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 The most recent unpublished papers in this series have been, without any doubt, Revolutionary!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!

Special Issue 75: Holism and Subatomic Physics

Read Special Issue 75

This edition continues this journal's exploration of a nascent Holist Science.

Though I have been approaching the mysteries of the Subatomic world for a very long time (see Substrate Theory and The Theory of the Double Slit) - I now must tackle the many anomalies of this area of Physics, Philosophically, to have any chance of establishing a new Holist approach, before Physics effectively destroys itself, with its increasingly generated contradictions.

These papers bring together findings from Substrate Theory, The Theory of Emergences and the new Systems Approach to Science, to make the case for using Dialectics in Physics and the search for further "Invisible Media" across the Sciences.

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... 

Special Issue 73: The Holistic Engines

Read Special Issue 73

This is the third edition in a new series on Holist Science, and how it must differ from Pluralist methodologies, if it is to truly revolutionise the discipline, and move it past its many current impasses. 

The Holistic Engines examines how change happens in natural situations - how Science fails to grasp dynamic causalities at multiple levels of Reality, and how it must now embrace a new augmented Dialectical Materialism, if it is going to begin to deal with Reality outside of its complete formalisation in Mathematics and Technology.

Art Director's note:

The importance of Abstraction to Holism and Dialectics, has been reflected visually, in the series thus far, through the use of Russian Constructivism as illustration, and the development of those ideas in proto graphic design and art from the Bauhaus.

However, what is missing from this influential Abstract art, is similar to what is missing from the Pluralist Abstraction that Schofield criticises in his Philosophy of Science. Both of these forms of Abstraction lack any real dynamic content, or the ability to represent change and evolution as we see it occuring in the Natural World. For this reason these Abstractions, while sometimes revealing, and formally very satifying, can sometimes seem lifeless and cold, or overly simplifying.

For this issue, which looks specifically at how Holistic Dialectics could address the real engines of change, we have looked to another, more dynamic form of Abstraction, and a key precursor to Constructivism, for many of the illustrations: Russian Futurism. Unlike Italian Futurism, which was closely related to Fascism at the time, the Russian version was primarily influeced by Cubism, and many of these Futurists went on to become part of the Bolshevik Revolutionary movement.

Issue 71 of SHAPE Journal: Cycles II

 Issue 71 of SHAPE Journal

Preface: The Beginnings of Holistic Dialectics in Science

With the latest Publication in SHAPE Journal, Jim Schofield is finally embarking, after 12 years of intensive theoretical and philosophical research, upon a now-possible, and clearly-transformational and definitely-essential Development in the Sciences. 

For, though the foundational bases were originally laid down by Karl Marx in the 19th century, Marx, as both a historian and a philosopher, was rightly-and-unavoidably pre-occupied, with the crucial elements of  a Qualitatively Developing History, along with the fact that the essential bases, for its understanding, were only present, in an observable-and-studiable way, via Rare Revolutionary Interludes, which alone clearly revealed the Actual Engines of all significant change, within their observable tempos of both Demolishing-and-Creating of Societies.

Indeed, it was only in a detailed study of such Revolutions that both the Maintenance of a persisting social system, and the Creation of a Wholly New society, could be revealed and addressed. And, hence an essential break from the previous universal domination of The Principle of Plurality in all of the Intellectual Disciplines of Mankind!

But, incredibly-slowly, the debilitating flaws in the Pluralist Stance, though successfully avoided within Technology, were beginning to be revealed in The Explanatory Disciplines, following the partial break through in Philosophy by Hegel.

But within that most basic Science, Physics, the problems caused by Plurality, led to a seemingly insoluble Crisis, between the Theorists, on the one hand, and their indispensible Technologists, on the other, who both erected all their Experimental set-ups, AND then delivered the necessary means to actually use their findings in Production too. The never-questioned links between all of these was undoubtedly Plurality - because of its technical embodiment, the universally lauded Mathematics!

And this had to be addressed FIRST to get all sides OFF the cause and apparent "only-solution" of their problems!

So, this was the first major task undertaken by philosopher Jim Schofield, in his damning Critique not only of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, but also of all of the various mistaken contributing Parties in the Crisis.

They were all indissolubly wedded to Plurality.

This Critique was Finally completed and published (as such) in 2020!

But, the more significant, and absolutely essential Dialectical Corrections within the Assumptions and Methods of  The Sciences, following Marx's treatment of Capitalist Economics had to be the same Transforming Revolution applied to the Sciences, and, of course, primarily in Physics first-of-all. It, most certainly, will be a Major Undertaking, affecting the whole of Physics, and, thereafter, all of the other Sciences, which defer to Physics as supplying their most basic Content.

The Problem, as was made clear in the criticisms of Plurality, was in its assumption of all Causality being entirely without Qualitative Changes, for they can mever emerge from any strictly pluralist Laws.

Indeed, the only real way, to import such changes, is via the alternative to Plurality, namely Holism, and in the Dialectical Version of it established by Karl Marx.

So, at this very early stage, the task, had to be, to deal with both Stability and Qualitative Changes in Reality, and consequently, and correctly,  in Causality too! The Key area turns out to be in Constantly Repeated Processes!

For, instead of constantly recurring "random processes" delivering a thermodynamic, maintained, minimum energy Stability, that state is usually a Balanced, Active Stability - achieved solely within that system, by the effects of constantly repeated, though totally-contained selective elimination processes - changing the set of contained process's relative abundences, and hence the overall effects of multiple, simultaneous processes involved.

For Such Systems can exist as Seemingly Permanently Self-maintaining Stable Systems, with greatly extended periods of Stability. While these actually, via a rare-but-inevitable avalanche of externally-initiated minor changes that though they are normally offset by others, acting in the opposite direction, as such maintain the Balance, Though sometimes, much more rarely they precipitate unstoppable changes throughout the Whole System, and cause a total collapse!

Thus the whole belief System, based upon Plurality, has to be replaced by something better: and just as it took Marx many decades to dismantle and replace Plurality in Economics with a newly constructed Dialectically Holist alternative, the same sort of comprehensive task is necessary in the Sciences too.

Circles into Helices into Spirals begins this process by looking at these repeating structures and the roles they might play in both the maintenance of periods of stability and those of profound change. 

Of Cycles and Dialectics

 

Dialectical Dynamics

In Part 17 of David Harvey’s series of Lectures upon Marx’s Grundrisse, he reveals some crucial features of Marx’s version of Dialectics, based upon the repeated Cycles developed in the very intrinsic dynamics of both establishing the wholly New, within processes that then become parts of repeated Cycles, and which in their subsequent development, also elicit other consequent related Cycles, all of which, thereafter, mutually-determine each other’s qualities!

But they never settle into finally Fixed Forms. This can be confusing for readers of Marx, who expect definitions of things to stay the same - as they do in all Pluralist forms of study.

Indeed, they are always undergoing constant changes, and suffering consequent Crises, for Dialectics indeed emphasizes the Holist nature of Reality!

