Audio Issue 3 - Understanding Change

 

Audio Issue 3 of the SHAPE Journal

This selection of tapes looks at how we try and understand the dynamics of change. Science fails to understand change in any meaningful way. It can analyse quantitative change well enough, but how things emerge and evolve is much less well understood. Jim Schofield’s latest philosophical research attempts to address qualitative change, and begins to devise new experimental approaches and methods for capturing and understanding these crucial changes as they happen.

Start by watching the video below, in which I interview Jim about his new research, and the change in direction and focus that it represents. Below that you will find three raw recordings of Jim's recent tapes, in which the new theory is being currently developed. 

Audio Issue 2 - Impossibility Space

 

Audio Issue 2 of SHAPE Journal 

This edition collects together several recent recordings by Jim Schofield on the philosophy of science, continuing his recent questioning of the nature of reality and how we study it. 

The main hypothesis presented here is that reality is somehow organised into emergent levels. We cannot predict when a new level will emerge, and we can't understand what it is and how it works, merely by studying the levels below it (reductionism). This is because a new level actually changes the levels below, creating new subordinate levels that make up its key components and contentions.

In this new work Jim Schofield moves away from looking at levels in terms of scale and physical spaces (the vast difference between sub-atomic physics and human biology, for example) and instead reimagines levels as possibility spaces.

The discussion draws on Buddhist philosophy, Dialectical Materialism, Mathematics and Evolution.

A Revolutionary Understanding

Lenin was very critical of Positivism

The major Wrong Turning at the beginning of the 20th Century within Physics (and then the other Sciences), was undoubtedly that taken by the Positivists, who were troubled by the increasing number of solely Empirical Laws arising within Modern Physics, which seemingly had no evident Physical Causes naturally available - as had always been the case with the usually historically-sought Causal laws. The advantage with those Prior Laws, was that they could be related to the involved componentsí Natural Properties, that also clearly held sway all the way from the Atomic & Molecular Level, to their performances in Bulk at a higher Level of Reality. So, in addition to any purely Quantitative Relations extracted, there was also always this Qualitative Information: so, together, they married Quantity & Quality into two-sided, Meaningful Laws! 

But, those New sort of relations, also emerging, though they involved similar numerical relations between certain evident variables, clearly DID NOT & COULD NOT ever relate these to any Qualitative relations, to, together, deliver meaningful Explanations of Real phenomena.

Now, before we go any further, we simply must make absolutely clear that the now usually achieved Totally Separate Quantitative & Qualitative Equations as such delivered NO PERFECT standard to mutually relate to! And, this inadequacy became a far more general attitude to behaviours well outside The Sciences too!

Once accepted as legitimate, ALL LAWS covering much wider areas of Reality also were acceptable as mere Quantative Relations having NO Qualitative Explanations!

And this was highly dangerous, for what effects they produced were seemingly Unknowable!

And they were only finally possible as Mankind developed the means to largely Control Limited Areas of Reality, extremely effectively, and, thereafter maintain that situation throughout subsequent variations within the Main Components, that would have to be clearly associated with certain actually consequent changes: and if these were then extracted as Laws they could effectively be used - BUT ONLY in Artificial Tightly-Controlled Production Methods.

That became their primary motivation!

For more genereally evident Quantitative & Qualitatative Relations were NOT there simultaneously available! And so NO Explanations were possible

You would imagine that the growth of The Sciences would simultaneously greatly enable Mankind in Explaining their World: BUT the Pluralist limitations caused by those tightly restricted conditions made it so the relations that they were limited to DID NOT reflect Reality-as-is, and was linked to Numeric Values rather than Explanations! And, it, inexhorably, began to move Human Society from merely taking Reality, exactly AS IT IS, to instead having to be able to direct, small parts of it into very useful chosen (and more-and-more-often), Entirely New Directions. 

The age of advanced technology effectively killed Science.

It wasnít so much a Revelation of Reality-as-is, as it was a ìNew Extracted and Totally-Controllable More-Limited Versionî, capable of empowering the Manufacture (but NOT the Understanding) of useful, artificially extracted & Transformed Additions - both as clean & unadulterated, as were most of the wholly Natural & Different Productions, independent of Man, within Reality-as-is!

Indeed, the New approach embodied a Veritable Revolution in the Capabilities and the assumptions of Mankind in order to achieve ONLY that & no other. But, it also originally explained Absolutely Nothing! For, it was situated only within a Parallel Artificial Domain, which was initially, at best, much more useful than it was informative.

But, Mankind saw, at least, the possibility of it delivering a great deal more, if, and only if, it could be married to its evident Properties with roughly-appreciated from already-known (for many Natural Phenomena) and their inter-relationships. But the two were only separately known. 

Of course, these ideas emerged as such, ONLY within the Working People of Society: for NO progress could possibly be made by those who didnít actually DO any such work! So, the initial gains were always made by the Artisans and their descendent Engineers and Experimentalists - the most skilled pragmatic workers in Society - whose knowledge of making things was Wholly Pragmatic, rather than Explanatory.

Now, simultaneously with these crucial developments, a very different Social Class had politically taken control of their individual Localities, (often by Force), and, thereafter, convinced the Populations which they now controlled, that they alone were ALSO both Capable Defenders of their now-subsevient charges, and were also absolutely necessary to stop even-worse-others (from elsewhere) taking away all that was now being achieved, and doing it by viscious-looting Force, and even killing any who got in their way, when they thought it necessary.

Now, such consequent internal social divisions, were never conducive to the increasing requirement for a real Understanding of what was currently actually being both pursued & achieved, and, by which the overall Level of Understanding AND Achievement could be extended.

Somehow, the false paths, and even the consequent wrong conclusions imposed by all the participators within so far experienced History, just had to be somehow transcended, if the many usual prematurely-terminated outcomes were to be avoided.

But, it, unavoidably, had to eliminate the usual consequences of a very poorly understood, and consequently always deteriorating situation, especially as the Ruling Classes (and their many privileged hangers-on), constantly used their limited Control to actually prevent the Real-if-hidden Truth being both considered and then developed effectively!

How are we to convince ordinary people of the Real Truth of the situation, when as individuals it will always be impossible, within such a situation, where every usual means of informing them, of what is possible, has been well-and-truly tightly controlled for centuries, if not actually millennia, by the Ruling Classís generally agreed self-centered means of dealing with all such features, while ALWAYS maintaining their CONTROL!

The consequently-developed route unavoidably-achieved, came to be via Wholly New Political Parties, along with Jointly-agreed actions, based solely upon their Own Class! But, those benefitting mostly from the current situations, would, in any Generally-Precipitated Crisis Situation, always turn to the much wilder, more direct Forms of Repression, such as Fascism & even naked Military Control of Society.

So, the best hope surely now, has to be to equip the Real Class Forces of Change to take maximum advantage of the Coming Inevitable Terminal Crises, by knowlegibly revealing the predictable Result, if the Forces of Reaction within the battle for The Minds AND The Forces necessary to impose their preferred outcome. As always, a union of The Working class Youth and the latest Marxist Theory - as spelled out, for exanple, in this Major Series of Essays, can be the only salvation.

But beware of false Prophets!

It is also very clear that the Stance fought for in these papers is neither complete, nor does it have sufficient Forces to achieve the Necessary Objective of providing what will be needed, to direct that Assault! Alliances with currently existing and tolerated organisations clearly presently, does the Very Opposite, and ALWAYS also undermines the only valid means of understanding the current Headlong Deterioration!

