Disposable?

Dormitories at an abandoned Apple factory in China

There is a persisting and perplexing problem in attempting to explain the historical trajectory of Capitalism over its fairly short life!

It concerns the swift growth of human populations in the towns and cities, which infers that they must have come for a better life than they had endured previously, and also that they must have, initially at least, experienced one, in order to both stay and grow in such numbers. It therefore appears that work in the factories of the employers was indeed delivering an improvement in living conditions, at the time.

Yet, the most evident state of many of those city populations, was that they always seemed to be barely surviving, and in the direst poverty. Why on earth did leave their existences in the countryside to commit themselves to descend into the hell of such cities? And, why did they not return to their countryside jobs, when life in the city hit rock bottom for them?

The trouble was their old jobs were long gone!

The farmers were mechanising, and no longer needed the vast army of labourers of the past. And some farms found sheep far more profitable than arable farming - again requiring less labour. And, in the Highlands the villages were being cleared to deliver ever more "pastures and playgrounds-for-the-rich". There were no jobs, and also no homes there any more.

It is, therefore, less of a contradiction, when the major driving forces are exposed. But, nevertheless, for along time there seemed to be a shining light which still appeared to deliver the promise of a better life.

In what later became the USA, such situations were rarely as bad: indeed, such workers, who generally were immigrants, escaping from desperate conditions in Europe, entertained an ever rising standard of living, pretty well constantly for over 150 years! What was going on?

Workers in the USA were afforded a better quality of life

The new economic system did both promise a better life, but simultaneously put every single worker onto the unavoidable task of enriching their employers. And, these are contradictory objectives!

Whilever things were going well for the employer, the life of the worker also was better. But any setbacks for the employer always changed things dramatically for the workers. The employer would sack workers, and maybe employ others at lower wages, gradually forcing down the quality of life of all those employed. And, if the company failed and couldn't sell what it made, it would be shut down, throwing all the workers out without any means of subsistence.

Indeed, such failures were common, so there was ever the threat of unemployment to aid employers in keeping wages as low as possible. 

Workers at Apple factory which has now been shut down

In addition, this system of Capitalism was inherently unstable, and every few years had Depressions when many were thrown out of work, and Booms when things picked up again - but never in exactly the same forms.

Many firms vanished in the slumps, and new ones were created in the booms, but these ups and downs acted most strongly against workers, so even within a steady situation there would always be unemployed workers, who by their presence as such, were enabling the effective control of those still employed. Any trouble from a worker and he or she could be replaced by one of the unemployed!

Now, though conditions vary at an amazing rate, the contradictory state of the Capitalist Economic System has remained essentially the same - it has accelerated and globalised if anything.

Though workers organised into Trade Unions and even developed their own political parties, these contradictions were never removed, and every change benefiting the ruling Capitalists would be energetically pursued until it too ran out of steam.

Occasionally, there would be a Revolution which dispossessed the Capitalist class, but as the dominant Capitalist system became truly global, it could both effectively and severely limit those "socialist" countries from any real success, and by war, boycotts and eventual assimilation, even those attempts were reversed.

Clearly, unless and until the working classes, on a World scale implement many successful revolutions, they will remain both dispossessed and disposable to their capitalist enemies, ever more powerfully in charge!

Empty dormitories at former Apple factory

Issue 58: The Solar Wind II

This strange new auroral phenomenon is called 'Steve'

Steve is still a mystery

There's been quite a bit of odd space weather lately. 'Steve' above has been spotted in the skies before, but only in the last couple of months has this bizarre aurora really started to cause a stir.

Also, a recent crack in the Earth's magnetic field unleashed a magnificient auroral display over Norway earlier this month. There seems to be increasing evidence that the Solar Wind does periodically enter our planet's Magnetosphere, and may, somewhat paradoxically, even be responsible for it.

“We’ve discovered that our magnetic shield is drafty, like a house with a window stuck open during a storm,” says Harald Frey of the University of California, Berkeley

Since this issue was written, and while we were “going to press” as it were, some interesting evidence came to our attention which may support the notion that the Earth’s magnetic field was originally ‘seeded’, and continues to be supported by the Solar Wind.