Now, this makes it very different for Classical Formal Logic (a Pluralist view), which has dominated all Reasoning since the Ancient Greek Intellectual Revolution. This Logic must consider things Qualitatively Fixed, though they can vary Quantitatively, and so-called Understanding becomes a kind of Logical Game - with fixed rules! The most fundamental rule of all forbids contradiction.

And, this meant that, for well over two millennia, that there was NO way of explaining Qualitative Development - which was reduced to Quantitative changes of fixed entities. So though the wholly New was often recognised, it could never be explained: a crude “Quantity into Quality” was merely assumed, and its circumstances noted, and used to predict when & How such things may change, but never Why!

But, certainly, how Marx understood such things, in his Grundrisse, was revealing its intricaces to Harvey!

And, some of the most revolutionary processes are revealed there as to how-and-why the wholly New could first emerge, give birth to other consequent processes and cycles, and were then, unavoidably, transformed, recursively by their own creations!

Indeed, though neither Marx nor Harvey were aware of it, recent research into both long-lasting Natural Stabilities within Reality, and their roles both within and outside of Emergent Interludes have been recognised and both described and explained via the concept of “Balanced Stabilities” - Stability itself is not only dynamic, but contradictorily accomplished via change.

For, these are combined phenomena, due to many simultaeous processes acting together, in balancing pairs, which fairly quickly, when subjected to cycles of variability, gradually filter out lesser contributions, yet establish relatively stable pairs of opposing processes, which effectively deliver an overall, co-ordinating bunch of these, which together provide a self-maintaining Stability overall, and, which is usually self-maintaining, for extended periods of time, but which can in extreme circumstances, precipitate an overall dissociation of all the individual component “balances” and finally cause the overall collapse of the complete “Balanced Stability” - a Revolution, in fact!

In consequence usually immediately forming new opposing Balanced Pairs, and ultimately composite Bundles in wholly New “Balanced Stabilities” in so- called “Emergent Interludes”

And elsewhere, and over time, these features, and others like them, are THE ONLY explanations for real, entirely- innovative creation of the totally NEW! Evolution is impossible with a strictly pluralist view of Reality.

And, the holistic mutal affecting of multiple simulateous processes, and cycles, makes the incredibly long odds of changes by mere Random Chance, in an entirely Pluralist World, a total non-starter!

Also, and perhaps even more important, the Pluralist set up is exactly what leads to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, permanently immobile Stability as the end point of varying factors, and the whole concept of Entropy as nonsense.

And, perhaps, even more importantly, the many wrong turnings due to Plurality, have been the myriads of contradictions that it has caused, initially in the division of studies of Reality into separate “Subjects” and “Specialisms” as a workaround, but most profoundly of all in dispensing with very effective Logical Models like The Aether, as an undetectable Universal Substrate filling all of Space, and the dispensing of Physical Explanations, replacing them with INADMISSIBLE, entirely pluralist mathematical Equations, which contain none of this crucial dynamic quality, whatsoever.

Reality may not have any pre-ordained directions of Progress, but it certainly behaves very differently when everything can potentially affect and transform everything else.

Exploring this brave new world is where Science must go next.

This post was taken from Issue 70 of SHAPE Journal entitled Cycles. 

Issue 70 of SHAPE Journal: Cycles

Read the Issue

This edition features a collection of essays by philosopher Jim Schofield on the importance of studying cycles.

It is becoming ever clearer that Repeated Cycles of Processes turn out to be imperative at all levels of Reality. From the enlightening holist philosophy of the Buddha, to weather patterns, metabolic pathways, life cycles and new extensions of Dialectical Logic and Physics Theory, recursive cycles are at the heart of many key attempts to understand the complexities and underlying structures of the natural world.

Key to this new study is unlocking the role cycles play in Qualitative Change, evolution in both Life and the development of matter, the interaction of vast systems and the Emergence of wholly new entities and systems. This research is vital in the development of Dialectical Materialist philosophy and SHAPE journal's attempts to rescue Science from the damaging limitations of Pluralist methodologies.

From Idealism to Materialism

Holistic Dialectics

We cannot possibly deliver here, all that is needed in differentiating Idealist Dialectics from the Dialectical Materialism of Marx. And this is primarily because neither Marx, nor his followers within the Socialist and Communist Movements of the Working Class, have, as yet, really fully appreciated his methods, and attempted to complete the still unfnished areas he revealed - or even more crucially, extended the stance into vital areas NOT addressed in any comprehensive way by Marx.

And this has been, primarily because, he never produced a full informing and instructing definition of his Stance and Method. But also, it was mainly because neither Marx nor anyone else tackled the major Elephant-in- the-Room - the omission of a comprehensive treatment of The Sciences.

That has been begun to be tackled elsewhere, by this theorist, but it is a colossal task, and as yet is far from being a completed undertaking!

So here, the differences with Hegel, as well as with the present day crop of Hegelian “Marxists” (such as Zizek) will be undertaken here!

As a study of both the Development of our Universe from a still debateable starting point, and, subsequently, from Mankind’s much more available History and Prehistory, they clearly demonstrate, that these two conceptions of Reality have simultaneously co-existed throughout that vast Development: and they have never ever fitted neatly together at all well, in any attempts to do so at any subsequent time either.

Indeed, they, in the emerging consciousness of Mankind, presented their implicit primary confounding contradictions, as presenting an ever more evident insurmountable barrier to any possible developments into something actually revealing of the causes for the emergence of significantly Wholly New!

And, in addition, the very late emergence of what later became known as Thinking, and, in particular, Rationality or Reasoning, were also strongly and damagingly coloured, and significantly limited by maintaintaining that contradictory pair of bases.

But we must NOT forge too-swiftly nor too-far ahead in attempting to understand this important trajectory, as it had also developed concretely, as contradictory physical processes, not only in the absence of Man, but even before the Emergence of Life itself. For, by starting exclusively with how it developed within Mankind, definitely prevents a more basic understanding of how these two interacted materialistically in the whole trajectory from the very beginings of underlying Reality itself, to which they must also have already been intrinsic.

Now, how can, and why must, this be insisted upon?

Well, it is, first, because the initial Emergence of Thinking in Mankind was never able to deal with this contradiction: and had to attempt to square-that- circle with some “exterior, non-material agency”, like a GOD, which somehow, also, had the crucial imputs, though often thwarted by Man! And, second, it turns out to be because these seemingly opposite approaches often appear to dominate, at different times, and indeed actually change each other, and into one another, thus, together, acting as the crucial engines of natural qualitative development.

Indeed, it is finally becoming clear only NOW, that the simple, initual conception of Reality, as a mere collection of forever-fixed components, obeying eternally-fixed Natural Laws - like some Lego Construction Game - is definitely just a simplifying myth that could NEVER explain the qualitatively new: and, therefore, wrongly substitutes mere Complexity for actual creative Emergence.

Now, interestingly, around the 5th century BC, two diametrically opposite conceptions of the “True Nature of Reality”, one occurring in Greece, and the other in India, began, in very different ways, to attempt to systematise Human Thinking, BUT each upon one of those two opposing concepts!

