An Objective Worldview?

Marxist Philosophical Practice: A Matter of Approach (PART 1)

Here are a couple crucial questions:

“Is there a primary discipline, which underlies all the other serious study areas of Mankind, and which is, therefore, an absolute prerequisite for them all?”

And second, “What allows human beings to penetrate Reality deeper than any other approach?”

The answer to the first question is, “Yes!”, and that to the second is “It is Philosophy – the uniquely Human View of Reality!”

Let us attempt to establish these conclusions by considering three key disciplines that I have been involved with all my adult life. The first was Mathematics, the second Physics, and the third Marxism.

In each discipline, there is a body of prior work, representing the gains of that area of study, but, at every moment in time, it will always be partial, and even contradictory, and hence will have its limits – situations which bring a line of reasoning in that discipline to a shuddering halt – seemingly incapable of, thereafter, being taken any further!

And, indeed, only one discipline, if you can call it such, enables such impasses to be transcended. It is the discipline that relates Mankind and Reality – Philosophy.

Yet, not all ideas which claim to be Philosophy are such. Most supposedly philosophic stances have the very same limitations as all other intellectual disciplines, but, nevertheless, because of its remit of both Mankind and Reality, only Philosophy, because of its recursive self addressing stance, has any real chance of dealing with the problems involved in the attempt to understand Reality by Mankind, in a remarkable recursivity of Thinking!

Other claimants to the title appear objective by basing everything upon Matter and Energy - Physics, or upon Absolute Pure Form - Mathematics, but those are the illusions that actually scupper their claims.

Now, historically, it might seem that Philosophy has the biggest handicap of all, as it regularly slips into Solipsism, with the Mind being taken as the basis, but the other contenders don’t even admit that it can only be human minds that can attempt the task. At least Philosophy is self-conscious enough to know its limitations, whereas the others claim an un-established objectivity.

Only Philosophy itself can attempt to address “Thinking about Thought”, as did the brilliant German philosopher GWF Hegel, and arrive at a true conception of the effective conceivability of Reality by Man.

But, in addition, and crucially, Hegel also discovered the means of revealing its regularly occurring limitations, and even the means of transcending them.

I think you must agree, only Philosophy goes beyond the individual restricted areas of study, to address them all – via their common factor – The Thinking of Man!

It becomes increasingly clear, when the various disciplines are criticised by the true meta-discipline of Philosophy, that Mankind has no direct access to so-called Absolute Truth, so that in order to get any sort of handle upon Reality, Man has no option but to both simplify and idealise what is seen, to have any chance of revealing even partial truths (or Objective Content as they are usually termed).

And, also it is clearly critical that the various assumptions, that are also and unavoidably made, will always be inadequate, and will, in time, inevitably result in guaranteed impasses, as always indicated by the emergence of what Hegel called Dichotomous Pairs of totally contradictory concepts, which, though, surprisingly, arising from identical premises, nevertheless, delivered totally contradictory outcomes – indeed opposite results that could not possibly both be true!

Indeed, these impasses have been occurring many, many times in Mankind’s history, and are usually not transcended.

In fact, both arms of the dichotomy they represent are KEPT, and USED – by switching between them in attempts to find what will work in a given context. This trick is the essence of the indeed useful intellectual backstop – encapsulated in “If it works, it is right!” – in other words Pragmatism!

Rene Magritte

And, such is not only the defeatist cornerstone of current Postmodernism, but crucially and revealingly that of the current consensus stance in Physics – The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

Now, after millions of such pragmatic compromises, Human Understanding is finally in something of a mess! It is, at best, a vast patchwork of “small working areas” glued together by a set of pragmatic myths. It isn’t useless, of course, but, with so many pragmatic solutions, it gets ever harder to integrate into a coherent and consistent whole. And hence, makes the development of an all- embracing means of understanding it all, ever more unlikely!

Indeed, impasse after impasse were never transcended, and instead became the impassable boundaries of new “specialisms”, sub disciplines or even full-blown disciplines, in themselves.

Hence Human Understanding, in spite of a preponderance of evidence, lost its initial seemingly integrated comprehensibility, and the various “disciplines” proliferated at an ever more alarming rate.

Yet, even more damaging than this ready resort to Pragmatism, were absolutely crucial mistakes in basic premises, which became so universally subscribed-to, that the users became almost completely unaware of them.

One crucial split took place some 2,500 years ago in Greece and India, where the lauded Ancient Greeks (ignoring Zeno’s revealing Paradoxes) plumped for the Principle of Plurality (as a powerful simplifying tenet), while at about the same time, in India, the spiritual leader, The Buddha, chose the very opposite Principle of Holism, as his primary tenet. 

