Mechanisms of Development

Mechanisms of Development

& The Consequent New Structures of the Nature of Reality

There are many, long-held assumptions about the Nature of Reality - and these are understandably distorted by the often extremely slow tempo of the Qualitative Changes that occur. And this gives an initial impression of some essential Eternal Stability. on which everything else is built, with only inessential variations actually occurring.

However, such an environment, if it were to exist, would basically remain the same forever - maintained as such by a Fixed Set of Natural Laws. With this primary assumption, attempts to understand those Laws were well worth pursuing, if only to make sense of the full set of possibilities, so that the most conducive could be arranged for, and always kept that way, forever.

This was a relatively Static Conception of Reality, and what investigations were pursued, were NOT considered to be an infinite set: but, at least, a fairly large-yet- unchanging group of natural possibilities. All discovered Laws were assumed to then be available then, in exactly the same ways hence forward!

But after many millennia of study, there always seemed to be others - as yet unknown! The set was apparently getting ever-bigger, and a full definition of them all always appeared to be a long way off!

It never occurred to Mankind that Wholly New Laws were constantly developing, because NO possible mechanism for Production of The New seemed at all possible - beyond the divine.

And indeed, all discoveries were naturally-assumed to be merely different combinations of those already- known Laws: and there was an assumed Logic of such combinations. But all of this isn’t True! Indeed, there are situations, in which the Wholly New can be created for the very first time: and NOT merely from new combinations of previously existing Laws - and, hence, when such does happen, there is absolutely NO Way of ever predicting what they will be! They will most certainly NOT be mere combinations of past known Laws - for then they could easily be explained and always be completely predictable!

So, what occurs, are termed Emergences. They are NEVER predictable, and hence ALWAYS add Wholly New Possibilities to the Overall situation.

Reality-as-it actually-develops: we have the constant Evolution of Nature to attempt to understand!

All we can more generally say, about these Wholly New Emergences, is that they will, indeed, have “something” comparable in common with other prior Emergences - for example, how they may interact with other prior existing Laws, of all kinds! BUT, exactly what they themselves will contribute, will never be predictable, in advance of their first appearence, though more general roles to other prior Emergences will be obvious after the Event.

Now, all of this is clearly profoundly important - the great omission in modern Science is the paramount role of Emergences within Evolution. For, following their appearences, new directions will be possible, that were not available prior to such Events: and the most important of these will, most commonly, be when old- established features begin to be directly-contended, and, maybe, even actually eliminated.

Well established features can simply just vanish!

So, it would be totally mistaken, to assume that they would only Add to the possible range of outcomes: for, sometimes, they could most certainly Substract from prior possibilities too.

Now, as I have been at pains to fully appreciate the Important Role of Contention in complex situations, it becomes ever-clearer just how many surprising outcomes can result in well established, seemingly “stable” circumstances. And the Active Stabilities within the long periods between Revolutionary Events, are perhaps both the most important, AND by far the most difficult to explain! What actually delivers these Active Stabilitues, which are maintained for such exceptionally long periods?

It certainly isn’t a single overall condition that has to be precipitated into a General Collapse! It can, surely, only be a whole series of Separate Active Stabilities, which deliver the Obvious Overall Stability, due to the simultaneous stabilities of all the present sets. So, they have to be, at least close to individual collapses but surviving! The Revolution will be precipitated by first one individual Active Stability failing, and in doing so, trigger other Collapses, until the whole System is dissociated.

Now, there are still many more only half-answered features about the Nature of Reality, particularly concerning Electromagnetic Currents and Fields in Space, and relatedly also involved within the Sub Atomic regions within, and even without, Atoms. For things like Birkeland Currents cry out for further Explanation: as do many other related phenomena!

The classic “Chicken-and-the-Egg” Problems - relating Current and Fields, especially out in the vast expanses of seemingly Empty Space - originally conceived-of as a vaccuum devoid of matter - are still far from any satisfactory explanation, and are never considered as important when it comes to actual research of Space itself: while the Sub Atomic Spaces within Atoms are also ignored experimentally.

It could be that the usually available controls considered essential for ALL Earthbound Experiments, are clearly impossible in such areas, so literally Nothing is done there! In particular, the unexplained Nature and Description of the creation of the Birkeland Currents, coursing between

The Sun and The Earth: not to mention the now widely- suggested Hierarchies of several of these Currents, claimed to be actually Directing the arrangements of Stars, across Truly Vast Volumes of “Empty Space”!

How did these huge Systems Emerge, and what initially directed their creation and optimum positioning?

Clearly, the usual descriptions (as in the “See the Pattern”) make absolutely no attempts to address these questions, as has become the norm in most Electric Universe published ideas, as well as elsewhere in Physics.

But, all such assumptions-without-Explanation, simply must be investigated: yet all access to Experiments-in- Space seem to be totally non existent within this extensive Group, and wider too, it appears!

Indeed, there seems to be a surprising attitude to Theory - NOT, as the essential explanations of WHY things behave as they do, within carefully designed Investigative Experiments, but, alternatively, as self-consistent “Descriptions”, with absolutely NO naturally critical stance - as they surely should always be to finally arrive at The Truth!

Clearly, any still-remaining “Big Bang” ideas, give a Single Initial Source, for all Energy Requirements, but Reality is NOT a Running-Down Clock: it is a powerful- and-Continuing Creative Process, regularly producing The Wholly New - the evidence is all around us!

Along with the now universally-employed lop-sided account of the Ukrainian Conflict, the same kind of lop- sided accounts of Reality are similarly rampant too!

ASIDE: The above conclusion, which is certainly true about Modern Science, needs, I feel a concrete example of the increasingly employed alternative to experimentally-justfied Theory, to the now regularly- resorted-to alternative of more-detailed, and indeed useful, Descriptions, often employed in Science - as an alternative to Real Theory.

The example, that I am most familiar with, is the See the Pattern “Explanation” of the various forms of Atomic Nuclei - composed (for simplicity) by identical Spheres - representing Protons and Neutrons, and attempting to “explain” various features in terms of “Closest Packing” Forms!

It certainly isn’t a Scientific Explanation: it is a somewhat idealised Description ONLY, and explains almost Nothing of these crucial bits of Reality! It says absolutely Nothing about the Vital Properties of those different Atoms! The Science is omitted and “replaced?” by some Purely Descriptive Geometry.

The obvious and clearly very important Properties, known to be associated with these substances, all the way to their constituent Atoms, are NOT explained by this Closest-Packing Approach: so by far the most important and Causal features are simply NOT delivered.

The Persisting Myths involving the accumulation of only simple Quantitative Changes, within their Key Parameters, which being much too deficient to also include any Qualitative Evolutionary Changes, is therefore demolished! And Real Evolutionary Changes then actually construct a New-and-Necessary Totally Integrated System, in which the many contributions help to both support and mutually maintain one another.

But, by the very same relationships, many contributory elements are also eliminated, so, the overall prior System cannot recover, and step-by-step it dissociates into a complete Collapse: Stage One of a Revolution has occurred!

The Total Chaos that thereby results, however, is certainly NOT the end of the Process! For, wholly-automatically, a Whole New System then proceeds to construct a very different, and more appropriate sort of Active Stability. Stage Two of the Revolution is also complete!

Now, these Two Processes are always very Different: the Collapse is both swift-and-automatic: but the Re-Build, thereafter, has to find its optimum components, largely by trial-and-error, and that takes time!

Now, though Karl Marx recognised that these Revolutions regularly happened in Human History, AND hence were probably the usual Mechanism involved-in Real Qualitative Changes in Absolutely All Kinds of Developing Systems, his Primary Discipline was the study of Human Societies within History. And, that alone would require a truly massive amount of work to identify, describe, and crucially Explain all its vastly varying tempos, and the particular factors affected therewith.