It IS NEVER mere Organisation that will equip the Necessary Forces of Social Revolution, BUT ONLY a genuine UNDERSTANDING of what drives such situations.

Not Alliances, but Understanding! 

And, currently, absolutely NONE of the current Claimed-to-be Left Parties have added significantly to the contributions of Karl Marx - the unavoidable limitations of a philosophic stance initially derived almost 200 years ago, will NEVER be sufficient to address TODAY!

That is why this research was begun, some 16 years ago, following an active participation in literally ALL the Parties of the LEFT, but also an increasingly a commitment to the essential Development of Marxism via the Sole attempt at a Dialectical Critique of both Social Development, and its inevitable Turning Points within Social Revolution.

BUT, and it turns out to be a very big BUT: the necessity of Theory involved which can NEVER EVER be developed by a single individual! It is far too big a risk to be the work of only a single contribution, as was clearly proved by the example of Marx himself!

Though the gains I have been able to contribute, have at least been significant, they have been so in spite of over 60 years commitment, which has NEVER been sufficient! And, in spite of my most productive contributions being in the last 16 years, amounting to over 1,600 papers, it has only been in the last couple of years that the most significant contributions have been produced.

It isnít the job for a single individual (no matter how committed), for it is without doubt, an approach which not only transcends any single discipline: but, indeed, needs to be adequately developed, it requires them all - and not just produced by real interest, but also, necessarily, by the required methods to breakthrough all the many constraints, implemented to simplify analyses!

For example, it has been the inclusion of the major discoveries in Systems Theory, by Biologist Denis Noble and others, that has for the first time also addressed several limitations in the ways Marxism has regularly pursued ever since - and including, Marx himself!

Now, this project, along with a series of others, has put into serious question, NOT just these type of problems, though also upon a much wider scale, in which the Whole set of ways that problems can occur - both in Reality-at-large, AND in the whole range involving both natural and consequent engineered problems, concerned with Explaining all that we now also see, as well as the full range of situations both now possible and also as newly evident, achievable Objectives in delivering what they all can do. For, in the past, a set of assumptions about what makes things the way that they are, have MOST CERTAINLY greatly over-simplified our Understanding.

The perceived basic (and invariably inadequately described) situations, have, almost always been believed to be those possible States - that some Natural, or even Man-Made Action or Event can actually exist within!

Indeed, on-going-investigations are always revealing New Forms, which could-and-often-did actually persuade Artisans that their objectives were impossible: especially as ìprecisely-knowingî the current state turns out to be never a simple task, as so many interactions frequently produce results that ìlook unchangedî and are in fact actually significantly-different, in a way which is not immediately evident.

Remember that Artisans have long established required conditions for certain processes WITHOUT a full theoretical basis for them, & their Laws reflect curtailed & severely limited Equations only!

The usual solution was always to so-greatly-restrict both the Context and Controllable Content, as to always produce a single, easily reproducible State, that could validly be considered One of the Many Basic States possible, which would always be taken as a legitimate extraction from all of the others known to be possible in that Context! For such always was the Primary Objective, as a starting point, in all Manufacturing - as the dependable Basis for all Subsequent Productions.

But that doesnít help us Understand complex, dynamic, Natural Systems - including those of Society itself. 

The Odessa Steps

The separately arrived at properties in Reality-as-is DO NOT just ADD UP - they DO NOT deliver the Full Set of possibilities. They are a Strictly Limited Set, selected for by the particularly severe constraints that had been imposed in order to extract them in the first place.

For the objective was NOT, and, indeed, was never intended to enable an Explanation of the subsequent performance, BUT, instead, only those required for Future Production of a Chosen Result.

And these two sets of conditions produce Very Different Possibilities!

The ones always chosen are just those with ONLY a Future Production in mind! Indeed, that objective is the ONLY One usually fulfilled: the whole Approach is solely directed towards Production, and NEVER Explanation!

And the Conclusions from this are that our assumptions are certainly NOT sufficient! Reality-as-is contains many other cases we are unaware of, and, they also affect one another, which would greatly complicate the then required processes yet to be implemented.

So, they donít even try!

So-called Physics is NOT what it is claimed to be: it is a SYSTEM for controlling Reality, solely designed to aid Production. 

The Required Revolutionary New Stance

Clearly, we have been well-schooled, in this Wrong Turning, for a very long historical period, and for what always were Very Good Reasons indeed!

You would not criticise a child for not dancing before it could even walk - NOR understand what you were saying before they could even talk!

There have been profound and unavoidable Purely Natural Reasons for the necessary route we have taken, which, if we are Now (and Subsequently) to avoid at least some of the consequent pitfalls, in our future updates upon our methods.

For, the problem emerges entirely from our distorted - yet completely understandable, Early Misconceptions of the True Nature-of-Things!

For, we, ourselves, actually also developed from a Whole Series of Lesser Forms, and many earlier solutions, within our then Primitive Thinking, only had to be close enough to Reality-as-is, to deliver an improved, and hence worthwhile, benefit! This, anyway, has always been the situation for Mankind: for settling upon the ìSupposed Truthî, long before anybody even had the required means to do so absolutely, or even partially! So, it NEVER delivers the required complete-and-wholly-correct Truth as its evidently, arrived-at conclusions.

Let us attempt to address this problem better NOW!

We will still NOT yet arrive at the Complete Truth (for it doesnít yet even ìexistî), BUT, we can eliminate just a few obvious very long-standing ìsupposed truthsî as now completely evident as errors.

The daddy of them all is the belief that The Truth is FIXED!

It isnít.

Indeed, Absolutely Nothing is!

But, it can certainly appear so in stable Systems, for some considerable periods of time, because even with apparently constant random variation, Really Significant Changes will only emerge when that ìseemingly undirected variationî, somehow, finally arrives, surprisingly, and at a Much Better State - and, thereafter, vigorously proliferates the New Form fast!

BUT NO External Judgement of Quality was necessary in this crucial transformation: its own increasing relative success, alone confers that by itself.

This is something like Darwinís notion of Natural Selection, but extending that to all Levels of Reality - all Natural Systems.

So to us, at our Level, , most things either continue to appear Fixed, or in ìGetting-Nowhere Randomnessî seemingly permanently! But, that isnít actually The Full Truth.

Yet, appreciating this, still doesnít indicate, in advance, exactly what Laws are going to emerge. On the contrary, to ensure Current Success, you simply always have to be maximally aware of what Laws seem, ìfor nowî, to be Fixed! But, the scientists who do ONLY that, will unavoidably be caught into getting nowhere, when suddenly a New Law finally does emerge!

So, instead of ONLY Subject-Based-Research: there, surely, has to be also Constant Background Research probing-deeply into the very important Dynamic Development of Laws.

A Final Aspect of this whole Approach, when generally-applied, concerns how the various well-established Laws, being unavoidably radically challenged by this Current Stance, occupied by almost Everybody Else with the argument that it most closely reflects what has been continuing to significantly Change. Laws that were usually considered as Forever Fixed now are more correctly seen as involving Whole Mixtures of Laws, most usually swamped by one that had previously emerged as totally naturally dominant.

This is a rarely appreciated feature of Reality-as-is, which is usually simplified into that which is currently dominant, so when circumstances begin to greatly amplify another element, it seems to have come in from outside of the System, whereas it was always a built-in, though currently suppressed, aspect of Reality-as-is that was therefore always totally hidden and ineffective previously, but in non-conducive condutions. It is clearly an important philosophic feature that was naturally, if mistakenly, assumed as such in the past.