Some idea of the real nature of Dichotomous Pairs, is evident in the contradictory use of BOTH of these opposing stances, in what later became Science.

For, in attempts at explaining things, Holism turned out to be essential as it alone took all factors as significant simultaneously.

Yet, in concise and useable description, it was about various quantities, and Plurality was used instead, and worked very well in appropriately “farmed” and maintained contexts.

But, even such a contradictory union was not a full description of the mix of stances employed, for, STILL, the unifying Principle was always the oldest of all – that of Pragmatism – “If it works, it is right!”

Clearly, even in Science, the supposed pinnacle of a rational study of Reality, a great deal would have to be done to open up a real possibility of a comprehensive, consistent and coherent “Understanding”.

My “initial solution”, as both a qualified mathematician and physicist, was driven by my subscription to the philosophies of Hegel and Marx, yet I found NO similar purpose among my political colleagues. So, in spite of my intended task, little was achieved until I became an inter-discipline specialist contributor, using my abilities in writing complex computer programs, to assist colleagues in many different disciplines.

I soon came across particular “truths”, not considered in other disciplines, and, perhaps surprisingly, found Key philosophical ideas when working with a world-class Dance Teacher and Choreographer in designing and delivering Multimedia Aids for use in the teaching of Dance Performance and Choreography.

The understanding in most of these was very different from my Economics-based Marxist stance in politics.

And, I was forced to go all the way back to Hegel’s discoveries and methods to review my own rather limited and as yet un-criticised premises.

Though I didn’t immediately realise why, I was having to solve problems in a discipline that I knew little or nothing about very quickly indeed! In fact, our very first production won a British Interactive Video Award, beating many so-called experts, with greatly more resources and better facilities.

On reflection, I realised that I had finally understood what Hegel and Marx were doing as philosophers, which could be applied in something as surprising as Dance Education, by the very best practitioners.

The usual rational ascent to ever more “explanation”, was never adequate when a Dichotomous Pair of contradictory concepts arose, as with Zeno in his Paradoxes concerning Movement, and they also emerged 2,500 years later in the teaching of Dance via recorded footage of exemplar performances.

No matter what manipulations were tried, such a pair of contradictory concepts both seemed applicable yet contradictory, and pragmatic switching was the order of the day among most practitioners. The usual impasses were dealt with in the old pragmatist way, but were useless in solving concrete problems in delivering what was required due to adequate Access and Control of the relevant recorded footage.

But, Hegel’s method of seeking out Dichotomous Pairs and then severely questioning the common premises that had led to both arms of the dichotomy, proved entirely appropriate in this area too! For example, Digital footage was excellent for accurately locating positions the various parts of a dancer at a certain moment, yet absolutely useless for also delivering the dynamic trajectory of the movements involved. While Analogue Video was immaculate at delivering real movement, but rubbish at giving accurate positions. After an extended period of research we found solutions to the problems using BOTH means, recorded simultaneously, and using accurate positional data from the digital footage, to produce animated overlays synchronised to the Analogue footage. The results were brilliant!

The now-termed Marxist methods of identifying an impasse via Dichotomous Pairs, and then transcending it by a major revision of premises, will always allow progress. These methods still lead the World over 25 years after they were devised!

But, it will not be by access to Absolute Truth. For, such is impossible for Mankind to achieve. Instead, Mankind must, step-by-step, impasse-by- impasse, move beyond the limitations of prior premises. And, it cannot be but a truly infinite task, for several important reasons.

First, Evolution in producing human beings via Natural Selection could not endow them, with all that was necessary to alight directly upon Absolute Truth! It doesn’t work towards such targets, but allows the most fit, in survival terms, to increase at the expense of those not so well endowed in those areas.

So, Man could not find himself appropriately equipped to naturally see what is involved in the general development of Reality. The determinators delivering human beings are much more prosaic.

So, instead Man has had to “pull himself up by his own boot-laces” to only forever approach, but never arrive at, Absolute Truth - which cannot but be wholly infinite, as it is always changing, so it is never a stationary target. 

El Lissitsky

Second, in making significant gains in this task, Man is also actually changing Reality himself, because he is “of Reality” – he is changing the very thing he seeks to understand. 

Third, independently of Man, Reality is evolving anyway, it isn’t a static System.

Hence, conceptions of homing in upon a static Reality are a myth! The strategy must be to ride the wave of change increasingly well, though always falling into the water with every seemingly successful surfing attempt.