A paper entitled Solar wind induced magnetic field around the unmagnetized Earth (2004) by G. T. Birk1, H. Lesch1 and C. Konz2, looks particularly relevant in this regard, as does this excerpt from Natural Resources Canada website, an article entitled Generation of the Earth’s magnetic field:

“Even before the Earth’s magnetic field was first formed magnetic fields were present in the form of the sun’s magnetic field. Once the process is going, the existing field acts as the seed field.”

There’s some really intriguing, and seemingly holistic science going on in this area of physics - but further research is required to work out its veracity and its significance to our own theories regarding magnetism and the Universal Substrate. Watch this space: The Solar Wind III is already in preparation.

Read The Solar Wind II on SHAPE

What Sort Of Organisation Can End Capitalism? I

Unfortunately most socialist organisations are not up to the job currently...

Building the Effective Force of Real Change

Part I: Underlying Theory is Paramount 


Having been a politically-active and committed-Socialist all my adult life, and been the driver of several worthwhile, if meagre, local victories, I have naturally wondered, long and hard, why the organisations I was involved with had so little effect upon the possibility of building the forces to actually achieve Socialism.

And also, thereafter, having finally become fully aware of the real paucity of Theory in such organisations, I have, for, the last decade, dedicated myself entirely to attempting to remedy this totally debilitating lack of the essential means to succeed!

As a 19 year old student I found the only sound criticism of the current theoretical stance in my chosen discipline (Physics) in an old book by V.I. Lenin, entitled Materialism and Empirio Criticism, I could, finally, clearly see where the appropriate stance in Modern Sub Atomic Physics should be, and naturally turned next to the Father of that stance, Karl Marx, to learn more: and that I did!

My introduction to Marxism was through theory rather than politics, but I was soon committed to Marx's objectives. I became preoccupied with day-to-day political activism, within one or another of then-existing Marxist tendencies, which I successively joined. And, each time, I naturally trusted their general theoretical stances, in the policies they, and therefore I, pursued.

So, preoccupied totally with such activism, I did not pursue what had originally brought me to that position. I did no theoretical work in Physics at all! Indeed, I was actually dissuaded from doing so, by my comrades, as there was always a great deal of immediate and urgent activity to be undertaken.

But, I was wrong to be so dissuaded, as the current theoretical developments within all of those organisations was literally zero. Marxism was not being developed by the real Marxists, and by this I do NOT mean being applied to new situations, as they occurred. They were certainly doing that.

It was perhaps 'up-to-date', but certainly not up-to-the-job!

Now, Marxism has truly enormous untapped potential, particularly in the Sciences.

But, in order to conquer this enormous and important area, there was still a great deal to be addressed philosophically: and that was certainly not being done. And, in addition, even the political work of committed socialists was majorly undermined too. For, the vital, creative heart of this Dialectics has to be its Holist stance. But, the reasoning of my comrades was almost never holistic: it depended upon the Pluralist stance of both everyday and academic reasoning - it simply was not fit for purpose.

Marxism was not, and should never be allowed to become, a set of recipes uncovered by Marx to address all conceivable problems. It was still to this day, gravely inadequate in a vast area of serious intellectual disciplines, without which it was doomed to merely being various kinds of fixed analyses, and a consequent set of programmes. Marxism needed to continually address these diverse areas to keep on developing! I had been wrong to abandon applying it seriously to other fields, and at a high level of research to my professionally qualified area.

I didn't even realise this until I changed my discipline, after a move to a new post.

I became a lecturer in a college, and did mathematical research in my own time. And, this soon began to make increasing demands, that required my learning to program a mainframe computer (this was the 1970s!), as the calculations were becoming increasingly onerous. Surprisingly, I discovered that I was very good at both Systems Design and Investigational Programming. And, I fairly quickly climbed the appropriate academic ladder to become an essential colleague to researchers across the whole range of disciplines, in Higher Education, from Engineering to Biology, Optics to Mathematics, and Taxonomy to Dance!