The Greek philosophers ultimately alighted upon Plurality (with only fixed relational concepts as their sole basis): while, at about the same time, The Buddha, in India, was contemplating primarily the natural Living World, and chose Holism, based upon universal interactions and constant change of literally Everything.

Now, choosing only one of either of these guaranteed that the true nature of Reality would not only NEVER be made fully available, but, in addition, each in very different ways, could only deliver moments or aspects of that Truth, YET, nevertheless, were still doomed, in the end, to lead only to ever increasing contradictions and even multiple terminal impasses - totally non negotiable within the confines of either of the two overall chosen conceptions.

The Greeks had devised formally a Pluralistic Basis, in order to generate a developable discipline, concerning only Pure Spatial Forms, and, via a legitimate new kind of New Abstration, really only applicable in that context, had succeeded in producing Mankind’s First-Ever Rationally-Developable Discipline - Mathematics!

But, they were so energised, by the undoubted efficacy of the new Discipline, that they extended its means to all Reasoning, and in particular to the Sciences. And that was wholly illegeitimate!

Now, very quickly indeed, Zeno of Elea had, in his Paradoxes that addressed various applications to Movement, proved that such a rationality frequently led to contradiction. Yet, he was generally ignored for over 2,300 years, until the idealist German Philosopher Hegel confirmed Zeno’s work and extended it to all Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, and in all such circumstasnces finding ways of correcting those errors and legitimately transcending those impasses.

He called his methods Dialectics. But, he was an idealist, so his means were to do with “Errors in Human Thinking” only, so, their assumed re-directing of things in general, including the material world, was neither addressed nor achieved, and hence never considered to be anything to do with the Nature of concrete Reality itself - but merely to do with our Thinking about it.

And, it was only when Hegel’s extension of Dialectical Ideas, was demonstably also identified as a feature of concrete Reality itself, by his follower, the historian, Karl Marx, that the real breakthrough finally happemed. And, even then, that was by no means immediate. Indeed even History was previously always explained in terms of the results of intentions from the thoughts of wise or influential Men, but Marx realised that such an assumption was torpedoed by the occurrence, trajectory and resolutions of Social Revolutions, so that once analyses begah to be made of such Events, the Thought- directed idea of development began to be abandoned.

Contradiction was not only found to be intrinsic to Reality itself, but in fact constituted the only driver of its actual creatuve developments too! And, Marx had the detailed History of the recent French Revolution compiled by Michelet, available to prove his cases!

Yet, it was in his sequence of subsequent writings including Theories of Surplus Value, Grundrisse and finally Das Kapital, that Marx’s version finally broke free of idealist notions of historical Reality.

Nevertheless, in spite of the considerable hidden gains within those works, the whole necessary effort was NEVER applied to The Sciences, and they would, as recent work in that area has demonstrated, prove just how crucial Dialectics would be, as there was still a great deal yet to be revealed in that extension.

Indeed, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, and diverse efforts upon The Origin of Life on Earth have begun to reveal that the true Content of Reality-as-is is endlessly and profoundly Holistic and Dialectical, with new aspects emerging all the time. BUT NOT, it must be emphasized, within the taught courses at the citadels of Current Knowledge - The Universities, though a very few individuals in such institutions are leading the current struggle for a major Change!

But, following a decade-long effort to apply a dialectical approach to a New Critique of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in Sub Atomic Physics, the writer of this paper has continued to formulate New Dialectical Methodologies in Physics, based upon exemplars in both Marx’s work, along with modern interpretations of it, by serious investigators like David Harvey in New York, but mostly with his own contributions in areas such as the Origin of Life, Motion Study and Systems Design, but primarily in the revelation of wholly new actual Dialectical Mechanisms possible for revealing the Dialectics of Qualitative Change in diverse areas of Developing Concrete Reality.

Perhaps the most important contributions deal with how the most general natural situations, that always involve a multiplicity of simultaneously acting Laws, and which, in direct contrast to the purposely Plurtalist prior methods usually employed in Science, wherein that Plurality is ensured and maintained by means of maximally restricted experimental situations, that are purposely designed to deliver NOT what occur naturally in Reality-as-is, but, unstead exclusively only single laws optimally restricted and therefore delivering only wholly pluralist situations - one at a time, and wholly separately. Thus, delivering only an approximation of real simultaneous, multi-factor and multi-law Reality, delivered instead as a sequence of different individually- restricted scenarios, each one demonstrating, in isolation only a single relation of a tiny number of Factors, and hence omitting ALL the cross-effects, and ultimately never the New Developments, happening in Real Natural Situations.

At the very best, those can only deliver a series of separated moments of Reality, which never happen as such in Reality-as-is. All cross-influences are excluded, and absolutely NO qualitative changes will ever be allowed to occur.

Is that Science?
NO, it is what we call Technology!
It is a mode of production, NOT one of revelation!

For, as this researcher was able to establish in his Truly Natural Selection Research, the actual processes occurring naturally, and delivering stages that ultimately would form steps in whole complex series of initially simultaneous processes, and thereafter, along with others gradually change the balance and dominances between them to form a phalanx of later cycles of simultaeous processes, that finally could deliver something entirely NEW!

Stanley Miller was on the right track, but wholly blind both visually and theoretically to what was happening in his Famous Experiment. But, nevertheless, it did deliver Amino Acids all by itself!

Clearly with the new dialectcally-theoretical and process- aware methods, whole series of Miller-type Experiments could be designed, but each one initially delivering tiny gains, while also suggesting Newmulti-Channelled- forms of following experiments, with both particular product gains, as well as new designs for the next version.

A whole series of Theoretical Developments immediately followed the Truly Natural Selections gains over 12 years ago, which then resulted in the General Theory of Emergences sometime later.

And, this very important diagram (Editor - next page), in a purely descriptive form, represented one of the results of that research. It is a complex, yet generally- applicable diagram! And, extended details of its original development, are fully available in this journal.

But, at that time, the necessary fuller set of Dialectical Methods were not yet sufficiently developed, to address a thourgh-going Explanation, as the demanding Critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory was consuming all my time! But, on completion of that task, and because of what has also been achieved in that work, this researcher has now been able to resume essential work upon this crucial trajectory, much better equipped!

Advanced Hegelian Dialectics

But, before such a set of developments could be tackled. there was a major and damaging Fork-in-the-Road laid down, that had been strongly and wrongly signposted by the originator of Dialectics himself, - the German Idealist Philosopher, GWF Hegel.

For, his basic area of study was NEVER Concrete Reality, but instead the Concepts and Ideas that were the both the results, and the content of Human Thinking: indeed, he considered that his all-embracing subject was Thinking about Thought. So, as an idealst, he considered that the only possible content of Wisdom came solely and exclusively from all Considered Thinking: which was, for him, an ever-growing collection of concepts, which were wholly cerebral and could not be anything else: so he considered that by revealing-and-using his extended Dialectical “Rules of Thinking, these Thoughts vould indeed be validated or corrected by formulating them, along with sufficient detailed, related and well- informed other considerations, to reveal the Truth via his Dialectics alone. So, the task of the Philosopher was primarily to discover and reveal such Laws, which when complete could “accurately both express and even solve, any rational problem!”

