Development and Evolution

 How life changed tempos radically...

In beginning, to explain the Natural Development of Reality-as-is, and having to consciously change from the once primitive Approach by assuming a single All-Embracing Rationality to a strictly Formal One, epitomised solely by Mathematics: it gradually (and haltingly) became clear that such an Approach was far too restricted - excluding all relevant causative factors, to highlight only those that are wholly defined by a Set of Forever Fixed Laws - just like those of Mathematics, and hence making those rationalities entirely Pluralistic.

So, if the readers of this (as they should) require a comprehensive proof of this important conclusion of mine, I can refer them to many evident arguments, culminating in this stance, within SHAPE Journal - compiled over the last 12 years by this writer: where the main intention was to win over participators to the Alternative Holistic Approach, as originally initiated by The Buddha, though only finally and extensively established by the historian/philosopher, Karl Marx, very much later, in the 19th cebtury - some two and a half millennia after The Buddha.

But, Marx never extended his crucial changes into any of The Sciences, which turned out to be an absolutely vital omission: so he did not complete the necessary transformation, thereby leaving his version of Holism, woefully lacking in many important and indeed necessary areas. And, most important of all, he did not establish sufficiently an All Embracing Version of Holism!

For, it should also have comprehensively tackled the problem of multiple, simultaneous and mutually- affecting factors, that would have involved what I have called The Systems Approach.

But, even those meagre additions, by this Thinker and Writer, turn out to be nowhere near enough, as FIRST: The Emergence of Life totally transformed the available mechanisms within the properties of the now newly available agents of all the possible concrete development, namely ALL Living Entities, and the then, ultimately, the qualitatively different Thinking, finally possible by Mankind!

Now, the latter undertaking is now somewhat underway, but the former involving the effect of Life itself, has, as yet, NOT been addressed. So, the purpose of this paper will attempt to begin to sufficiently fill that vital gap!

For the tempo-and-nature of Development, itself, was majorly-and-qualitatively transformed by the Emergence of Life - as embodied in the unavoidable, appaerent limitations delivered by the relatively Short-Lengths of all the Lifetimes of the interacting living entities involved, and also significantly also compounded by the only possible concrete legacy between generations, being via the sexually-produced, and hence genetically-defined determinators, combined within the produced seeds-or- offsprings: and which always being distinctly genetically- different to the contributing individual parents, and, thereafter directing the competition of those differently- endowed others of their type.

For, the somewhat inferior products would always survive less well, and, over time, the genetic stock of the various populations would clearly improve and even their means of life would change and be passed on both purely genetically, and by parental instruction! And though other factors would undoubtedly be involved, there would be significant tempo developments via Evolution, than was ever possible before the Advent of Life!

From two very ordinary Working Class families, including my Grandma, who could neither Read nor Write, my son now has a Doctorate and directs a significant course at a well-eatablished English University!

Yet, nevertheless, actual ascending trajectories of possible individual development, are not yet what they should be, as the World Economic System grinds increasingly haltingly towards an inevitable Worldwide set of Devastating and even Existential Crises, in many different directions, each with no obvious solutions, being either pursued, or even proposed.

The opportunities that are still possible, are increasingly opposed by those who for a very long time have been reaping most of the rewards available , and doing it in such a way, that, on a Global Scale, they work against such developments, if applied generally, and instead re-direct the driving imperatives involved away from the general involvement of all populations, so that they show themselves as driving things, at least partially, only to their own working populations, so that they are ever more likely to be blamed. Global calamities such as increasingly irreversible, yet wholly Damaging Climate Change, and the also ever-growing impoverishment of the majority of the World’s poorest Populations!

And, by so doing, attempting to divert the blame for all of the Crises onto ordinary people, and certainly not the fault of the decision makers, who actually caused it, as long as they didn’t suffer!

The Objective of the Ruling Class is clearly to ensure their own well-endowed future, while everyone else bears the brunt of any fall-out, even though to continue to get away with it all, they will act as if they are struggling against colossal odds outside of their control, while they continue to try to alleviate the lot of the Common People “as best as we can!”

But, though the tempos of development involved in Society were vastly increased, those improvements were NOT directed in the very best directions, for the benefit of the majority of the population. But, always aimed in the directions that affected the tempo of monetary benefits selectively to the Owners and Directors of all Productive, Transportive and Distributive undertakings! The needs and benefits for Employed Workers did NOT figure at all in these remunerations!

Theory:

Without a doubt, further progress in the intellectual developments that Mankind has pursued, is needed in order for us to survive beyond this century. Literally ever since we abandoned the Trees of the Equatorial Forests for the significant Emergence of the new open expanses typified by the unsustaining grasses, with their populations of grazing, fleet-footed animal inhabitants, along with the fierce predators that preyed upon them, so clearly having the strong effect of selecting for ever increasing speeds of the prey animals, in order to even survive! Surely, that didn’t seem at all coducive as a habitat for Human Beings! So, what was it that even gave them a chance of surviving? They were NOT fleet- of-foot: nor did they possess dangerous teeth, claws, or remarkable strength!

Those Hominids seemed hopelessly ill-equipped for the wide open Praries, and far better off remaining where there closest relatives, the Gorillas and Chimpanzees chose to remain, with the protection and relative abundence of the fast shrinking Forests... But, they didn’t do that!

So what features in the lives, suggested that the Praries were the best place for them?

They had already abandoned the trees for the Ground! For by doing so they enabled their forelimbs to become manipulators of things: and their hands evolved very differetly, into brilliant manipulators of many different things. The became bipedal, with NOT tree-grasping “hands”, but running feet! They had already found ready-made rools in the form of sticks and stones, and could maintain a naturally caused Fire, both for warmth and to scare off predators.

And these changes radically altered their ability to THINK! It was as yet still similar to how they used their brains in the Trees - but was changing fast! The new environment was greatly more challenging than it had long been in the forest: for there was literally no secure places to go to when challenged by predators. Somehow early Humans had to stand and fight and arrive at effective wasys to do that! They had to constantly think of how they would survive: and those who didn’t measure up, perished! There was a selective pressure upon them that fairly rapidly selected for the cleverest!

They found caves to use as refuges: and ever better weapons to fight with, including spears and Fire itself; and, accordingly, only the best thinkers survived, and, along with the developments in intelligence, the Humans (or, most probably, their immediate ancestors), rapidly adapted to make the best of this new environment for their survival and development. In particular, they lost most of their body-hair, and rapidly adapted sweating to further cool down their increasing temperatures - while also adapting thier legs and feet, for extended necessary running. They became ever better animals of the plains!