Marx, though, intimated that such processes were almost certainly more general than being limited only to Human History: but he, personally, NEVER took his conceptions directly into the vast Range of Disciplines, where they would also be validly applicable!

Now, this was unavoidable, at that time, for both the tempos and the Qualities involved in Natural Systems, would be very different indeed, and, any wholesale- and-unmodified transfers, from say, History to Physics, would certainly be calamatous!

The Nature of what Marx called Dialectical Development, would, initially, at least, be limited to History and Economics - but the Philosophical reasoning behind his approach was much more general.

Now, the extension of this approach to all the other Disciplines is much Easier Said Than Done! For, starting with basic materials within Physics, will, in spite of the same general appoach, be necessarily profoundly different: if only because the ingredients in Physics are totally non-living objects, without any Conscious Reactions to what is going on!

The involved processes in such Systems, though still taking a related development path, will still be vastly more limited than the Processes in a History of Conscious Human Beings! It will be possible for such Human Physics Practitioners, to naturally attempt to build a Dialectically Developing version of Physics - BUT, it will look nothing like the Forms and Developments dominating Marx’s vision of History!

And, if it is to become THE general Way in all investigative Disciplines: they will ALL differ significantly - each with their own unique characteristics, even with a consistently Dialectical character assisting in our understanding of Change.

Indeed, this researcher as a qualified Physicist, and long-time critic of the usual ways that this important Subject has been developed. I disagreed with my Lecturers, from my very first term at University, and interestingly, on searching for an alternative approach in the exellent Library there, I found only one lone book presenting, what I believed, was a viable alternative. The book I found was in the Philosophy Section, and was called Materialism and Empirio Criticism - a work by the Russian Ulianov, who was the only one at all close to my own strongly held criticisms. I only, later, found out that Ulianov was better known as Lenin - the later leader of the successful Russian Revolution, and an avid follower of Karl Marx!

But, by the publication of this book Lenin amply demonstrated that Marx’s Dialectical Materialism could be applied powerfully and consistently to a very different Discipline to that of Marx, which in many clearly evident ways was considerably more Basic than History! Lenin knew that he personally could not take these ideas further: but he certainly proved it was possible, while at the same time very different to its application in the social world. And, he also proved his profound Marxist credentials, at many crucial junctures and Crisis Points within the Progress of the Revolution.

Many years ago I attempted to do the same job as Lenin (in Physics, not global Revolution!), but I couldn’t make any real progress, until I came across The Systems Approach, which alone significantly extended the range of Causal influences beyond the usual Properties of Atoms and Molecules to include Top-Down Systems Causes too! And, as mentioned elsewhere in these papers, Oxford Don Denis Noble has effectively included Systems Theory into his again very different Discipline of Biology!

Now, that there are three very different areas finally receiving necessarily extended approaches, we have produced, thereby, three different possibilities for new developments. For - in terms of Levels of Reality - below History we now have Biology, lacking the Conscious interventions of Mankind, but including Life and its basic development trajectories - and finally we have Physics, which now delivers the most basic Level of Reality that we can access.

And, these, together, have recently ushered-in various previously not-included factors, the Most Important being a general Systems Theory - and, for the first time, the acknowledgment of Top-Down Causalities, to add to the prior sole reliance upon reductionist Bottom-up influences.

And, what could, indeed, be added ON TOP of all of these, and influenced by them, as well assigning a wholly New Major Level of both Actions & Effects, consisting of Artistic Interpretation & Futher Explanation, across the whole set of the Arts, and a most profound disemination via the powerful revealing Media possible!

Now, in addition to what has been suggested above, yet another highly important aspect of the Key Processes involved, has-to-be the mechanisms that must be used to implement what is necessary! For these greatly influence just how these processes inflict the absolutely maximum effects! These unavoidably greatly concentrate these Effects in subtle Systems-Processing ways, ONLY evident when we correctly consider them acting upon various sets of Reactions, as finite CHAINS of separate processes.

For, though crucial, these are never regimented by waiting-in-line for their turn. For, the output from one process has to “find” the place to initiate the next process, and any movent involved, could also dissipate these comings together, and, in so doing, reduce the possibility of a completed CHAIN. So, perhaps surprisingly, the coming together always also elicits a reflected opposite action, from the recipient, and this dissipates the energy, in the form of an oscillation in-place! The complete CHAIN therefore happens, and so possibly dissociating energy happens in-place: and the overall result is the achievement of a kind of Active Stability, which allows all the required reactions to happen without dissociation! There are Two basic cases that must occur in the above described way:

1: THE LINE SHUNT Where whole chains of different processes, when disturbed in a single direction, nevertheless deliver a maintained two-way Oscillation, at the End of all the processes acting in a CHAIN

or
2: THE TWIN SHUFFLE When many such processes are acting simultaneously, a disturbance will cause multiple similar oscillations throughout the whole lot!

For, both of these intensify those Effects, which though seemingly one-way “shunts”, in fact actually cause movements both forwards-and-back, to deliver the possibility of maintaing an overall Stability, via a both ways maintained oscillations!

The reason for mentioning two different examples, is that while they deliver different situations, they still end up with a similar Active Stability, substituting Oscillations in place for translational movements.

This paper is taken from the ongoing series The Systems Theory of Everything, currently being published in SHAPE Journal. 

Issue 78 - The Systems Theory of Everything IV

Issue 78 of SHAPE Journal now available 

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

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

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


Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Empirical Laws within Science

New Emergences and Imposed Calamities

Multi-Level Law and its Evolution

Emergences and Evolution

Mechanisms of Development

Where are the Marxists?

Cause and Law

Special Issue 77: The Systems Theory of Everything Part III

 

Special Issue 77 of the SHAPE Journal

Special Issue 77 contains the third instalment of The Systems Theory of Everything.

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

The series continues by examining how Systems evolve over multiple Levels, and how this fact effects the reductionist discipline of Physics.

Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Top-down and Bottom-up Development within Evolution and Physics

Natural Active Stabilities

Assumed Restricted Scenarios and their consequent Man-Made Laws

Levels and Tempos

Mankind’s Greatest Mistake

How the Mistake Affected Theory

Revolution and Multi-Level Law

 The following paper is part of a forthcoming special series of the SHAPE Journal outlining my new Systems Approach to Science - the issues are to be titled The Systems Theory of Everything...

The key revelation, via my recent work on Systems Theory, is that absolutely all Laws exist in very long-lasting, initial & partial modes - actually defining, what appears to be, their naturally Sole and Permanently Existing Level. This Level certainly continues to exist-as-such for often considerable periods of time. Yet, that seeming-permanence is totally illusory: for, though it has in actuality established a Primary Level-of-such-Laws, the consequent process of the Law's Inevitable Evolutionary Development was, as yet, still incomplete. It actually can-and-does establish further transforming developments, into extra Causalities, situated at a Wholly New Level, while adding a Purely Empirical Rider STILL at the prior Level.

Now, understandably, this was always missed in our scientific investigations (and still is, by all those intimately-wedded to the two and a half millennia-old Principle of Wholly Pluralist Laws)! A stance naturally arising, entirely Pragmatically, from the absolutely necessary, and greatly restricting, experiences of the only Form of Successful Productions, entirely Without Theory then known. For it simply could not be otherwise!

Only via great restrictions upon both Context and Content could Productions be consistently successful. And, this is because, of course, such limitations successfully totally suppress any natural further Causal Developments - indeed of any Evolution of the Laws involved.

Remember, therefore, such Levels were solely imposed by Mankind! Left to itself, Reality-as-is naturally evolves, though often extremely slowly from our perspective. And it was Successful Production that set the first-percieved-boundary, though the natural difference in tempo actually drove the Man-sized conceptions involved.

Now, the problem of discarding that initially necessary straight-jacket in Thinking, has taken a very long time, in breaking-into Man's Consciousness, because Production has become the Motive Force for our Success in this World! And, has also been the Prime Driver of the whole Human Population into Opposing Economic Classes, which also perpetuate this actually accelerating aberration.