I finally achieved a professorial-level post as Director of Information Technology in a College of London University, and, thereafter, working with a researcher in Dance Performance and Choreography, with whom I had previously managed to win an award from the British Interactive Video Awards (BIVA) organisation. But, continuing this work still futher, required significant developments in philosophy, to enable both the philosophic discoveries and the technical inventions required, in wedding filmed or videoed footage of Dance to an effective means of Access and Control, for teaching purposes. And the solution to these problems was found to involve a significant extension of my current "Marxist" philosophy required.

Finally, the dice had been cast for a long overdue return to Marxism and Physics, as the solution achieved in handling the dynamics of movement actually pointed to what was necessary in many of those areas too.

The problems encoutered in revealing the many dynamic complexities of Dance Movements in understandable and instructive ways, were relevant in Sub Atomic Physics too, and I could finally address a trenchant criticism of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and begin to construct its replacement by an increasingly Holist approach, involving real qualitative changes, which the Pluralist approach of current Physics was totally incapable of supplying.

It has taken some time!

By 2011 the Anomalies of the Double Slit Experiments were beginning to be explained purely physically, and an important paper upon The Processes and Productions of Abstraction was produced, followed by the Theory of Emergences.

But, these were only the beginning!

All the research was being published in a monthly online magazine called SHAPE Journal, which was supported by this blog, and SHAPE Youtube Channel. We are now approaching the 9th Anniversary of the birth of these publications, which has involved well over 110 Issues involving around 900 papers. 

And with the last Special Issue on Death to Copenhagen, we have now completed our primary objective theoretically!

But, of course, that was a means to another end, namely the re-grounding of Marxist Theory. And, the next objective has to be the rejuvenation of that Theory in radically changing current Marxist Practice in building the effective means to end Capitalism forever!

Part II: New Marxist Theory and Practice will follow soon...

Stephanie Kelton - Economist

An Interview on LEFT OUT

The most recent LEFT OUT episode from Democracy at Work was an interview with Stephanie Kelton, an Economics Professor at Stony Brook University in the US, and it was a revelation!

Some idea of her politics is illustrated by the fact that she was on Bernie Sanders team in his effort to be the Democratic Party's candidate in the recent Presidential Election. But, she is far to the left of that pro-Capitalist Party, and penetrating in her revelations of the real factors acting in a modern Floating-Currency Capitalist Economy. Her position allies her with others, like Hudson and Keen (both of whom have also been interviewed by LEFT OUT), but her emphases, though related to theirs, have been both complementary, and different.

A cornerstone in all three accounts has been the role of Government Debt in driving the economy - for their printing of money, then inserted into available resources in the Economy, delivers a boost that is essential.

For, the basic primary processes, in such an Economy, are the buying of products and services, which are essential for the whole Capitalist monolith to roll forwards: The availability of that insertion to investment in better machinery, training and the rest, always increases productivity and so boosts sales of cheaper goods. So, all of this justifies by the expansion so caused by that initial creation of money.

The usual consensus analogy with a family's Household Budget is a fiction!

They are NOT the same!

In effect, the guaranteeing of future growth by such Government actions, as the initial essential boost, is crucial, and, if successful, then increased future Tax returns will, in time, amply justify that effort and that cost. But, in addition, to such a one-off boost, the most important regular built-in factors, ensuring such developments are due, significantly, to ALL the services that the Government necessarily provides, such as:- 

Education

Health Services and Hospitals

Roads and Transport

Fire Services

Police Forces

Ports and Safety at Sea

Energy Production

Water provision & Sewerage

Care Homes 

...and all the rest, which mightily contribute to the future performance of the Economy - see countries that have none of these, and seemingly have no chance of being able to join the fray, except by paying destitution wages: those Services are NOT just liabilities costing money, but necessary investments in current and future economic prosperity.

In particular, the everywhere -proposed ( or just smuggled-in) vast cuts in all of the above, and, very-damagingly, the privatising of such services, all proposed as helping to solve the current problems, are all clearly just lies!

They are, in fact, delivering the best possible opportunity for driving the wages of the bulk of the population down, while also making them pay for those services transferred into private hands!

Several other amplifying points clearly defined a very different view - for example Tax cuts!