Now, such swift and concentrated adaptions also demanded major changes in their brains, but, most significantly, in how they solved the very different problems of Survival: for without that ability too, they could not have continued their conquest of ever new environments, which they continued to do until they were literally everywhere upon Planet Earth!

But, to assume that all these developments were based upon ideal ways of internalising the Truth of these New Situations, you would be very wrong indeed. For, there was Absolutely NO Easy Access to such “Truths”! Reality-as-is is far too multi-layered and complex for that to be directly achievable by mere Experience of it.

Indeed, all such achievements ONLY had to marginally increase the possibility of survival - and that has to include something of the Truth!

So, literally NONE of the improvements ever enabled Human Thinking to alight upon any absolute Truths at all: they were all only ever partially true, and would, every single one of them, lead to error in all attempts at analysis!

Our concept of both the Nature of Reality-as-is, AND of of our predictions from it, have so far been inadequate, as every New Area of Study only ever reveals wholly New, previously-hidden features, that, even when they are fully addressed, are STILL not by any means, the Whole Story! Indeed,these revelations prove undisputedly that the Holist View and Approach to the study and control of Reality-as-is is absolutely correct, and that from the tiniest morsel of Matter to the Infinite Universe, there will exist many, many very different Systens, Structures and Laws, which, nevertheless, naturally co-exist, and even contribute to one another: YET at each Level deliver different dominances and hence a surprising measure of temporary independance, while still via Emergences, are always capable of changing overall situations dramatically - even into what appears to be a Direct Opposite situation!

This paper is taken from the latest issue of SHAPE Journal (76):

Issue 76: Development

Read Issue 76 of SHAPE Journal

...

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

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

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

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

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

The Fateful Wrong Turning

Many millennia ago, the most advanced organism upon Planet Earth collectively made a fateful decision as to how they would attempt to both grasp their given Reality, and make full use of it, in order to both further Prosper and also Develop.

It was by no means a totally incorrect decision, for it was based upon a clearly Pragmatic Premise, which at that time was both unassailable, and indeed capable of delivering a sizeable measure of success in their consequent endeavours, considering their then achieved understanding. The Premise was, in a nutshell:

If it works, it is right!

This positioned Mankind's priorities totally within what they could gain from their experience of, and consequent actions within, the World as it definitely appeared to be.

Of course, at that particular stage in their development, it could not be anything other than that, for, though, they were the most successful organism, they were still at a very primitive stage in what they could possibly be, and indeed do - so, in order to to continue to make any further progress, that approach would be the only way: and hence both the Means and the unavoidable Limiting Restriction upon what they could achieve!

It meant, primarily, that they should continually be trying new interventions, with the diverse elements of Reality, and in consequence, thereafter, only sticking-to the ones that actually-and-reliably seemed to work. But, it was never at all likely to increase their actual Understanding as to why they worked at all!

But, nevertheless, in the hands of Mankind, it very quickly promoted this fairly physically-weak species, into a privileged position, among all the other animals of Planet Earth, and the advantages that culminated in this development had actually commenced when Mankind abandoned the Trees to become a purely bipedal creature of the Ground.

Indeed, their ancestry is clear, even now, that they were members of the Great Ape Subgroup (including Gorillas and Chimpanzees), who were all highly competent, swinging about within the branches of the trees, which dramatically modified their fore limbs into Arms and Hands, and even did a similar job upon their hind limbs! They could grip onto branches with all of their limbs: but the Hands, co-ordinated with their binocular-vision eyes, could also manipulate and study things extremely well!

So, when Climate Change within their traditional areas began to clear away the extensive forests, and replace them with vast grasslands, most of Mankind had to radically alter their means of Life, and learn wholly new skills and physical natures too! There was little or no cover in the Grasslands so hiding and surprising potential prey was impossible, so even staying in contact with them, meant that Mankind, as hunters, had to become long distance runners with greater stamina than their prey species.

[This is evident, even today, with literally all the World's best Distance Runners coming from that same area in Africa]

And, that change resulted in other major changes too, as long distance hunters had often to chase and even Track their prey at a run for days so keeping cool led to losing most bodily hair, and developing sweating to reduce consequent body heat: as well as the natural skin colour being Brown for the same reasons!

Now, in another direction these Prarie-dwellers also came across Lightning-caused-Fires, that swept across the Grasslands killing the prey it overtook. And the human hunters noticed birds eating the killed-and-cooked animals, and trying it for themselves, found it delicious for them too! So, if they could transport a small fire, perhaps moved onto a flat piece of rock, then keep it supplied with further fuel, they could have their own means of cooking prey, as well as also frightening-off threatening predators from attacking them.

Now, Mankind has no enormous teeth nor big claws, so weapons had to be added to Man's means of killing Prey animals, as well as fending-off predators. They discovered Flint, a hard-but-brittle rock, which when easily shattered, was capable of delivering both sharp edges and piercing points.

So, for literally thousands of years our ancestors Knapped Flint, with increasing skill, to produce Knives, and ultimately Spears, and later Arrows (propelled by flexible wooden Bows, with strings made of animal sinews). And the Flint Knives enabled the butchering of their kills, and the extraction of skins and hides as clothing, as well as anything else they could make use of. A group of well-armed and skilful users of their weapons, were soon a formidable threat to individual animals and even small herds!

Mankind, with its simple pragmatic ideas, and effective learned means were beginning to succeed surprisingly well. And their Flint Knives became effecting tools for working Wood into desireable implements and even constructed dwellings, especially if taking advantage of naturally-occurring Rocks or even Caves.

Surprisingly early-on in the caves of Lascaux, in a valley regularly traversed by herds moving between different seasonal feeding grounds, groups of humans lived, for long periods with semi-permanent self-built Dwellings. And they drew images of their prey on the walls of their caves!

But, the Hunter/Gatherer Existence - later called Savagery - certainly had its limits, and Natural Disaster Events could easily wipe out many Family Bands, and ultimately a Social Revolution transformed many human groups, via a wholly new means of dealing with required resources. A much more static way of living, especially in conducive areas - such as adjacent to Major Rivers, and with Planted crops in protected Fields, along with prey animals also fenced-in and cared-for, for easy access.

It was the Social Revolution to Barbarian!

Significantly, though many other innovations were constantly added to Mankind's Skills and Methods including the weaving of Cloth and even winning metals from Rock Ores - the basic Pragmatist Approach didn't change, in spite of Empires being built upon Wars and the enslavement of conquered peoples, involving yet another Social Revolution!

But the complications of these new Social Forms demanded that Records be kept and written Orders required. Writing became increasingly important and regularised Speech too. The Languages of peoples had to develop along with the Social Changes:and the development of explanations and even Discussions grew very quickly among a Literate Class. Language became an alternative to "suck-it-and-see" pragmatism!