The Essence of the entrenched Pluralist perspective, underpins the current Class Dominances, and has continued to dominate Mankind's Consciousness for Millennia!

Science is also a social process, and part of a superstructural system that "maintains the base" 

But, such a damaged-view of the World has undermined any Real Understanding of Reality-as-is, to such an extent, that the dominant Economic Drives were, and are, pushing Nature itself to the brink of collapse, and without a veritable Revolution, the Human Situation upon Earth is surely in question. 

For, the Natural Revolutions of the Ancient World, that historian and philosopher Karl Marx had studied, and thereafter so brilliantly-and-remarkably analysed, in his wholly New Dialectical Way, sadly had, since then, been increasingly diverted away from that wholly natural, self-correcting-and-developing Path, by the concerted efforts of Mankind (particularly its Ruling Classes) - greatly distorting and also forcing such situations into clearly non-natural directions, without the releases and rejuvenations that those Revolutions had always allowed!

Initially, those man-devised objectives and consequent directions didn't seem to be forcing situations badly wrong! But, that increasingly and acceleratingly changed, as Mankind's choices ever more speedingly precipitated more-and-more Crises, though also, contradictingly, alongside clearly evident Gains.

So, the real causes of a general deterioration were never realised! And, the mounting damage to the Natural Environmental Processes of Development, along with the suppression of literally all natural-and-beneficial Revolutionary Upheavals, were imposing a significant and increasing bias, and ever more deterioration, upon the underlying conditions of all wholly Natural Levels.

The previously wholly Natural Processes of Both Correction and Improvement were increasingly suppressed by Human Activity, and concern for the many natural self-correcting Systems of Planet Earth, along with its diverse and contending Contents, were NO LONGER allowed to function as was necessary for such a complex System to be able to develop naturally!

Of course, Marx's historical analyses had been wholly correct, but he had never went beyond his own finite Social and Economic Disciplines, in any of his analyses, so the wider Sciences were all totally omitted! And, subsequent Marxists, ever since, (with the possible exception of Lenin) all kept well within the confines and boundaries of their own particular disciplines - so many of these contributions, though certainly of some value, were also severely damaged by these major limitations.

Coupled with the always-assumed extrapolations-upwards from single Atoms and Molecules, all the way to considerably larger natural associations, could not but severely-distort what was considered to be Causality, regarding real and much larger Systems. 

Clearly, these assumptions would be wholly misleading, in Real World situations, so, experimenters continually restricted the circumstances of their Experiments, until the results finally matched the assumptions! Not very scientific was it?

But, remarkably, by mere chance, those results did indeed match with another remarkably truncated Discipline - and, for totally unrealised reasons! For, IF the restrictions were tightly implemented-and-maintained - as such, the situation would indeed be made to conform to the originally tightly restricted-and-controlled condition - which limited Laws to their initially First-discovered-Level alone.

You can see why they clung to their Plurality so steadfastly: but it was for the Wrong Reasons, and led them increasingly astray over time!

Only Modern Systems Theory (for example, the work of Denis Noble) could possibly reveal the Truth - for Causality actually changes with Scale! And, without which, the intricacies of Real Dialectical Causal Evolution would NEVER be understood.

Now, the very development (occurring originally in Ancient Greece circa 500 BC) that laid a basis for a certain kind of Consistent Thinking, associated with Number, and thereby establishing the very first Consistent, Concise and Comprehensive Rationality, upon which, the First-Ever Usable Rationality was constructed - gave power to the elbows of those who extolled-the-virtues of Rationality in establishing Truth Absolutely Everywhere, and ALSO, thereby, instituted the Wholly Wrong Idea, that the same would be possible across All Areas of Study, upon an identical basis: which was most certainly UNTRUE!

For, though this did also reflect the First Discernible Level in Natural Laws, it was NOT all-embracing, and would, everywhere, be extended, given time, because in its early association with the First Ever Rationality of Mathematics, had subsequently damagingly manacled literally all Logical Thinking, only to that necessarily limited Rationality, probably very similar to that devised for Mathematics: which was, most certainly, Totally Incorrect.

And, this clearly also-damaged the very idea of Rationality, as applied across most areas of Study, and was, thereby, limiting the range of possibilities only to those that conformed to a single artificially limited Logic.

The true, natural variability of most real relations was ignored, for a simpler System that always also implemented the necessary limitations!

These damaging assumptions were established for literally all Ways of Thinking - as it was to match the Limited Rationalities across the whole range of real possibilities, which had, thereby, falsely restricted situations to only all severely and wrongly-limited-sets. The whole range of Rationalities were similarly straight-jacketed into restricted sets, that could never fully reflect the full set of Real Possibilities that were actually occurring.

Clearly, such wrongly-imposed limitations would necessarily omit some of the true full set of legitimate contributions, and, thereby, also fail to fully consider all of the actual effects of those omitted possibilities completely, and hence, at least some of the consequent extended sequences of later, as yet, totally unaddressed possibilities.

What would unavoidably have been delivered, but would also necessarily have always been incomplete: and these, nevertheless, would have their effects, which because of the imposed, yet incorrect limitations upon everything, would later still appear, but "without causes", and consequently be frequently wrongly explained!

Now, a single case, as described above, would, of course, be added to by all other applications of that falsely imposed restriction: not to mention all the many possible "cross-effects" between the various different omitted cases. So, in this complex world, we are now revealing the overall effects of these limitations, which would, very quickly, expand to significant unaccounted-for consequences. And, the question that arises must be, "What would experimenters DO to bring things back into predictable territory?" Would it be another dose of those usually-applied simplifying Physical Restrictions, that were the problem in the first place?

The points made in this essay are by no means trivial: but taken as a whole, with other seemingly confirming processes of various other kinds, can-and-have produced an apparently consistent approach, which is, nevertheless, totally false! And, therefore, one which initially must have seemed wholly sufficient, has, as more and often contradictory additions were included, demanded ever more also-incorrect additions, merely to counter the ever-increasing contradictions, caused by those restrictions. 

The only effective approach, has to be a disposing of all these past mistakes (and any correcting props we routinely rely on), and the complete replacement by the indicated extension of Dialectical Materialism, to a Holistic Systems Approach to absolutely Everything!

The previously truncated, and hence initially greatly simplfied, straight-through approach, and its replacement by a sequentially emerging System of Levels - to actually reflect the real constantly (if slowly) Emerging Evolution of Reality into Ever New Levels, with majorly qualifying Effects. The Appearance and consequent Evolution of Life did exactly this, and thereby has proved its necessary inclusion within absolutely all areas of Change!

Now, the consequences of this are NOT just in explaining the Emergence of wholly new features, BUT primarily in how the increasing numbers of often contending Laws and Properties - all available together - actually manage to co-exist!

We must remember that all these many Laws, not only all exist in the same spaces, but both depend upon each other for required resources - and also, in turn, deliver their products in the same way! And, though some will compliment one another, others will most certainly contend. And, in a multi-factor environment, contentions will tend to balance out - effectively negating each other's opposite effects.

Overall, the most likely outcome will be what might be called an Active Balance - producing a kind if Stability, which is actively maintained as such, by cyclical processes, all of the time!

Now, as I have established elsewhere in several other papers in this series, the gulf between these, and the way of finding, and using Natural Laws, particularly in my specialist area of Physics: and the Real World I have described here, is undoubtedly enormous! For, the relations due to the properties of the various Elements and their compounds are always limited to just the relations between those properties occurring at the most basic Aomic and Molecular Level, which are considered to then be merely multiplied-up somehow, purely quantitatively, when used in the actual bulk occurrences: with no consideration whatsoever of any Interacting Systems Effects, between the many clearly also-present, other simultaneously-happening processes. And, the relations between all these many different processes is totally disregarded!

