Audio Issue 3 - Understanding Change

 

Audio Issue 3 of the SHAPE Journal

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

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

The first Audio Issue of the SHAPE Journal - The Nature of Reality

 

Audio Issue 1 - The Nature of Reality

This is the first Audio Issue of the SHAPE Journal. This new form of publishing will feature podcast-like content alongside lectures, videos and some written-word content, transcribed from audio recordings.

Philosopher Jim Schofield's eyesight has deteriorated rapidly in the last year, making traditional writing and editing impossible for him. This new format for the journal should allow him to continue working and communicating his ideas via this website. 

It is also an opportunity to investigate new ways of disseminating content and finding new audiences for the work. Some of our most successful outputs have been YouTube videos in the past, and this shift will place focus on that kind of content over traditional academic papers. 

In the first of these new editions Jim Schofield goes back to basics, looking at how previous work on the Substrate Theory of Subatomic Physics and the recent series on Systems Theory might affect how we see the nature of reality...

Use the link above to access the full issue. You can also listen to the main discussion on YouTube:

A Revolutionary Understanding

Lenin was very critical of Positivism

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

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

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

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

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

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

That became their primary motivation!

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

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

The age of advanced technology effectively killed Science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But beware of false Prophets!

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

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

Not Alliances, but Understanding! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Odessa Steps

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

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

And these two sets of conditions produce Very Different Possibilities!

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

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

So, they donít even try!

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

The Required Revolutionary New Stance

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

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

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

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

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

Let us attempt to address this problem better NOW!

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

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

It isnít.

Indeed, Absolutely Nothing is!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Conclusion

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

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

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

Reality-as-is is NOT already fixed!

Neither does it change within limits!

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

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

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

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

How about that for a truly demanding Discipline!? 

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

Special Issue 78: The Systems Theory of Everything V

Special Issue 78 of SHAPE Journal

...

Special Issue 78 contains the fifth 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 of papers in this edition examine the history of Pluralist Science and how we might begin reversing its many mistakes.

Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

The Bases of the Sciences

Nature’s Context

The Misleading Failure of Bottom-up Causality

The Problem of Laws and Levels

Science for Understanding, not merely Production

Qualitative Causes and their Investigation
via Systems Means

There is no royal road to science...

 

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

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

Science for Understanding, not Production

Science for Understanding

and not merely

Science for Production

Pluralist Science - which I have extensively revealed to be greatly misleading, in the absolutely necessary Development of an absolutely full and necessary Real Explanatory Understanding of Reality-as-is - has proved to be severely-limited and entirely-restricted, in both its true effectivity. It is really useful only when used within Purely Effective Production Methods: and, even there, significantly-limiting in what could ever even be achieved, in that extremely valuable area!

It has, also, unavoidably, and very badly distorted any attempts, both at a fully-subsequently-developable Understanding of all the on-going further possibilities, achievable even within those now drastically-restricted-and-maintained components, still always seen to be absolutely all that is involved, AND certainly-thereby, also due to its consequently-misleading Methods - which actually forcibly always omit the possibility of many other useful extra Productions, mainly because their possible subsequent Manufacture - isn't even realised, as ever being achievable via related methods! Only the more obvious "Paths-through-Reality" were ever considered in Production.

Surely, a thorough-going Revolution-within-our-Approaches, is long overdue! For that will be absolutely imperative, not only for a True & Wide-Ranging Understanding, but, in addition, for a truly mammoth, and important, extension of what a Real Science could deliver.

And, as those already familiar with my writings over the last period will already be expecting: these absolutely necessary transformations will be impossible unless also accompanied by a Dialectical Materialist Approach, which has already made a whole series of Essential Developments in Politics, established via a major & revealing re-interpretation of History, not only in terms of warring Social Classes, but most profoundly, also, in the necessity of taking-the-side of the Working Class, and steadfastly working against the increasingly established, and now ruling, Capitalist Class.

But unless this is seen as an example of "The Tail Wagging The Dog", we must also emphasise the damaging inadequacies of current Capitalist Rule, in Mankind's Understanding of Reality!

For millennia, Theory has solely been the exclusive Domain of a series of Ruling Classes, which because it has never been in the hands of The Doers, absolutely always reflected and supported the position of the Classes that had developed it.