Could Solutions be found via Discussion too?

So, in the leading Civilisation of the time - The Greeks, they began the attempt to formalise the most important area of Mathematics (the Study of Number), with its extension into Geometry. And via the invention of abstract relations between the various Forms encountered, began to Rationally build a Formal System - Euclidian Geometry. And via this System of Formal Relations using Theorems and Proofs, a coherent, consistent and comprehensive Rationaliy was legitimately built.

BUT, the new rationality was only true of the relations between Forms: it was NOT true for anything else! And yet, the Greeks (and ultimately everyone else) believed that these discoveries were universally true, and applied them as a Rational Cure - to absolutely everything else!

And that was wholly illegitimate. For, all the relations revealed were Wholly Fixed - as relations between Formal Descriptions only: they would certainly have to be so, for Forms are a human invention to facilitate a reliable Naming between Fixed entities alone: while most of the relations within Reality-as-is are certainly NOT Fixed: they most definitely vary, and as such produce all actual changes.

Indeed, literally the only area where these assumptions are true, is within Mathematics, and hence in Absolutely All Equations too!

BUT, these forms are precisely what are used in The Sciences, as determining all possible circumstances, including all actually Qualitative, as well as Quantitative changes, whereas with Qualitative changes they CAN NEVER be so legitimately used. And, to undermine the whole of the usual assumptions, individual Laws (and hence their Equations) are NOT totally independent of one another,

The only way that such Laws, and their Equations can ever be used, is with very limited contexts and contents, in order to totally exclude such effects! We have assumed that such rigid restrictions, along with tightly controlled environments are merely to separate out individual Laws: but they never actually achieve such isolations, and, even at best, only limit divergences to deliver approximations to the actual relations, and never give the supposed truth!

Due to this wrong turning, Experimental Science is majorly mistaken.

The incessantly-used substitutions between different Equations in order to produce other Equations, are always wholly invalid! And the almost-entirely mathematical manipulations that are the backbone of Theory in Science are completely invalid too!

[Leonard Susskind should take note]

And, finally, the whole mathematical approach conceptually wrongly isolates simultaneously-acting Laws, as if they act wholly Singly-and-Separately, which they certainly don't! Indeed lt is only beginning to be addressed in new The Systems Approach to Science, where they influence one another in various ways, including Selective Eliminations of the rarest interlopers in the mix.

Indeed most apparent Stabilities within Reality are both temporary yet long-lasting, so give the wrong impression of being Wholly Permanent, and hence a basis for all our assumptions about "Natural Laws"!

Once again we must return to Karl Marx's Analysis of Social Revolutions, to correct this mistake. For only there, in the total turnover of many apparently Permanent Laws, are they discarded and replaced by wholly New Alternatives, in the establishment of a different and better Overall System!

 

Developments in the Human Brain

Elsewhere, recently, I have found it necessary to consider the Effect of the Emergence of Language upon Human Development and Understanding. And, in those studies, it clearly is significant just how the Patterns of Thinking seemed to change profoundly whenever a particular Form was also given a Name, and then discussed, along with other things, and in the same way as everything else. And, this was unavoidable, of course, because within Language, a Name must be totally-fixed, to thereby allow Language to both effectively and unambiguously deliver any ideas involved!

For, whereas, a Form is never once-and-for-all uniquely determined - they most certainly-and-importantly DO change, into various other and significantly different Forms as Development proceeds - Names, on the contrary, cannot do this, for a mutually understood definition must hold, in order for it to play a meaningful role within communication.

This is both mostly unacknowledged epistemologically, and highly important, as Language is our only means of Explaining Things. Such a limitation can often be wholly incorrect when applied to dynamic Forms and Systems in particular, as it is often not immediately evident, as profound Change doesn't happen most of the time, in many areas. They are then regularly used as just another normally-unchanging (constant) elements of Language, Words: and this can cause major errors in Explanations, when those Forms suddenly change into other quite different Forms, in Emergent Development. 

But today, I came across another See The Pattern video on Toutube, by the creator and presenter of that series, Gareth Samuals, in which he considers a study from a US University, in which the actual Shrinking of the Human Brain, generally, has been clearly established! 

Now, I gave been engaged for some time upon the Emergence and putting the Effect of the restrictions of Language, above those nrcessary for Human Thinking, which has seriously affected it, in both some great advantage, as well as also, other clearly disbling ways.

For, the direction that The Sciences have taken since the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC, there has been been an effort to take the Forms, along with all other elements as being totally constant, by putting the needs of the Consistent Language (in Explanation) well above the need to the development of the Forms, thus vastly distorting all supposedly Scientific Explanations, by the needs of Language over those required for Forms.

Now, in addition to the above point crucial other changes are involved. For, something about the processes involved in Thinking about Things generally, must surely have significantly changed the structures and processes involved in a major qualitative changes in the forms of wholly new features that were recently necessary that were NEVER necessary previously, and some replaced those left over from a majorly different System, no longer relevant!

It would seem that whatever changes happened (and remember they actually were NOT universally implemented) still involved a shrinking of our Brain size.

What could possibly have caused it? And did it mean a reduction in the processes necessary,  caused by   simplfied Thinking techniques!? And, if so what exactly were these changes?

We have long been aware of physical changes due to excessive exercise: but this discovery is undoubtedly significant - for it seems to link a Loss-in-Structures, coupled with a significant Gain-in -Performance!

For, if this is a rare if General Rule, it infers a very different - nay revolutionary - relation between Structure and Performance, and a significant re-writing of Development and Evolutionary Changes!

But, it shouldn't surprise us, if we are already committed to the Revelations delivered by Dialectical Materialism! For, though, most of the time, things do remain unchanged, we are beginning to address the Clear Fundamental Interludes of Significant Qualitative Changes, AND the significant Role of Contention in the creation of the Wholly New! So, it cannot be avoided that the Material World changes too - And NOT just incrementally - they also happen in the thinking abilities and even physical capabilities of organisms, which can only mean that these developments must also reflect the capability of physical Changes in those organisms too!

Thought-and-Language simply must have some physical manifestations - for, indeed revolutionary transformations in Thought cannot merely be a mere new arrangrmrnt of a totally unchanging physical entity!

For, we must remember, the relatively short lifetimes of individual people, and their only way of passing physical capabilities on being via Sexual Reproduction between different individuals, in a definitely clearly dialectical development of the production of a Single Egg (synthesis) - formed from both contributing (and contending) parents, but thereafter wholly contained within and automatically sustained by the Mother! Until finally, in a cataclysmic change termed Birth, suddenly becomes a separate and unique individual - having to breathe and feed for itself! If that isn't a Revolutionary Physical Change, I don't know what is!

