Special Issue 66: The Origin

The Origin

This edition collects my key papers addressing the Origin of Life and introduces my theory of Truly Natural Selection - the idea that matter itself undergoes a kind of evolution, and that this process eventually lead to life emerging on our planet.

This is part of an ongoing examination, by this author, of Emergences - those crucial events whereby all truly new entities originate.

Several sets of papers, upon this topic, have been published by this theorist before in the journal, but it can’t be, and certainly isn’t, a totally completed project. Indeed, the most important part of such a task, is always to divide yourself off from the Millennia-old, and very well established amalgam of different stances unified by both a belief in the Principle of Plurality on the one hand, and the age-old validator of “If it works, it is right!” on the other. And, truth-be-told, you only detach yourself from that well-entrenched position, in a series of stages, as you realise yet another weakness in the Old, made clear by an emerging appreciation of the strength of the New.

Now, I also feel that I cannot expect my readers to follow the same devious path as I have been forced to take, so there are times when a full re-statement of certain arguments, including a great deal of what has already been published before seems completely unavoidable. And this is just such a situation!

And, it is also very important, for the additions and extensions are via the Holist and Dialectical approach to science and understanding, as against the usual Pluralist and Formal Logical approach. This major transfer turns out to be both profoundly difficult and easily self- torpedoed, by unconscious and habitual returns to the old methods.

Now, as these methods have been used to both demolish the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in Sub Atomic Physics, and the revelation of the world of Mathematics as actually being in Ideality, rather than Reality, and finally a wholly original stance upon the Origin of Life on Earth, it is clearly important to get as clear a description of the methods involved as possible.

Issue 63: The Dialectics of Natural Selection

The Dialectics of Natural Selection

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This edition re-issues my work on Truly Natural Selection, on its 10 year anniversary, alongside some more recent contributions to this vital subject.

This series of papers extends Natural Selection beyond the Living World and into Reality in general.

It sees all “complication” not just as a summation of Parts, but as a necessary development of things, involving wholly new features, when it is usually, and correctly, renamed Evolution.

Where with Life we have the mechanisms of qualitative change as variation based on mutation, plus selection via competition, this more general form drives change via selection between competing chemical processes, and the significant transformation of context.

Fitness to survive, reproduce and prosper in the form which drives Evolution, is replaced in the more basic form by advantage to conducive, complementary processes and the successive transformation of the underlying situations entirely without Life being either present or necessary.

This view of Reality runs entirely counter to the famed Second Law of Thermodynamics, and therefore, requires physical explanation. We can do this in terms of context, whereas the Second Law is a product of interludes of maximally constrained stability, while competitive advances-in-order occur in quite different situations of unconstrained, maximum opportunity. And these alternating phases turn out to be the natural features of systems driven in cycles of any kind. The pattern of longer periods of relative stability, interspersed with short interludes of radical, qualitative change, is, in fact, the norm in the trajectories of such systems.

And the Key Events in these processes are the revolutionary episodes, which we call Emergences. Clearly, the most significant and undeniable of these has to be that which produced the very first Living Things. And this Event alone confirms that Selection in some form must have preceded Life! It was the source of Life on Earth.

Many important fallacies are addressed in these papers, including the usual mathematical definition of Probability, and its false use as a Cause of Life. And, most crucially, we address the concept of competition involving mutually conducive and mutually contending chemical processes, which are necessary for Selection in these circumstances.

The crux has to be the revolutionary Events called Emergences, which had clearly already occurred throughout the history of Reality, prior to the Emergence of Life, and which are generally ignored by most current Science.

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Truly Natural Selection extrapolates Darwin’s Natural Selection backwards into non-living systems, and the competition between simultaneously acting processes, involving both the consumption of resources, and the generation of consequent products.

Such active systems would invariably transform their own bases, and rampant positive feedback situations would always dwindle as necessary resources were used up, while other processes could accelerate due to the adequate production of their resources by other processes. Now, apart from such relatively independent processes, there will always be other relations between simultaneous processes, all the way from necessary sequences of dependant processes to either mutually- supporting, conducive processes, and at the opposite extreme mutually-contending and opposing processes.

So, even in such non-living mixes, the processes would directly effect one another and a kind of competition would most certainly ensue. And along with these, there would also invariably be the ever-present, one-way, Second Law of Thermodynamics type processes which would seemingly prosper on a wide range of products and effectively parasitically benefit from all available productive processes.

These ideas, in a totally holist way, were developed to extend concepts originally thought to be confined only to the Evolution of Life, first to its actual Origin, and thereafter to the whole spectrum of developments that have occurred ever since the start of the Universe.

And these ideas finally became a cornerstone of my Theory of Emergences, and a new dialectical view of selection and change in nature.

Read issue 63

Issue 60: Evolution

Issue 60

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Route to Life

Unacknowledged Philosophical Bases 

Flawed Foundations always lead to Catastrophic Collapses!