Tax cuts for the poor, means they can buy more, and as there are so many of them, it would indeed stimulate the Economy. On the other hand tax cuts for the rich will not do that: they already have ample resources, more, in fact than ever before, so they certainly wont spend it in a way that will stimulate the Economy: and the myth that they will invest it in increasing investment in wholly new ventures, or in enhancing productivity, is also wrong - they will just take over more companies, and buy back their own company's Stock currently in other people's hands - for that inflates the value of shares and hence their own wealth.

The proof that this is correct, and could very easily be blatantly obvious to ordinary workers, forced the Trump government's Tax Cut to actually include a small cut for the Working class, - knowing that, in the short term, this would be immediately reflected in increased sales, and allow them to claim it was working as claimed, when its real aim is to make the Rich richer!

Another suggestion by Kelton, herself, about the necessary provision of local multi-purpose Health Centres, to be built everywhere. reminded me of my own experience in the 1940's after the Labour's Election Victory! For, they did something similar and it was a great success.

I lived in a desperately poor slum area of Manchester, yet the new Government provided a large children's Health Centre, with Doctors, Dentists, Opticians and Nurses. There were links to all local schools and visiting testers for Eyes, Teeth and Hair to find faults and solve them.

The local "park?", Gorton Park, had no flowers, no Trees or even any Grass, but Bowling Greens were provided, accompanied by an Old Peoples' Centre, with staff and cooking facilities to provide meals, with a warm and comfortable place to meet friends, have meals, play card games, old time dancing and the rest!

And these facilities in the midst of a Victorian slum, transformed the people and the place: it had a culture and a life. Can you imagine what it would have been like without these facilities?

Kelton's suggested Health Centres were also seen as Social Facilities, for all the People, and even for health campaigns as we had had in West Gorton.

[By the way, I was born and brought up in West Gorton, but got to Grammar School, and ended up as a Professor in London University]

New Special Issue: Death to Copenhagen!

Special Issue 57

The demise has been noted, and the last rites said, so the time has come to bury the beast!

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory must be laid to rest. Such a final necessary conclusion has definitely arrived, as its remains are beginning to stink!

Three things had to be done to bring things to this long desired state:

First, an alternative coherent, consistent and comprehensive Physical Explanation had to be found for all of the many anomalies of the Copenhagen Interpretation. And, it has been achieved here, by the inclusion of a currently-undetectable, but definitely- existing Universal Substrate, which has been theorised using only known particles.

Second, the illegitimate amalgam of contradictory philosophic stances, underpinned by the Principle of Plurality, and excused by the regular recourse to Pragmatism, had to be totally dismantled and replaced with a new approach to Science.

Third, there has to be an explanation as to why the equations used in Quantum Theory give answers that match the Reality. And, this turns out to be nothing more complex than fitting-up pure formal relations to a situation, by using that situation’s measured data. It is a useful oft-employed pragmatic trick!

But, the real cause of this great impasse was the abandonment of theories which actually delivered the most Objective Content, and replacing such a policy with one which allocated all cause to Pure Forms, so jettisoning things with unsubstantiated features for a “pure and whole description”, that delivered reliable predictions without a trace of the actual causality involved.

Presented here is the long-delayed interment of a long dead idea. To work out where we go next, we must return Physics to a genuine materialism.

This terminating instalment is just the latest in a series of issues of SHAPE Journal to debunk Copenhagen - the rest can be found here:

 

The Significance of Oscillation

The Nature of Reality and the Significance of Oscillation

Our first conception of Reality was always bound to be of its human-scale entities, eminently stable and persisting forms, processes and products. For what actually exists, at greatly smaller levels, is entirely unavailable to our senses, and because such knowledge did not inform our prosperity and survival, such as is implicit in the "our-scale" things we need and use to survive or even to prosper.

But, what are those larger-scale seeming permanencies? Are they really as permanent as they appear to be? No, they are not! Indeed, the more we investigate them, the more frequently do we encounter much smaller-scale components, which are all in persisting oscillation.

Clearly, opposing effects are simultaneously effecting things, which find some sort of persisting balance in oscillation! We can see less permanent versions of similar oscillations, even at our own macro level, in the vibrations of strings, and even in those of many rigid things, but they soon lose energy to the surrounding atmosphere, and fade away.

The clearly evident vibrations, at our level, are always transient...