Issue 44 now available

This paper is the first in a series of articles to be published here weekly, on the theme of Marxist Philosophical Practice. This work isn’t about Capitalism or Socialism, and certainly says nothing about Economics. This is about Marxism as a philosophical approach, applicable to any field of study, any aspect of reality. The series takes four very different issues in Philosophy and investigates them via this Marxist stance, which is termed Dialectical Materialism.

These papers are also collected as a new issue of the Shape Journal (44) available here

Trees of Life

The Role of Marxism in Science & Thought

Occasionally, realised links crop up in the most surprising of seemingly unrelated places. For example, though any Marxist would see a definite link between Hegel’s Dichotomous (Contradictory) Pairs in Thought and Darwin’s Evolution of Life on Earth, they would not expect the same descriptive diagram to throw light upon both, but that is certainly the case.

 

When considering Darwin’s famous scribble of the Tree of Life, with all its bifurcations and extinctions as a product of Natural Selection, who would have guessed that an almost identical figure could be as revealing a descriptor of Hegel’s studies in Thinking, and his recognition of Dichotomous Pairs as results of expiring sets of assumptions and principles?

Yet, we should have guessed that something like this was possible, for, such Pairs are both based upon the very same premises, yet cannot both be true, and hence, deliver an immediately, terminating possibility of staying pragmatically, with such opposites, and using each only when it fitted certain situations, OR, alternatively, and much more productively, go on to exposing the errors embedded in their common premises, correcting them, and thus allowing a transcending of the impasse to a better, and further developable set of ideas.

Yet, as even these simple diagrams show, the two descriptive diagrams are certainly very similar, AND, crucially, the extractions from one, informed by the fossil record and current studies of still living species, could surprisingly also throw light upon the problems encountered in Thought, and particularly in Formal Logic. While, in the opposite direction, extractions, from the developments and extinctions in Thought, could better inform our ideas in evolution.

Now, it is true, these comparisons could be seen as both trivial and man-devised, delivering only how clever the deviser had been. But, what has been described here and illustrated by these diagrams, are merely only the first step, in a thorough-going, and profoundly informing, investigation.

For, how is it that Marxists were able to study Social Development in human History and thereby be able to recognise the universality of revolutionary events, as true, not only in societies, but also in absolutely all developments in Reality?

It is the most profound contribution of Marxism to Human Thought! But, we can also put it in a very different way.

Is it not precisely because most scientists are not philosophical Marxists that Modern Physics has got into the unholy mess it now resides in – not to mention the many spin-offs from this, such as Modern Cosmology? Do you, for a second, believe in the Multiverse?

No, to ban such crossovers is counter-productive and guaranteed to lead into the mire!

Admittedly, clever, man-devised analogies, without any profound content, will regularly be put forward, but the proof of the pudding is always in the eating. Really profound cross-links will immediately begin to reveal new and important understandings, and lead to obvious progress.

For example, the epiphanies experienced by this Marxist were in very surprising areas of study. For I have been both an educator and a researcher all my adult life, and in my fifties and sixties I was involved in developing Multimedia aids for teachers of Dance Performance and Choreography, along with an expert in the field of Dance Education. Who would have thought that, philosophically, the only solutions to the many problems presented by effective Access and Control to exemplar video and film footage would demand a Marxist approach?

And, later, when my sight was failing, and I looked to the scientist Ramachandran, with his studies of Blind Seeing and Visual Neglect, to find ways for me to cope with my deteriorating condition, that I should begin to understand what the actual Eye-Brain system was doing in delivering effective vision.

Only in the last month (January 2015) I read about studies in the conception of Time by the human Brain, which gelled very well with my own work of 12 years ago upon Seeing.

Now, in case my readers will dismiss these gains as unimportant, I feel that I must bring in my “Big Guns”. After a lifetime as a physicist, and throughout that time an opponent of the famed Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, this scientist found that he was able to apply his now further developed Marxist philosophical approach (coming, of course, from the above mentioned researches), to Wave/Particle Duality in its prime citadel – The Double Slit Experiments, and managed to explain all the anomalies without any resort to the Copenhagen stance. And, following this, I am now involved in a detailed study of the real, concrete contents of what is usually supposed to be purely Empty Space.

Indeed, in retrospect, I think I can say with confidence that the failure of the self-proclaimed Marxists, to have tackled ANY of these questions, is a measure of just how far they have strayed from what Hegel, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky had put into our hands. The failure of Marxists is because they were no longer continuing to develop Marxism in the many areas that required such an approach. They were NOT Marxists.

Dialectics

What is Dialectics?