For with the Long Established view determined by both tailored and rigidly maintained Fixed Sets of Contents, along with unchanging Contexts - they are all separately dealt with - each in its own required Context and Content, the resulting Laws, are then coupled with sets of another, Absolutely NEVER arrived-at in a Commonly occurring Situation - and in a Production always applied as part of a sequential Series, with each step in its own ideally necessary and maintained different Context.

So, clearly, that will constitute a wholly Artificial Union, and will never suffice if they were all applied in a singular Common Context - which is, of course, certainly mainly the case in Reality-as-is!

In Conclusion

So, in finnaly assessing what has ultimately been achieved, we must draw some general conclusions, primarily about the most important areas tackled in these essays.

The key objectives were always to deliberately target the absolutely necessary Philosophical Developments, which are particularly difficult when no longer addressing Restricted Contents & Contexts, as we always do in Mathematics: but, instead, approach the Real World-as-is - much of which still remains not only yet to be revealed, but also Explained in any way!

And, that, Iím afraid, is much easier said than done: for an Extremely Important Ser of Reasons:

Reality-as-is is NOT already fixed!

Neither does it change within limits!

It is an Evolutionary System - forever developing to the Wholly New!

So, they were here addressed hopefully to transform the underlying assumptions unavoidably-associated with the usually involved important Ideas and Methods, upon which our current Theories are always based.

But, unlike most Explanations that only ever deliver within Constrained Rationalities (like Mathematics), what we have to deal with is absolutely NEVER finished: for it creates the Wholly New regularly (if infrequently) and requires, instead, an Open-Ended System, integrating the Totally New, BUT also never as an Anything Taken-up Collection. It also has to fit!

But, in doing so, it adds more to have to relate predictably with every new addition! So, it involves a Rationality, which grows, amd though preserving the old, it also adds-in, an affecting, yet mostly conforming, NEW!

How about that for a truly demanding Discipline!? 

This article is taken from Issue 79 of the SHAPE Journal, and is the last in the series of papers called The Systems Theory of Everything.

Issue 79 - The Systems Theory of Everything VI

Read Issue 79 of SHAPE Journal

The last in this series of papers on Jim Schofield's Systems Theory deals with how science needs to move on from a mechanistic understanding of systems and evolution, and finally embrace dialectics.

Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Natural Multi-Factor Interactions

Dialectical Materialist Evolution

Addendum: Emergence and Randomness; Order out of Chaos?

Systems Structures & Top-Down Causalities

A Revolutionary Understanding

The Need for a New Approach to Theory in General

 

Issue 78 - The Systems Theory of Everything IV

Issue 78 of SHAPE Journal now available 

Issue 78 contains the fourth instalment of Jim Schofield's Systems Theory of Everything.

This series of issues attempts to set out the first definitive account of Jim Schofield’s new Systems Approach to Science. The various papers collected here, and over the next few editions of this journal, explore the proposed theory and explain why it is such a radical departure from the current universally applied scientific method. 

The series of papers continues to investigate how Systems and their Laws Emerge and Evolve, and why a Marxist approach is necessary to untangle it all.


Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Empirical Laws within Science

New Emergences and Imposed Calamities

Multi-Level Law and its Evolution

Emergences and Evolution

Mechanisms of Development

Where are the Marxists?

Cause and Law

There is no royal road to science...

 

In the words of Marx: "There is no royal road to science, and only these who do not dread the fatiguing climbs of its steep paths, have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. "Believe me, dear reader, your Karl Marx."

Dr Ranjeet Brar delivers this lecture at a party school on the question of Marxist Philosophy - there is some interesting stuff to unpack here. Looking forward to going into Dr. Brar's ideas in more depth, but certainly some correlation here!

Revolution and Evolution

Real Evolution: The Dialectical Materialist Version

This is the latest in the long series of papers on The Systems Theory of Everything, currently being published in instalments on the SHAPE Journal. The most recent unpublished papers in this series have been, without any doubt, Revolutionary!

And it has taken some two thousand five hundred years of mistaken & Wholly Pluralist Misguidance, to finally announce the Ultimate Demise, and the Impossibility (at least at present), of both a Sound and Developable Truth-Revealing Approach, that will radically transform Human Understanding of all Development.

And, let us be clear, it is not a moment too soon! We need a new Dialectical Materialist Science to understand and deal with rapid changes happening today - both socially and in the natural environment.

The War in Ukraine, similar to many that, for example, the USA regularly indulges-in - without the Whole World System having to be purposely-and-consciously put in Existential Jeopardy - now threatens to be a repeat of the Second World War, when both sides were also Capitalist, and the Capitalist Dominance of the World turned out to be at stake then too.

Now, this will NOT be a primarily Political Paper, but these points are much too important to be ignored, and they will always be regularly addressed when appropriate. But, at this point, the Full and Crucial Replacement of the Millennia-long errors made by Mankind, were clearly, and will be, by far, the most important initial task: so, the arguments arising from abolishing the currently Universal-and-Incorrect Stance, have not yet been by any means sufficiently elaborated - so, let us, at this time, continue with that First & Foremost undertaking, and get what we will more generally require, initially, from the clearly emerging ideas in this set of papers.

For, upon a re-assessment of the currently major mistakes in Science, I am sure that we will reveal, in addition, answers to the more general questions too! And, the Key Area, is surely in correcting our conceptions of the Required Context for any Sound Analysis of Systems undergoing transformation.

Absolutely Nothing will take place, anywhere, unless the required features are available-and-beginning to come across what they will quite naturally combine-with! Indeed, what we now know are vital are the CHAINS of Processes - linked by the Output of one being the necessary Input of the next in the series! And, of course these will never all be happening at the very same time: they simply couldn't do so, as initially they would totally all be entirely separate - distributed singly throughout a relatively unstructured melee.

The trajectory of the subsequent-build, could only be a One-at-a-Time situation! And for the whole CHAIN to be successfully sequentially-acting, would not only take an inordinate length of time to complete the CHAIN, but would be regularly-interrupted and even sometimes prematurely terminated, by adding other links from different potential-partial-CHAINS that were available with the same link, but inappropriate.

Any Outside Observer would confidently only predict just a different kind of Random Chaos resulting for the whole population of Partial Chain potentially available by the same link. And such a conclusion would be correct, and remain so, until by chance after maybe Eons of Time, a favourably functioning Complete Chain was finally executed. But still entirely alone, what could it DO?

Indeed, the answer would surely be Absolutely Nothing, and would remain so, until a different and somehow Complementary Chain also arose, that could connect with the other one, and thereby produce something Absolutely New, with always reproducibly favourable functions!

Now, such seeming miracles have been, and still are, considered Totally Impossible to occur - within the established Thinking of Mankind!  For, within their known World, such situations would just have to be the result of a Supernatural and All-powerful, yet Man-like Director of Absolutely Everything - indeed A GOD!

Order could never actually Emerge out of Total Chaos! All the consonances of Everyday Reality simply must have been arranged-for: how else? Clearly, these remarkable and complex situations, just with Reality alone as the Sole organising Source, and if just left to itself, would perhaps Complicate, but surely never mutually Co-operate! Order couldn't happen purely by Chance!? Surely, the everywhere evident, Direct Contentions would always predominate?