What are far more important, are the oscillations at the micro level, which do seem to persist indefinitely, without ever fading away! And, by far the most important form of such oscillations is the orbiting of one body around another, which can be "permanent", and actually exist at every level from the Sub Atomic to the Cosmic.

Various explanations of these orbitings, some of which can last for billions of years, have been suggested, The Cosmic persistences being said to be due to their happening in a vacuum, so there is nothing to carry away the involved energy. While, at the other extreme, in the oscillations of atoms in solids, are said to be actually maintained by the ambient-temperature energy of the surroundings, in intimate contact with the oscillating atoms.

But, what about those orbiting electrons within atoms?

They can be both promoted and demoted, from-and-to external energy sources, BUT NOT in a continuously-changing way: the orbits only exist at particular radii - all others are prohibited (the famed quantisation of orbits).

But, these same properties also persist in the supposed vacuum of Space!

Now, similarly "quantized" orbitings have been created, in the laboratory, and at the macro level, when deliberately made to occur in a liquid Substrate, under surprisingly simple conditions. Now, before anyone gets too excited, may I inform any doubters that ALL that was involved in these experiments was a single silicone oil substrate, and absolutely nothing else!

They were carried out by French physicist Yves Couder: and the writer of this paper has concluded that some of the remarkable phenomena produced there, in particular the orbitings of the produced "Walker entities", were made possible entirely by the presence of Vortices generated within the Substrate, and both maintained and even quantized by the two-way transfers of energy, between such a causing orbit and its produced vortices, due entirely to the constantly repeated orbits, only balancing-out to stability at particular orbit radii!

The significance of this, if true, will be enormous! For, this theorist has already applied these ideas to the quantized orbits in atoms, and also has explained all of the anomalies of the Double Slit Experiments, primarily by the presence of a currently undetectable Universal Substrate.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory is now already mortally wounded! And, many of the inexplicable properties of "Empty Space" are also receiving physical explanations, in terms of this same currently undetectable Substrate.

And, that Universal Substrate isn't just an unsupported speculation, without a detailed explanation of its composition, that too is well under the way, and currently holding up very well.

Though this may be dismissed as unsupported speculation, I have to strongly demur - especially when the alternative, the Copenhagen stance, isn't even a Theory, but merely a formal description, bolstered by a remarkable series of speculations!

No indeed. I take my methods from those of James Clerk Maxwell, who, seeking an explanation of the then also currently undetectable Universal Substrate - The Ether - devised a purely theoretical Analogistic Model, composed of Vortices and "electrical particles", to explain the functions of that substrate, and from it managed to develop his world famous Electromagnetic Equations! He was using the only means available to the investigator deprived of sufficient access to what he required to address a given problem. He knew, very well, that our theories, at best, only ever reflect the amount of Objective Content in our explanations, and that they would inevitably be replaced by others, containing more of that Objective Content thereafter.

So, theories, which explained more than those they replaced, were entirely legitimate in maintaining the necessary ongoing ascent. But, wild speculation was still prohibited - no Gods here!

Instead, the sincere investigator would seek analogues elsewhere in Reality that were already to some valid extent understood, and attempt to weave an effective explanation out of those - That is what is being dome here. That is the postulation of a currently undetectable Universal Substrate, using everything we know about "Empty Space", and as many analogues from known and detectable substrates as possible.

Clearly, if validly established, the universal presence of a material, yet hidden Substrate, will undermine many assumptions in current physical theories.

And, the first giant Sequoia to fall will be the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

While the next must be all of those that insist upon totally Empty Space, anywhere!

For, with the kind of Universal Substrate that has been developed to demolish Copenhagen, a rich background for literally all phenomena has been established, and, crucially the supposed cause of Quantization becomes a generally possible physical ground, occurring everywhere.

Add to this the increasing role of both oscillations and orbitings, and their intrinsic participation in interactions with that Substrate, and a whole new approach at all scales becomes crucial.

Music and Holism

Cymatics - music meets Yves Couder?

A Gateway to the full Richness of Reality?