The Objective would be this guide to sound manipulation and Reasoning of achieved Concepts, which he termed Dialectical Logic! Now, he considered that his purposes were not just for high level discussion in Universities, but could, had and indeed would, determine Mankind’s future History itself, by the consequemces of such disciplined Thoughts and consequent Actions.

For example, he considered that he could put down the trajectory of History, and all its failures and successes, to the concepts and consequent programmes arrived at by leading thinkers throughout all Known History.

Now, I am neither an Idealist, nor a Historian, so clearly if those are your main concerns, you will not find what you may be seeking in my writings! For, I am a resolutely Dialectical Materialist - a very different animal, who is attempting to understand the role of Dialectics, not only within Human Thought, but, at its best, also intrinsically reflecting something of the rationality of Concrete Nature itself, which was first realised by that one-time follower of Hegel, the historian and philosopher Karl Marx.

Marx was originally an energetic member of the Young Hegelians but could, initially at least, never compress the whole of the Ancient History that he uncovered into Hegel’s cerebral categories, in his Logical analyses.

And, the most disturbing areas were in understanding the almighty Upheavals that were certainly rare, but also absolutely essential, in the significant Qualitative Development of such Interludes: one of which - The French Revolution, had only recently occurred, and the following complex and multi-stranded developments and its final Resolution, which seem to be the Very Opposite of Hegel’s Rational Means of Explanation.

This paper has been published with other essays on this topic in the latest edition of SHAPE Journal (69) entitled Redefining Philosophy II. 

Dialectical Materialism vs. Pluralist Science

Marx's work was never finished

In watching David Harvey's excellent series of lectures upon Grundrisse by Karl Marx, the vast differences in efficacy, between these two approaches, were laid out very clearly, enabling us to seriously address the vastly overdue, and absolutely essential Critique of the current Theoretical Bases within all the Sciences in General, and, for this physicist, of Sub Atomic Physics in particular.

For, ever since the wholly illegitimate transfer of pure Mathematical Rationality to both General Reasoning and the Sciences, there also has become established, as the primary goal of all Investigative Experiments and Explanatory Theories, to exclusively seek-out the supposed-to-exist "Eternal Natural Laws", which are considered (according to that unavoidably-involved Principle of Plurality) to be the sole causes of all known phenomena, acting as constantly-unchanging and forever-existing Laws determining everything.

Now, if there is a paramount purpose in Marx's founding of Dialectical Materialism, it was to break all Reasoning free from that incorrect restriction.

Yet, of course, the idea behind its then wholesale transfer to other Disciplines, was to also endow these important intellectual activities too, with the very same powers and facilities delivered to Mathematics, in these important areas also. But Mathematics, regards only the properties and relationships between the whole range of Pure Forms, which certainly DO NOT, and indeed CANNOT, change qualitatively - only quantitatively.

So, they have to be fixed in quality for the whole consequent set of mathematical processes to actually work.

But, of course, Mathematics does NOT evolve, as both Reasoning and Science certainly do, so Plurality is a perfectly legitimate characteriser of the Contents involved there, and nowhere else!

For, everywhere else, the relations between concepts are NEVER FIXED forever.

Mankind was originally faced with a completely unsolveable set of problems when addressing just such areas, precisely because of the unavoidable mutual effects between ALL the always both conceptually-simplified and purposely-physically-restricted relations, that we had only been able to extract in very different and necessary circumstances. And literally NONE of them, outside of those special naturally pluralist circumstances, were ever Eternal and Unchanging!

In fact, the main approach that Mankind had discovered, in order to deliver such conclusions, was only ever possible if the Context was artificially achieved and firmly maintained to only deliver a distorted reflection of the real World, which had thereby been forcibly endowed with just those relations alone.

Such a situation wasn't ever evident in Reasoning, as this was a purely cerebral activity: but in the Sciences, there had developed a means of Experimental investigation to reveal and extract just such artificially-Fixed Laws - but, of course, they would ONLY be legitimate for USE within the precise contexts from which they had been extracted. They couldn't be generally true.

Nevertheless, Pluralistic Science did indeed enable a consequent Technology which created an effective illusion of this being the case, making a whole range of successful Productive Activities both possible and successfully achieved.

But, Mankind, along with their hominid predecessors, had successfully made some progress over vast periods of time, primarily through a pragmatic approach to reality, which offered many practical solutions but little deep understanding.

And, since the Greek Intellectual Revolution, the transfer of Mathematical Rationality, nevertheless vastly increased what they could do - so why would it be questioned?

At the same time, the apparent Stability of the Heavens gave them a perfect arena for successfully employing such means to their view of the entire Universe.

But, to achieve a result via such methods, even in arranged-for circumstances, meant a separate experiment for each and every-single-Law presumed to be involved: and a whole series of production processes, one for each such Law, to, overall, deliver something like the expected result! So, an actual all-laws-present-simultaneously type real situation, as could, and mostly did, happen in Reality-as-is, would never be possible, because those many individually achieved laws don't just add-up like Lego bricks, they actually qualitatively-affect-one-another, in currently unknown ways.

So, the usually-trusted "Scientific Methods" could never replicate the natural effects going on in Reality-as-is situations! Clearly, what was needed to be able to tackle any complex events in Reality-as-is, could never be replicated by such usual purely technological means. And, even more important, the situations, in which outcomes qualitatively changed couldn't be replicated.

As Hegel (for Reasoning), and Marx (for Science), had found out, the pluralist approach was totally incapable of ever tackling qualitative complexity anywhere.

And they began to investigate Dialectics, which deliberately included such mutual effects, and that also involved tracing complex trajectories to many such mutual effects, also taking into account the always changing, and continuously-produced Contexts, as the resulting sequence of Phases, at varying tempos aequentially-occurred, and had to be both identified, time-located, and then appropriately dealt with.

Now, this might validly seem to be wholly impossible!

As the tempos of such Phases are often too swift to catch, or too slow to observe in their totality!

So, Marx in transferring Dialectics also to the Concretely Existing World, had History and Geology as informative partial records, and realised that those perfect examples of such "Interludes of Dramatic Qualitative Changes" - in Social Revolutions, which occurred at a tempo discernible by suitably trained observers, who would always be available in such tumultuous times.

Jules Michelet

And, in Marx's time, The French Revolution had only recently finished, and had been recorded in great detail by the excellent French Historian, Michelet. So Marx set about attempting to elicit the various Phases taking place over that tumultuous 25 years of Revolution. Instead of being swamped by everything affecting everything else incessantly, he found that he was able to discern the gradual establishments and dissolutions of the separate phases, due to their ripening causes, as they developed, and then as they were consumed and redirected in subsequently maturing new dominant phases. He could often, in fact, discern the overall trajectory of the interlude, and begin to reveal Qualitative Changes, their causes and effects, AND their transformations of the underlying, turbulent Context too.