Indeed, the trajectory of Human Development has long been attributed to particularly powerful Men! You have never been able to just sit back and observe Reality, bringing up all things everywhere exactly as is - & carrying you with it, has it? On the contrary, Early Mankind was always lucky-to-survive at all, in a mostly hostile World! And, it appeared to be the actions of particular individuals that changed the odds to every single greater extent that enabled the subsequent rise of Mankind to dominate their environment.

Nature was only very rarely conducive, perhaps initially only in the Eden-like tropical jungles, with their plentiful fruits and shelter from the elements. But the following Open Plains habitat was almost totally devoid of any natural succour for humans, who had to transform into fierce hunters of the Plains Animals, simply in order to survive.

Indeed, conceptions of natural mechanisms of Development, through all the Stages that must have been involved: and particularly the earliest ones - those entirely without Life - have never been really understood!

Yet, it is certainly those, existing at the Base of all subsequent processes, which have always been the Real Productive Drivers of Absolutely All Development!

Let's make it Crystal Clear.

We have to explain the earliest Pre Life Developments, that enabled everything that happened subsequently - including the Origin of Life itself!

Where are the Marxists??

And why we need interdisciplinary Marxist Theory NOW

In this profound period of mounting crises, the self-professed Pro-Working-Class" Marxists, can, it appears, no longer see the woods for the trees!

The very long trajectory of Working Class Politics - from the remarkable Revelations of Karl Marx - to the disappointing political situation we find ourselves in today - has apparently arrived at what seems to be a General Terminal Denouement, with the Climate Crisis and the Ever-Mounting War in Ukraine!

The Soviet Union has long since fallen and China, while purportedly still a Communist State, quietly and undemonstratively chases trade with a still Capitalist Rest-of-the-World, as the Sole Policy for its People. The Socialist Perspective seems to have no place to go!

The World has changed radically to become more like the situation in 1939, when a Nazi-ruled Germany invaded Poland. A new World War is increasingly highly possible now, just as occurred then, but though at that time Britain still had a powerful World Empire, and the Prior Economic Crisis Worldwide was finally fading in a seemingly general recovery.

But NOW there is a Gigantic World Economic Crisis brewing, while both the West, as well as the Hawks in Russia, are itching for a New World War, to supposedly solve the Economic and Political Problems facing the Capitalist Class, along with "The Fruits of Victory", BUT WITHOUT the necessary wherewithal to sustain it, especially as such a Conflict will inevitably vastly speed-up a truly enormous Multi-Sided Cataclysm - not only Economically, but unavoidably also coupled with the mounting Climate Catastrophe too.

And the powers-that-be are already well aware of that eventuality, but because of it, they undoubtedly need to vastly consolidate their Positions and Strength, and to do it while the Working Class still have absolutely NO effective Trades Unions, and NO Revolutionary Parties to lead them in precipitating the necessary Revolution!

For the inevitably coming Crises will certainly change the state of play dramatically! And the Automation that has seemingly replaced the Work Force in much Production, will not mend itself when their minders and fixers are flocking into the Newly Growing Unions, and the rejuvenation of True Marxist Revolutionary Parties of the Working Class begin to grow like Topsy!

The current "seemingly insane" drives of the Ruling Classes demonstrate their obvious realisation of what is increasingly inevitable, and if unprepared-for, could result in their Demise! A Victorious and well-equipped professional Army would be necessary to defeat a rampant Working Class - as the Nazis proved in Germany, after World War One.

The Restricted War, which Putin is waging, doesn't suit the opposing Countries, and today there is evidence that powerful interests in Russia itself feel the same: Remember their Working Class lived in a Socialist country for 74 years before the Victory of the Capitalist Oligarchs. They too will flood-into Working Class Parties when they are necessarily strongly repressed from above!

Russia's army in Ukraine

And who might then be waiting in the wings - China!

(and why is China currently having to deal with a new virulent form of COVID after they dealt so effectively with it when it first emerged? Can you guess how it arrived?)

Now, you would think that there are enough regular commentators around, who call themseves "Marxists" to work on some sort of strategy - but there are in fact literally none who explain things the way I have done here, and what is more, they hardly mention the increasingly important and rapidly changing Contexts, for what is clearly developing totally unhindered!

Yet it had always been the strength of Real Committed Marxists that they also always situate developments in the Delivering Contexts, as they in the end, often, deliver the more unusual consequences! And, the reason for this, is that in them, and even their evident absences within most others:  they have a particular set of preferred outcomes which they strongly signal, while ignoring those that they would rather didn't happen!

Now Richard Wolff is a celebrated "Marxist", but I could find No Trace of a pro Working Class Stance in his comments upon the War in The Ukraine. And a Prior analysis of the way things were developing in the Context involved, should have been what he established FIRST!

As has become increasingly clear, Thinkers upon these matters are always too Single-Discipline based to arrive at a Real Marxist Analysis. They find the same things Marx discovered in History, BUT only within their own Specialist Areas!

And that is never enough!

To cope with the problems of today, both the actual pertetrators AND those seeking Objective Solutions, DID it with their Subject-Blinkers on! And, because of the unavoidable biases involved in both approaches, the problems were NEVER solved, either by the Capitalists in charge, or adequately addressed by the Discipline-limited "professed Marxists"!

For, the cricial limitations of ALL Restricted Approaches, is that by so doing, only a cut-down version of the presently-existing-situation, which occupies ONLY a Single Level within Reality-as-is, will actually deliver a finite solution, BUT always limited to that Precise Context alone.

This relation within a Limited Context and its associated useable Rationalities, is, of course, the root if the Problem - and gives the illusion of" Absolute Truth!" But it certainly isn't so! And we must say Why!

The reason is that these Restricted Situations were in the earlier Evolution of Reality-as-is Absolutely Correct: BUT then ceased to be so as New and Different Levels emerged that changed things fundamentally. Yet these were add-ons at Different New Levels, so the old version could even then be taken as an Approximation to the Modified Current Truth.

Needless to say, this always confused early Thinkers, when it was finally updated, and they didn't for a long time realise the Division of Absolute Truth over Several Levels! They didn't even see the Levels, but instead interpreted them as Different Disciplines!

Clearly, the whole range of commentators of the current increasingly critical situation, are, whether supporters of the Status quo, OR perhaps surprisingly, even any avowed "Marxist" Critics - they are all, nevertheless still very far from capable of fulfilling their various, intended, and supposedly-opposite objectives - as both of these opposing groups never really address the problems caused in any way that could lead to a sound resolution.

The once reliable trust that could be put in the Marxian Socialists, is, I'm afraid, more or less dissipated by their current inability to both explain and then direct arrived-at solutions, to what will undoubtedly be inflicted upon us, in the coming period!

And, the reasons for the failures of both intensions of the perpetrators, and the inflicted-upon recipients of what has been delivered, wrongly characterise what was actually involved, and where it would lead! The Perpetrators know only what they can do, and that isn't enough to accurately know what effects it will have! While the recipients using extracted Laws taken from wrongly conceptually considered remedial actions, which, therefore, don't get the expected effects right either!

Both sides use Laws extracted in only partly defined ways, for the recipients, and based upon a very different prior experience, by the perpetrators. For in both sets if actions, Wholly New Emergences, when they will happen for the very first time, are absolutely NEVER predictable: so, what will happen is unknowable!

And, because of a multiplicity of these events, there will be NOT a single outcome, but a range of possible outcomes with different probabilities of each happening!

Now, where have we seen this before? Is it not in Quantum Theory?

And, at this stage of the Mess wrought by a rampant, blinkered Capitalism, the Significant Damages to the Environment, and its resiliance-to-recover from such things, has, by now, gone TOO FAR, and Significant Climate Change is already knocking at the door, simultaneously with such a destruction of its means to recover, that a Major Calamity appears unavoidable.