Dialectics was a discovery of Frederick Hegel – the German Idealist Philosopher, who, some 200 years ago, considered his area of study to be Thinking about Thought, and realised that all our conceptions about Reality are unavoidably constrained by our experiences and the current extent and depth of our understanding. He further realised that such understanding would always be compromised, most particularly, by what we still didn’t yet know, but also, and primarily, by our own arrived-at assumptions, concepts and principles.

The journey to a “full understanding” was not only never-ending, but was also strewn with passage-impeding rocks of our own making. Now, that doesn’t sound either very profound, or even optimistic! Indeed, it is often used as an argument for – “Give up now you’ll never do it!”. But that wasn’t Hegel’s view!

It may appear defeatist, but that wasn’t what he took from this discovery. He recognised that our assumptions were absolutely necessary, to make any progress at all, and, crucially, they were never pure invention. On the contrary, they were always based upon some aspects or parts of an as yet unrevealed Absolute Truth. And, this content gave those conceptions a definite measure of objectivity. But, invariably, such extractions from Reality would be useless if each of them only applied to a single solitary thing.

Mankind wanted more general conceptions that could be used across the board. So the correct parts and aspects were turned into “general truths”: and that was both a breakthrough, and an error!

For, the incompleteness of these forced generalities - clearly unavoidable when they were made, would also unavoidably confer a distorted outcome upon our subsequent uses of these generalities. Though they would work in many cases, they would also, and inevitably, lead to a point where they would deliver contradictory pairs of consequent concepts. These pairs were clearly mutually exclusive: they were in direct contradiction to one another, and yet were BOTH outcomes of our earlier assumptions. They couldn’t both be true! Yet, neither one nor the other could be sufficient to cover what the pair delivered. They were both wrong!

Now these Dichotomous Pairs indicated to Hegel (just as the Pair Continuity and Descreteness had indicated to Zeno some 2,300 years earlier) that the underlying assumptions, in spite of containing a measure of Objective Content, were also, in fact, both at fault in important ways.

The question was, “How can we possibly transcend both these erroneous concepts, and come up with better ones that were not contradictory?” Hegel, therefore, used this to set about finding ways to transcend these impasses that seemed insuperable if we were to keep both of the contradicting concepts.

By a careful study of the members of a Dichotomous Pair, he was able to reveal the assumptions upon which they were based, and his task would be to replace them with other assumptions that could deliver the positive aspects of both, while removing the contradictions. The impasse would only be transcended and a better basis for understanding put in place, if the new suggestions dug deeper and revealed more aspects of the truth than were embodied in those they were to replace. He knew, of course, that even if successfully achieved, this would nevertheless be a never-ending oscillation. For each new premise would, in spite of the gains it had delivered, in the end, reveal its own shortcomings by producing yet another Dichotomous Pair, and with it another seemingly final impasse.

Hegel called this method Dialectics, because instead of obvious adjustments to one or the other of the Pair, the solution had to deal with both, testing what was suggested for one, as it affected the other. In the end the premise had to be as good as possible for both: the process was a dialog between the requirements to solve both the members of the Pair. At the end of the process a single new basis, which dealt effectively with both, had to be delivered, if the achievement was to be anything other than a clever frig.

Clearly, such solutions would never be easy to achieve, and the underlying causes, would not only be well entrenched, but would have repercussions in many different areas. The new assumptions would be revolutionary!

Clearly, the most important feature of Dialectics was that it rejected the methods based upon Formal Logic, for they underlay massive tracts of the prevailing culture. The building of greater truths out of lesser truths, as was the basis in Formal Logic, was totally rejected. Instead of a mere accumulation of new knowledge being sufficient, it was clearly a transformation of how we thought about things that had to be achieved, And, this had to be done every single time! [As V. Gordon Childe, the great archaeologist said, “Man makes himself!”]

Hegel’s contention was that the building of Truth could never be cumulative, but came in fits and starts as prior, misleading bases had to be demolished and replaced on a regular basis.

You may have heard of Dialectics as the method used by Karl Marx, and the evident basis of Marxism, which it certainly was, though, of course, Marx had transferred Hegel’s methodology wholesale into a materialist perspective, and hence renamed his method Dialectical Materialism! But not many know what it actually involves?

Issue 33 of Shape: The Logic of Change

Read the issue

This short set of papers by no means comprises a definitive
statement of the Modern Logic of Change that it purports
to deal with. They arose as a separated series of brief
explanatory contributions to various different research
areas, and hence, in their intended contexts both assumed
that context, and in addition each had a fairly limited remit
as to their objectives.

Nevertheless, on inspection of these clearly-philosophical
contributions, it became clear that they could indeed be
put together as a brief, if varied, introduction to what is
evidently becoming an extremely valuable approach to
Developmental Change.