I: An Introduction

When watching a recent YouTube video of an hour- long discussion between Robert Wright, a Buddhist expert in Philosophical Psychology, and Jeremy England, an orthodox Jewish physicist, whose remit was the developmental processes that must have occurred prior to the Emergence of Life, within wholly non-living circumstances - I came across something surprising. 

You might expect what the scientist’s premises were, but, on some fronts at least, you would most likely be significantly mistaken, whereas, your preconceptions of the bases assumed by the philosophical psychologist might be assumed to be less rigid and materialist, but in fact the clearly-evident, major philosophical flaws actually came from this latter side of this discussion, and effectively tried to defeat the scientist’s current unconventional researches with either Classical or even Copenhagen premises usually widely employed in Physics. It was the very inverse of what you might expect!

Now, as a philosopher and a physicist, myself, I have spent some considerable time tracing the development of philosophic stances from their clear inception with the earliest Homo sapiens - in the almost 180,000 years-long Hunter/Gatherer Phase, of their means-of-life, wherein only Pragmatism, in which. “If it works, it is right!” was Mankind’s single available intellectual methodology.

But, note, this limitation didn’t stop this physically, ill- equipped descendant of the Apes, successfully spreading itself into all of the then accessible World. And, this only stepped-up in tempo with the remarkable Neolithic Revolution, wherein permanently-static domiciles replaced the prior constantly-wandering mode-of-life and very temporary, moveable homes, which was only enabled by the methods involved in Farming and Animal Husbandry. And, thereafter, very quickly also led to a wide range of new skills including pottery, weaving, and ultimately metallurgy, and a vast development of social relations and communications, finally achieving what we term Civilisation.

Then, around 2,500 years ago, in Ancient Greece, the intellectual foundations were dramatically changed, initially by the development of Mathematics (Euclian Geometry), and thereafter by Formal Logic, both of which brought in Idealism (via Plato), but within a generation also had also, via Aristotle, included Materialism.

But, of course, these were far from delivering a coherent and consistent set of alternatives: they were, instead, specific to given situations and with only ever strictly local applicability. So, all three stances were used “when each was appropriate”! The overall stance was a remarkable-and- piecemeal amalgam of Idealism and Materialism - held together by Pragmatism!

Nevertheless, many only-glimpsed relations were somehow grasped from Reality, which, more often than not, actually failed when they were attempted to be applied in the real World.

And, it was found essential to purposely limit and maintain a much simpler situation, in order to “hold Reality still”, farming it in various different appropriate ways, in order to extract any relations at all!  

Now, perhaps surprisingly, this did not stop effective use! As long as the precise conditions-of-extraction were exactly replicated, then the relation could be effectively applied.

But, to then allow these relations to become eternal Natural Laws, which was always assumed, an absolutely essential tenet had to be crucially attached to such processes. It was the Principle of Plurality, which stated categorically that all such Laws were always totally separate from one another: they were eternal and could never be modified in any way.

All complex situations were onceived of as merely complications of some subset of these laws, in various different proportions. Individual Laws were totally un-modifiable! And, this was also instituted for the, also new, processes of Formal Logic too. For, the model for both had been the precursor achievements within Pure Mathematics, where the absolutely essential idealisations that were always used DID legitimately conform to this Principle!

The Crisis in Physics, which led to he Retreat that became Copenhagen, was precisely down to this contradictory amalgam of stances, which became totally untenable there, long before its evident emergence in non-investigative, and primarily cerebral-only disciplines - like Wright’s for example.

In other words, and perhaps surprisingly, my critique of both Classical and Copenhagen Physics turns out to be also exactly correct in damning Wright’s stance, as it too is totally pluralist (whereas, as a Buddhist, you would assume him to be a holist!).

So, it seems productive to concentrate upon England’s evidently progressive diversions from the usual preoccupations of the vast majority of physicists, and primarily address where he is diverging from the current consensus, and looking to how Physics played a role in the Revolutionary Origin of Life, before criticising his short-comings.  

Jeremy England

II: Jeremy England’s Stance and Purpose  

On watching the video of this hour-long debate, for a second time, I began to discern the debaters’ differing Grounds, from which the various areas dealt with were tackled. So, perhaps, the main contribution here should start by revealing these, in contrast to my own.

Wright, as the interviewer, was obviously the major determinator of what was discussed, so it was he who also set out what to him were the probable bases common to them both.

The primary basis was clearly assumed by him to be Thermodynamics, and, in particular, its Second Law, about the Universe inevitably running down (which, of course, does not sit well with a natural Origin oof Life). He, secondly, also was clearly a subscriber to a belief in eternal Natural Laws (or Plurality) though all this was never overtly spelled out.

Finally, whenever his set of bases weren’t able to take things further, he would switch the ground, sometimes quite dramatically, into areas where he felt more confident, or to where he thought England’s position might be less defensible [Something like “Yes, but arguing”, but not quite as blatantly dishonest!]