Marx, brilliantly, began to construct a means of carrying out a Dialectical Analysis of an Interlude in History, that would throw light, for the first time ever, upon large scale Qualitative Change at ALL Levels in Mankind's studies of Reality-as-is, as well as what it certainly was within real Qualitative Episodes of revolutionary Changes!

A wholly New Level of  Dynamic Qualitative Changes was coming into focus for the first time!

But, he also, and comprehensively, brought his new techniques, to a remarkable level of explanatory power (outside of Revolutions), in his brilliant 40 year-long dialectical analysis of Capitalist Economics in his major work Das Kapital.

For, in that 3-volume work, he not only used what he had learned from his studies of prior Revolutions, but also by literally evolving wholly new aspects of his methods, as-he-went: and thereby demonstrated the only proper way of developing such a Critique in any and indeed every new area of study!

Unfortunately for us all, he died before he could take things further beyond Das Kapital, and, thereafter, nobody tackled the most important area of Dialectical Science, until the work of this theorist some 125 years later.

And, as with the key experiences of Marx in addressing Economics, the trajectory and content of that work could NOT be merely transferred formally solely from the methods developed by Marx: for the Essence of the products of Dialectics, is that none of such processes can ever be predicted in advance, as can always be achieved with "single eternal Natural Laws" within pluralist situations and methodology.

For, Dialectics addresses simultaneous multi-law situations, with diverse outcomes, as the component laws actually affect-and-change one another, are contingent upon one another - and the situations involved necessarily bringing-about an overall restructuring that can seem unpredictable and chaotic.

Each Subject Area will require its own Dialectical detailed studies, and will produce its own characteristic developments! Indeed, instead of idealistic simplifications delivering what seem (erroneously) to be Universal Purely Formal Generalities, any generalities across different disciplines will only become evident only after such necessary studies, and absolutely never before them!

Dialectics doesn't deliver "formal generalities" to be applied everywhere, but, on the contrary, it delivers methods of study arising from the very different Holist view of Qualitative Changes and a resulting Evolution.

One thing that arose out of subsequent initial dialectical investigations, across-the-board, in diverse Disciplines, was the actual trajectory of a Transforming Interlude of Change (a revolution?), which indicated dynamic forms that had to arise to both dismantle old systems, as well as construct the New in such Interludes (though differing markedly at different Levels, were still necessary to articulate such radical and innovatory changes)!

Diagram of a Trajectory of an Emergence

POSTSCRIPT:

The general deterioration of the Sciences, and particularly Physics, was brought about by the universal adoption of Plurality (and all its consequences) originally due to the transfer of Mathematical Rationality to Science, but accelerated by the increasing demands to use its gains in Production and Technology: so Physics was the first to be facing-both-ways as insisted upon by Poincaré and Mach, and composed of both causal Explanations, along with useable Equations, but ultimately impelled by the contradictions and impasses in explanation caused by Plurality, finally transferred wholesale to a uniformly pluralist stance by the abandonment of Explanation for Mathematics!

Indeed, considering the efforts of this Researcher (a physicist) over the last decade: he was initially incapable of making comprehensive inroads into an intended Critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, due, in no small measure, to certain philosophical tricks and fudges instituted originally by Werner Heisenberg, and consolidated wholly pluralistically, by the consequent Mathematically-orientated so-called Theoretical Physicists, whose welcoming milieu was now completely Pluralistic - because it is entirely mathematically driven, with what is left of "explanation" shrinking to a mere commentary upon the "Mathematical Theory" which determines everything.

And, it was unchallegeably re-directed by certain theoretical moves - like the total abandonment of any kind of Universe-Wide propagating Medium - that left whole areas of the subject based solely upon Pluralist Mathematical Equations, and literally NO physical causes whatsoever.

The initial direction, in attempting to find a solution, was therefore, and perhaps surprisingly re-directed towatds studying the methods of Abstraction, that had been involved, and where they were illegitimate!

And this revealed, very clearly, that the foundations of Mathematics had always been based, NOT upon Concrete Reality, but upon Simplified Relateable Abstractions ONLY, so placing that Discipline wholly within the Realm of Idealism and NOT materialist concrete Reality.

Diagram of the Processes and Productions of Abstraction

And, even then, a really effective start could not yet be made, unless a sound basis was established for both Propagation and Action-at-a-Distance, in so-called Totally Empty Space was adequately explained.

A Purely Theoretical Investigation, involving a currently undetectable, but materially-existing Universal Substrate, was assumed, and an attempt made to define its properties, in order to explain all the anomalies of the Full Set of Double Slit Experiments, that had precipitated The Copemhagen Stance, which was carried through to delivering a completely materialistic set of Explanations for physical phenomena.

And this was indeed achieved by temporarily considering-and-using a mutually-orbiting pair consisting of a Negatively-charged, ordinary matter Electron, and a Positively-charged, antimatter Positron, which had briefly been observed in the Accelerator at Fermilab, and named the Positronium, where it was dismissed as an unstable ephemeral, but instead was here considered, in this Theoretical Experiment, as Stable-within-the-Suabstrate, and renamed (for the theoretical Experiment) as a Neutritron - a wholly neutral joint particle, undetectable by current means, and a Unit of the proposed Universal Substrate (supporting evidence lies in unexplained pair production / annihilation which produce these very component particles, seemingly out of 'nothing', Double Slit experiment outcomes and Yves Couder's experiments using Quantum analogs).

Remarkably, this theoretical entity, devised through a dialectical re-evaluation of Physics, was able to deliver everything that was needed to make the assumptions of Copenhagen in all the Double Slit Experiments totally unnecessary - the Neutritron explained them all!

A Dialectics of Climate Change?

Dialectical Materialism is the only methodology capable of grappling system-wide qualitative change.

Multi-Factor Cyclic Systems

and their Forms of Stability & Change

The current crucial climate debate surrounding what was always called, until recently, "Global Warming", is complicated by the multi-cycle nature of our world's weather systems, as they are affected both externally, primarily by the Sun, and internally by the composition and movements of Earth's atmosphere. 

This too is modified both from within as well as from the outside, influenced by both natural and Man-Made systems, and occurring usually at tempos so very different, at least initially, to the actual life-spans of individual human beings, BUT nevertheless entirely capable of succumbing to cataclysmic overall, planet-wide transformations - though more often only suffering from recoverable Crisis Interludes.

Such complications are then used to demote all such negative interludes as being solely due to quite normal oscillations to-and-fro of any complex, multi-part varying system - but one which, nevertheless, self-corrects to a "normal-settled-stability" - and is consequently "Nothing to worry about".

And such a conclusion is the only possible one, if and only if, the usually assumed Principle of Plurality, is true: for it allows ONLY Fixed Laws, and Stability as its inevitable outcomes in almost every varying Interlude.

So, the problem is, that without the appropriate philosophic stance, for a real changing and developing Reality, it will always be impossible to know where the situation actually is dynamically, and whether the current crisis is temporary or terminal!