The position from which these Developments CAN ONLY be achieved, most certainly, being that of an entirely Socialist one - and entirely committed directly against the Capitalists, and their self-centered priorities! And, such a Stance is absolutely imperative, as for literally millennia such Ruling Classes have had the power and made their Decisions, entirely without the wherewithal, within their Class, to actually DO any of the clearly necessary Work, or even, to ever get a real understanding of it!

Theory and Practice have largely become based upon Different Social Classes, and this exclusively determined their priorities for millennia.

For though, I am originally the son of an unskilled labourer, after a surprising success within an extended Education, I have worked for many, many years in Schools, Colleges and Universities, and across a very wide range of Scientific Disciplines, with significant success, so these social conclusions can never be attributed solely to Sour Grapes!

But, it was also never a Smooth, Sweet & Fruitful Ascent to Glory!

It was a constant fight, with many battles, that just had to be won, and also necessarily immediately-followed by the successful acquiring of a new job, often even with a switch in country required, in order to ensure that subsequent necessary judgements there, would be based solely upon my clearly-demonstrated achievements, rather than Class background. 

And, as long as these were regularly being achieved, they predominated in how I was assessed for new posts within new places! Indeed, I had an extremely wide range of appointments and contributions in many different cities, with Professional Demonstrations, Lectures and even Posts in eight different countries - including throughout the UK and Ireland, then Hong Kong, along with significant work in Spain, Portugal & Greece, and others in Holland & Belgium. And, surprisingly, any local victories NEVER meant that you could stay in that Institution, for no matter how good was a current position, success also invariably makes you a rival for the ambitions of similarly involved others, so a gain is ONLY guaranteed by an immediate move!

But, clearly, returning to more General Developments, well beyond the strictly personal, with such a remarkable Political Stance as mine, there could be no chance of building a soundly understood General Position, without an increasingly soundly-realised Real History of Development (as it really should be), AND absolutely crucially based upon a Sound & Profoundly-Grasped Philosophical Theory, fully able to explain all Historical events, as well as be ready to further explain them again once they have produced all possible following Developments too.

No such Informing Theory was even intimated until the arrival of the truly Revolutionary Philosopher Karl Marx, in the early 19th century, whose principle area of study, initially, was Ancient History, some of which was available within the still available Writings of Civilisations like those of the Greeks & Romans. But, Marx could not believe that they accurately described the earliest Developments, and he, among a wide range of other investigators, with varied agendas, began to go much further, and consider the very much earlier Origins and Developments of Mankind.

And, it was unavoidable that the transitions between, say, Hunter/Gathering and Farming, would surely have to be established within a subsequently greatly-accelerated Form, within a further set of Developments, which were characterised by him as constituting actual Social Revolutions!

And, very clearly, such Emergences had to have happened also only in the Innovative Developments of the entirely Wholly New, and, of course, within the very First Appearance of all Living Things too!

And, Marx's Major Conclusion was that these dramatic-and necessarily Swift-Tempo-Transformations (not evident within the usual Slow Tempos of Everyday Trivial Changes) were undoubtedly the Key Interludes of All Major Transformations, which would have to be understood, to ever really meaningfully--explain all such significant Revolutionary Changes!

Now, Marx was initially a committed follower of the Idealist Philosopher Hegel, especially in his remarkable tackling of the most outstanding problem, left totally unsolved by the Greek Developments (way-back in History), which certainly did NOT fit in with their Generally Universally Celebrated Approach: the appearances of wholly unexplained, yet certainly consequent Qualitative Changes, and the only reasons Hegel could consider for them, was because, as an Idealist, he never ever addressed Reality-as-is. Instead, Absolutely Everything, Hegel believed, developed entirely within Human Thinking - where absolutely Everything was possible - so solely within that Powerful Context, he could deal with Qualitative Changes as necessary changes in Thought, and NOT changes in material Reality!

But, it was, at this precise point that Marx parted company with Hegel, for he insisted that these significant Changes took place entirely within concretely-existing Reality-as-is! Hegel's effective Sleight-of-Hand, in locating all such cerebral ideas as only existing within the only-and-unavoidable way we related such things, was Wrong. Hegel was clearly relegating such things entirely to Things of the Imagination: and Marx knew that this merely avoided the Real Problem, which would be irrelevant when addressing Really Existing Situations.