Though there are some references to other areas of study, I
have modified the parts that would be meaningless outside
of the context for which they were originally produced.
Therefore, hopefully, these essays will indicate the path
that is currently being constructed – a Holist approach to
Science with an appropriate and useable methodology.

New Special Issue: The Holist Revolution

 

This collection of papers might be the most siginifcant contribution in the work towards a holist approach to all the sciences. It advances what Hegel set as his primary goal, which was to develop a ‘Logic of Change’ to take over where Formal Logic had always failed - during interludes of significant qualitative change.

Even 200 years ago Hegel had identified crises in many disciplines where the prior assumptions and principles on which they were based, had run out of steam, and were beginning to come apart at the seams. He, in particular, recognised the appearance of what he termed Dichotomous Pairs - which were principles that though effective in certain areas, were in fact, mutually contradictory, and could therefore never be unified into a single principle covering both. Indeed, though crises may be considered to be typically of short duration, Hegel realised that such situations could persist for very long periods. Man learned to switch between the Dichotomous Pairs to use whichever principle worked in a given situation.

Hegel argued that by such methods, real understanding had been brought to a halt, and that any solution gained by such switching was merely pragmatic and needed to be transcended. He insisted they should be addressed with a view to revealing, criticising and ultimately replacing the assumptions on which they were based, resolving the impasse to a new level. This was Dialectical Reasoning, and the transcending to a new level was termed an Emergence.

The papers in this issue attempt to outline these methods in eight different disciplines, occasionally being profound enough to demolish the older methods of analysis and attempted understanding, for a more comprehensive approach that covers not only periods of stability, but crucially, the transforming interludes that we term Emergences.


Read issue

Dialectical Reasoning

The revolutionary methodology of reasoning, handed on from Hegel to Marx, was of a very unusual type compared with what had been universally employed previously.

For, being holistic, rather than pluralistic (as literally all prior reasoning had been, and, of course, all of Science certainly had become) the new approach started from the total inter-relatedness of all things, and hence fulfilled the credo, “Everything affects everything else!”.

But, such a stance does seem to totally exclude the possibility of Analysis, which is surely the central plank of the scientific method, and has to look beyond individual (and separable) contributions to integrated and mutually transforming effects at a higher level, to get any sort of handle upon how Reality actually behaves.

But, in spite of these major difficulties, it alone can cope with both Change and Transition as caused processes, and that has to be its critical contribution to human reasoning.

One vital feature was that the multiplicity of contributing factors meant that in any situation both complementary, and even totally contradictory, factors would certainly be present and making a contribution. And, any observed overall effect, would be the result of the increasing dominance of certain mutually conducive factors over other less effective sets. And, even that situation would never be permanent, but would have the ever-present possibility of such a “current “solution” being overturned as the general situation changed, and even a directly contrary dominance could come into overall hegemony.

To address qualitative change is very different from purely quantitative changes within a stable situation.

The conceptual model adopted, therefore, became one of contradictory pairs of overall outcomes, and as the most important aspect of the studied situation, its development into something entirely different. It could be dealt with (to an extent) by the activities of these Opposites – the Dialectic of the situation!

Now the validity of this rather surprising approach has been confirmed innumerable times, but only in developments: it is not about stable, quantitative and slowly-changing situations, but about transforming and qualitative changes.

Perhaps before this discussion gets out of hand, the crucial evidence of The Impasse should be brought in?

Most conceptions of situations are far from being the “absolute truth” of it, but are usually an acceptable and useable approximation: the assumptions, processes and even entities involved do get reasonably close to what is going on, and in most stable circumstances “do the job”: conclusions and even predictions can be relied upon. But, such is never the case forever. No matter how clever (or even wise) were our suppositions, there will always be situations where the conceptions and assumption fail. Now, our fallback practice is to have a second-string theory, which also works in some very closely related cases, and we switch to this to see if it does the job here too. And sometimes it does!

We then have two mostly workable alternatives, and we pragmatically switch between them to be in the position to carry on with our objective.

NOTE: But, we must not confuse this with pure unprincipled Pragmatism, as displayed in the current models of the Nuclei of atoms. For there is, at the present count, an unrelated set of some twelve alternatives to juggle between, This two model alternative is not only much more tightly constrained, but, as it will turn out much sounder philosophically.

But, there are cases when even these dichotomous pairs fail to deliver anything at all. And this indicates a true impasse, where the possibilities of the current situation have been left behind completely. No matter what we do using these alternatives, they still always lead to a contradiction: they are both wrong! The situation seems to defeat our usually applicable pair of alternatives, and we seem to be able to go no further.