The problem is, of course, dialectical, involving the unavoidable causal interactions of multiple simultaneous factors, which can, and indeed do, wholly dissociate in what is termed an Emergence or Revolution, of what appeared to be a wholly stable, even permanent situation.

The best Mankind will ever be able to do in such situations, is monitor those crises, both as they occur now, and as they have in the past, as ultimately providing sufficient evidence of some interpretable forms, as are generally left behind in the resultant surfaces of the ground, which are later turned into permanent records, sometimes revealed, but also ever more often fairly deeply buried beneath our feet.

Geologist researching past cataclysms in Greenland

Clearly, Philosophy, is NOT as the idealists see it - merely the Discipline of Human Thought - but, on the contrary, it is the Discipline for our Understanding of Everything, including Material Reality, and its indisputable ongoing Development.

But, crucially, the long established stance, in both all the Sciences, and in most Reasoning, has, for millennia, been what we call Plurality, which can only ever deal with a trajectory of merely Quantitative Change, whereas, for example, the whole clearly evident Emergence of Life, from NON-Living Matter, simply must totally refute such a simplifying stance, as being wholly inappropriate - for actual Qualitative Changes would MOST certainly have occurred, in such dramatic developments, which would have to physically and chemically explain such Qualitative Changes - always totally impossible via Plurality.

Indeed, though the development of the very first Intellectual Discipline - Mathematics, was made possible only via the invented special relational-premises of the Greeks, they were Totally Pluralist, and could never be the basis of any other Intellectual Disciplines, which just have to handle Qualitative Changes causally, rather than merely descriptively, and after the fact, so enabling at least the overall trajectories of such changes to be made sense of.

But, as distinct from damaging total calamities, the vast majority of natural situations are NOT straightforward avalanches of Change, but always involve whole sets of multiple simultaneous and interacting processes - usually significantly always involving whole sequences of differing Cycles, though, at the same time, of similar Qualitative Changes, resulting in very unusual trajectories involving both long-lasting interludes of "Balanced Stabilities", which were preceded in their final formation, by a series of multiple Crises, and always, at some terminating stage, are totally dismantled in a general, everything-involved dissolution, which then rather quickly builds a wholly new Balanced Stability upon the changed products and properties of that Dissolution.

Emergence theory is an extension of Dialectical Materialism by this author (Jim Schofield)

Now, the Earth, as an affected body within the Solar System is NOT as Newton might have believed, majorly determined by Geometry and Gravitation, but also subject to other influences and past collisions, to maybe cause its Spin, its axis Tilt, and its capture of a Moon, plus an evidently constant Solar Wind of energetic Charged Particles from the sun, and whatever caused it to develop an internal Magnetism and extensive Magnetic Field.

And, just to concentrate upon its Global Atmosphere, with constant angular momentum throughout, but with different radii beteen the Equator and areas closer to the Poles, the surface will be moving at very different speeds an affecting the local atmospheres differently.

While the different angles of the Sun's rays onto its curved surface as well as the Day/Night on/off nature of that Radiation will all affect various areas of the Atmosphere differently too!

Finally the Earth's Orbit around the Sun is elliptical rather than circular so there will be Yearly variations in the radiation reaching earth at different times and places.

Indeed, all of these will be modified by the Earth's Spin, there will be multiple cycles, all of them constantly repeated but at different rates and different amounts of external heating from the Sun!

And the Question must arise, "Why is the Weather usually so ordered, within a season, and what might both make this happen, and, alternatively sometimes appear to approach chaos?"

Special Issue 67: Holistic Materialism Addendum

Holistic Materialism Addendum 

This Special Issue of SHAPE is an addendum to the original two part series entitled Holistic Materialism published last year.

The original series constituted a set of loosely related papers by Marxist theorist Jim Schofield concerning his philosophy of science, and his application of Holism and Dialectical Materialism to the sciences, especially particle physics. This has been a historical and epistemological project as much as it has been a philosophical and scientific one. In order to understand the mistakes and impasses we are presented with in science today, it is imperative to go back and have some understanding of how knowledge and philosophy have evolved over human history.

But what exactly is Holistic Materialism? Holism is a word that means different things to different people, a seemingly vague term that is often abused and misused - ‘holistic medicine’ for example covers all sorts of pseudoscientific nonsense no empricial researcher would care to be associated with. However Holism as a philosophical concept refers to something quite specific, and for Jim Schofield it is encapsualted in its opposition to the Pluralist position (not to be confused with pluralism), which sees all entities and laws as separable - capable of being isolated and studied in isolation - but more importantly, that this separability will somehow unlock the truth of how things in reality work. Essentially it is the philosophy of reductionism and this underpins almost all contemporary scientific research.

Jim Schofield’s work is a unique critique of the hidden assumptions which underpin all science.

This is not the first time the term Holistic Materialism has been used, however. We see it linked to biology and 19th century naturalists in the writing of Ernst Mayr.

“The discovery of the similarity between dialectical materialism and the thinking of the naturalists is not new. Several authors have called attention to it, particularly Allen... He starts quite rightly: “The process of natural selection is as dialectical a process one could find in nature.” Allen thought that the dialectic viewpoint of the naturalists had been lost between 1890 and 1950... Allen asserts that the “holistic materialism” of the naturalists had failed to incorporate two important dialectical views. First “the notion that the internal change within a system is the result specifically of the interaction of opposing forces or tendencies within the system itself.”
The Roots of Dialectical Materialism (Mayr, 1997)

In the work of Schofield we see this kind of holist view of natural systems but very much informed by the dialectics of Karl Marx. It is not enough to see the interconnected-ness of things but realise how natural dominances emerge, to the point of seeming universal, and also how these dominances can come crashing down as their internal contradictions finally play out. It is in these crucial events that we see the Emergence of the wholly new. In these papers we see how Pluralist science prohibits access to this fundamental feature of reality, and that while those 19th century naturalists may have hinted at the way forward, holist science is something new.

In this additional set of papers we address Mayr’s contribution directly, including his full paper The Roots of Dialectical Materialism as part of this publication.

Jim Schofield’s initial conspectus (also included here) is critical of Mayr’s positioning of early Naturalists as instrumental in the development of Marxist theory, but also acknowledges Mayr’s work as potentially very valuable to the further development of Marxism, philosophically, and in aiding the difficult progression towards a holistic scientific method.

The World Socialist Web Site, published by the International Committee of the Fourth International, certainly considered Mayr’s work important to Marxism, publishing a detailed obituary of this great thinker upon his death in 2005. In this piece Walter Gilberti writes:

“Mayr’s life-long interest in the fundamental questions that continue to animate the biological sciences, combined with his exceptional longevity as a working and thinking scientist, engendered in him a profound appreciation of its history. In particular, he stressed the importance of a study of the history of scientific concepts (natural selection, e.g.). He wrote: “Preoccupation with this sort of conceptual history of science is sometimes belittled as a hobby of retired scientists. Such an attitude ignores the manifold contributions which this branch of scholarship makes” (1982). He stated further: “One can take almost any advance, either in evolutionary biology or in systematics, and show that it did not depend as much on discoveries as on the introduction of new concepts.... Those are not far wrong who insist that the progress of science consists principally in the progress of scientific concepts” (1982).”