And, these constant renewals, many thousands per day, alongside the inevitable terminations, ultimately, of both parents of the prior generation, SIMPLY MUST involve other major changes too, also significantly sometimes including, the creation of the Wholly New! Yet, exactly how all those changes in Thinking, physically emerge-and-modify what happens in the Brain is NOT known.

There is no developing Physical Model of the Brain: it, instead, is conceived-of, as an eminently-flexible organ, with potentially infinite capabilities - to which I must profoundly disagree! For, what could possibly have given this matter such capabilities?

You can see why a God had to be considered as The Prime Architect with these assumptions - but it has long been just a necessary Myth!

And, with the usual regular errors imposed upon all discusions of causes, due to the confusion about Names, especially when they are applied to things such as Forms, as explained earlier in this piece - so that NO meaningful conclusions are arrived at, and making regularly sound conclusions impossible to achieve, and the consequent generated problems are thereafter rarely, if ever, addressed.

Yet, surely, it must be possible, from a real understanding of how Forms do ultimately-transform, via explicable processes, into something quite different, without letting the basic rules of supposedly intelligible Language, forever lead us into the mire!

Of course, to be able to do this, one must have seriously embarked upon a dedicated journey into The Dialectics of Change, which is NOT the accepted wisdom currently, though there are increasingly many areas where that is the only worthwhile Approach.

 

The Origin of the Ruling Classes

The ruling class obtained their power and wealth using violence

Long, long ago, in a now-totally-vanished Early Civilisation, certain dedicated people struggled with all their might to begin to understand Reality-as-it-actually-existed. And in that initial, and mostly pre-Productive era, the main purpose was always primarily to see what caused things to both Change and even Develop, in the ways that nature clearly did. 

These were remarkable People, having only recently abandoned the nomadic of existence of their forefathers, and conquered how to work-with-Nature, settle in a single permanent place, and plant-and-tend crops, as well as pen-in and domesticate certain animals, they had crossed the Rubicon, that had long restricted their development, which had lasted, scarcely-changing, for literally millions of years. 

They knew what they had achieved, and were already beginning to think differently about the world. And also, to consider what other possibly different behaviours could also be tried-out, that might, in the future, produce dramatically different alternative possibilities. And, the purposes for establishing such objectives, were seen to be to both explaining their own Past History, and, armed with such understanding, perhaps be in such a position to avoid old mistakes, and to struggle instead for something a whole lot better!

But that wasn't yet happening. 

For instead, other groups of people, who were NOT such seekers of truth, and were still living as constantly-wandering Hunter/Gatherers, were motivated by seeing those settled people, who were clearly much better off than they were, to instead shape their future by the Use of Force - directed entirely to acquire those things using violence, for their own exclusive benefit, BUT, at the same time, effectively preventing others from doing that very same thing to them.

And those possible builders of an alternative future, currently enjoying the benefits of a productive life, were not yet equipped to attempt to either understand or withstand the warlike objectives of jealous onlookers from outside: who did know what they, themselves, were already fully capable of achieving, such things, just as they had in the past, by the obvious use of Force. They could vanquish any possible present and future opponents by employing a First Strike Strategy, and then, thereafter, remaining fully-equipped to perpetuate their achieved dominance, if ever they were challenged, both either by those that they now ruled, or by any wholly new forces, with the very same objectives as they themselves had originally pursued. But, such rule by conquest was no contract between rulers and ruled: there was no doubt as to who was in charge.

The earliest raids were just surprise attacks, and the attackers couldn't take-and-carry-off very much, but the hunters could inflict serious hurt and even deaths upon the defenders, and would be back frequently, if some form of effective defence were not put in place. But the only at-all-competent defenders would be other groups of Hunter/Gatherers, and they would not usually be either available nor willing when required.

Ultimately, a surprising solution was settled upon by chance, when desperate Hunter/Gatherers were taken in and helped by a Farming community, and then when a raid occurred, the hunters who had been taken in effectively defended their new friends, and beat the invaders off. And a deal was made, that in return for such defences, the Farming Community would continue to provide the needs of their Hunter defenders.

And, after a series of successful defences, the "Village Hunters" quickly became lauded heroes, and sometimes were even asked to be the leaders and protectors of the Community.

So, initially from good intentions, the Community had acquired a nascent Ruling Leadership of non productive warrior leaders. And a New Class had been established whose greatest asset was their ability to Fight-and-Win, but certainly NOT to work!

So, the later Leaders and Defenders of civilization would naturally come from this now privileged Class. 

And, they would want to maintain their Status and Privileges, even long after their use as Defenders ceased to be either necessary or possible.

And today, long after this leader/defender role has vanished - and after so much social upheaval in the name of equality and social progress - the Class that so became established at the dawn of civilisation, still largely remain in place.

Have a look at today's ruling class and the activities they enjoy if you're in any doubt...

Is Revolution a Natural Part of all Development?

Natural Revolution

SHAPE Journal is proud to present a new film by Michael C Coldwell and Jim Schofield.

This is a film about revolution.

A film about how revolutionary emergences are a natural and crucial part of all developing reality. 

Based on a wide-ranging discussion between Marxist philosopher and scientist Jim Schofield, and filmmaker and researcher Michael C Coldwell, this essay film explores diverse themes, from Stalinism to the evolution of language, from the origin of life on earth to the failure of the 1960s revolutionary movement. The visuals are ripped and mashed from Youtube - archive footage, newsreels and films from the 20th century. Music is supplied by Conflux Coldwell and the Urban Exploration collective.

Beauty?

Scultpure by Henry Moore - its beauty is nothing to do with symmetry or formal perfection

As an artist (I am primarily a sculptor) as well as both a professional scientist, and a philosopher, I always justifiably jib at sweeping definitions of Beauty, from one or another supposedly fundamental stance! So, when today I was assaulted on YouTube by a series of such declarations, I was impelled to pen this essay.

The most glaringly false declarations, as you might have guessed, were inevitably about Mathematics!

Wilczek swoons at its towering and breath-taking "Beauty", while another is staggered by the importance of Number in the Universe.

But, it is also clear, that neither of these 'prophets' were in any way aware of the fundamental weakness at the very heart of that Mathematics, which makes it totally incapable of dealing with any qualitative developments whatsoever. For, its power resides solely in its artificial simplification of all things to reveal only their superficial Forms or Patterns.