So, all the Effects that I have been considering in this series of papers are, thereafter, never considered at all by Scientists, or anyone else that I can see. Yet, they not only happen, but by various Systems Means, including the cancelling of Contentions, the overall total finally arrives at an Active Stability, which temporarily maintains them all, but now hidden within what we see as "Stability"!

And what a Natural Revolution turns out to be, is originated initially by a general drift towards - first one of the many Active Stabilities dissociated, followed immediately by all the rest, one after the other - onto the total dissolution of a general Collapse, and a return back to something resembling Chaos.

But, though it always happens - it isn't what we usually think characterises such a Revoluion: for, that is always the following High-Speed Re-constructive Phase, that allows a Total Re-building of all Active Stabilities, but upon an Entirely New Basis, this time solely from the Chaos that has been produced, yet on a different and indeed higher Level. 

Indeed, from the exact same included resources, a Wholly New Set of True Emergences appear, which though they were always possible within that set of resources, were also totally impossible to predict from the prior situation.

The promises of a successful Revolution can NEVER be specific: but when a Revolution is finally successfully completed, against the forces of reaction - the active stabilising processes of the prior system - the gains will always be significant!

Both in Nature and in Human Societies, development always occurs via a succession of such Necessary Revolutions: it can not be any other way, because all prior elements exist only in a rich interconnected fabric of interacting parts, which present a complex whole to thwart significant changes! There is NO ideal achieveable situation - for Reality-as-is constantly creates ever new possibilities, while simultaeously developing ways of safeguarding past gains. But, that will persist only until the System is no longer viable - at that point a Revolution is inevitable. 

Until we understand these complex processes in Multi-Level Systems, we won't know when this will occur, or have any idea what is likely to happen afterwards. 

Issue 73 of SHAPE Journal: Holist Science II

 

Issue 73

Understanding Reality

We attempt to understand our world in order to get the very best from it: but, it is certainly a breathtakingly difficult-to-understand world we find ourselves in. It is currently determinable only by two seemingly diametrically-opposite, yet generally-available overall systems of analysis, that directly appear to often effectively cancel each-other-out, and therefore consequently majorly undermine, both the possibility of understanding its underlying, driving trajectory - or even, alternatively, not being able to predict from any overall, perceived process, exactly what would happen next. So that, all attempts at revealing any particularly long-term set of objectives, at all regularly, appear to be always doomed to failure!

Yet, nevertheless, all short-term-and-local Realities do appear to follow some seemingly Fixed Natural Laws, but only if, along with such necessary time-and-locality constraints, so that we are constantly seeking out only Fixed Laws to enable such plans - until they, as is usually the case, finally fail.

Now, these two possible Stances were both established, at almost the very same time, some 2,500 years ago, but each of them, happening in very different areas of the World.

One of them, insisted that the Natural Laws were both Eternal and separable, but, as they were often acting simultaneously along with many others, one of the contributions was then usually largely Dominant, so that its outcomes would totally swamp all others, in their overall direct joint sum!

While, the alternative stance, instead, considered that the norm for all simultaneous contributions, was one of a constant variance of all acting Laws, so that outcomes were always changing, and all predictions just had to include an extended range of possible outcomes, with, in addition, a constant readiness to switch to an alternative, if a Key Indicator so suggested a sufficient change to merit the switch.

Certain extremes of these two, were undoubtedly delivered effectively: but, the bulk of cases were always very poorly served indeed!

The former case was later termed Plurality, and was attempted to be brought strictly to heel, by rigid and long-lasting controls upon idealised situations: but these still proved impossible, unless the number of active factors within a situation were significantly limited, which enabled a kind of Stability to be much more easily achieved-and-maintained.

Now, this was justified by the rapid and successful developments during the Greek Intellectual Revolution of that time, which ALSO kept the idea of all Natural Laws being Forever Fixed, but, as their contributions, to the overall sum, did vary in magnitude - that was the supposed to be the sole reason for the different outcomes, The Laws were still always Fixed, but their overall sum wasn’t.

That did not suit the alternative Stance, as its supporters insisted that the individual Laws themselves Varied Constantly to some degree. So that was seen as the reason for varying overall outcomes, as well as being the reason. for the Variety and Beauty of the Natural World, and, particularly, those involving all Living Things, which could never be seen as being due to Eternally Fixed Laws.

This view was later termed Holism.

But, of course, neither case delivered The Full Truth of Reality!

The problem was that simultaneously-acting Laws often affected one another, and changed their Effects. So, things were constantly in a moment-by-moment, consequent on-going, melee of multiple Changes in ALL contributions! This, initially, seemed to undermine all attempts to predict overall outcomes.

But that too could, and often was, also negated, by the fact of Temporary Stabilities, caused by the forms of the interactions going on within such multiple simultaneous sets of processes! For, though some of these, in turn, were caused by the Effects due to Diametric Opposites - but only ever within on-going, multiply-repeated processes.

For Cyclically-repeated processes involving such opposites, selectively eliminated all extraneous materials, so that ultimately, Pure, constantly repeating cycles were the main outcomes. And, these could balance with their equally Pure oppopsites to cancel-out. And, what also frequently “steadied-the-boat”, was the fact that in diverse bundles of such sets, including such Pure Processes, where stabilised sets simply repeated, whilever there were Correcting Processes for every change in an existing process, occurring within another of the same set.

So, constant repeating of effectively unchanging Cycles of the same contents, due to the above effects, necessarily delivered many Temporary Stabilities, as long as those conditions remained! For, in such constantly repeating Cycles of those processes, all Non-Opposite Processess would be effectively eliminated, leaving only the Balanced Opposite processes determining the consequent Stability.

When these did change, entirely-locally, they were termed Emergences: and when they changed much more generally, over wider, extensive Systems, they were sometimes called Revolutions!

Clearly Pluralist Science and Holistic Science are very different views of the same world!

NOTE:

It is clear, to this researcher, that, though the above does correctly show the effects of constantly repeating Cycles of processes, and, in so doing, selectively-eliminating chance ingredients, and even processes, to ultimately arrive at a constantly-repeating, overwhelmingly dominant unity of the same sort of processes - the actual mechanisms involved do not, at this stage, entirely satisfy!

And, in watching one of Gareth Samuel’s “See the Pattern” videos, about the processes taking place in the Sun, it became clear that he too was arriving at seemingly dominant sets of processes, that had been similarly refined into constantly repeating systems, that must have emerged from initially complex sets, that only gradually arrived at what he concluded were the final regular forms: so, it seemed likely, that these could have been arrived at in the same way as the processes I was considering.

In addition, it was clear that, in spite of their seemingly constant arrived-at state, they also were never permanent: so the ultimate transformations to other steady states might also reflect such changes elsewhere too.

What is usually generally called Science is actually no such thing: we might more accurately term it Technology, for as a wholly pluralist undertaking, it is not even derived from any dependable form of Science, which would have to be, to some degree, Holistic in its philosophical Stance, to be able to deal with Reality-as-is!

But, because that cannot be distilled into a collection of Pluralist Fixed Laws, the practitioners involved, by taking the route of greatly modified and controlled situations, did manage to effectively enable a Pluralist version, always limited to only very highly constrained situations - but sufficient to also deliver a wholly achievable, and increasingly broad and useable Technology.
But, of course, the required extension into a generally applicable Science, within which it was intended to reside a comprehensive and Explanatory Means, was always impossible! Indeed, researches have proved conclusively that a Science, based upon Plurality, can’t help us understand the natural world, even though a functioning Technology certainly gives us vast control over our environments - and has effectively transformed the world to suit our means of understanding it.