Nevertheless, as long as the observer of this discussion disregarded Wright’s God-like stance’ the responses of England were able to show what he and his colleagues are researching, and some of the strengths and weaknesses of his grounds too. His area of study is pre-life, purely-physical developments, that were contributary to the ultimate Origin of Life in specifically conducive situations, and with already-existing natural processes.

He chose, as a physicist to follow the usual assumption of Physics being the most basic science, and looked only for physical processes that were so endowed.

Now, the writer of this review has also addressed a similar set of questions, but, instead, based them upon pre-life chemical reactions.

In the Wright-England discussions the whole question of a non-living process as being similar to Darwin’s Natural Selection, concerning the evolution of living things, could not be avoided. All, including this writer, agreed that both the Reproduction and Competition of life forms, especially with their changed genetics, could NOT be replicated in pre-life conditions, but by restricting the discussion to Physics, the gap, to Natural Selection, was so large that a very different approach had to be taken - basically also thermodynamic, but with England playing down the usual Entropy abstraction, and preferring “work” instead.

Now, we never got to hearing about his physical examples, which would have been crucial, but nevertheless, absolutely NO route to Life was evident.

In the writer’s own researches, however, concentrating upon pre-Life Chemistry, rather than Physics, much more similar processes to those in life could be addressed. And, something akin to competition could be included, where different processes required the same resources. Indeed, the “competition” for such resources simply boiled down t a preponderance of one process over its competitors, along with differences in the speeds of such rival processes.

In addition, sequences of processes into “conducive strings”, and even “conducive cycles”, made revealing links to what is already known of Metabolic Pathways in Life. 

Metabolic Pathways

And, with all these considerations, situations such as Dominances and paucities of required resources, showed how mixed populations of multiple processes could change and even lead from dominance to paucity, and the dynamics of alternative developments and different dominances. Such a clearly relevant set of investigations wasn’t involved in the Wright-England discussion. 

But Jeremy England did reveal a much sounder attitude to so-called Natural Laws, as being “arranged for” by the involved specially-tailored domains, and consequent methods of investigation, and also, therefore, depended upon as man-made models, in those given circumstances.

Nevertheless, the errors of Plurality undermined both sides of the discussion, for neither went beyond Law, and certainly didn’t address the essential role of Emergences in developmental creation of the wholly new. What was implied was that such miracles as Life, simply emerged from adequate complexity, rather than ONLY occurring following a Major Crisis and Collapse, thus precipitating the ONLY situation in which the Wholly New could possibly emerge - that is in a veritable Revolution or Emergent Interlude.

As the writer has spent many years upon such studies, he has formulated what he calls Truly Natural Selection for the non-living era, and ended up with his Theory of Emergences, it is clear that this discussion never approached these relevant, indeed, absolutely essential topics.


This review was published this month as part of a new issue of SHAPE Journal on Real Emergence

Issue 53: Real Emergence

Read Issue

There are many different definitions and uses of the concept of Emergence - but surely the most important are those crucial events when something unpredicatble, and completely new changes the game forever - a revolution such as the origin of life on Earth.

When the complexity of Reality is studied taking into account all phases from the beginning of the Universe (if such can be conceived of), then many new, innovatory Levels will be shown to have emerged at many different times, which also changed the whole environment. New forms of matter successively emerged from the basic resource of Hydrogen, and doubtless before that the same could be said of pre-Hydrogen forms. From this it is clear that Matter itself has developed, and emergent Levels (in my definition) have proliferated throughout this history, each one significantly changing the environment and changing its potentials.

So, the emergence of Life is only one of many emergent Levels before and since.

How can we characterise this sort of Emergence?

The Limits of Abstraction

The Processes and Productions of Abstraction

How Does Abstraction Fit Into A Dialectical World?

Some years ago, after extensive research, I produced the above diagram entitled The Processes and Productions of Abstraction. 

It requires a close look at the accompanying papers on both SHAPE Blog and SHAPE Journal to be able to correctly extract what the diagram delivers, but it did then lead to some major advances in the many possible worlds in which such different productions could actually exist.

The formal areas on the diagram are:-

MAN - the active element, in the middle

REALITY - as the all-containing Ground

CONCEPTS - through-and-into which the various Productions occurred

An important, and surprising, part of that latter "mental area" of CONCEPTS was termed Ideality - because it by-passed Reality crucially in the various Processes involved in its Productions.

Indeed, it was this Ideality - a rich conceptual World, that was the repository for Mathematics, and enabled a significant advance yo be made in the Philosophy of Mathematics by this theorist.

But, it was only a first step, for it then, more generally, and only briefly, involved just a few, and by no means enough, recursive loops, back to earlier productions, and, thereafter, consequent processes, with necessary corrections.

But, clearly, even more radical, and even transformative changes turned out to be absolitely essential too!

It was not yet, by any means, about Dialectical Logic and the essential Dialectical Materialist philosophical standpoint.