But, as you may already have guessed, our two alternatives can never be wholly arbitrary, or unrelated to one another, they both will have a measure of the Objective Content of the situation within them, and it was that, which caused them to becomes our pair of alternatives.

But the occurrence of The Impasse, instead of being a dead-end, is perhaps the much more productive situation - for it is only here that the necessary transcending solution can actually be addressed.

NOTE: In his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert Pirsig called such situations the vital periods of “Stuckness”: situations to be sought out and welcomed as the places to make real progress in our understanding.

Dialectics takes the naturally emerging pairs of such dichotomies as temporary truths in the short term, but also as anvils on which to beat out a transcending alternative.

One obvious area, totally unintelligible to today’s physicists, involves the alternatives of Wave and Particle in Sub Atomic Physics. And, perhaps, the most famous is the perennial Descreteness and Continuity dichotomy, as Zeno was clever enough to demonstrate so superbly in his Paradoxes.

But surely, such a method, is not, repeat NOT, predictive, as are most quantitative equations in Science, though, on the other hand, it does give the person a changing situation - to think about what factors are involved, and which way a transition is likely to occur. In contrast to the usual method in Science, which can ONLY predict within its appropriate and defining Domain (set of producing conditions), the holistic approach is much more general and unconstrained.

The holist alternative does attempt to juggle all the involved factors as changes occur and by defining them into pairs of opposite-yet-possible outcomes, points strongly to a particularly limited pair of possibilities.

It is by no means as crude as it at first sounds, for whatever “wins” in a competition of many contributing and distortable factors, will always get there due to its cooperating, and even integrated and mutually modified, set of conducive factors to ensure dominance. While, when a transition does occur, it will again be to one with a similar set of conducive factors, which are likely to be the opposite of what pertained before.

The natural marshalling of simultaneous factors will always take such a form, for such groupings ensure proliferation best. It is about multiple factors with different directions interacting to lead to a particular overall dominance.

A pluralist equation doesn’t even include what factors are present. It is merely a quantitative relation within a static, non-changing situation: it is incapable of saying why it behaves as it does, and the nearest it can get to suggesting what might replace it, is for it to “blow up” into one of its terminating singularities.

But, though this contribution is only a beginning, Dialectics did reflect the true dynamics of multiple interacting factors in real systems. The seemingly arbitrary concentration upon opposites is NOT what was being inflicted upon the situation by Mankind: it was NOT simply another imposition. For the division into conducive and antagonistic contributions to combined effects did cause related groups of factors to form conducive, mutually-supporting sets or systems. And in any complex situation, the direction of these proto-systems would be defined.

It is also important to understand just how dominance occurs: it is basically a version of Selection, which I have elsewhere termed Truly Natural Selection, and it occurs not only in Living Things, but at all levels, even between chemical reactions, which might compete for the same resources

And, a working through at this basic level turned out to deliver a viable model. Mutually conducive or supporting processes, where the product of one was the necessary resource for another, would certainly mutually affect one another. And such could even develop into quite long sequences or even cycles.

Clearly, as such systems came together they would really be greatly more successful than lone processes or mutually contending pairs of processes. The conducive systems would soon collar the majority of the available resources and begin to dominate.

Yet, such sets would not all require the same conditions and resources, so many such systems would occur. 

The rivalry between them would be of a different character. It would not be direct competition – for they required different things, but efficiency and rate of production would tend to some systems growing bigger then others.

NOTE: though too early to deal with it here, these ideas have led to the Theory of Emergences, which addresses how the “wholly new” comes into existence – clearly crucial in any complete theory of Evolution.

Figure and Ground

The Dangers of Simplification

 

This seemingly interminable series of papers on Fields is a product of the way we always attempt to deal with such phenomena.

We have learned that the most productive approach is to avoid confusing complexity, and, instead, work to simplify situations as far as we possibly can. So, we select & isolate situations, attempting to leave only what we are seeking: we simplify first conceptually, and then concretely until we have both a revealing and amenable Domain - ideally conducive to our further studies.

By now, we are, without doubt, the masters of such isolating and constraining of phenomena in such a way as to “completely reveal” their supposedly “Key Relations”.

It has, indeed, become the fundamental approach for all our experimental set-ups, and, therefore, produces not what we think we have revealed – Fundamental and Universal Laws, but, on the contrary, specific and limited relations locked fast into the specially arranged, conducive situations we have erected.

Thus, our “Truths” are always fragments – particulars. And so, though we crave overarching and universal laws, we never actually get them.