For the Working Class to re-arm with the very latest Developments in Understanding such Situations AND, of course, intervene in them, there is still much to be done!!

Indeed, without the Significant Extention of what Marx brilliantly initiated, and Lenin further developed, of the profound theoretical basis - we have no way of Understanding the complex dynamic Systems and multiple levels involved. Yet this vital theory could not be both further, adequately and necessarily developed, without the current conscious extensions of these ideas into All The Sciences that Marx and Lenin had never addressed - and are NOW being so-extended by this theorist!

The lack that these omissions inflicted upon this Important Body of Theory, is clearly indicated by the oft applied appellation of the term "Scientific Socialism" to Marxism, which is most certainly Untrue, as neither Marx or Lenin, nor anyone else, ever criticised the means and methods of Science from the correct Dialectical Materialist base to, for the very first time, establish such Laws from a philosophical standpoint - as a Socialist Science!

For Science - as was, could never be competent as a basis for that Fundamental Philosophical Stance. And even before this New Turn, the old Causal Laws, so achieved, were regularly added to, by supposedly New Purely Empirical Laws - with Absolutely NO Causal Explanations evidently possible for them.

All attempts to discover such interpretations met with Total Failure, and this caused most physicists great difficulties - for they profoundly believed that all such Laws MUST have Causal Explanations. But, the Positivists Henri Poincare and Ernst Mach insisted that these Empirical Laws should be given equal status with the preferred Causal Laws, within their Empirio Criticism Approach. And though this, at the time, was rejected, the following vast increase in these Empirical Laws, in the Sub Atomic Realm, persuaded the majority of physicists to agree: it rapidly became the norm for all Science!

Jim Schofield's work on Marxist Systems Theory

The Systems Theory of Everything

And, it was only recently, that the Emergence of what is termed Systems Theory proved that Causal Explanations were indeed possible, but NOT residing at the very same Level: for as they were associated ONLY with Systems-of-these-Processes, they were situated at the higher Level of Systems modifications!

Indeed, all of the Sciences were shot through with these systems modifications: reductionist Science was NOT the reliable basis that it used to be assumed to be!

Indeed, the Systems modifications turned out to be many and various and torpedoed the long resorted-to assumption that the tiniest causal relations just were the same but multiplied-up in all bulk situations.

It just isn't true!

AND, most important of all: without the full addressing of ALL the interactions in all bulk situations, the very Natural Stabilities that occur and their Tumultuous Collapses - particularly in Revolutions - will Absolutely Never be understood.

Indeed, even more generally an Important Turn has finally actually been initiated, that had been a very long time in getting to the stage, when Explanatory Theories, across-the-board, could finally deal with their long disabling restrictions, and become more generally applicable!

Marxists must now embrace a holistic Systems approach if they are to deal with any of the problems facing us as a species today. 

Leeds Marxist Society on the Parkinson steps, University of Leeds

Systems-based Marxism

Hinting at a New Philosophy for both Science and Politics

There will be many who vigorously reject how the last essay in this important series ended, with Lenin standing on the rostrum of the All Russia Congress of Soviets, declaring “We shall now construct The Socialist Order!” I’m sure this radical and polemical tone will put many off what I have to say about Science.

Lenin has always been a divisive figure, but he had long understood the real universal significance of Dialectical Materialism - the most remarkable and indeed revolutionary contribution of Karl Marx. For, though Marx had never taken the crucial step of congenitally extending his profound philosophcial contributions into The Sciences, Lenin, did indeed know better!

For, very much earlier in the 20th century than the Russian Revolution, Lenin had himself, via his own brilliant book Materialism and Empirio Criticism, taken on the crucial task of debunking the contributions of Henri Poincare and Ernst Mach, the physicists who had insisted in their own version of Positivism, in which all the aspects of Physics which relied solely upon empirical evidence alone, with NO associated attempts at Explanation, should be given the Exact Same Weight and Status as the very different Causally Explained Laws, which always included full associated Explanations!

And, it was this undoubted major retreat, that finally “opened the door” to both Relativity and Quantum Theory, which were clearly “legitimised” if the claims of the positivists, were right!

When I arrived at University as a first year Physics student in 1958, I was immediately totally aghast, at literally everything my Physics Lecturers “taught”, who never made any attempt to Explain Anything: they merely gave empirical evidence and coupled it with the New clearly Positivist Stance, along with sophisticated Mathematics, which to them was wholly sufficient. But it wasn’t enough for me!

At school I had always been branded “the gifted mathematician”, who could “do it all” in that discipline. I had obtained 4 different “A” Levels in Mathematics, along with 3 others at the same Level. I had always found Mathematics very easy, and I was similarly successful in all of my subsequent three years of Mathematics at University! BUT, I had chosen Physics as my main subject there - because, it alone had always attempted to Explain Reality! I had eagerly looked forward to the much higher standard of Explanation that I thought I would get at University: but it turned out to be abysmal.

I endeavoured to get explanations, but the lecturers were never available - there were, after all, almost 100 students in my year, so such individual attention was NEVER available. We did, however, have access to post graduate Demonstrators, but they just dismissed my questions with “Is the Mathematics too difficult for you?”. And, at my insistence that it wasn’t that I couldn’d “do the math”, so, could they show me the required Explanations for why the Mathematics worked: they soon got angry, and, of course, always had the support of the other students present!

So, I took to long periods in the excellent University Library, but there was nothing available in the Physics Section that could give me answers. So I switched to Philosophy instead, and there I very quickly found Lenin’s aforementioned book on Physics.

I thought I had found the answer, but nobody on my Physics course wanted to know! So, I joined the Communist Party to try and find out more about Lenin’s work. But even there, I never found a single person who would even discuss it with me. So, I continued to seek more answers in Marxist literature, but Lenin’s Book was all I found there!

And all the other self-proclained Marxist tendencies were no better. Politics and Science, it seemed, were mutually incompatible (or taken together, appeared to be beyond any single consistent understanding).

But clearly, in the way that such Marxists seemed to argue, they always insisted that they were being “very scientific!” Clearly, what was being called “scientific” in their “Reasoning” was definitely something else! It appeared to involve only the Mathematical Rationality of the Greeks, along with most modern scientists, that is, of course, not-at-all Holistic, but definitely merely Pluralistic, involving exclusively Fixed Laws, due to the artificially imposed restrictions upon ALL of their studied Situations.

Literally all such “reasoning” was erroneous, as Marx’s criticisms of most reasoning tried hard to dispel - but, with Marx himself being an Historian and Philosopher, he did not comprehensively identify and codemn the still-remaining Plurality, as such, so he too was unaware of the still involved and numerous False Bases still used almost universally in most Consequent Reasoning.

Lenin’s crucial lesson, in his valuable book, was NOT yet integrated, as it should have been by then, into an appropriately revised Modern Dialectical Materialism.

He had been on his own in genuinely developing Marx’s work. It was, therefore, no surprise, on many subsequent key occasions, that Lenin, wholly alone, managed to correctly interpret dynamic situations, as were regularly proved correct by subsequent actual developments! Just telling everyone Newly Discerned Truths is never enough: they have, also, to realise why they usually got things wrong! Lenin, himself, always had his finger upon the true pulse of the Developing Revolution, and within the White Heat of constant, incipient Change, he was effectively forced to insist upon his arrived at analyses - there was no time for Education Classes!

