon which all Reality plays out?
Of course I am not! When we talk about particles, atoms, waves and even planets and stars we are going well beyond Graphs.
	Oh, I see! Are your equations then independent of the ways you investigate them?
What do you mean?
	Well, whenever you do Physics nowadays, everything is predicated entirely upon Equations, and everything else is termed unprovable Metaphysics, is that not true?
Well no! They are the essential Forms of Reality, but we do a great deal more than just refer to them.
	So, you are not a Copenhagenist along with the rest of the scientific World? Where do you stand instead? Do you have an alternative explanation of the Double Slit Experiment, for example?
I think you are hog-tied by “classical” and mistaken assumptions that everything is like our everyday macro World. It isn’t! When we investigate the Sub Atomic World we find things that we are incapable of explaining using our usual metaphors. For example new forms exist, which can sometimes act like a particle and sometimes act like a wave.
	So, you are a Copenhagenist! Do you also search for answers ONLY within your essential equations and considered within your 4-dimensional continuous ground?
Can you think of a better way to conduct Modern Science?
	Well, yes, and for a whole series of good reasons. For example you, along with the rest of your colleagues, ignore my Paradoxes, which demonstated that the assumptions of both Infinite Continuity and Analysis into the wholly descrete, were both profoundly misconceived, and merely a pragmatic way of dealing with aspects of Reality.
All that has long ago been dealt with!
	Only Formally (mathematically) I think you will find – never concretely!
But, it is only within such formal relations that we can uncover the essences of the Real World. How can you disagree with that?
	Well, I do disagree, and most vigorously, for equations are both only a starting point for the very different process of Explanation, and, at the same time, are only purely and totally Formal – abstractions! How can they drive concrete Reality?
But, we use these equations every day and they deliver! How can you say that such use is to be ignored?
	Well, of course, I don’t. They are very useful! BUT, only when the users remake a piece of the World to fit the equation. Without an appropriate Domain of Applicability, all equations fail abysmally.
It seems to me that you reject the unassailable nature of formal equations, without presenting a better alternative. Surely, the crises at the end of the 19th century of your classical approach consigned all that to the rubbish bin forever?
	I’m afraid you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Believe it or not, the damaging assumptions of the pre quantum era, are still around today, AND within your Copenhagen stance too. To saddle the holist position with that old standpoint is not correct. The most important error of Copenhagen is that they (and you) place formal abstractions as driving Reality, and that is Idealism.

The problem revealed in this disagreement will not be resolved by formal logical argument alone. As can be seen from the above, within those forms NO resolution is possible. The methods that Mankind has developed over many millennia could not be other than constructs: NO assured paths to Truth were, nor are they yet, available So, each and every gain had to be an invention, which each time included a little more Objective Content (parts or aspects of the Truth) than the things they replaced.

The Crisis in Physics represents the denouement of a whole set of long-held assumptions and even principles, which though they enabled developments of a remarkable nature in the past, have finally become unpassible barriers to the current difficulties. For almost 100 years physicists have been repeatedly avoiding recognition of this wall, but in spite of a desperate retreat into Idealism, they have failed to solve a single outstanding contradiction.

Whatever these mathematicians believe, they can never solve these problem.

That is our job, and we will do it!

But, of course, such a promise cannot be left there.

The ground for such assurances must be, at least, broadly outlined.

A New Path to Truth?

Are we addressing our World correctly?

When we use the principles of Plurality (The Whole and its separable Parts) and Reductionism (the continuous causal chain) along with absolute and unchanging essential relations, are we treating it as it actually is, or are we imposing upon it a “universal”, which is actually only a “selection of moments” within a temporary stable phase?

Now, if every extracted relation from Reality is not singular, but indeed always a particular and temporary result of multiple, mutually interacting and transforming sub processes – each of which, in turn, will have the same creative nature, then we can consider variabilities significantly moving the “centre of gravity” of any particular nexus beyond its final threshold, and causing the emergence from one temporary relation to another.

In such a holist conception of Reality, no relation is absolute or eternal, but we have, nevertheless, to explain the apparent constancy of the evident periods of reliable predictability.

For though the World may well be holistic, it isn’t chaotic!

It displays “fairly” consistent forms everywhere within a current stability.

We have to conceive of a holist world that drives towards, and self-maintains, such stabilities, but, at the same time, will be subject to underlying variabilities, which can, and always will at some point, precipitate a complete transformation.

When we attempt to build our World out of stable equations, we are conceptually limiting our whole approach to Stability as its only and permanent state. And we conceive of catastrophes of dissolution as wholly destructive end-points! We attempt to explain an evolving World in terms only of pinheads movements, within its periods of Stability, and which we further endow with a seamless transformation into the new without crises of any kind (often mistakenly labelled as evolution not revolution)!

Whereas, the much more revealing and important task is to explain both the apparent stability, and its dissolution, in terms of its underlying variabilities and their developments too.

Of course, our choice, historically, was always both unavoidable and indeed valuable. To embrace a fully Holist World from the outset, would have allowed NO step-by-step advances whatsoever - better to limit our attentions to the most stable and persisting aspects of Reality and tackle them. Or when seemingly all such easy targets had been dealt with, to impose a controllable constancy upon a given, limited situation, and investigate that in the same way as before.

For though the World is undoubtedly holistic, to embrace that meant, for Early Mankind, that they had to subordinate themselves to it, and pursue what can only be called religious routes to Truth.

The pluralistic/scientific alternative may have been a construct, but it did allow maximal use of what could be extracted as long as Mankind could control quite limited areas. The World was divided (or even constrained) into separate investigatable Domains, wherein consequent discoveries could be turned to useful ends.

Now, the new modern holistic approach will have to prove itself by beginning to address the number one problem, which Science has, so far, proved entirely incapable of solving.

It is, of course, the Origin of Life on Earth, and this work has already begun.