Mathematics is the study of forever-fixed Pure Forms, and as such was, and is, a truly remarkable advance, but certainly NOT the Revealer of all, or even any, Causative Essence. The invention of this formal approach, by the Ancient Greeks, was indeed a major Revolution in intellectual studies: but it wasn't carried out by an omnipotent, all-knowing and all-seeing God - but by mere human beings.

Darwinian Evolution selects for Survival and effective Reproduction only - so our Hominid-Line knapped pieces of flint for literally millions of years, without any significant intellectual development occurring at all. For this 'intelligence' was not congenital, but certainly had-to-be both a solely socially-acquired, and passed-on ability.

Indeed, the undoubted proof is clearly evident, from the revealing studies of Palaeontologists, who also immediately recognised the tremendous significance of the Neolithic Revolution, when Mankind successively changed-over to staying-in-one-place with others of their kind to productively both Farm-the-Land, Domesticate Animals. and discuss with one another. Only then could increasing-social-interactions begin to develop in both the regular Exchanges of things, and revealing Discussions, delivering a consequent development of productive activities and crucially also both Language and indeed Thought itself!

Now, the above short diversion into Human Evolution was absolutely essential, as without it, the inevitably inaccurate initial misconceptions about the Nature of Mathematics would inevitably intervene to prevent any understanding of its accompanying significant weaknesses. So, unavoidably demolishing any promotion of it to a universally fundamental role in the Consciousness of Mankind!

The Ancient Greeks had achieved a remarkable thing conceptually, in their Intellectual Revolution - they invented a wholly new kind of Abstraction - with regard to Forms, that enabled the valid construction of the very first Intellectual Discipline in their History - namely Mathematics!

I call them "Simplifying Relatable Abstractions", and they were a remarkably empowering original invention! They stripped down certain formal conceptions to an absolute minimum content - indeed, so tiny were they, that they were useless in isolation - BUT, as connecting-enablers, they alone legitimately linked certain things together, delivering a sound means that could be legitimately repeated into delivering a substantial complex and coherent spatial Discipline.

But, there was a flaw!

All so-produced-things must be permanently fixed.

They could never change qualitatively into something else!

So, what had actually been inadvertently and unavoidably subscribed-to was the Principle of Plurality, and, most certainly, not everything was legitimately so permanently limited. But, abstract Form most certainly was!

Now, here beginneth the inevitable drift into significant Error, from this initial success. For, immediately, The Greeks, delighted with what they had been able to do with Form, exported the same sort of qualities into both Reasoning and a nascent Science, where they were wholly illegitimate as universal premises!

But, the disaster was, by no means immediately evident, particularly if those so-produced Disciplines were to be only used within naturally Stable and Unchanging Situations.

And also, crucially, in Science, investigators quickly learned how to both achieve-and-maintain such situations, for both relation extractions and also subsequent effective use of extracted eternal Natural Laws. While in Formal Logic, the Reasoning was limited to fixed concepts, which could suffice in most stable situations!

NOTE: But, almost immediately, Zeno of Elea had revealed the unavoidable falsities that emerged from Contradictory Fixed Concepts in his Paradoxes.

Now, as both a competant mathematician and a well-informed philosopher, I have developed these ideas, particularly with respect to the damaging Role of Pluralist Mathematics in Science, wherein I have established it as unavoidably both pluralistic and idealistic, and hence totally inadequate as any sort of assumed General Ground of Concrete Reality, i.e. in Science.

Indeed, all of its many extensions no longer exist within Concrete Reality at all, but are situated solely within Ideality - the realm of Pure Form alone.

Jim Schofield's Theory of Abstraction

So, when Wilczek and his like wax lyrical over the Beauty of Mathematics, he is actually describing situations in Form-Only Ideality!

The breath-taking intricacies and "beauties" of these investigators, are NOT about The Real at all, but, instead, only about the extensions of formal definitions into the infinite, but not concretely existing, features of Pure Form Alone within Ideality.

[It applauds the infinite extendibility and intricacy of Symmetry with Fixed Forms, and totally excludes the Real World Beauty of Creative Development entirely]

It just cannot be Science any longer: for it is, at best, a form of Art, based upon the Real, but artificially extended to extreme limits, outside of Reality, to display their Formal Beauty!

[Remember: Reality also contains properties, qualities and causalities, while Ideality contains only Form!]

But, why then is this unreal World indulged-in so extensively by scientists?

Having shot themselves in the foot via the Universal extension of Plurality to literally everything, they walled themselves off, permanently, from Developing Reality, and the Holistic and Dialectical means of dealing with it, so were forced to permanently give-up Understanding, for mere Prediction, and hence had to look elsewhere, NOT, it must be emphasized for Explanations, but instead, to seek only Descriptions-of-Forms that might possibly then be used as Disembodied Forms, enabling Prediction, without-Explanation or increased Understanding.

It is actually a retreat to an older pragmatism, disguised within sophisticated Abstraction!

DNA and the Social Development of the Brain?

In a CARTA video available on YouTube, by Leah Krubitzer, she delivers a remarkable alternative to the usual Genome-dominated idea of development in the brain. It clearly demonstrated that though the forms-of-development within the brain are solely determined by genetics, the actual contents of those developments are NOT so determined at all, but are primarily influenced by actual use, via behaviours in the real world - especially by behaviours caused by major crises inflicted upon the recipient.

This "seems" to return to the oldest problem of all in explaining development!

Is it wholly blue-printed within the DNA (Genome) of the living entity, which effectively determines everything that subsequently occurs, though occasionally changed by what are wholly accidental Random Damages to individual Genes, OR, can things learned during life be passed on to descendants as "Acquired Characteristics" (such as in current epigenetics and a return to Lamarckism)?

For, her contribution could also be seen in that way, but that certainly isn't, and indeed wasn't her case either. What Leah Kubitzer reveals is more a development of the former than a return to the latter as will I hope be revealed!

Indeed, various studies both of unusually sensually-equipped animals both occurring naturally, as well as in addition others having had their sensorial means artificially totally-restricted, and the effects on their brains compared over many individuals.

The results were remarkable!

Actual use, over time, had physically-changed the brains involved.

Particular areas of the brain appeared transformed in the animals artificially reduced in sensorial abilities, to enhance some of those that remained, to end up with a brain-structure similar to that of the duck-billed Platypus, whose brain-area dedicated to its super-sensory bill was relatively enormously enlarged. But, the changes noticed, in both, amounted to a great multiplicity of the connections from that part of the brain to other areas within it, and consequent increases in those particular areas too, the behaviours-possible were down to those vastly increased connections, and NOT to wholly new functional areas.

The brain was physically changed by enhanced behaviours, but then, via new connections, also enabling, in addition, wholly-new further development of such behaviours.