For, NO Abstraction can possibly ever be Absolutely Correct!

The actual process involved, in arriving at an Abstraction, though it is the result of a valid realisation of some measure of occurring Objective Content - some individual aspects or parts of the Truth, will still never be comprehensive. Only for a time, will it be possible to handle a given Abstraction, as if it were "The Whole Truth". For, its validating context will always be limited.

Indeed, we have already-fairly-quickly become aware that unless we remained within the exact-same context, or even rigorously worked to maintain it, our Abstraction would always, ultimately, begin to Fail.

And, remarkably, when t does, the relevant Abstraction, or even "Law", could actually turn into its exact-opposite. We could even arrive at a point where Two-Diametrically-Opposite-Abstractions, would both be, apparently, equally-valid, but on then trying each alternative in-turn, only one would lead onwards in our reasoning. 

What Zeno of Elea had discovered, 2,500 years ago, was concerned with the abstractions Continuity and Descreteness - for, when applied to Movement, it was not an odd-and-rare occurrence at all, but a very general and unavoidable feature of all Abstractions - reflecting both the Holist (constant-change) Nature of Reality and the natural trajectory of such changes.

The Formal Reasoning assumption that Absolute Truth could be built out of sufficient eternal elements, be they Abstractions ort Laws, was clearly incorrect!

And, therefore, what finally buried Formal Logic and its Reasoning, which always prohibited contradiction, as a sure proof of failure, either due to incorrect Reasoning or erroneous oncepts, was, instead, slowly being realised to be the natural dynamic of intrinsic change and development!

Of course, the emergence of the exact-opposite to a conception takes a great deal of swallowing: why couldn't qualitative changes just lead to something else?

Why only the exact-opposite?

Now, if the very centre of your mental world is Formal Logic, the required explanation will just never be found! To discover it, you have to study concrete Reality, not only as it exists today, at this moment - but, also, via the History of its development, wherever it leaves sequential evidence!

Instead of attempting to derive higher levels of existence from mechanistic complication of lower levels, you must, instead, study the higher levels to throw light upon the lower ones - twhere the evidence is always unavailable!

The real revealers of Reality are only available by studying Geology, Life, Man and Consciousness - for there the tempo can be made visible and analysed.

The Natural Emergence of Opposites

The emergence of opposites in reality, mentioned above, really does require further elaboration. Perhaps surprisingly, the ideas which ultimately led to the following Theory, came originally from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, via his Theory of Natural Selection.

For, in the attempt of this theorist to tackle the Origin of Life on Earth, Darwin's Theory could not be used, because it only involved contention between populations of living species, competing to survive. Clearly then, though such could be used after the Origin of Life, it certainly could not in the conversion of non-living processes into the very first Living Things.

So, the arena for that Origin, and the natural processes occurring there, would have to be considered, as somehow, having a similar effect to those involved in consequent Evolution, but with none of the necessary competition-and-reproduction that dominated Darwin's Natural Selection.

Clearly, only various physical and chemical circumstances-and-processes would have to be happening.

I'm afraid the old random chance occurrences, allowing significant changing of the game, is just too unlikely to be seriously contemplated, no matter how long you give it to act. So, upon careful analysis, it is clearly totally impossible!

The most important features would have to involve easy moving of involved substances, varying conditions and multiple, available substances.

Clearly, the most obvious transportations, would occur if everything was happening in a liquid (water), which due to other external physical forces was constantly "on-the -move" and, consequently, also "on-the-mix".

Many such environments have been suggested, but only one stands out as ideal.

It is the occurrence of shallow and connected, tidal pools, on the edge of a globally-connected ocean of water, situated on a spinning planet, with an inclined axis, and a nearby, warming star, whose rays would frequently get-to-and-affect our described environment,

A reasonably-complex Atmosphere would also be essential, so the diurnal changes in illumination by the star, due to the spin, and the seasonal changes, due to the inclined axis, would not only cause varying Weather, but also both vigorous flows and strong interactions between that Weather and the global ocean.

The Nature of that Atmosphere should also be regularly added-to by ongoing volcanism and eruptions.

All of these situations would enable varying conditions, that also regularly recurred, all of which would be conducive at different temperatures, to many different chemical reactions being possible.

So, with the right conditions in place, what would unavoidably happen?

Various reactions would take place: though different in varying local conditions, and an active sea would move these around - not only locally, but also globally. Some would dissociate again, if the conditions became too extreme, but with the full picture as described above, there will always be places where certain things could and would survive, even if they were not happening everywhere.

We can conceive of a mix of different reactions taking place both incessantly and simultaneously, with facilitating energy perhaps from the nearby Star, or heated water from the vicinity of volcanism.

The big question is, "What would happen next?"

The usual assumption is that in time all possible situations will occur, and in many one-chance-occurrences, these will lead to more complex entities being produced, though still entirely non-living!