This is certainly similar to Schofield’s view and the approach taken by this retired scientist, also trying to better understand how science works, and how it fails to work, through theory. Scientific Concepts are vital here, as Mayr suggests. However objective one’s data may seem to be, it is only through the frame of key concepts that interpretation and understanding begin.

Holistic Materialism is just such a concept - a frame for understanding our scientific findings by adopting the much wider view that is necessary, in such a complex and interconnected world.

Issue 67 of SHAPE: Holistic Materialism II

Issue 67

The second part of my series on Holistic Materialism is now available to read on SHAPE Journal. 

Issue 66: Holistic Materialism I

Read Issue 66

This is the first in a special two part series entitled Holistic Materialism. These issues constitute a set of loosely related papers by Marxist theorist Jim Schofield concerning his philosophy of science, and his application of Holism and Dialectical Materialism to the sciences, especially particle physics. This has been a historical and epistemological project as much as it has been a philosophical and scientific one. In order to understand the mistakes and impasses we are presented with in science today, it is imperative to go back and have some understanding of how knowledge and philosophy have evolved over human history.

But what exactly is Holistic Materialism? Holism is a word that means different things to different people, a seemingly vague term that is often abused and misused - ‘holistic medicine’ for example covers all sorts of pseudoscientific nonsense no empricial researcher would care to be associated with. However Holism as a philosophical concept refers to something quite specific, and for Jim Schofield it is encapsualted in its opposition to the Pluralist position (not to be confused with pluralism), which sees all entities and laws as separable - capable of being isolated and studied in isolation - but more importantly, that this separability will somehow unlock the truth of how things in reality work. Essentially it is the philosophy of reductionism and this underpins almost all contemporary scientific research. Jim Schofield’s work is a unique critique of the hidden assumptions which underpin all science.

This is not the first time the term Holistic Materialism has been used, however. We see it linked to biology and 19th century naturalists in the writing of Ernst Mayr.

“The discovery of the similarity between dialectical materialism and the thinking of the naturalists is not new. Several authors have called attention to it, particularly Allen... He starts quite rightly: “The process of natural selection is as dialectical a process one could find in nature.” Allen thought that the dialectic viewpoint of the naturalists had been lost between 1890 and 1950... Allen asserts that the “holistic materialism” of the naturalists had failed to incorporate two important dialectical views. First “the notion that the internal change within a system is the result specifically of the interaction of opposing forces or tendencies within the system itself.”

The Roots of Dialectical Materialism (Mayer, 1997)

In the work of Schofield we see this kind of holist view of natural systems but very much informed by the dialectics of Karl Marx. It is not enough to see the interconnected-ness of things but realise how natural dominances emerge, to the point of seeming universal, and also how these dominances can come crashing down as their internal contradictions finally play out. It is in these crucial events that we see the Emergence of the wholly new. In these papers we see how Pluralist science prohibits access to this fundamental feature of reality, and that while those 19th naturalists may have hinted at the way forward, holist science is something new.

Generality, Particularity, Singularity

Performing Sculpture. Small Feathers, 1931, by Alexander Calder

Marx’s Abstractions

and Dialectical Developments

On further listening to David Harvey’s analysis of Marx’s Capital, it becomes important exactly what the necessary kinds of Abstraction are, that are actually being used.

Previously, when revealing the significant and transforming content of the Greek Intellectual Revolution, somewhat earlier in these investigations, the key achievement turned out to be in the wholly new kind of Abstraction that they had developed in their study of shapes, but which, at that time, had also enabled the development of the very first intellectual discipline - Mathematics.

So, once again, within this current discussion on Marx’s Capital, it has to be the kinds-of-abstraction used, as well as both when, and to what extent, they can be effectively employed, that are the most important questions.

Now, Marx wasn’t a scientist, he was a philosopher and historian - and neither is David Harvey, who is a geographer by trade: so neither of them were intimately familiar with the methods and abstractions of ‘hard’ sciences such as Physics, or even their associated disciplines, such as Mathematics. So, they would not be immediately aware of the unavoidable limitations of idealistic Mathematics - for their focussings were very different in their own primary disciplines.

Now, Marx crucially talks about Generalities, Particularities and Singularities as the abstractions concerned with the Laws of Motion of Capital, and how he sees and uses them, turns out to be crucial, and also very revealing when related to their somewhat different uses in Science and Mathematics.

So, once again, I am pressed to use my analogue regarding Multiple-Chemical-Processes, to clarify what is involved. For there, though many active factors are involved (all acting simultaneously), the most frequently naturally- achieved Stability, in this type of system, will always be in an achieved persisting balance between all of these processes, characterised by a certain Dominance, as the apparent underlying determining “Law” of the situation.

And, that would be what Marx calls the Generality of the situation.

But, the other factors involved will vary, and though they cannot dislodge this Dominant Law, they can move it about - somewhat!

They would be the contingent Particularities of the situation.

Finally, something could happen which completely terminates the situation: so this Law ceases to apply!

That would be due to a Singularity of the situation. These are key Abstractions from the situation with different properties and effects.

Now these are necessarily considered somewhat differently in their varieties of use: and though my explanations, that lead to these differences, arise from my always-holistic stance, it is important to note that many other widely current uses, even in Science, are wholly pluralistic in their determining, underlying stance, and hence differ significantly! That is, they take all the laws involved as permanently fixed.

So, Marx’s strictly holistic methods will never be considered by those usually employing entirely pluralist methods - like the majority of both scientists and logicians for example.

Now, in any such, many-law, holistic context, as with both my favoured chemical analogue, and also the ones involved in Capitalist Economics, the simultaneously-acting laws will most certainly NOT interact pluraliatically, for then all would be of the exact same type. Indeed, within holism there will usually be a Generality - delivering the underlying fundamental Law, determined as such by the overall, dominating conditions, but always also (potentially) modified by a whole series of Particularities; which can adjust and vary the Generality. While there will always be, in addition, one or more Singularities, which can, in appropriate circumstances, terminate the Generality completely, by changing the underlying situation. And, there will be different reasons, which causally-determine all these natures, and their roles, in a given situation.

Once again, my revealing analogue can be used to expose all their various determining causes. In that case, the Generality will be described by the basic underlying Law, itself, caused by the relative abundance of its major required resource, more often than not, determined by the circumstances in which it occurs. While, the various Particularities, will never challenge that objective dominance, but could modify it contingently to some extent. Finally, the Singularities are totally independant influences, sometimes from without, that cancel the dominance of the Generality and facilitate its complete replacement.