The revelation of these crucial flaws, were revealed very soon after the Greek Intellectual Revolution, by Zeno of Elea, who was able to demonstrate the failures of Pluralist Science in his work called Paradoxes, in which he was able to reveal irresolvable Contradictions in Movement, using the Rationality discovered legitimately in Mathematics, but then wholly illegally applied in both General Reasoning and the Sciences, and from which, they had done it, in spite of Zeno’s valid revelations.

In fact it wasn’t until the early 19th century, that Hegel took Zeno’s work and applied it more broadly to logical Opposites, that the truth was finally generally revealed, by Hegel’s follower, historian and philosopher Karl Marx, who began the mammoth task of applying those dialectical ideas, first to History in General, and then to a major Critique of Capitalist Economics! But, nevertheless, since Marx’s death in the 1880s, no-one has attempted the task of applying Marx’s Comprehensive Method to any of the Sciences, so that in spite of Lenin’s warning, in his book Materialism and Emporio Criticism, the most important areas have still NOT received the necessary treatment, resulting in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and a similarly disabled Cosmology!

 
And, in fact, Modern Holistic Theory, which has been wholly a product of the 21st Century, has not been applied to anything comprehensively, though many individual papers have already been published here in SHAPE Journal - and in the near future the writer of this paper is nearing the completion of an alternative to Copenhagen. While a short pamphlet upon Holistic Science is also completed, and will be published, in print, this Spring. There is still much to do.

Noam Chomsky's Philosophy

Noam Chomsky's intellectual approach (and what it lacks)

After watching the latest video from Noam Chomsky on YouTube - another wide-ranging philosophical contribution upon Human Thinking and Understanding, with its relation to our changing Conceptions of Reality - it became increasingly clear that, to him, this was NOT the development of various different attempts to both formulate accurate accounts describing that Reality, only in the common form of an increasingly competent, developed Language, but also never, as a revealing critique of its current contexts of different Social Organisations, involving ideas for its necessary improvement.

In his dealing with the relations between that Thinking, and the Reality it was attempting to describe, he only considers the internal relations and inadequacies of such Thinking, as the only possible-and-effective means of in any way addressing our world.

It was a wholly intellectual approach!

However, in spite of great historical breadth and an increasing intellectual depth, he also insisted upon what he saw as its intrinsic and sometimes unavoidable failures, as well as its seemingly built-in limitations.

But, Chomsky is neither a Scientist nor an Artisan of any kind: he only contributed conceptions concerned solely with Thinking-as-such, without involving any concrete means of, not only testing his ideas in Reality, but also, as Mankind had always done, not finding solutions in any consequent, concrete interactions within that Reality-as-is!

And, towards his conclusion, it also became clear that he was exclusively describing the imposed, if diverse, stances of various sections of the Ruling Class, as the only possible, as well as unavoidable-and-natural consequences of the processes involved, in only that developing system, over time.

He considered it as the sole engine of all development. He is clearly an Idealist!

So, in spite of his apparently "leftist" reputation, he had literally nothing-to-say about what had occurred in Socialist Thinking, throughout his extensive and detailed contribution. It, overall, reflected the dominant Liberal/Left Stance, most clearly exemplified in US politics, and, consequently-and-crucially also had absolutely nothing to say about real Social Alternatives, or amazingly, even intellectually about the major Pluralist/Holist diversions in Human Thinking within the last 2,500 years!

He was, therefore, wholly preoccupied with only what he saw to be both the only real means of progress, as well as the Natural and unavoidable limitations of that same Human Thinking: and consequently-but-inadvertantly, went on to demonstrate that very same limitation, even in his own analysis, dictated by his chosen-and-privileged ideas of intellectuals ONLY!

Noam Chomsky on Natural Law

At no point, did he ever address the Idealism and Materialism aspects of Philosophy, and, in particular, had zero to say upon the Dialectical Materialism of Karl Marx, and its role in the Major Social Revolutions of the 20th century. Nor, of course, did he trace the declines, both in historical gains, and within its own self-defeating short-comings, in the hands of its Theoretical developments and Political Organisational Forms.

Frankly, by his contribution in this event, you would think that he had given an extremely comprehensive account, but that was very far from the Truth. Indeed, the actual significant interactions of openly Marxist Parties in the active motivation of the Masses, into effective political action, including their damaged successes in the largely still-feudal countries, such as Russia and China, and their universal failures in the advanced Capitalist Countries of the West.

And, of course, absolutely NO acknowledgement of the fact that Dialectical Materialism was never ever comprehensively extended beyond the area of Capitalist Economics - including absolutely no such attempt to develop that key methodology across the whole range of Sciences, or absolutely crucially into either Philosophy or Language - so that consequently, it had nothing to say upon the reactionary developments in Sub Atomic Physics, and no absolutely essential and transforming contributions in Biology - particularly concerning the study of Evolution.

It was clear that throughout this presentation, Chomsky was NOT explaining his position to ordinary working people - for his whole approach was aimed at privileged middle class intellectuals, like himself, as the language he used totally betrayed his target audience, very clearly indeed!

And, I have myself suffered from exactly that type of deliberate exclusion - for though I have worked as a professional educator all my adult life, my paternal Grandmother could neither read nor write, and my Father (her son) was always an unskilled labourer. Throughout my successful career, I always refused to ape "my betters", and kept my Northern Working Class accent! So, I was usually treated as someone, who wouldn't understand the intricacies of Real Intellectual Argument, until I deigned to join in and prove the theses of "my self-assumed betters" wrong!

The method always employed in such Public Lectures (and Discussions) always uses the Names or Titles of Arguments, rather than explaining their actual contents, so that, unless you are constantly involved in such ideas with all of your time, you would not know what they meant, and your consequent "lack of understanding" would invariably be put down to your stupidity. And so, to terminate any possible explanations from me, the deliverer would show great surprise at one's ignorance of such essential Titles!

My own education, concentrating primarily upon Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, of course suffered from the same "Intellectualism", as I am here describing with Chomsky. But my Working Class background indelibly imprinted by my upbringing and status, always impelled me to attempt to transcend its clear limitations. Initially this broadened my interests to include, first Painting, and then Sculpture, and finally Computing - and slowly, in particular, due to the way I was treated in my chosen career. I was first a schoolteacher among my own Social Class, and then later in a Grammar School (educating the children of the Middle Class), after which I spent 10 years in a Further Education College teaching mature Working Class students how to program computers, along with the very best skill training Engineers for Local Industries.

I finally, after many rejections, I got a post in Higher Education, but it was only possible by attempting to get such a post abroad. I got a job in a Polytechnic in Hong Kong, where I was soon promoted to Senior Lecturer. And returning home to the UK on completion of my contract, I got a similar post in Glasgow in Scotland, where within 2 years, I was promoted to Principle Lecturer.

I decided to terminate my teaching, and concentrated instead solely upon devising and producing tailor-made Computer Software aids for researchers across the whole range of disciplines, which significantly adjusted my conceptions of Theory: as I had to help deliver exactly what my Discipline Expert Required!

And during the 1980s, many important Programmes and published research Papers were produced.

Finally, in a Director of Computing role, first in Bedford and finally in London University, I worked with an exceptional teacher of Dance Performance and Choreography, to deliver the Control and Flexibility she required, in using recorded footage of exemplar performances, that was subsequently used all over the world.

This career was sadly terminated early due to ill health, but working entirely from home I continued producing original research and software tools, and when this became impossible due to my failing eyesight, I worked with my son, Michael, who by then was a PhD, and a lecturer in Leeds University, to attempt to tackle the inadequacies of Intellectualism in Philosophy!

SHAPE Journal was my attempt to tackle Philosophy differently... 

This undertaking has taken me 14 years, 12 of these publishing over 150 issues of SHAPE Journal and this blog, involving over 1,000 separate papers. The initial project was to tackle the mess descended into within Modern Sub Atomic Physics, particularly addressing the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and the Modern Version of Cosmology, arising from the Copenhagen Stance. And latterly an extension of Dialectical Materialism in dealing with Modern Science...