But, there is a great deal more in these findings than what immediately presents itself.

Notice that the duck-billed Platypus, as a species, hasn't changed much in vast periods of time, and yet the particular individual animal (a possum) deprived of its sight changed at a remarkable rate, and made all the necessary developments very early in its life - the initial period was absolutely crucial.

Nothing new was available to that animal, indeed it was a deprivation that precipitated the developments.

But, we already have a process in which the given Genome of an animal delivers all its "built-in" behaviours, with any changes being down to random chance mutations of genes. And, in addition, it is supposed to be only by such purely random damage to the genome that any changes can ever happen, and thereafter by Natural Selection, which chooses the best adaptations to predominate over succeeding generations.

Is not that single one-way causality also somewhat challenged by these findings?

For, the deprived individual animals developed not only new connections in their brains, but also enhanced, or even new, behaviours benefiting from those changes.

Yet, the developments in the brain must also be inherited! How else do modern animals including ourselves come to be as they are? And, at the same time, why do some organisms remain unchanged for millions of years?

Mankind has, in the past, clearly revealed important processes in this area, but, as usual, always conceptually simplified them in order to more easily develop them further - for simplifying Abstractions always enable such things (see all of Mathematics!).

And, there has to be more to the mostly wholly redundant and unused majority of any organism's Genome, where the genes seem to be in "rooms used as depositories of rubbish, and like those in many a Stately Home, full of no longer used cast offs".

I don't believe in 'junk' DNA! It is more likely that this represents The Past of that organism in some way, in its evolutionary development: occasionally transformed by mutations, but later bypassed either temporarily or permanently, as a repository of things that once worked but now bypassed. Could this be how prior evolutionary solutions return, in supposedly convergent evolution, such as the return of fish-like traits in sea mammals? 

Primarily, though, the dead weight of our pluralist history in Mathematics, Reasoning and even Science has imposed upon our thinking the myth of eternal Natural Laws and Reductionism, which fatally damages our ability to make sense of such Development at all, by falsely converting it into the mere Complexity of many summed-fixed-things and laws.

The consequent missing ingredient was therefore Real Qualitative Change, and hence the absolutely necessary means to ever understanding Creative Changes.

Darwin, Engels and Marx

Now, since Hegel and then Marx, the methodology of Dialectical Materialism had been devised to address such developments, culminating only in 2010 with the Theory of Emergences (by the writer of this paper), which finally tackled the trajectory of alternating Stabilities and Emergences that characterise Qualitative Development in literally all spheres.

And, echoes of it are clearly shown in the case of the deprivation of sight in a possum leading to a rush of developments in other senses - for in the Theory of Emergences the termination of seemingly permanent Stabilities can only be precipitated by crises that cannot be resolved from within them, and therefore necessarily results in both a collapse of the current Stability, and thereafter the consequent construction of a wholly new one, which is finally established via another and wholly different Stability and set of new capabilities!

Theory and Practice

Which one delivers the Path to Truth? A serious attempt at an answer!

Science presents Mankind with an amazingly stimulating promise.

But, are we really aware of exactly what that promise is, and where it resides in our thinking and our actions?

Such questions must be adequately addressed, in order to affect just how much of that promise is fulfilled. And, it is the early history of Homo Sapiens that can remove a few of the more blatant errors, in dealing with such questions, but certainly by no means all of them.

For, the vast majority if Man's existence as a separate species, there was absolutely nothing that could be called Science, but there were developments in how Mankind managed to survive, and even occasionally, to prosper! So, what were these developments, and how did Mankind arrive at them, and then, begin to think about them?

The only real evidence, for the majority of that time, resides in the varying cultures that have been uncovered, concerning the knapping of their flint tools, which can be sequenced by where they occur in layers left in the ground beneath our feet, and so still investigatable now, as sequences in the deposits accumulated in the ground. The other vital evidence, from such deposits, is to how far human beings migrated over time, and how long such wanderings took.

Now, in spite of the evidently incredibly slow rate of development revealed by these deposits, they do reveal a dextrous and intelligent life-form, but not yet equipped with the intellectual wherewithal to transcend that initial hard and limiting lifestyle.

Yet, all of these revealed cases are about exactly-the-same-species as we are now! There have been no significant genetic developments of our species since that time, so any progress absolutely must be due entirely to new social reasons.

Most of our development as a species regarded practice

The vast changes in the tempo of development, over the whole trajectory of our species, seem, initially, to be wholly inexplicable. But, really, it actually demonstrates the colossal differences within such developments, revealing seemingly impossible impasses in mind processes, which along with inappropriate Means of Life, could, and clearly did, lock our species (as with all others) into a literally almost-stationary mode for colossal periods of time, even though as later developments show very clearly, what was needed was actually there for the beginning, but was inaccessible until a particular "vital social point" was surpassed, after which, things took off like a veritable rocket!

Put into modern Dialectical Materialist terminology - an Emergent Episode or Revolution occurred.

The crucial question is then to explain why such an extraordinary Event did finally happen and changed things for good. The Transforming Event was that instead of constant wandering, as small family groups, seeking the means of Life as Hunter/Gatherers, Mankind discovered how to farm-the-land, and domesticate-animals for food, milk, clothing and even transport! They could then stay in one place in significantly larger numbers - and pool what they knew and what they found out. Language then developed at a rapid rate, and instead of a re-cycling of remembered family myths, they daily encountered different ideas and discussed with many more different people.

It was this Neolithic Revolution that vastly accelerated the tempo of developments.

Now, throughout the long Hunter/Gatherer period, developments had been occurring, but at a very slow rate, and they were all essentially concerned with Practice. The development of flint knapping Cultures identify that the developments were mainly centred around the wonderfully dextrous Hands of human beings. Indeed, though my earlier description was limited to Homo sapiens, it had also been true of earlier, non-human hominids, over literally millions of years, significantly ever since Homo Erectus, when our ancestors freed The Hands from being used primarily for locomotion, to be used, instead, in a variety of new ways. And significantly by Homo Habilis, who first began to use tools, significantly out of flint shards.

It is clear that this vast prehistory, prior to human beings, did indeed change the capabilities of the Hominid brain, but not yet to actually Think, as we do now. It was, initially, used in arriving at the best methods of surviving and manipulating our immediate environment, judged solely by Pragmatism- "If it works, it is right!", and thereafter remembering them. And, with a woefully inadequate language, even that was no mean feat.

Indeed, physical rituals were by far the best means of embodying such methods in memory, and, later, also involving chants. But, language was still, for most of this development, wholly inadequate to the task, and do-as-I-do demonstrations were far more effective.