NOTE: Now, the above constitutes only the briefest start in addressing such Holistic Changes and how we can deal with them, and, as we develop this discription, the significant differences and evident superiority to the consensus Pluralist Approach, will gradually, and excitingly, be revealed. For example, the conundrums and even impasses connected with Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts will be fully explained - particularly via our revealing analogue, which will always include an opposite sub-dominant process, which, in certain circumstances replaces the prior Dominance, without significantly altering the overall Balance and Stability!

But, the very reason for the prior adoption of Plurality as the universal stance in investigating Reality, does have some sort of basis, in the evident relative predominance of long-persisting Stabilities within Reality: indeed Stabilities are frequent and persist for long periods, but can never deliver any significant Qualitative Change.

So, in spite of the always very short durations of Emergences, they are, nevertheles, the sole sources of all Development. And, the apparent “Truths” of Plurality are usually arranged-for, by artificially-constructing and actively-maintaining appropriate Stabilities, to ensure the possibility of applying such Pluralist Laws successfully.

But, of course, such a purely technological approach can never address any of the areas involving qualitative changes and their explanation - and these are evident in by far the widest ranging areas of study. Even Modern Physics and Cosmology have both been brought to existential crises by the limited pluralist appoach, and without a veritable revolution in these areas, they are effectively doomed as sources of Explanation for Reality. .

NOTE: It is interesting to consider Mathematical Singularities alongside Marx’s use of the term. The use of singularities in Mathematics means indisputedly that they are occurring wholly-within a legitimately pluralist context - namely Ideality. But, the infinities possible within Ideality, legitmises the positioning of a found “real” relation upon a graph of infinite possible extention, though for it is only a small locality within that graph, that maps onto a situation in Reality, and the rest of the space included in the graph necessarily constitutes what are, in that context, termed as Singularities - that is as aymptotes to Infinity, or swoops to Zero. They should just be the boundaries-of-Reality, but in idealist Modern Physics are instead suggested as portals to alternative Worlds!

Controller of the Universe, 2007, Damián Ortega

Singularities and Emergences

Now, of course, even the role of Singularities, as so far merely described, can never explain any consequent real development, but only individual qualitative changes: and where they lead is also never-supplied, at such a level of analysis.

What is actually needed is a causal-mechanism for “system-change”, wherein a mutually-affecting collection of many different, and even contradictory, processes actually dismantles the old order, and generates a wholly New System. And, such an event, has a name within this Holist View of Development: it is called an Emergence.

And, it is certainly not a mere fixed-causality, with a given single outcome at all! Indeed, it is not even a consistent, co-ordinating system of coherent, related processes, naturally coalescing into a consequent final outcome. It is, remarkably, a balancing system of contradictory factors, which ordinary Logic would see as merely inhibiting, or even cancelling, one another, and hence leading nowhere!

And, it should be clearly contrasted with such co- ordinated systems, whhich can never lead to real, entirely-original qualitative changes.

An Emergence is always a remarkable Event, which produces purely temporary Stabilities, which almost always involve the same self-restoring balance of contradictory factors, while displaying an apparently resultant Dominance (which, superficially, certainly looks like a pluralist law).

Now, this turns out to be a surprising entity, for though it appears to be, and usually is, a conservative arrangement, ensuring its Status Quo for long periods of time, it can, in certain circumstances, become undermined. And yet, though that cause undermines - in one area of the balance, it mostly restores the situation - in another area, to counter that undermining. Such a contradictory Stability, therefore, includes the wherewithal to correctingly deal with Crises most of the time.

But, if pushed too far, it not only precipitates a wholesale dissociation - a total Collapse - it also always delivers an unexpected outcome. The produced intermediate situation no longer perpetuates anything. New subsytems can now begin to come together, relatively unhindered - though many just as quickly dissociating again in their own Crises. But, finally they come together in a new balance of contradictory factors, which constitures yet another new Stability! And, that new system could never have been predicted from the prior Stability. This is how the Wholly New emerges!

But, how is the necessary variety first produced, and then maintained in any given context? The engine of our Solar System is clearly The Sun, but different parts of a planet, presenting different angles of incidence of the Sun’s Rays at its surface will receive different amounts of heat, and consequent differential heating of the local atmosphere, causing Winds and hence differential evaporation from any liquid water available in seas or lakes.

And as the planet spins, it will also at every point on its surface by alternately be illuminated, and then plunged into darkness, causing differences in heating over time!

So, already, just considering the ‘stable’ Sun and Earth, we get diverse conditions including precipitation and even worldwide small particle distibution, via moving winds. And the more things that are considered, the more variabilities are involved.

The point is, how do they co-exist in some maintained, or regularly repeatable mix? Clearly, conditions can vary enough to promote opposite processes in extreme situations, the results of which can be moved about by winds and currents. Yet, some planets in our Solar System do seem to exhibit restricted ranges of prpocesses, and continuing as such for seemingly vast periods of time. While others, like Earth, seem to be in relatively constant change: which appears to be largely due to Life.

And Life itself must have once been some kind of Emergence: what else could it have been?

So, why no evident Life elsewhere in the Solar System?

We can deal with a variety in conducive circumstances, but what triggers the crucial event that enables everything that can consequently emerge? Clearly, once we abandon the fictional simplicity of a Pluralist World, we find ourselves in a much more complex Reality, requiring a wholly new approach when attempting to understand it.

Postscript:

Clearly, there is still a great deal to yet be addressed, but I feel some brief foray into that waiting world should be addressed here, as a sample of what is to come.

Let us consider Causality!

For, our idea of Causality is significantly distorted by not only the premise of Plurality upon its nature, but also in the consequences of that stance for how we see, explain and use Causality.

The Principle of Plurality has all elements extracted from Reality as permanently-fixed: not only categories and concepts but also extracted Natural Laws too. And, consequently, our tools for dealing with these were obviously also “tailored-to-fit” such fixed entities and relations.

Primarily, if Plurality were true, it would be entirely valid to deliberately restrict, or even “farm” investigated situations to effectively isolate a given relation: for, if that relation were naturally eternal, our manipulations would never affect it: it would remain the same.

Also, we could never effectively use that relation, if we didn’t similarly simplify the context for use, as with “only one Law free to act”, we could easily apply it to achieve predictable ends. And any complex production would have-to-be organised as a series of productions, one for each pluralist Law evidently involved.

We would never attempt to apply them all simultaeously! Yet, of course, simultaneously, is exactly how Reality works with its “Laws”, when left to itself! So, because of our subscription to Plurality, we purposely prohibit, for ourselves, any knowledge whatsoever of how simultaneous “Laws” might actaully affect one another, or even follow particular natural sequences over time.

The natural selection of such sequences is NEVER available to us, as it must have been in totally unfettered Reality. Indeed, Plurality is NOT true in either Reality, or even in Reasoning. In fact, it is only true in Mathematics, because of its simplified relatable abstractions, on which it was constructed. But, they don’t form the abstractions upon which Reality and Reasoning are constructed!

So, in making Plurality the basis where it does not apply misleads what we can do with what we obtain by such means: and, in addition, limits the conditions we can apply them in to severely restricted and unnatural contexts.

This essay is taken from the latest issue of SHAPE Journal called Changing Dialectics