Now, I will not even try, at this stage, to "correct" Chomsky's claims on the impossibility of explaining Effective Causal Explanations, which is the universal cornerstone of all his diverse arguments about the Impossibility of Real Understanding - because, in his particular restricted presentation of that problem, he was correct! 

But, in spite of his seemingly comprehensive arguments, he omitted (or more likely was totally unaware of) the effect of the alternative to his universally Pluralistic intellectual stance, in all the means that he referred to in his otherwise comprehensive treatment. And that was because, ever since the Greek Intellectual Revolution, almost 2,500 years ago, the only way literally ANY consistent and effective Rationality was considered possible, was by limiting the experiences involved to solely pluralist situations - which did NOT allow any real Qualitative changes, and, hence, would, if rigorously implemented, profoundly limit all relations to fixed exclusively quantitative Laws, so the Rationality involved could never ever explain the real Essence of an Evolving Reality, which is therefore definitely limited to both Constant Laws, and only episodic, and always inexplicable Qualitative Changes - NEVER involving significantly any reasons for those changes.

And, to ever address explicitly such changes, situations would have to be Holistic - as was defined at the same time as the Greek Intellectual Revolution, but wholly separately, by The Buddha, many thousands of miles away in India!

Now, neither subsequent Western Plurality nor Eastern Holism, ever dealt comprehensively-and-explicably with a qualitatively developing World, and Mankind's uses of their consequent ideas to understand Actual Development does not yet exist!

For, Reality does not conform completely, with either of these simplifications of it, mainly because, in both cases, the occurrence of the many, clearly obvious Stabilities, were never understood correctly!

Plurality, in fact, made Stability the basis of Everything! Whereas Holism failed to understand their persisting occurrences, completely, making Constant Change its credo! And Mankind, for a very long period indeed, could countenance no other method, when relying exclusively upon a Single Conformity occurring straight-through all possibilities.

The idea of an actually-existing Hierarchy of different Rationalities, at different Levels, as well as the actual causal connections occurring between those apparently independent Levels, were for a long period, totally outside of any such considered possibilities - until thinkers like Karl Marx and Charles Darwin began to reveal irrefutable evidence of such important natural transitions, simultaneously with innumerable contradictory components, strongly keeping situations as they were over long periods of time!

How can you even approach these questions without reference to Marx and Darwin?

Indeed, Contradiction was considered an absolute anathema!

And until Contradiction was properly understood (outside of the formalisms of Logic), such changes would certainly remain wholly inexplicable - and so they are inexplicable to Chomsky! In the universally-applied Mathematical Rationality, all Contradiction was dismissed as impossible, and therefore revealing an error of Logic! And, it wasn't until Mankind's breadth of Study was extended well beyond the Strictly Local, in both Time and Space, that such things could no longer be avoided.

Nevertheless, most "theorists" had developed their theories separated from the Real World, and instead as a wholly cerebral exercise, and so could never personally implement any of their then necessary experiments, so to even carry them out they had to employ skilled artisans and engineers, to achieve behaving systems for them.Yet, their both avid and universal subscription to the Principle of Plurality, could not be lightly dumped, as it did successfully "legitimise" the reliable Production of manufactured goods, both solved-and-delivered by those artisans and workers, and especially for the leisured intellectuals, who were never involved successfully in such activities anyway, and so didn't consider whether they were legitimate or not - but only that they delivered the objects and services that they required.

Yet, an ever-growing army of artisans and engineers, whose credo pragmatic credo was "If it works, it is right!", were increasingly rejecting the intellectual, theoretical stances of the scientists, and, in particular, the incredible-but-necessary theoretical assumptions of Modern Sub Atomic Theory, and always instead trusted their own Pragmatic arrangements and understandings, at which they were the consummate masters, and were always relied upon by those theorists, to make their experiments fit their way-out theories!

You may well wonder how this arrangement ever worked out, until, that is, you see the kind of Mathematics that the theorists always resorted to, to make it fit. For that Discipline, being wholly Pluralistic, naturally extended well beyond Reality-as-is, and well-into Ideality, so when the technicians were setting up the required experiment, they too could do the Maths, so they would physically organise the experiment to artificially deliver exactly what the Pluralist Theory predicted!

It was an unhappy coalition, as far as the pragmatists were concerned, and they increasingly began to look elsewhere for Real Theory. This situation has led, in Physics, to what is termed The Electric Universe alternative! And while this alternative was compromised by its Pragmatism, it has certainly challenged the conformist position in both Sub Atomic Physics and Cosmology, with valuable and demanding alternatives!

You can read more about the pros and cons of this in the latest issue of SHAPE journal:

What is the Philosophy of Mathematics?

 

Worlds created from abstractions are virtual, not real

What is Mathematics?

And what is its Relationship to Reality?

I have been looking for satisfactory answers to the questions above for sometime - none are forthcoming! Having just watched a couple of lecture videos on Youtube - one by Ray Monk on The Philosophy of Mathematics and another via Google Talks by a Dr. Stephens on Emmie Noether, my question (posed by the title to this paper), that literally demands to be addressed, remains unanswered. It was needed to clear up exactly where Reality-as-is terminates, and the products of Human Thinking, both claim to take over and intervene, by Reversing-the-Process, and beginning instead to contribute to the actual defining of "A Reality" via man-made Purely Formal Relational System!

The Ray Monk video

Indeed, though not admitted as such, that actual change was one of the unavoidably Key Products of the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC, when a successful attempt to do precisely that was actually made possible by their invention-and-use of certain

Simplifying Relational Abstractions

applied to concretely impossible, yet mathematically essential relations, between such things as:

               

- Points with zero parts

- Lines with zero thickness 

- Planes with zero depth

For it was these abstractions, and these alone, that made Mathematics possible, by restricting the whole exercise, with such transforming physical constraints: that they also made all subsequent relations in that discipline to become Forever Fixed in quality! Everything was made, by these changes, to conform to an essential

Principle of Plurality

- but though easy to validly insist upon, within the Realm of Pure Forms alone, it was wholly impossible to apply in Concrete Reality-as-is! So, when usefully applied to "such a Reality", that too, ALSO just had to be majorly-constrained to deliver only such necessarily-Fixed-Relations- achieved by forcibly-limiting the situation involved, into a rigidly-constrained Stability - indeed, into a guaranteed Pluralist Situation, to enable Mathematics to be effectively-used.

Therefore: Reality is NOT revealed by Mathematics!

Reality has to be made to conform to our abstractions.

However, such seemingly-unchanging Stabilities can occur naturally, and often do if only temporarily, AND, in addition, man-made Pluralist Stabilities were often fairly easy to both construct-and-maintain: the consequently extract Pluralist Laws, from both such contexts, were then further-assumed to be the Natural Truth, but usually often hidden under many overlying and masking extras. 

So, this major and false inversion, promoted Pluralist Laws as the "Actual Truths of Reality", and material Reality-as-is was demoted into becoming "a misleading fiction"! And, consequently, all arranged-for situations in Production, which obeyed those Pluralist Laws, were wrongly seen as exposing the "Real Underlying Reality" of the natural world.

But that isn't True!

Also, all insertions algebraically, from one Pluralist Law into another different one, are totally illegitimate! The whole universally-established Method of Mathematical Rationality as a means-of-extending these discoveries into a comprehensive valid discipline, are also totally mistaken when dealing with Reality-as-is.

But, Mathematical Plurality was universally employed because it validly enabled a whole and successful means of implementing a totally reliable Method of achieving Successful Consequential Productions, merely by breaking the Production Process down into a series of separate individual stages, each with its own physical restrictions and consequent Pluralist Laws!

And paired with the longtime-prior, pragmatist legitimiser of "If it works, it is right!" the New Approach vastly-enlarged what could possibly be done: for the new system was a truly major advance over what it replaced! And, it even encouraged the beginnings of a possible alternative and Causal Approach, with added-in possible notions of exactly why things behaved as they did.