But Lenin was no dictator: his credentials were always being confirmed by Events. While, far inferior leaders, like Stalin, also insisted upon their required conclusions! They seemed on the face of it to be like Lenin’s style of conclusions, but, in fact, they never ever were! And, with Lenin’s tragic and premature death, the most valuable link to the most developed Marxism was lost!

In a long career in Revolutionary Poltics, I rapidly achieved leadership positions, but was never, at that time, really educated into appreciating Lenin’s Developments in Marxism: so, I too suffered from the usual inadequacies. Indeed, only in retirement did I have the time to study Lenin’s methods properly. And, without the vital revelations of Modern Systems Theory I would not have cracked it yet!

For, so-called Science still was wholly restricted to the Bottom-Up Approach, which was supposed to reductively explain All Causality - but instead it was only by what happened at the Atomic and Molecular Level (initially only dealt with in Chemistry, but, thereafter, presumed to determine everything in all other Higher Levels too), and nothing created above that Level was considered to be Causally important, at all. But, that was obviously wholly incorrect, and many Levels both above and below the one in question are always causally-active - though involving Bottom-Up Causalities, actually only occurring within the Levels, BUT then delivering consequent Top-Down Causalities which were active Between the Levels!

And, such an Approach necessarily omitted all the significant Changes occurring in transforming Development, which are, therefore, NEVER predictable in advance of them actually happening (a vital aspect of all Bottom-Up Causality): for they alone deliver the Wholly New - such as Life, Man, Thinking and even Social Revolutions.

As they didn’t even exist before: they are clearly created for the very first time, along with and within the Wholly New Development!

You can see the difficulty here for Holistic Politicians - for they can never promise beforehand, all the anticipated and fought-for Revolutionary Gains! What they actually deliver, are always solely the consequences of the effective creative actions, which more than anything else equips Mankind to make the future, even though all they can say is that it will be better than the the System before.

Now, all the teaching I encountered in all of my own Education, as well as in every single post I obtained, as an educator myself, whether in Schools, Colleges or Universities, had everything generally still clinging to the established Pluralist Stance, in all the scientific subjects I had to teach.

And, of course, no developmental conceptions were even possible: for that stance could never actually explain any Real Qualitative Change! So, there was no such thing as the Emergence of the Wholly New; all Laws were necessarily Fixed, and, to ensure this, all experiments had to be severely restricted and rigidly controlled, so that the Laws - thereby revealed - would conform to the unavoidably involved agenda!

The Real Laws of Reality-as-is were never addressed, during six decades spent in Science Education!

Now, let us be crystal clear in this assessment, Plurality works very well for many things, which is why it is rarely if ever questioned - it works perfectly for Technology and seemlessly for Production, because we can rigidly control all of the Systems involved.

BUT, surely the crucial purpose of Science is not to merely make things but to Understand the Natural World, Understand the many Systems we don’t or can’t control, and to Understand Real World Causality. With Plurality that was impossible to ever achieve!

So, a Theoretical Explanation of exactly WHY things happened as they did could never be revealed by the usual scientific methods! And, of course, there were consequences for this dominant Philosophical Stance throughout the other major areas of Study too, such as History, Philosophy and, of course, Politics.

For, everything undoubtedy evolves, and the dynamics of all their changes are unobtainable with the usual Pluralist prejudices severely distorting All Real Qualitative Development!

And we need to Understand how Natural Systems evolve now, more than ever. We need to Understand how and why they fail... by far and away the most devastating avalanches of so-called Natural Crises, are now, all over the place, due increasingly to the many decisions that are attempts to solve other problems we don’t really understand, but actually only accelerate the speed of Natural Threats that, instead of being under our control, are now swooping headlong towards unstoppable disaster.

The most obvious of these problems is Climate Change - which is already very close to terminally undermining many of the Actively Balanced Systems of importantly maintained and life-preserving Stabilities, on which the Level of Human Civilization relies.

While, elsewhere the urgent push for ever higher profits, in order to allay possible economic collapse, is also simultaneously undermining the need for the better safety measures needed to deal with Climate Changes’s many damaging affects - such as flooding and pollution.

Attempts to balance the economic system without a working Systems Theory causes unforeseen problems at all different Social Levels. For example, over-zealous cuts in safety-measures within Maternity Hospitals in Shropshire, led to delays in essential Ceasarian Sections in problem Births, and the avoidable deaths of several babies.

And, of course, let us not forget the Covid Pandemic - which was very badly handled by pro Capitalist Governments the world over, and which inevitably led to thousands of deaths of old and infirm people! But you see, doing what was right for the majority of People was no good for Profits and an Economic System reliant on perpetual growth - so that largely determined Government policies including a rush to return to maximal profit making - much too soon. And the effect upon the Care Systems for the old, infirm and disabled not only made it widely inadequate, but also drove many of the very best carers to despair, and an increasing number of exits from that profession, into less upsetting and exploitative alternatives.

This is just one example of the many labour shortages caused by criminal mismanagement of the economic system during this period.

Sadly modern Marxists have no answers to any of these problems either. It is vital that we now take a Holistic and Materialist Systems Approach to both Science and Politics, before it is too late, and these life support systems collapse for good.

This short essay is taken from Issue 77 of SHAPE Journal - The Systems Theory of Everything II - It is also available on ResearchGate. 

Issue 77: The Systems Theory of Everything Part II

 

Issue 77 of SHAPE Journal

Issue 77 contains the second instalment of The Systems Theory of Everything.

This series of issues attempts to set out the first definitive account of Jim Schofield’s new Systems Approach to Science. The various papers collected here, and over the next few editions of this journal, explore the proposed theory and explain why it is such a radical departure from the current universally applied scientific method.

The series continues with a closer look at Buddha, Marx, Hegel and Zeno for clues on how to develop Systems Theory.

Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Real Messy Development
Top-Down or Bottom-Up?

Reality-as-becoming:
The Two-Way Street of Real Full Causality

Beyond Zeno and Hegel:
The Profound Significance of Contention

The Buddha and Quantum Theory

A Comprehensive Holist Approach:
How can we effectively deal with Levels?

Systems Contentions

Systems-based Marxism

Equations: Why they lead us to nothing...

Entering the Multi-Level Cosmos

Issue 76: Development

Read Issue 76 of SHAPE Journal

...

This edition looks at evolutionary development, but certainly not in the usual and expected ways. Jim Schofield's new Systems Approach to Science reconfigures how we think about how both natural and social systems change over time.

From the revolutionary tool use of Early Man, to the problems of solving Climate Change today, from the mysteries of Sub-atomic Physics to the unknown Origin of Life on Earth, this discursive series of essays plots a path through the many flaws in current Human Understanding, to reveal the vital need to appreciate systems holistically for the first time.

Revolution and Emergence are just as important to understanding Life's development, as genetics and incremental Evolution. How do such vast systems become stable in the first place, what finally makes them collapse, and how does that process lead to the Wholly New?

The initial conceptions by Human Beings, as with all the other simultaneously-existing living-creatures, assumed the Constancy of their Common World - and this intial assumption, in the Sole Case of Mankind alone, was then increasingly challenged, by their own, if initially meagre, sucesses in dealing with that World.

Now, such real developments, that were achieved, did not ever come easily, so there was nothing automatic about our progression. Indeed, it was also clear that they were difficult to “get right”, and Reality-as-is, was also definitely composed of multiple features, some of which seemed Contradictory...