Taking the very same reasoning further, and over colossal time periods, enough totally chance occurrences, will very slowly take the complication to the very threshold of, and then into, the existence of the very first life. What utter rubbish!

You can see that the theorists involved in such theories are of the classical, pluralist, formalist type. But, that would never, ever do it! It is a mechanist, almost Laplacian narrative.

But, the Origin of Life was an actual, and totally game-changing, Revolution: an Emergence of the first water. A change, that once it occurred, took hold and completely out-competed all non-living processes from the outset.

With absolutely NO living competitors as yet, it would rapidly dominate every reachable conducive area across major parts of the Globe.

Now, compare this with the frequently suggested sequence of very unlikely, random occurrences, that fail in their millions before one manages to survive - faced then with another long stagnation, before another freak occurrence moves another small step towards Life.

The alternative presented here conceives of an entity being created that has absolutely NO living competitors yet possible, and something on-the-way-to-life, just competing with non living chemical processes, solely, on the basis of competing for the same resources. Indeed, what will have happened in the preceding period with only non-living processes happening, is that certain processes requiring, and finding, their required resource in abundance, usually churns on for literally millennia, producing enough products to lay down a layer of sediment thick enough to form rocks, still around billions of years later.

It seems very likely that the first "near-life" occurrence will also dominate in a similar way to the non-living example suggested above.

Of course, for this to happen, there is, still, a Revolution to describe!

It is, as been proved many times, totally impossible using the usual mechanistic, pluralist assumptions. So, as suggested earlier, we must look for evidence of actually-occurring Revolutions, in much later developments, long after the First Emergence of Life, to extract a working conception of how such a radical, totally transforming Change occurs, to see if it can throw light upon the most Revolutionary Event of all - The Emergence of Life on Earth.

It has been done several times, in various different ways. First, Karl Marx applied the newly discovered Dialectical approach to History, and discovered a whole series of such Revolutions in the Social Organisation of Human Societies.

Second, Lenin used it as a general method to guide the Bolsheviks within the Russian Revolution to seriously affect the outcome.

Third, Schofield went on to generalise Darwin's Natural Selection to non-living competition between chemical processes, in the period immediately prior to the Origin of Life.

Fourth, he then went on to formulate his Theory of Emergences, which traced the trajectory of an Emergent Event from a prior Stability, via a major Crisis to a Cataclysmic Collapse, swooping to what appeared to be Total Chaos, but then naturally-and-inevitably then delivering a self-constructed ascent to a wholly New Stability, at a different Level entirely.

Though much has still to be done, it is already underway.

Epistemology & Being III

Our Understanding of Reality and the Consequences for Theory

The Emergence of an Alternative?

True scientific thinkers were always aware of the patchy nature of their studies, and determined to go beyond what had been extracted, to attempt an Explanation of why things were the way that they were.

This was a significant development! Essentially, Mankind had been using his Knowledge of Reality, without understanding its causes. His techniques were descriptive rather than explanatory, and knowing what-happens-next was sufficient for a successful intervention.

But, by asking, “Why?”, he was requiring a great deal more!

He was impelled upon this path, because, if he could “understand” the reasons for things, he could apply them elsewhere in analogous situations and build a coherent, comprehensive structure of explanations, which would certainly truncate the long-winded process dependant ONLY upon inexplicable description alone.

And, for a while, these Explanatory scientists were highly successful (if only in very limited areas), and their explanatory contributions did make significant contributions.

But, of course, they had to be insufficient or even downright wrong! Depending, as they did upon a framework of “do-able” studies, their attempts at explanation were too narrowly based to ever deliver the “full Truth”.  Each and every Theory was always compromised, and could be no other. But, these scientists soon realised that though their contributions were incomplete, they necessarily contained significant “objective content”.

They were NOT mere fictions, but always delivered something of real value.

These real scientists expected their Theories to be superceded by better ones, and indeed embraced the approach, which came to be called The Scientific Method, wherein hypotheses (probable theories) were purposely subjected to attempts at disproving them by experimental testing “to, and beyond, their limits”.

This led to the demolishing of clearly incorrect theories, but also stretched some theories to extended areas of applicability, and even led to improving modifications where the evidence merited them.

They approached a much deeper understanding of the relation of their Theories to the “Truth”. All “truths” achieved by the normal, pluralistic methods were clearly “relative”, “partial” truths, and subject to updating, or even total replacement.

But, sadly, even this improvement turned out to be insufficient. All this work was still based upon other long established assumptions that were intrinsically flawed, and THE most profound flaw appeared in the occurrence of cataclysmic Events of Change, which came to be called Emergences.

Indeed, these were precise Events, as were mentioned earlier, such as the Origin of Life on the Earth!

The Bottom-Up approach could NOT deal with Emergences.

Why was this?