Indeed, to this day, this pragmatist tenet - "If it works, it is right!", still plays a vital role, even in Sub Atomic Physics!

Indeed, intellectual pursuits are comparatively modern, dating only from 500 BC, with the intellectual achievements of the Ancient Greeks. They say, "The Greeks had a word for it!", but, they had to allocate them to the many wholly new intellectual ideas that were beginning to be used and argued about.

And, here's the rub!

They, and everyone ever since, didn't get-it-right. Indeed, how could we, for we aren't all-seeing and omnipotent? Indeed, to use the language of Science, what is called Absolute Truth is NEVER known, nor can it be. For, look who is attempting to describe things - we only invented the first approximations to many things a mere 2,500 years ago!

So, what is it that we name, argue about and use? It is at best a partial reflection or aspect of the Truth, that is termed Objective Content!

But, this attempt isn't pure invention: it often contains enough to be useful, but always in limited contexts. So, as we extend our studies, we will always stray beyond the locality, in which our Objective Content pertains.

Very soon after the inital Greek Intellectual Revolution, Zeno of Elea was able to list a whole set of cases in his Paradoxes, wherein the uses of the concepts Continuity and Descreteness inevitably led to logical contradictions. So, these concepts did NOT exist as everyone used them.

They were OK in certain uses and arguments, but not in others. Significantly Zeno had chosen the very area - Movement, wherein the usual meanings were inadequate and often WRONG! Yet, any sort of general treatment of such Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, was not re-visited for 2,300 years, when the German idealist philosopher Hegel was able to identify many different cases, over a wide range of circumstances, and also, and profoundly, identify the cause of incorrect use in the inadequacies of Formal Logic, which took NO account, whatsoever, of Qualitative Changes: it dealt only with things that qualitatively remained-the-same.

It is a wholly Pluralist discipline!

He then embarked, as well, upon a study of the premises for such concepts. and was able to prove his case by removing unbridgeable impasses in reasoning by correcting the premises of the involved concepts. But, he also knew that Formal Logic also had to be radically changed to include Qualitative Change - he sought A Science of Logic.

But, of course, that is an impossible aim for an idealist!

To validate the meaning and premises of anything needs a reliable, objective basis for confirming any ideas, and that can never be a mere consistency within a set of man-made ideas and their rules of relation! It can only be within Concrete Reality. For, only there can improvable Objective Content about anything be both tested and improved.

To limit criticism only to the meaning of words omits the Real World as final arbiter - for example, it does not depart from an idealist stance: that is all that Hegel could do in finding a "new way", but it still needed Marx, to insist upon a switch to a materialist basis, for the problems generated to really have any chance of being addressed.

Now, the underlying Pragmatism, which has played such a major role in Thinking throughout Mankind's History, has always emphasised Practice as the most fundamental of the joint integration of Theory and Practice, but that very History proves such a decision to be wholly mistaken.

For most of that time, Practice alone was present, and development was, therefore, doomed to proceed at a snail's pace over enormous periods of time, as the objective was merely to do again what you had successfully done before!

Indeed, it is only in what is termed Theory, that we attempt, not only to describe phenomena, but also to crucially begin to explain them too. And, perhaps surprisingly, such Theory does not have to be 100% correct to enable real progress: it only has to contain more Objective Content than was available previously.

Practice without Theory is embodied in 100,000 years of flint cultures, achieved by Homo sapiens (modern humans): they were NOT pre-human hominids - they were identical to us biologically, but they had not developed any theory.

So the Emergence of Theory was truly revolutionary!

How else can the Neolithic Revolution be understood?

Why should what had been happening all around them throughout that prior period, would then begin to be controlled by Man, and the revealed means spread like a wildfire throughout Mankind.

Theory was a new process, infinitely superior to even perfected-but-unexplained Practice.

And, it did NOT require Absolute Truth to be an adequate engine of Progress. It did, however, require Objective Content - parts or aspects of the Truth, which reached beyond a particular phenomenon to deliver a more general applicability. Indeed, such "truths" would, nevertheless, inevitably lead, in time, to seemingly untraversable impasses - yet they could, and indeed would, be transcended.

For Theory was not only about Concrete Reality itself, but could also be reflexibly applied to itself!

It isn't a mechanistic method: absolutely everything comes within its aegis!

The process is not only one-way.

The greater generality of Theory enables it to extend understanding, and even direct further Practice to proving its applicability in new areas. And its generality presses users of it to ask "Why?", in addition to only "How?"

Theory is never "absolutely correct", but it constitutes the only path to Truth.

Genetic Code Development in Hominids

The Ed Green lecture is in the second half of the video above, if you want to see it.

In this excellent recent lecture upon early pre-humans and Neanderthals, Richard “Ed” Green delivered a fascinating description of what is now possible from “decoding” the found Genomes of now extinct near- humans, and comparing them with both living and long deceased Humans.

I cannot do justice to his remarkable revelations amd conclusions, but they are all available on YouTube, and should be obtained directly, and in full, from the producing source. And, though Green does not make the same conclusions as myself, there is little doubt that what he derives from the now available evidence, takes him a long way from the prevailing Pluralist philosophical stance, and much closer to the alternative Holist stance.

For, I can draw, and indeed have-drawn, conclusions which, I believe, are extractable from Green and his many colleagues’ work, when early humans are compared with other animals, in terms of their then unavoidable “Means-of-Life! Green arrives at remarkable results for the natures of the Genome in all the early Humans and near humans investigated. They are considerably different from what happens in herd animals and also sedentary groups of animals, for they seem to bear the genetic stamp of being isolated Hunter/Gatherers, which, necessarily, imposed upon them a lifestyle of constantly- wandering small family groups, and even spread them, even at that early stage over extensive areas of the Planet.

And, such a lifestyle meant that to reproduce they would have to come across other, maybe very different family groups, from which partners were found and new mixes produced to then continue the incessant wandering.

The evidence available to Green, indicates the “localisation” of genetically different groups - not only Neanderthals, but others in both different parts of Asia and in Southern Africa, and interbreeding causing present day Genomes of particular humans to include a mosaic of features from “ostensibly-different” hominids - yet, still producing viable humans as a result!

Clearly, in spite of long periods of time, and extensive spatial separations, these populations are more like country or regional differences of today, for they all remained humans, according to all agreed definitions, and they would certainly have continued to have the same conditions and consequent lifestyles too.

Finally, if a holist stance is taken as the basis for all analyses in such developments, the emergence of the wholly new - the change to a new species, would have to involve a major crisis, which dissociated the prior Stability, and from its dissolution a new stability - a new species could result.