Invisible Media

Substrate Theory proposes that an invisible medium of Leptons permeates all known space - a Materialist and Holistic explanation for all of the strange phenomena at the Quantum level, that somehow seems to lack accessible Causality. Here we begin to consider whether such Invisible Media could be operating at other Levels of Reality too.

Recent work designed to reveal the full, and yet often hidden motive forces within Reality-as-is, has begun to founder, upon certain important Effects, seemingly without evident Cause. In Sub Atomic Physics, they were the latest excuse for theorists to drift ever deeper into an out-and-out Positivism, by substituting purely-descritive Mathematical Formulae instead of Causal Explanations!

Indeed, actual Causal Chains have been traced downwards through increasingly evident, yet relatively-independent, Hierarchical Layers involving multiple, diverse Effects, and their often Unknown or unavailable Causes, until, finally, an Invisible Wall appears to totally halt that process! And, which, therefore, effectively permanently terminates these investigations, and, indeed, stops-dead in continuing to supply both the culprits and their actual physical Effects: the investigations seem to encounter a Final Limit - as an evident inability to reveal exactly what needs to be changed further, in our descriptions and explanatoions, to fully deliver an adequate theory of the event.

Of course, much of this can be put down to loudly trumpeted misdirections by those who benefit most from such terminating advice to any campaigning oppositionists to the current Status Quo. But, not everything is down solely to such imposed difficulties!

Indeed, many of them seem to boil down to incomplete and hence wrong-and-misleading usually generally- accepted definitions, and consequent “Wrong Theories”, by supposedly independent, or even seemingly fully- committed and serious prior researchers. Even the “experts” on our side can be the unwitting culprits.

It is always worth remembering that we do not have totally unhindered access to Reality-as-is! It is always insufficient and structured in the the easiest-to-grasp- way, due frequently to historically effective precidents. And these established ideas, as well as their clearly useful side, are also-and-inevitably misleading, when confronted with the Wholly New!

But, recent extensive investigations in entirely new approachess (by this reaearcher) have begun to uncover wholly new definitions of previously-unknown, active causal elements, which seem to quite wrongly prematurely terminate investigations, as being incapable of further necessary revelations, as the currently involved elements appear to have exhausted all possibility for further change. And this is not the usual kind of added contribution, as it is subtractive rather than additional.

And, the reasons for these premature terminations seem to reside elsewhere in an extended overall set of limitations, only now making themselves felt, additional to the previously supposed only important causal factors.

And these are NOT, as you might think, as being due to purposely ommitted factors built into the usual inadequate definitions, but instead, actually due to a running-out-of-possubilities, due alternatively to wholly Invisible factors, that have become so, caused by the wholly Pluralistic-and-hence-truncated definitions, instead of the Real and much more widely-defined Holistic definitions, which alone can enable certain factors, entirely from outside-of the usual, to both change, and even, sometimes, switch to different, and even Wholly Opposite properties, when the conditions pass certain significant thresholds elsewhere.

The actual Hierarchy of related Levels is not considered!

These occur because apart from embedded effects, due to the presence of certain agents - for in a truly Holistic World, collections of mutually-affecting factors can be simultaneously present, but usually in most circumstances only allowing a limited selection of possibilities, but can, if an unusual mix is arrived at, which implements the exact opposite of what had previously seemed to be always the same, and also delivering a very different outcome.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the Multi- Layered-Hierarchy of the semi-independent layers of causality is NEVER usually considered, and that is precisely when the causality originates in a usually correctly ignored Layer, so that the New Cause seems to come from Nowhere!

The Invisble Walls can be breached and Explanations from without are validly brought in!

NOTE: Inklings of such events were seen millennia ago by Zeno of Elea, and formalised very much later within Hegel’s Dialectics, but a systematic revelation required the revolutionary changes implemented by Karl Marx in his own Dialectical Materialism, which he predicated on his new Holistic and Materialist approach to History!

Indeed, the very essence to Holist Situations involving a number of interacting and mutually-affecting factors, is, first, that they don’t merely add-up, but, acutally to widely-varying degrees affect outcomes, and even in rare cases flip to the exact opoosite of what pertained in seemingly all other cases!

NOTE: In the classic “if-then” clause in Programming, not only is there no Causal Reason ever given for the usual outcomes considered without any full explanation, but the third option (evident if the elsewhere factors are considered), actually adds adds “neither” as another outcome, which can also actually terminate a causal sequence also, with no-one being the wiser!

And this was previously taken to be a totally unchangeable thing, but, in fact, in this precise context, at least, could only flip to the opposite.

And this takes Holist Studies into a wholly new and usually totally unanticipated realm, which I have termed Systems Approach Processes, opening-up vastly extended, if also, rare ranges of options that initially are always deemed impossible!

This paper is taken from the latest issue of SHAPE Journal on Holism and Subatomic Physics (Special 75)

 

Issue 75: The Origin of Systems

The Origin of Systems 

by Jim Schofield

Issue 75 Editorial:

The Origin of Systems is a new series of papers by philosopher Jim Schofield, exploring several options for a complete overhaul of both Science and Materialist Dialectics.

We must turn our efforts to the holistic study of complex systems and what Schofield calls “Systems Effects” via the “Systems Approach”, if we’re to turn a corner in our understanding and finally break free from the shackles of reductionist Pluralist thinking.

It soon becomes apparent that we know very little about how natural systems actually come to be, how they evolve over time, what keeps them going over hundreds or even millions of years, and what finally precipitates their collapse. Only a Holist approach stands a chance of answering these vital questions about Reality.

And as the vast systems of Capitalism and our Global Climate begin to collapse, a Holistic understanding of Systems in general, will become vital for our survival as a species.

As Schofield writes in this issue: “Our so-called Explanations, are often far from the mark, due to their being totally unaware of the Real Full Processes of Development, behind Reality. And this leads to many mistaken conclusions, rarely addressing the absolutely vital, self-made and inevitable mounting Crises of our remarkable History, in all its causes, both positive and increasingly dangerous! So without, the Key Revolution in Real Understanding, that we await, this remarkable Development, this unfathomable work of the Evolution of Matter - culminating here in us, in Human Beings, and in this society - could easily end in an existential catastrophe.”

The Origin of Systems, as a piece of theoretical writing, is extremely ambitious in scope, but ambition is certainly needed now, when a Revolution in how we think, is needed for our survival.

Art Director’s note - Tomás Saraceno

This month’s issue deals with the complexity and interconnectedness of natural systems, and our worrying inability to understand them through current scientific methods. As always in SHAPE Journal, we try and chose the work of great and thought-provoking artists to accompany the theory text, not to illustrate the ideas discussed obviously or directly, but to form a parallel but relevant narrative on the core concepts involved.

For The Origin of Systems we chose the work of installation artist Tomás Saraceno. He originally trained as an architect, and his intricate and immersive works seem to literally build bridges between science and art. Saraceno certainly sees the Earth as a complicated and vast system, we must try and understand, describing it as “the fastest vehicle that ever existed”. His work is concerned about the threat to natural environments and ecosystems, also taking inspiration from neural communication networks, origin theories, sub atomic physics and spiders.

Read Issue 75 of SHAPE Journal here... 

Process, Context and Recursion II

Pas de Deux (1968) Norman McLaren

BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND MOVEMENT AND CHANGE

Carrying on from the prior papers in this series, I will further establish the System Nature of a Holistic Science, as applied to the Study of Creative Dance Performance and Choreography. The last 30 years of Research in this area, has also, surprisingly, enabled me to make this contribution, both there, and for Holistic Science in General!