The whole method, being pluralist, depended upon the identified “constituent Parts”, which made up a given situation, but these were destroyed as such in an Emergence. They simply ceased to exist, and the laws relating them meant nothing any more. The very things we would need to “explain” the new situation were no longer available. We had NO bases for explaining the turnover. Our methods did NOT deliver the real Truth, but instead a truth relative to a particular set of circumstances that now NO LONGER APPLIED.

New forms, entities, relations and, indeed, laws appeared “out of the woodwork” – at least as far as our “understanding” was concerned.

The new Level that appeared could NOT be dealt with purely in terms of our Lower Level entities, relations, processes and laws. What had occurred was NOT explicable in terms of our current Knowledge, because it was, and always had been, INCOMPLETE.

Now, if that was not enough to scupper an investigation of the newly emerged Level, there was a further complication. The new Level actually began to constrain, if not determine, those prior, lower-Level processes. There was an irrefutable top-down mediation of “now contained” lower level processes.

How on earth could our current assumptions cope with that?

There are millions of examples of this, but I must at least mention one.

On the pre-Life Earth NO free Oxygen could exist in the atmosphere. Oxygen is very reactive, and any that became available, by any means whatsoever, was immediately taken up in what are called oxidation processes, and ended up as solids embedded in the geological accumulations of the ground itself. The atmosphere, replenished by natural, non living processes, was mainly of volcanic origin. There was NO free Oxygen at all.

But, early living things changed all of that. Photosynthesis, in plants, using sunlight and available Carbon Dioxide, produced Oxygen as a waste product in their cell building processes, and this proliferated to such an extent that, in spite of continuing oxidising processes, the amount of free Oxygen in the atmosphere increased until it became a substantial and transforming proportion. There is even clear evidence that it, at times, was much greater than it is now (currently about 20%). And this process was ongoing. Any reduction, due to other processes, was continually offset by new productions by the plant biomass.

For the first time in the history of the Earth, free Oxygen was maintained at a substantial level in the atmosphere. This revolution had changed its own context. Situations emerging due to a given context had then proceeded to change that context substantially. And, this meant that new things could happen that were impossible previously.

Indeed, Life, which caused the situation, could thereafter develop in entirely new ways. Oxygen breathing animals could evolve and fill the empty Land areas without the need for what had been essential before – the ocean environment.

This tale reveals the significance of Emergences. Following such an Event, entirely new forms appeared which could NOT be explained in terms of the pre-Emergence processes.

Emergences were, and are, Creative!

The Necessity of Holistic Science And a wholly New Methodology

Now, these profoundly important Events could NOT continue to be ignored. And an alternative approach to Reality, based on Holism, also had to be resurrected. Not, obviously, the old impenetratable Holism of antiquity, but one based on the recognition of its paramount role in the Evolution of Matter – the development of Reality.

Plurality had to be relegated to a purely pragmatic methodology that took the obvious unevenness of Reality, and constrained its more amenable areas for detailed study, and the subsequent construction of initial, obviously, limited models of these areas, as a first step towards a more general understanding.

To complement this scheme of work, it has become evident that the complementary study of Emergence is the most important direction to take in revealing the imperatives of a holistic world.

Certainly, the significant failures of pluralistic science were revealed by Emergences, and also have significantly redirected our conception of the nature of Reality, AND, importantly, of our understanding of Reality.

This paper was written in response to an article – Essence of Thought by Gregory T. Huang - in New Scientist (2658) about the Human Brain. The scientists involved were undoubtedly and unconsciously, pluralist, as described above, and could not see that their methods were incapable of transcending the mechanisms of Lower Level systems. They believed that they could find their “Theory of Everything in the Brain” via Neural Nets and brain localities, but because they are as mistaken as the Physicists, who expect to find their Theory of Everything in Strings of Pure disembodied Energy (or some other purely mathematical forms), they too must fail.

Soon as we look at Human Understanding in its present state, we see the products of past Emergences in ALL subject categories, be they Physics, Biology or Chemistry, or in Neurology, Psychology and Psychiatry. Each and every area is determined by its own Emergent Event, and no-one can, no matter how hard they try, use their current, pluralist methods to bridge the gaps.

Obviously, this paper is but a preface to one that takes the positions expressed here into a critique of the article that precipitated this reaction.

Back to Part 2

Epistemology & Being II

Our Understanding of Reality and the Consequences for Theory

The Route to an Alternative?

So, what are the glaringly crucial questions which we wilfully ignore?

The number one question has, surely, to be an explanation of the Origin of Life on Earth. Can you think of a more important question? And, as soon as that type of question has ever been posed, a whole avalanche of related ones pour out – the most obvious becoming the different Subjects which we have set up to deal with different areas of Reality.

We have, of course, Biology to deal with the Science of Living Things, which in turn is quite separate from Physics, which deals with aspects of inanimate or material objects, and finally we should mention the even higher level areas of study, such as Psychology, concerning the minds of human beings.