And, of course, this revealed that "Hegel's Solution" actually achieved Absolutely Nothing: and would legitimately be immediately rejected by those who daily dealt with Reality-as-is, AND actually regularly physically-made a whole host of Real Things.

So, naturally, the Makers-and-Doers within Society had to base things upon something incomparably more solid than those based upon the idealist Belief of Thought alone!

Indeed, the whole of Manufacturing and Production, just had to base its methods entirely upon Real World Properties and Laws relating Real Things.

BUT NOTE:

In order to cut Reality down to a handleable size, it still had to be severely-restricted to forcibly limit it to One Single Law at-a-time, to enable the situation to be so-simply-directed. But, Complete Manufactures would, therefore, have to be composed ONLY of a full & separate set of individually artificially-restricted situations, each thereby obeying ONLY a Single arranged-for Law at a time.

But, let us be crystal-clear, though avoiding the lies associated with the usual assumptions about the Nature of Reality, even with the truth-filled view, it still had to be severely maintained so, in order to be at all useable in Full Productions: AND that approach was majorly misleading too, when it came to correctly Explaining Why things happened exactly the way that they did!

The Devil had merely been replaced by The Deep Blue Sea, when it came to both Theory & Real Understanding!

And, the full set of problems involved, were not easily simultaneously solved, for the Real World as such is absolutely NEVER a mere Summation of Fixed Laws: indeed, they most definitely affect one another, and not just by individual modifications, but, instead, also widely by interrupting-one-another, and even, wrongly, linking parts of different Laws into concatenated mixed sequences - to give inexplicable & useless results!

Indeed, the only solution to this seemingly unsolvable mess, would have to involve the Finding of the actual Causal Laws, that certainly deliver the only available Empirical Versions, currently the only ones easily ones accessible.

And, until recently, these were nowhere to be found: and that was because Mankind was permanently wedded to the Myth that all such Laws were exclusively Bottom-Up! Yet, the Causal versions of these Laws turn out to be exclusively Top-Down, and will only be both found and revealed at a Higher Level.

The Causes were only made available by all the extensions, found to be also involved solely within Systems Theory! And, these wil; turn out to be Nothing Like the usual "Within-Level" explanations available for the usual Atom-Level Laws, extracted from the Properties & their Processes available at the Atomic & Molecular Level, (and because they are solely numeric) also to be able to be simply multiplied-up, totally unchanged in Quality and varying only in Quantity, when acting at the usually-required Bulk Level!

But, the New Systems Level Laws, on the contrary, are very different indeed: for they are effectively-and-always combined with each other there, to give overall very complex qualitative results: though in the usual normal "within-Level" Way, though with absolutely NO Qualitative Causes being evident there - can still give only Quantitative Results, so the New NON-Quantitative Laws can never be further analysed into individual seperate Causes at all, without a very different Qualitative investigation of the Causal Laws that also delivered them!

Now, historically, for many generations, Physicists ONLY sought Quantitative Causal Laws, as these, knowing the Properties of the Atoms & Molecules involved, could also presumably Fully Explain-why things acted as they did! But, by the 20th century, and its vigorous extensions of Physics down into the Sub Atomic Realm, there began to Emerge ONLY Purely Empirical Laws, relating only the combined Quantities, and with absolutely NO Evident Qualitative Causes at all evident! And this was because these Laws were Causally Qualitative, and hence though associated Quantities could indeed be merged correctly - by so doing the individual Qualitative Causes were not-retrieveable, but totally LOST by such operations!

The combined Quantitative results were entirely CORRECT, but the reasons for them were LOST!

And, try as they might, no Physicists were unable to find a single Cause!

Henri Poincare & Ernst Mach reacted by defining a Wholly New Stance, that they called Empirio Criticism, in which they insisted that Empirical Laws should be given the same weight as was the case for Causal Laws. But this stance was initially (and correctly) rejected by the majority of their colleagues, worldwide! But, as there then followed a Positive Avalanche of these Purely Empirical Laws, the general mood flipped-over to begin to agree with the position of the previously-rejected Positivists, and there were even those who placed such solely Quantitative Laws as by far the more Basic!