As soon as you consider the consequences of a Holistic World, the possibilities as compared with the usual strictly Pluralist standpoint actually explode dramatically into a host of new possibilities - not only into myriads of previously unconsidered alternatives, but also into the effects of sliding amounts of different components in all compound entities and processes, but crucially, in addition, into also including both rich joint interference patterns, and, in gradually varying mixes of different components, even how they produced consequent combined, mutually affecting, and sometimes, significantly, wholly unpredictable results.

Mere quantity changes are expanded into changing qualities, and even the emergent production of the wholly new! The traditional pluralist approach cannot deal with such in any meaningful way: we just have to accept them and find pragmatic ways of including them.

Only the holistic approach admits there is more than mere complication in the emergence of the new, and it isn/t a purely continuous process: sometimes it requires a major dissolution to even make possible a new direction of developments. And as, distinct from the old conceptions causality can act in both directions = from the old to the new, and from the new to the old. What is actually possible leaves the usual assumed combinations of fixed entities and eternal Laws well behind, on the foreshores of the Pluralist World: the majority of the vast oceans of the Holist World remain to be explored!

Now, perhaps surprisingly, the cornerstones all of Mankind's effective intellectual disciplines, ever since the Ancient Greeks, have been entirely dominated by the Principle of Plurality - a definition of the "nature of things" that always treated them all as qualitatively-fixed, which had originally been applied to the shapes of things, and related all existing shapes to combinations of individual Perfect Forms, that is as mere additions of various amounts of several of those always-the-same components. Indeed, the following major successes with such Shapes, enabled not only the construction of a powerful means of dealing with Forms in general, via Mathematics, but, was also exported to form the basis of a new reasoning with Statements of Fact, termed Formal Logic! And, within a generation, was also extended to the early attempts at Science.

Now, elsewhere, by this theorist, this has been rigorously contended as totally ignoring all Qualitative Change, and even the indisputable Evolution of things in a trajectory of qualitative developments.

For, absolutely nothing in nature is a mere Legoland-like constructional puzzle! 

Lego Moog

Clearly, the diametrically opposite Principle of Holism, with its tenet, "Everything affects everything else!" has to be much closer to the Truth, yet it hasn't been comprehensively applied to any of Mankind's Intellectual Disciplines, thus far! But, the flaws of Plurality have long been known, though never recognised as such.

The best early critique was formulated by Hegel, and converted from his idealist approach to a strictly Materialist one by Karl Marx. Yet, a comprehensive application to Physics has never yet been attempted.

Now, this is currently underway by the writer of this paper, but within his other interests, it rapidly became clear that the most appropriate area for a truly Holist Approach to be both demonstrated and even developed, just had to be in Music, and especially in Electronic Music!

After centuries of pluralistic structures in Music, particularly in the West, the forms began to "break the rules", though in a remarkable way still using instruments actually constructed to deliver the old pluralist scales. Yet, certain stringed instruments, without-frets, did allow portamento - sliding between "legal notes". And, an increasing awareness of Oriental music, (particularly that of India) revealed a much richer sonic world, with instruments expressly designed to make portamento an integral part of the artistic expression.

But in the 1960s the musical experimenters using tape loops and early electronic musical instruments, such as those used by Terry Riley with his "In C", also extended the variations to a much wider set of changes, initially at least, NOT totally under the control of the players.

Like the fractal mathematicians watching their constructions, produced by algorithms on computers, generated ever more unpredictable forms, so the musicians did likewise with combined cyclic sounds and very slowly indeed reflected another aspect of Reality.

And, in Physics, the French physicist Yves Couder, focussed primarily upon the properties of liquid media, devised analogistic experiments at the macro level, using a liquid substrate, and absolutely nothing else, to produce persisting entities called Walkers, which began to reveal qualities analogous to those occurring at the Sub Atomic level, including quantised orbits.

Now, those may not seem to be related to our thesis here, but they are! 

The Holist approach is much closer to natural Reality than Plurality, especially when phenomena occur in a Universal effectible and affecting Substrate. And, by far the most controllable discipline involving its propagation and receipt via a medium is MUSIC!

And, it has the property of being directly receiveable by the senses of human beings, especially those with a musical bent. This enables not only the discovery of the wholly new, but when the very instruments of production are directly under the investigators hands, variations can be made to listened to examples explored with immediate and direct feedback.