And, it is clearly crucial that each of these areas have very rapidly become walled-cities, wherein each has its own set of related approaches, which are necessarily unique to their own discipline, while the important connections-between these "subjects" are largely ignored.

The classic "explanations" of these “categories” do not allow the slightest criticism. They extrapolate the “local” successes of reductionism that are possible only in tiny sequences of explanation, into an overall, world-wide methodology, which, “in time”, is expected to explain ALL such connections – but not yet!

Any determined criticism of the bases of such assumptions sees them, inevitably, to be deemed to "fall at the very first fence", by the consensus defenders.

And, I do mean the first!

Zeno, for example, exposed our false assumptions in how we deal with Time and Space (particularly with respect to movement) with his famous Paradoxes, and that was about 2,500 years ago, and the consensus still simply chooses to ignore such revelations to this day!

And the assumptions that we make are not just the ancient ones, such as Plurality and Reductionism, but even the relatively modern approaches that we employ in Experimental Science and even in the famed, and even sacrosanct, Scientific Method.

These unquestioned assumptions MUST be addressed, and the mechanist view of the richness of Reality and its reduction to basic, immutable elements overturned for ever.

It just isn’t true!

And, it is clear to me that the key to addressing these mistakes (perhaps surprisingly) must reside in tackling such Revolutions as the Origin of Life on Earth, and similar vital overturns, which have occurred throughout the History of Matter, “since the Big Bang.”

No-one has yet got within a million miles of explaining the Origin of Life, in terms of more basic, non-living relations and entities, and the reason is precisely connected with the assumptions with which they all attempt to tackle the problem.

They merely expect to climb a ladder of relations and processes all the way from inanimate matter to the first occurrence of Living Things.

Rodchenko

Needless to say, they always and inevitably FAIL in that endeavour!

Why? The answer lies in their assumptions, as you will by now have already guessed. They MUST, on principle, explain everything, even including Life itself, in strictly material terms, and the only ones that they have available turn out to be totally inadequate to the task. They expect unbroken processes, and smoothly continuous sequences of relations, to do the job, and they simply cannot do that!

The Origin of Life on Earth was never such a process, nor even a very rare and unlikely version of such processes.

It was an Emergence!

On hearing the mention of such a label as “Emergence”, most scientists run like hell.

They spent their lives correctly opposing religious mysticism, and replacing it with reductionist materialism, and “Emergence” smacks altogether too much of the enemy’s approach. If such things turn out to be inexplicable in their usual terms, then it seems to be opening the door to mystical alternatives.

But, in that, they are entirely wrong!

An Emergence needs NO mysticism, or God, or any outside intervention to bring it about.

It is wholly due to material processes, BUT they are NOT pedestrian, pluralistic processes, nor are they predictable in the usual way. But, they are real, concrete processes. They are not strictly organisational, wherein some higher form appears as “built” out of lower order processes and relations – mere complication!

So, what is it that actually occurs in an Emergence?

To address this question we must totally renovate our basic conceptions of the nature of Reality. We must embrace the opposite of Plurality, which is termed Holism!

Reality is NOT a strictly one-way, bottom-up erection. Holism conceives of Reality as multiply-mediated – bottom-to-top, top-to-bottom, and every side-to-every-other-side.

It allows Recursions of many kinds: a simple ladder upwards will never do it!

All things are multiply-connected, and, indeed, multiply-determined, at least potentially, by literally everything else. So, our cherished premise, for example, of Stability not only being the norm for development, but actually essential for it, has to go.

Indeed, Stability, when it gets established, makes new developments wholly impossible!

It is an actively-maintained balance between diametrical opposites, and will, when achieved, persist for long periods, until its internal contradictions begin to successively undermine it, finally leading to a terminal crisis, which ends in a wholesale collapse.

But, the consequent swoop to oblivion is only of the constraining Stability and its self-maintaining sub processes.

Its demise leads to a Revolution, in which wholly new systems of processes arise, and can occasionally erect a wholly new Stability.

That is how Life arose!

The Phoenix must arise from the flames of destruction!

Revolutionary Routes

You can see how it is causal, but NOT in any direct traceable sequence from the pre-life level. An actual Emergence is essential to allow such radical changes.

Now, this was realised (also around 2500 years ago) by Siddartha (The Buddha), but as an almost incomprehensible system. There certainly was order there, but it seemed impenetratable.

Siddartha also conceived of the problem from a wholly human perspective – the purpose had to be a personal realisation of Man’s place within the Universe. Those who realised the holist nature of Reality HAD to dedicate their whole lives to its study and ultimately hope for Nirvana.

Though Holism is certainly a sound approach, it did not take account of the undoubted unevenness of Reality.

For Reality is not homogeneously interconnected, with multiple mediations of relatively equal weight, determining every discernable thing.

Yet, such things were not necessarily locked into indeterminable complexes of mediations, these mediations were, inevitably, of very different magnitudes in any particular situation. Some would be so tiny as to be both invisible AND undetectable, while others could be so dominant as to reveal themselves literally all the time, partially obscured, but quite evidently present.