Though the two sets of ideas did not mesh at all well, and Causal Explanations were never an integrated part of the Main System! Explanations provided merely a helpful accompanying narrative. And, any really-attempted causal explanations were restricted only to limited areas of study, which were naturally much closer to Pluralist situations, always due to these sustained periods of "Stability" (which could last millions of years, admittedly) as were evident in the Night Sky of the Heavens!

So, it is not surprising that such an evident conducive Tail would wag the confusing real Dog, and put the usually defeating nature of most of Reality as being due entirely to the large number of different active contributions overlying the hidden significant determinators! So, one way of "revealing" the "main determinator" in a not-too-complex system, would be to purposely-suppress all the "inessentials", and so completely reveal the underlying "main cause".

Science was deliberately converted into a wholly Pluralist Discipline, via Mathematics and pragmatism, because in such arranged-for situations, wholly successful productions were always possible, proving the value of the approach: though, of course, it could not lead to a successful integrated Theoretical System on the natural world - indeed a real Science- but only Technologies, involving many separate, achievable Contributing Productions, but NO integrated-and-cerebly-developable Theory.

Indeed, it is correct to insist that, at best, Mathematics can only deliver a partial Reflection of the Reality it seems to deliver, but simultaneously it can, in addition, deliver a whole collection of related features, BUT ONLY from elsewhere in the involved realm, where Mathematics legitimately reigns- that is within Ideality!

Indeed, Ideality, being only a Conceptual World of Pure Forms alone, enables Mathematics, but NOT Reality, to be infinitely extended! Many of the extensions to Mathematics, brought in to "explain" features of Reality that Plurality fails to deal with, are also totally illegitimate in Reality-as-is, so can tell us Absolutely Nothing: they seem not to exist anywhere in concrete Reality.

Maybe I should mention a few of these, in case you are in doubt!

How about Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Quantum Entanglement, Multiple Universes, The Uncertainty Principle, The Heat Death of the Universe, The Big Bang, Initial Inflation, Infinite Expansion, Normalisation, and many, many more!

But many of the real problems caused by the Illusions of Plurality, can be compounded in various different ways: and perhaps the most important ones are those caused by the mistakes of Plurality, but complicated by the formulaic simplifications caused by substitutions from one pluralist equation into another, because, once two, or more equations have been merged in this way, the result will certainly NOT be delivered by using that combined Form, as the concrete result is never a single process, but still a simultaneous set of mutually effecting processes.

For though we have made a combined single Formula, in Reality such will still be individual processes competing for resources and producing outputs into a general pool of consequent resources, once again to be competed for. Yet, the original amounts of the various components now being lost in the new and different pool!

And the algebraically arrived-at formula cannot in any way mirror what is holistically going on in material Reality. 

And, to complicate things even further, apart from being essential resources, when each process proceeds separately, many secondary products from one process can and will affect another when all happening together: and these will be totally unknown from the wholly separate cases that delivered the supposedly contributing processes... 

Dominances and Opposites

Natural laws are perhaps better thought of as natural dominances

How Holistic nature of reality both maintains Stabilities 

yet also enables Real Qualitative Change, via Emergences

The initial choice, historically, by a Mankind finally beginning to emerge as an intellectual interpreter of both its World, and of its own existence, was naturally to assume the absolute generality of the Principle of Plurality, rather than the seemingly totally opposite, and much more difficult to implement Principle of Holism. It was, at that crucially emergent moment, a completely unavoidable step, if any sort of progress was then to be made.

But Plurality also simplifyingly insisted upon the fixed, or qualitatively-unchanging-nature of all elemental things and laws, whilst Holism instead rested upon the inevitability of precisely such Qualitative Changes in absolutely everything!

NOTE: Of course, Mankind's initial, primitive Reasoning had also, long before that emergent moment, subscribed to the very same premise, as a basis for beginning to cope with Reality.

And, of course, most things certainly didn't seem to change in their apparently-evident, essential-natures, "all-the-time", but, on the contrary, only in their contributing amounts (their quantities): so the assumption of qualitative constancy was the only place for an initial intellectual study to even begin. Even these could account for some "qualitative changes" in certain circumstances, assumed to be caused by many different contributory things (that were themselves merely changing purely-quantitaively), yet still enoughfor a balance of simultaneous contributions to be changed sufficiently, so that a different involved component, could move into so-called Dominance and flip a situation over into a different mode.

But, it now finally seems likely that the assumption of a Pluralist World may need to be wholly dispensed with, and the alternative assumption of a Holist World, be imported into Science to replace it, in order to tackle its increasingly numerous anomalies and contradictions, generated by that initial premise.

Now, both of these Basic Principles are clearly enabling simplifications, so a mere switch between them cannot alone solve the many epistemological difficulties that have accrued over many millennia.

Some sort of detailed review of what we mean by these apparent alternatives, must be instituted to reveal just in what ways, and how profound, the real differences are.

Plurality, the philosophical assumption underpinning Science, deals solely with qualitatively-fixed relations only, which are usually achieved by extensive and detailed farming of given situations, to remove as many simultaneously acting factors as possible, so as to ideally leave only one, and, thereafter, to continue to hold things "still" - so rigorously, in fact, that only a single relational Law would ideally remain, making its extraction, and subsequent effective use possible.

Holism rejects this conception for its unavoidable distorting of any athus-found Law, always artificially made into an eternally fixed abstraction, which never, as such, occurs naturally in Reality-as-is! The Holist alternative considers that, in every natural situation, there will always be a reasonably extensive set of different contributory factors, all acting together, and, in spite of this, seemingly indefinable complexity, does end up delivering something as an overall end-result, due to all of them doing what they do, BUT together producing a single outcome. And such results can turn out to be very different in totally unconstrained conditions.

The commonest case, in all school science experiments, was always an "overall law", which normally varied along with its multiple component factors. 

Another, and different case, could be a kind of naturally self-maintaining Stability, within which any variation tending to distiurb that Stability, would be immediately countered by an opposing reaction of another, having the very same cause - but always returning the situation back to Stability.

And, in any overall resultant Law, considered holistically, factor changes could flip it from its previous Dominant result to the opposite Sub Dominant outcome - now become the New Dominant.

NOTE: this last point is referred to somewhat early... A long and necessary diversion in establishuing a wholly New Stance, will later in this paper, reveal in full how and why this occurs!

So, the usual result by Mankind was that conditions would be increasingly controlled, enabling a reasonable approximation to an artificial wholesale Stability to be implemented, to purposely facilitate a given required use: so such careful farming of conditions, rapidly became the norm, when both revealing and then applying, assumed-to-be-eternal Laws: but NOT, it must be emphasized, to stop it varying, but, on the contrary, and mistakenly, to supposedly eliminate the effects of other simultaneously-acting laws cumulatively affecting the result by mere quantitative changes in their various contributions.

And, of course the age-old pragmatic tenet still ruled the roost ultimately, with, "If it works, it is right!"

Enabling Technological Use rather than Increased Understanding totally dominated Science.

So, Science developed with that always-distorting premise - that of Plurality, and, therefore, a necessary Use-Methodology, had to be involved to initially rigidly farm the conditions "to ensure that the targeted Law would be-artificially-fixed, and couldn't be "variously-affected", as it would be when occurring in Reality-as-is.

[In addition, it was also wrongly assumed that this fixed version also behaved in exactly the same way in Reality-as-is, and that the differences there were simply due to the summation of all the other, also present and similarly fixed, Laws! Whereas, holistically, all simultaneously present Laws actually modified one another: it wasn't just a simple summed Complication!]