We get a multiplicity of particular laws-plus-their-contexts.

So, with such a complex area as Fields, and indeed ALL actions-at-a-distance, this fragmentation is multiplied even more.

Yet, before this revelation gets too depressing, it has to be emphasized that we certainly know how to use what we currently extract. Our methods have been very successful, for we know precisely where to apply our “partial truths” – in the appropriately constrained situations! As long as these correct contexts are accurately constructed, we do indeed have places where our laws work: we can predict, and hence also produce!

Our methods equip us for production, but also inevitably disarm our ability to explain why things are the way that they are, and behave in the way that they do, when left to themselves!

We are very adept technologists, but not adept scientists (though we think that we are), and, most certainly, are nowhere near being even competent philosophers.

Now, the pragmatists will dismiss any such criticisms of both their method and standpoint, because their purposes are in no way compromised by the inadequacies of their approach.

Continuing “Progress” still appears to be continuously assured. But, of course, without the essential development of understanding as well as straightforward use, what we get can only be an aberrant growth.

It is really a maximal exploitation of a partial truth, rather than a step on the path to an ever wider and deeper understanding of our world. [Like the young man who built me a working Amplifier, but could not tell me why it worked, or what the various components were actually doing: neither could he use what he had to design something new].
Indeed, if the stream of scientific explanations ceased forthwith, technology (as with my young electrical constructor) would etiolate and die, like a pea shoot without sustenance.

Science is the source and lifeblood of technological progress, and even more important, it can also be the means to actually understand the world.

Now, returning to our problems with Fields, the difficulty is that our isolating and simplifying also walls us off from what we are trying to understand. For such things are not appropriate to such methods: for Fields are certainly NOT isolatable phenomena! Why can I say this?

It is because the “Figure” and the “Ground” in such situations are not only inseparable, but also actually mutually defining and determining! We simply cannot separate them without destroying what they are.

For example, is a Field actually erected by its “causing” charge, or is it actually a response of the Background to the presence of that charge?

For we usually assume that our Grounds are always totally inert – mere formal references, whereas the holist suggestions outlined above change all of that!

The two always have a reciprocal relationship, and perhaps an evolutionary one too.

Now, rather than halting the conclusions here, and arguing whether these assertions fit all cases or not, let us first concede something called Dominance.

Though the philosophical basis for the ideas being explained here constitute Holism, they are NOT the same as that early version espoused by The Buddha, though it is still much closer to his position, than it is to the sub atomic physicists of today.

It does, in contrast, admit that things are not all of equal weight, and in many situations, particular relations can dominate to such a major extent that they can be fairly easily isolated, extracted an then used in the pluralist sense described above as the usual scientific experimental practice.

But, “Exceptions always make Bad Law”, and Dominance is not triumphant either everywhere, or permanently.

It is a surface effect, upon a holistic World, where literally everything does indeed affect everything else, and in many crucial areas we have to deal with not only Systems of Processes, but also hierarchies of such Systems too.

A great deal is always going on simultaneously, and our Simplifying, Isolating and Constraining in order to extract any usable order does indeed change the overall situations that we are trying to understand.

The classic example is, of course, the Weather, but there are many cases where such situations also defy Analysis by our usual pluralistic means.

My favourite is Miller’s Experiment, wherein he attempted to make an emulation of the conditions upon the primitive Earth – before Life had emerged, in the hope that he could reveal something of the developments leading to that revolutionary Origin of Life.

Sealing “everything necessary” in a glass containing-system, and adding heat and electrical discharges (as lightning), he set the system in motion, which was as near as he could get to the actual primaeval Weather System, in order to see what might occur.

As we all know, after only one week, the water in his system had already turned a deep reddy-brown, and on dismantling of the system, he was able to show that amino acids had somehow been synthesized.

But as to how this had happened, there was no way that he could confirm the processes involved.

The absolutely essential isolation from any present-day contributions, also prohibited any time-based Analysis, and most certainly, many strands of changes must have been happening throughout that momentous week, both as parallel simultaneous processes, and as parts of crucial ongoing and changing sequences. So, without any possibility of intervention, NO further explanations were possible.

This is, and always gas been, the classic dilemma of investigating a Holist World using the only available methods - pluralist science could get nowhere in such investigations. They seemed to be Unknowable. And in spite of the undoubted success of Miller’s Experiment, it was also the “end-of-the-line” in most scientists’ eyes. Pluralist science offered a great deal more and it was there that ALL the research was concentrated.

So, these inevitable cul de sacs in attempts to develop a Holist Science did dissuade anyone else from embarking on such a seemingly doomed-to-failure route.