I, of course, did the majority of this work in tandem with another researcher, the excellent Dr. Jacqueline Smith-Autard (Jackie), perhaps the leading expert in such studies in the World. She was the dance education specialist in the relationship, so please forgive my total concentration upon the Philosophical, Scientific and Computing questions involved, based upon a long professional life in these areas, mostly in Higher Education. 

Crucially, this research into Dance, and the difficulties of analysing movement using video, led me to fully appreciate the philosophical importance of Zeno of Elea, beyond his paradoxes of movement (the dialectic of continuity and discreetness) and to the importance of the Whole and the Part - and a fundamental critique of all Reductionism. 

I terminated, the immediately prior paper undoubtedly somewhat prematurely, in the midst of beginning to establish a wholly new Holistic Approach to the Sciences, certainly only now made possible by the extensive work with Jackie in Dance Research. But also, very clearly, this was too important a contribution to be tacked on to the end of what was really only a Basic Introduction, to a turn to a major new topic, so it was clear that a dedicated separate paper would be necessary to initiate such a Major Undertaking!

But, I feel that I must also make clear, that I had spent many years aiding researchers with computer solutions, in a whole wide range of Disciplines, from Physics and Engineering to Biology, before I was enchanted by Jackie's unique requirements for Dance. My own original areas, from where I started these kinds of interdisciplinary studies, were in my original specialisms of Physics and Mathematics, terminating finally in Higher Education in a major change to both Developing Operating Systems, and ultimately Directing Computer Services in two Colleges - latterly one that was part of London University (Goldsmiths).

In an earlier Higher Education post, I had established a unique Supporting Service for Researchers across many different Disciplines in a Scottish University, and had soon been forced to go well beyond the Total Plurality of my core Subjects, in order to solve a whole new range of problems that they were encountering. The complete abandonment of actually Explaining Qualitative Changes, which dominated literally all Current Research, forced me to daily address the often terminating anomalies within most Disciplines, and attempt a consequent General Turn to Holism!

And, as I was finally realising, towards the end of that prior paper, the Determining Systemic Nature of Holism, would have to be comprehensively established as an essential prerequisite to any attempt at a Real Developable Analysis of Change, which undoubtedly require an Epoch-Making shift in literally all current research methods. The usually assumed Total Independence of Single Natural Laws, was clearly untrue, and the usual way of eliminating those effects - by severely restricting the Scope of Investigative Experiments, merely threw all these crucial effects away, which involved the assuming of greatly more complex situations, that could be achieved by the mere summation of Eternally Fixed Laws.

They never can!

And, in addition, the Pluralists believed that the Laws found by their methods were exactly the same when multiples of such Laws were acting simultaneously.

That also isn't true!

Simultaneously-acting Laws always adjust one another to greater or lesser degrees, in ways that wholly Pluralist Methods will never Reveal. So these Holistic mechanisms have to be clearly revealed: thereafter determining exactly HOW production should be both implemented and controlled.

Or, alternatively, were there any naturally-occurring Stabilities, very different to those that occur in manmade Pluralistic Experiments, that actually are part of literally all Holistic Situations, and could be effectively and soundly used, as part of a more complex on-going System? The answer turned out to be "Yes!".

But, it was discovered by the historian Karl Marx, in a very different area, well-hidden within the Key Explosive and Emergent Happenings within every successful Social Revolution. For, such cataclysmic Events were considered "un-analysable", until Marx revealed that they were perhaps the only periods of substantial change, anywhere in Reality-as-is, that took place at a tempo that Humans could possibly apprehend and understand - primarily because, there alone, the Processes of History were entirely brought about by the actions of Human Beings themselves! Marx was not able to explain the apparent Stability of those slower processes of History, which for very long periods appeared to be steadfastly Stable and Unchanging. But, within a Revolution, the Maintainers of Stability totally collapse, and concerted actions by motivated groups of ordinary people, COULD bring about Significant Systemic Change!

However, in passing, such Events also revealed the seemingly permanent Stabilities all around, which resolutely maintain the Status Quo, for often vast periods of time, but, in fact, though strongly maintained as such, were happening in a Holist World, and could therefore, in the end, certainly be terminated.

These long-existing, self-maintaining Interludes, were clearly what we are looking for, being wholly naturally established and then maintained, but, nevertheless, only as Temporary Stabilities, possibly delivering Real interludes of Stability, via which a means of Holistic Rationality could be temporarily established and used, and naturally demolished when no longer applicable.

Clearly, for this to be the case, the composition, and self-maintenance of these Temporary Stabilities must be explained! Indeed, something both flexible and persistent must, on the one hand, be capable of mostly re-establishing the prior Stability, in a wide variety of possible undermining disturbances: AND also eminently capable of re-establishing conformability, to a new stability of outcomes.

Now this is by no means easy: but the best clue to a solution seems to reside in Diametrically Opposite Processes, which Zeno (of old) certainly noticed, and the idealist philosopher Hegel, organised into a varying system, in which these could deliver one outcome, or its direct opposite, and could, it has more recently been revealed (in my Substrate Theory of Physics, for example), give absolutely NO OUTCOME at all, as they exactly cancel each other out!

And, it has become clear, that in the sequences of consequently-enabled processes, they could, indeed, be terminated prematurely by such exact and final cancellations.

Yet, we are still a very long way from explaining the long-persistence of many such Temporary Stabilities, routinely mistaken for permanent or eternal features! We must also reveal their unusual-but-necessary compositions.

And, a possible solution to this might be if the Total Contents of a Temporary Stability was perhaps composed of multiple Balanced Stable collections of paired opposing processes, which, with a relatively minor damage could recover any undermining, by eliciting opposing changes in one area, to effectively Cancel-Out any damages inflicted in another: though both of which were somehow initiated from the very same external incursion, but in bringing about thereby opposing, balancing effects.

Now, as far as I have been able to discover, literally NO theoretical or experimental work has been undertaken in this vital area.

Something must be first causing such balances, and then, at least most of the time, maintaining them. What Stabilities there are, cannot have been already, and permanently resolved by magic, but somehow form into a naturally-arrived-at balance, and the consequent maintenance of a situation, instead of a never-ending constant slide towards Chaos!

Now, what has emerged, which could throw some light upon this problem, is the "calming nature" of constantly-repeating Cycles of Processes - which seem to be abundant literally Everywhere - and at all levels of Reality. 

And another similarly acting process, seems to be a consequence of multiple, simultaneous and different active processes, which seem to selectively change the overall composition into a more permanent mix over time. Possible causes such as Selective Elimination seem to be possible, but have nowhere been experimentally established.

And perhaps the usual reasoning, discounting such possibilities, is based upon a belief in Forever Fixed Natural Law, on the one hand, BUT, contrastingly, Evolutionary Change on the other!

Now, in a recently recorded coversation with Gareth Samuel, Eric Lerner explained the natural processes of a regularly concentrating Plasma Stream, in terms of an analogy with Road Traffic. In his case, he was explaining the sudden appearance of heat, by comparing a prior self-organised, one-way traffic flow, within a multi-lane road, to an unorganised mix of traffic going in all different directions, on a single-lane road, causing multiple collisions, and hence changing KE into an increase in heat! And, of course, both modes were natural, but caused by changing concentrating circumstances.

So, I am inclined to believe, that the processes I am considering could be analogous, and could in a similar way self-organise into optimum flows dynamically, for most of the time, only to be transformed then, by a rare change in the prevalent conditions.