It meant, of course, that the Pragmatic Objectives could always be the sole, aimed-for intension, so the consequent Explanatory Theory, derived from the farmed data so-obtained, was therefore wrong- and not just because of the farmed conditions (as explained above), but also, and crucially, because a Pure Form, from strictly Pluralist Mathematics, was then carefully tailored-to-fit that same already distorted data, so that the achieved formal law, as an Equation, was doubly modified: for it was, in addition, idealist, rather than truly materialist!

And whilever it was only pragmatic results that were required, the Technology involved could indeed deliver the required results, and so the ubiquitous method largely went unquestioned.

Nevertheless, any consequent Theory associated with that equation, would be incorrectly taken as being the required general, natural relation: the Theory, and hence the Explanatory Science so derived would necessarily be incorrect!

And, of course, as physicists delved ever deeper into Reality, the consequent inaccuracies became ever more unavoidable, and increasingly delivered debilitating anomalies in Theory via the assumed premises of Science, which inevitably began to deliver ever more contradictory results.

In addition, the devised solutions, all of which are unavoidably constrained by their basic assumptions, were forced ever deeper into the idealistic hinterlands of Pure Mathematics, in order to seek for the Perfect Forms that could be persuaded to fit!

[Isn't that exactly what Einstein did with Relativity?]

And, that could only lead away from Reality and ever deeper into Ideality, a domain of Pure Form alone, and hence the only true realm of Mathematics, and NOT in the domain of Concrete Reality- which should be the realm of Science!

NOTE: The problem was also that Mathematics had soundly started by merely being a direct Reflection of Reality: so it did contain something of that source. But, it was a distorting mirror because of its in-built and generally-and-intrinsically assumed Plurality.

NOTE: Reality has only three dimensions we can legitimately abstract, while Mathematics can have as many as you like, as long as you maintain the exact "geometric relations" between them all, that had previously been the case for the original three Spatial Dimensions alone, but could even be "philosophically" adjusted to even allow-in the admixture of Probabilities and Wave Theory - as in Copenhagen.....it appears!

And, that infers that the extra Dimensions must concretely exist, for the relations carried over from the Spatial Dimensions have to still hold in exactly the same way: and paradoxically to also NOT exist in our real space, but unseeably elsewhere, yet maintaining the very same inter-Dimensional geometrical relations both with the usual real three, and each other!

Now, as is well known in some areas of academia, ever since Zeno of Elea, certain Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, namely those of Continuity and Descreteness, could lead to nonsense when applied to certain Real World Movements, but his revelations were largely ignored, by using the pragmatic excuse of "If it works, it is right!", and it wasn't until Hegel found a solution, 2,300 years later, in the necessary modifications of their defining premises that many of these were removed.

But, of course, the ongoing problem was Plurality! For, it prohibited qualitative changes from ever occurring in such concepts. Hegel realised that such change had to be included in Reasoning, involving Dialectics as a new Science of Logic.

Now that, of course, is much easier said than done. And also this was being attempted by an idealist, who was exclusively concerned with philosophy as Human Thinking, and arguing! Whereas the required changes were even more important, essential in rescuing all the sciences, from the very same affliction.

Indeed, how would multi-factor situations actually behave, when affected by all their simultaneous and varying contributions, and even more confusingly, mutually modifying one another, as is the main premise of Holism? Just how far would the actual modifications precipitate one another, into ever more changes? Would it not be an infinite process? NO, it would not!

In Plurality, though properties would be fixed, quantitative changes would indeed be potentially infinite! But, changes, in a Holist World, would NOT be merely quantitative, but also qualitative, and such could be in any direction, so they could be either conducive or contending with respect to others - and in a multi-factor system, delivering both kinds of variation - balances at some points would become inevitable... And, never as a fixed and final result, either!

Indeed, the contending and conducive factors would be delivering a Dynamic Balance, wherein constant changes would still be involved, but changes in one could, in such a balance, be countered by opposing changes in other factors! The same disturbing factor could affect different internal factors in opposite ways.

In other words self-maintaining Stabilities, would be the most likely outcomes, some persisting so long as to appear eternal to our timescale. Stabilities which would require very significant disturbances to be fatally undermined, and which would, in such rare circumstances, ultimately totally dissociate the Stability completely.

NOTICE how far we have been transported in this endeavour, away from Pluralist Formal Logic into the dynamism of Holist Reality!

And, even at this most basic level the importance of "opposites" begins to become ever clearer.

AN IMPORTANT ASIDE:

The significance of the above ideas was demonstrated to this researcher, when theoretically investigating Pre-Life simultaneous Chemical Reactions, in particularly conducive circumstances on the early Earth.

Interestingly, I did not initally identify any individual chemical processes, with a view to defining-in-detail the ascent to the Origin of Life, via what qualities were involved at each and every step. For, I knew that such a journey would be strewn with unpredictable Emergences, and hence well beyond any theoretical means I could muster to re-construct that long trajectory.

So, I was much more interested in the dynamics involved in a proliferation of different processes, affecting one another, either conducively or contendingly, to produce ever higher levels of sub-systems, systems and super-systems via such creative events always delivering the entirely New, which would never be delivered by the usual pluralist Chemistry, as no chemical process is ever conceived-of in that way: they are all straight-forward processes with logical outcomes confined within Pluralist Science.

So, to consider such situations, holistically, would therefore involve dumping the usual pluralist methods, along with their severely constrained circumstances, producing only the revelation of single pluralist laws as the required outcomes - so, instead, considering whole collections of many simultaneous processes, all acting together, and producing a variety of products, which then, in turn, immediately became actively inolved in the overall system of processes, as a consequently constantly changimg mix, and also changing all the contributing processes, and so, importantly, changing the Contextin which all the involved processes are performing, and all of them changing somewhat along with such a varying Context.

Now, you can see why the outcomes of individual processes - all previously carried out separately in individual farmed pluralistic experiments, would certainly never suffice in determining what happens in these holist and multi-factor circumstances! So, the required focus must consider things very differently, primarily as delivering a Classical Dynamic Holistic Interlude (see The Theory of Emergences (2010) by this author), which will usually end up in a temporary, if long-lasting, Balanced Stability, with measureable overall characteristics, which can all be determined experimentally, (in the old-fashioned "Equilibrium" type experiments of the School Lab), and which will involve ongoing inter-process effects, in process-chains or even process-cycles, and with self-selected and evident Dominances, usually caused by the presence of certain resource abundances, due to current local conditions.

But, the most likely change, thereafter, without too much of a variation in the overall Stability, is usually a seemingly dramatic Switch to deliver an Opposite to the prevailing Dominance. And, believe it or not, such a switch can be explained, and with it the significance of Opposites in Holistic Dialectical situations generally.

Very different this Holist Science malarkey, isn't it!?

Now, the consideration of such a situation and its development will be qualitative rather than quantitative, and systemic rather than productive. For, in such a set of simultaneous processes, they will be not only changing each other's contexts, but also using-up or supplying each other's Resources too.

Connected Worlds - interactive ecosystem installation, New York

So, processes related by the product of one, being the resource for another, will form Chains, amd even occasionally Cycles, the preponderances of available resources due to the current location will also determine which Systems are most successful, or Dominant!

Indeed, there will actually be two sets of processes benefiting from the same abundence.

The first will be those going generally in one particular direction >>

The second will be those generally going in the opposite direction <<

And, with universal competition for the very-same resource, most of both sets will lose out - all except the Dominant one in its direction, and its Opposite (sub dominant) in its contrary direction! 

(Notice there is a seemingly contradictory hierarchy of opposites)


POSTSCRIPT:

The consequences for current research into the Origin of Life, of ths Holistic Approach, culminated in the Theory of Emergences (2010), which demonstrated once-and-for-all that research to re-create Life from scratch is impossible: and even much worse, that absolutely NONE of the essential interludes in that development will never be reproducable either - as they will all be the results of natural Emergences, the outcomes of which will always be impossible to predict!

A bit of a problem for science, where falsifiable predictions are so vital for proofs!