They were wrong, yet until such Causes were found and, ALL the Laws that underpinned that "wrong-turning" would no longer be seen as correct! And, that discovery still turned out to be a very long-time-in-coming, because traditional Methods had all efforts to find those Causes totally unsuccessful - for they were always inevitably looking in the Wrong Places, and for the Wrong Things!

The tradition had been that all Causality is always Bottom-Up!

But, that meant that all searches for Causes would be in situations BELOW what we were seeking explanations-for: but, they weren't there, and it wasn't until Researchers happened upon the wholly new Systems Effects, that the possibility of Top-Down Systems-Generated Causes began to be considered.

Yet, it still wasn't obvious, exactly what these New Causes were!

They were, of course, nothing like the usual Properties of Substances - traceable all the way down to individual Atoms and Molecules, which had simply been multiplied-up unchanged to describe the usual Bulk Effects! They were, instead, many and varied Causes - always involving interactions between different Situations, or even different Processes: so the simplistic Causal Laws, involving ONLY the Effects of Properties, were most certainly NOT what were happening at the New Systems Level.

In fact, the only reason that the usual type of Atomic Level Laws worked-in-the-usual-way, was because the arranged-for Experimental Situation was always very massively restricted to only the very minimum of Key Purely Numeric Variables, so that the Atom Level Properties that still worked in exactly the same way, as the numeric Effects could be added together correctly: BUT all other possibilities had been forcibly excluded, as they were clearly NOT numeric.

Now, the initial users always believed that their extensive editing of actual situations, did Absolutely Nothing to the various contributing Laws - merely revealing each focussed-upon-one, by removing the complicating and confusing others that were normally also present: and because of their non-numeric nature greatly hindered any attempt to understand what was happening due to these type of cases!

They believed that their methods were revealing the components that simply delivered Reality, via only a Direct Sum of all the numeric values of those delivered by their component Laws!

But, it just wasn't true!

They didn't all simply ADD, for some actually also causally affected & changed each other: and these original contributions had by then been totally lost by the mistaken consequent Methods used.

Now, the ones actual causing transforming interactions, at this Level, are many-and-varied, and hence, considerably more complex than the usually wrongly-supposed, merely numeric consequent interactions. And, therefore, the actually Transformed Overall Results would always differ considerably, from what those mistaken assumptions naturally misleadingly delivered.

It is also quite impossible to guess exactly what has actually been implemented, solely from the only available related source - the Overall Purely Empirical Results that are always easily achievable: by combining just the final solely numeric results alone. There will, most certainly, be more-than-one contributing Purely Causal Law: and to overtly do what is required, will be possible only if we certainly involve the finding and revealing, of all the many different necessary efforts to deliver them all.

But, where can we find, all that diverse evidence, to carry out these revelations?

It will certainly have to be at a Higher Level, as they must be Top-Down!

But, as they will be several, and of different Natures, due to being caused by very different processes: SO, the initial essential researches will be to consider the various ways these may be caused!

And they clearly wont be Solely Numeric!

Chains & Loops

By far the most important change, involved in these wholly New & Necessarily Also Qualitative Effects, are those generated by the fact that they are The Results Of Multiple Combined Causes residing within quite separate simultaneous Processes involved.

The crucial differences compared with ALL of the prior Single Process Causes, which always predominated in Properties occurring at the Atom Level, and were selected-for, by very strict and very artificial imposed restraints upon the Contents allowed in ALL arranged-for Experiments.

Now, this investigation will undoubtedly be substantial, so it will be tackled in the next paper in this series!


...
This paper is taken from the ongoing publication The Systems Theory of Everything.

Systems-based Marxism

Hinting at a New Philosophy for both Science and Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Issue 77: The Systems Theory of Everything Part II

 

Issue 77 of SHAPE Journal

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

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

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

Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Real Messy Development
Top-Down or Bottom-Up?

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

Beyond Zeno and Hegel:
The Profound Significance of Contention

The Buddha and Quantum Theory

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

Systems Contentions

Systems-based Marxism

Equations: Why they lead us to nothing...

Entering the Multi-Level Cosmos

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 75: The Origin of Systems

The Origin of Systems 

by Jim Schofield

Issue 75 Editorial:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Art Director’s note - Tomás Saraceno

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

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

Read Issue 75 of SHAPE Journal here...