For, with such a stance Evolution CANNOT be incrementally achieved: the changes that occur without such an Emergence are NOT qualitative, but merely quantitative, the species has new varieties within it, but its essential nature is unchanged.

In other words, the lifestyle tended to isolate families over extensive areas. But the necessity of Reproduction also required access to others, probably forming still- separated, but communicating overall groups, which later came across one another (probably in the form of individual wandering families).

So, though such “local groups” might become extinct, something of their Genome would be preserved within surviving individuals long separated from that group by joining a still wandering group and contributing, genetically, to some its offspring.

This short paper appears in the new issue of SHAPE Journal on Evolution

Issue 60: Evolution

Issue 60

Here we return, at long last, to the theme of Evolution. How might our recent insights into the notion of Holist Science affect our study of biological change?

This is certainly not a full-and-final definition of an Alternative Approach to the Study and Explanation of Evolution. But, it is something of a well-informed muse upon how that might be addressed - contributed by a philosopher who has specialised in just such an approach in Sub Atomic Physics, primarily in opposing, and finally disproving the current consensus stance of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

It resolutely rejects the universally-supported Pluralist Stance, which underpins not only Mathematics and the Sciences, but crucially Formal Logic too. And, the reason for its failures is that it focuses exclusively upon Stability, not only as the underlying basis, but as the only means to expose and allow the extraction of Reality’s supposed “Eternal Natural Laws”.

It thus necessarily excludes all Qualitative Change in all its analyses, and uses only Quantitative Change - thus substituting Amount for Quality, and Complexity for Emergence!

It has, of course, proved to be invaluable in dealing with situations within such Stability, but useless in coping with Qualitative Development such as Evolution.

It is also significant that the Holist alternative to Plurality was, and is still, a widespread philosophical standpoint, particularly in Asia, and among Buddhists, for it was first extensively described and used by the Buddha in his many Suttas. But the modern version arose out of Hegel’s criticisms of Formal Logic, and was developed as a system by Karl Marx in his Dialectical Materialism.

This short collection of papers is an initial argument for the holist stance to be applied to Evolution, as it was originally defined by Marx in his analyses of the development of Human Social Systems, and their transformations in Social Revolutions. And, also as demonstrated by this writer via the application of his Theory of Emergences, in his works on Philosophy, Mathematics, Science and Formal Logic

Issue 49: The Tree Metaphor - Modelling Human Knowledge

Read issue

This issue looks at various analogies for the evolution of human knowledge, and how they might reveal where we have gone wrong.

Can we establish a sound metaphor for how we usually establish Human Knowledge - a Model or Pattern for how we do it now, and maybe how we should do it in the future?

The purpose of such an idea is that it delivers an overt Model for how we have done it, heretofore, which, at the same time, gives us a basic framework, to enable us to both criticise and improve upon it, independently of the content that we pack into it. Put in another way, we are attempting to make clear the philosophical bases for this vital process, which are, usually, not only implicit and undeclared, but also rarely even questioned.

First Americans

The First Peopling of America

In how many waves, and when and how did they come?

Things are changing fast in the studies of Early Man, and many once-firm conclusions are being dismantled by new archaeological evidence.

A very interesting body of different discoveries from all over the whole of North and South America, are questioning the generally-believed single first immigration from Siberia, only 40 thousand years ago, which now looks as though it may have been at least three incursions, including much earlier ones by very different routes.

Quite apart from the above archaeology, there has always been seeming contradictions in the cultures of various tribes and civilisations that have left their proof in both the constructions still standing, and the peoples still existing to this day.

It has always seemed to me that the most primitive economic system that has existed until recently on the plains of the Mid West, in what is now the USA, the hunter/gatherers, contrasts markedly with the much more advanced peoples very much further south, in Central and South America.

For, the former were much closer to the supposed original point of entry - across the now Baring Strait, presumably when it had been turned into a land-bridge, with the decline in sea-level, caused by the build-up on land of the fast-advancing, vast glaciers of the Ice Age.

And, to raise even more questions, remains found in Brazil of an ancient woman or girl, were validly dated as the oldest ever found in the Americas, and she looked nothing like either the Plains people up north, or even the supposed Siberians or Mongolians who were considered to be the ancestors of all first Americans.Indeed, she looked more like the first peoples of Australia.

Then, even more recently found, some very old remains were revealed to have features more like modern Europeans. And, some were reconstructed to look more like the Ainu from northern Japan.

Finally a well-preserved, but very ancient body was found, and investigations proved that his entire diet had been of fish, which inferred a possible close-to-the-sea route of access, while along the south coast of Alaska animal remains proved conclusively that they must have lived upon land, next to, but not covered by the Ice Sheet that was dominating the rest of the Land.

And, of course, the ancient land revealed by the locking up of water in the Ice Sheet, will by now be inaccessible, due to the demise of that Ice Age, and the returning of the water to underneath the Pacific Ocean, so cannot be investigated for necessary evidence.

Now, why would anyone brave the rigors of the ancient far north to reach America?

The best argument seems to be the herds of Caribou, which occur, today, not only in Alaska and Canada, but across Eurasia from Scandinavia to Siberia.

And, Man soon learned to follow them in their essential vast migrations to new pastures. With a way of getting to such resources in America Humans could have followed them, using them for food, clothing and even transportation, as they do today.

Some time ago I put up a paper entitled "Did the Eskimos Discover America", reasoning that they could have conquered living in the Arctic of Eurasia, and merely followed the edge of the ice, during the Ice Age, occasionally on their sea-skin boats, to America.

And, this contribution has proved very popular. So, though that is clearly not the full story, it had merit.

From what I can make out from the excellent NOVA Documentary (on YouTube), there now seem to be several waves of early immigrants at very different times, stretching back much further than the now replaced single incursion.

New Special Issue: Thinking!

Special Issue 45

Exactly what thinking is has always been a problem for Homo Sapiens.

For we are clearly animals, yet seem to be very differently endowed from even our closest relatives among the Great Apes.

Yet we continue to study what we think of as “intelligence” in various non-human animals, and attempt to define what it is that separates us from them, and exactly how it could have developed in only this single species.

Indeed, we often characterise what we do as “Thinking” and picture it in a very homocentric way, as in Rodin’s famous sculpture of a man with his hand upon his chin and with head bowed. He isn’t looking at an object or doing anything physical: he is Thinking!

We like this because it doesn’t seem to fit with how all the other intelligent animals “think”. We seem to do our reasoning solely in our heads, using what we call abstractions, and we are convinced that only we can do this. There can be no doubt that it happens. But what actually is it, and what can it achieve? Indeed, the number one question has to be, “Can it actually settle upon the Real Truth?” The answer has to be “No!”