Now, Terry Riley and his colleagues were performing musicians rather than scientific investigators, so they were making primarily artistic decisions, as to exactly when they came in with their contributions. But, that meant that they did not have a complete idea as to how their contribution would affect the following overall piece.

Other performers since, playing the same "In C", decided to have a random number generator choosing when the various contributions would be added - you could just as easily have scientists choosing when to bring in certain elements to achieve certain sonic effects.  Clearly all three versions would be different, and reveal different "music"! But there can be no doubt that such investigations would go beyond what the more usual kinds of music would deliver.

More on this idea soon...

The Substrate

A material explanation for Einstein's space-time?

Properties Outwith and Within

A Matter of Context?

One of the arguments in Einstein's Theory of General Relativity concerns situations in which some system is wholly and uniformly contained within a higher and vastly larger system - like Jupiter and its Moons existing within the Sun-dominated Solar System. For, such a sub-system, as that of Jupiter, then behaves, to some extent, as if no overall super-system were present.

Einstein addressed such situations by talking of elevators and the effects, upon what may be contained within such, by the external contexts. He even considers the situation where the elevator is falling, compared with one with no context at all. His arguments turned me to thinking about my proposed undetectable, yet-definitely-material universal Substrate, for this might be considered in a similar way?

But, as distinct from Einstein's elevators - and their "contexts", my considered case would actually be full of its own composing Substrate Units, so any such local sub-system would be acting within them too. Clearly, this might well not be analogous to Einstein's Thought Experiment!

For, though my suggested Substrate could contain, within all the adjacent units of any contained sub-system, an overall "Gravity Field" - literally equal for all the elements of that sub system, it too would, presumably, also continue to act internally as if NO external field were present.

But, Einstein's Gravity Field was quite definitely continuous!

NOTE: So, in doing the above, am I perhaps just repeating that ancient error revealed by Zeno of Elea in his famous Paradoxes? For, that revealed the possible impasses produced by the two different assumptions of Continuity and Descreteness. So, are we here assuming that same Continuity, as of a "Space-Time Continuum" with its associated infinities, as in the Achilles and the Tortoise Paradox?And, even assuming the presence of the basic function of Propagation in a Substrate, which is entirely without either moving-carrying-units OR elastic interconnections between such units. And, explaining which turned out to be the most difficult problem to solve for that proposed Substrate...

So, returning to my original considerations, from that important diversion, the question seemed to be, "Is that because the very same forces act upon all local elements equally and hence, internally, at least, have no differentiating effects?"

For, the problem is complicated by whether energy is used from real, affected substrate units, OR whether the Substrate is more like Einstein's Space-Time continuum, with its distortion just directing movements in accordance with the "continuum slopes" - in other words involving NO distributed, stored-and-then-driving gravitational energy at all?

As the reader will no doubt have guessed, this theorist is not enamoured of idealist abstractions to explain concrete effects in Reality!

What seems much more likely is that a Universal Substrate of undetectable, but definitely material elements, itself performs the physical effects that Einstein abstractly attributes to his abstract Space-Time Continuum!

BUT, at the same time, such a stance, as I am proposing, does not throw away the clarity often achieved by formal representations of physically existing entities and phenomena, as we use them across, mostly effectively, ALL phenomena. However, it clearly also does not equate them as being identical!

For, such things are merely formal reflections of the real concrete World, but contain only pure mathematical, and hence unchanging, forms, and in order to work, the conditions pertaining MUST be appropriately unchanging. In both experiments and production, such necessary conditions are ensured by the scientists or producers involved, but on a cosmological scale such stability is quite naturally almost exactly delivered!

So, as with all Science and Technology over the last millennia, such formal relations will hold as long as the assumed, and usually such man-made, contexts are maintained.

Now, the Theory of the Universal Substrate, as suggested by this theorist, has already discounted the Copenhagen Interpretations of the confusing phenomena produced by the Double Slit Experiments, and has also even purely physically explained Quantized electron orbits in atoms too - both achieved by the assumption of this particular Universal Substrate. So, clearly, the next major task, looming large, must be the tackling of Einstein's General Relativity, physically, as has already been recently completed for Quantum Theory, and the mapping of the purely formal equations in both areas onto truly physical explanations!