Yet, it would be wrong to consign this approach to the dustbin just yet. Darwin’s Origin of Species was a masterpiece of Holist Science, and other major holist contributions have also been made. But, the philosophical ground, and necessary methodology for a general holistic, yet scientific approach has still not yet been defined. It still awaits a generally applicable methodology!

Now, this author has attempted to apply such a method to the infamous Double Slit Experiments, beloved of the currently dominant Copenhagen School in Sub Atomic Physics, and he was finally able to explain all the anomalies involved, without any recourse to Wave/Particle Duality or the probabilistic formulae of the Copenhagenists.

So, with this demonstration the Copenhagen View was proved to be NOT the only possible approach, and he has since embarked upon a particular area of Physics, which has long annoyed him.

It is, of course, Action-at-a-Distance, the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through totally Empty Space, and, of course, the “daddy-of-them-all” FIELDS!

So, let us assume the very worst!

Let us say that our “Figure” is really composed of multifarious and mutually determining processes, while our “Ground” is not only very similar in its diverse content, but also both determines the behaviours of the contents of our supposed “Figure”, and is, in turn, modified by them.

Now, here is surely a suitably messy situation to attempt to make sense of.

How might we do it?

Well, we do have a vast set of pluralist techniques, that though compromised conceptually, do give us “something”; and what we get is never merely pure invention, it always contains some aspects or fragments of the Truth. So, as long as we don’t wander off down the usual road, we can use these gains in a different way.

Though all gains made by such methods are always predicated upon restricted and maintained Domains, they do include an important measure of what is called Objective Content.

So, rather than careering off down the pragmatic sweet, downhill road to Production, we should gather as many closely related sets of pluralist Results as possible, and attempt to make some sort of conceptual integration out of them instead.

And, with such a change of philosophy and of methodology things can change profoundly.

We now consider all the skewed, pluralistic evidence, knowing that it has been extensively processed, and hence treating much of what we have with a measure of scepticism, and instead, attempting to formulate a common explanation, that would, in each biased pluralist set up, produce what has been extracted, but would integrate all cases into a single explanation.

Now, at this point we must address the universally applied frig that is the traditional answer to their “sets of pluralistic results”

That frig is the belief that each pluralistically obtained relation (a Law) is in fact the actual Truth for those factors, and if we simply add all such obtained Truths together, totally unmodified, we will get True Reality.

It replaces the true inter-relating integrations with crude Complication. The various Laws are summed to reconstruct what really happens.

NO THEY DON’T! What has to be done is to attempt to merge the individual isolations into a functional and integrated whole. That is much more difficult, but is essential!

NOTE: The alternative to the Copenhagen explanations of the Double Slit Experiments that was my own holist alternatives were amazing different in every possible way. And though the Copenhagenists could immediately motor off with their probability equations, they also brought understanding to a dead halt. Whereas, the holistic explanation have opened up theoretical prospects not only in these areas, but generally!

New Special Issue - The Parting of the Ways

Read here

The following paper, which attempts to identify and display the exact point at which Science took the formal, idealist path, and abandoned the theoretical/explanatory tradition almost entirely, to negate its former purposes and direction, and replace them with an inevitable and indeed terminal dead end, as its alternative.

It is not an easy task, for the most important moves for this ultimate bifurcation, were taken long before the clear and unambiguous split occurred. For, up till that final switch, a dual situation had not only existed, but had facilitated a reasonable amalgam, which though not entirely coherent, did manage to keep the best of both the involved flawed approaches, and thus keep things open for a reasonable, if somewhat eclectic, view of Reality.

So, this task has to start with those long-held, yet erroneous assumptions and principles, then describe just how such a basically contradictory mix of formalist abstract equations and causal explanations could between them approximate closely enough to Reality to allow a plausible and useful amalgam, that on close inspection was certainly unsustainable and indeed conflicting.

It was, of course, possible because the two dissimilar halves of the conceptions were used for very different functions - one was for use, while the other was for explanation: the latter was an effective explanatory narrative accompanying the quantitative use of the equation in predictions during actual functional use. The two were, in effect, “complementary” and delivered an overall mix, which delivered on both important fronts.

Now, whenever such contradictory dichotomies exist, it is because both sides of that contradiction are significantly flawed, while at the same time reflecting some real, and indeed vital, aspect of the situation. Both sides contain some Objective Content.

An Irresolvable Argument?

The basic dichotomy in the Philosophy of Science

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

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

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

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

That is our job, and we will do it!

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

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

A New Path to Truth?

Are we addressing our World correctly?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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