To treat all situations as composed of contributions of comparable weights would certainly prohibit ANY progress in understanding. So, holistic Buddhism did NOT precipitate its own Science of Reality.

Holism was correct, but both insufficient, and had no analytic methodology with which to investigate Reality, and reveal all its contributions. Its defence of total interconnectedness and universal mediations seemed to prohibit the development of a means of penetrating Reality in some revealing way.

Parallel with the holist view was the pluralist view, and though the latter was certainly incorrect, it would, in time, provide a means of analysis and study, but NOT for a further 2000 years.

To deliver anything at all, even a pluralist approach HAD to be allied with a wide already-existing Knowledge of dealing with things, and bending them to particular outcomes successfully.

Now, this was, indeed, available in day-to-day living, where Mankind increasingly learned how to control situations to his own advantage.

Edward Burtynsky - Manufactured Landscapes - China

Modern pluralist Science was born when Mankind could intervene in Reality with considerable control to constrain situations artificially, in order to reveal dominant relations, and, indeed, for the very first time, measure them. 

Then, Plurality could be employed as an effective pragmatic method, in both holding down, and also measuring Parts of Reality, to reveal their evident dominant relations.

Its gains were both considerable and remarkable, but its “paths to Truth” were considerably constrained. You could only find relations that were both evident AND revealable. You had to study only those areas where control could be established and dominant relations were quite obviously there, even if embedded.

The difficult areas, which did not display such prospects, were simply not available for study. Their significant contributions were just not evident, so you did not know in what way to control the situation, in order to reveal any of them for isolation, extraction and indeed abstraction.

These areas offered NO means of approach.

This meant that many areas were unavoidably ignored, and because of this biased selection, Reality was NOT revealed in its essential nature, but instead delivered piecemeal, via only its more amenable and relatively simple areas.

The totality of such studies gave the false impression that the whole of Reality was like these amenable areas.

It wasn’t and isn’t!

Nevertheless, mankind had been exploiting whatever he could glean from Reality for many, many millennia, and even these limited paths were quickly turned into “paths to something”.

The gains became blueprints for Productions, and the Industrial Revolution was born.

Next PART

Back to PART 1

The Crucial Outstanding Tasks for Marxist Theorists

Gustav Klutsis

What is to be Done: IX

The essential tasks for the Marxists of today

The very unavoidability of the Origin of Life on Earth could NOT be tidied away. It demanded explanation, and slowly but surely using Life as a template method, initial definitions of Emergences as radically transforming Natural Events began to be formulated.

Surprisingly, these were NOT lead by the Marxists. Instead, individuals and small groups of scientists began to formulate these generally.

Many Wrong Turnings

Various diverse groups embraced the area of study “from their own discipline standpoints”. Green campaigners were enamoured of the approach, but did little to develop it scientifically (Lovelock comes to mind). The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Laughlin in opposition to the consensus in Modern Physics also lined up on the side of Emergences. Emmeche from the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen published a joint paper with two colleagues from other areas of study espousing the Emergentist approach, and finally Murray Gell-Mann and colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute in America also insisted that they were ”of the same persuasion”. But though I suppose that these were a significant and diverse group of supporters of the idea of Emergence, I’m afraid that they did not turn any significant corners. They were, of course, ill equipped to address the real problems and tasks involved, for these were unavoidably philosophical. In addition it turns out to be impossible for anyone to make contributions in this field who are still following the standard pluralist approach of the majority of scientists. It is clear to me that such researchers, no matter how dedicated, cannot overcome the problems inherent in the pluralist approach. After all, the most essential feature of Emergences MUST be that they are creative! In the same way that Evolution was incessantly punctuated by the entirely New, and involved a regular opening up of new Potential and Form, so it was with all Emergences. The creative aspect of these Events was anathema to most thinkers.

The iron grip of strict Determinism on the one hand, and still-existing religion on the other, were sure they had ALL the answers already. They had always had the answers, of course! To depart from strict Determinism was condemned as Metaphysics on the left hand side, and Sacrilege on the right.

The epitome of the Scientific approach was embodied in the work of Holland (at Santa Fe), who along with ALL his colleagues it seems, was convinced that he could “demonstrate” Emergences via
Computer Simulations.

Forgive me while I fall about laughing uncontrollably. The idea that a retrospective form such as a computer simulation could possibly produce creative Emergences was unbelievable. But, remarkably, that turned out to be the Determinist/Reductionist consensus. Quite clearly such people could never tackle the problem: the Emergence of Life on Earth could never be addressed merely by a re-mix approach.. All they would be able to do is emasculate it! They might be able to turn it into a vehicle for their careers, but they could never address its true essence.

So, Who Could Tackle This Problem? It should be obvious WHO should be doing this work. IT IS YOU!

Indeed, as far as I can see ONLY dialectical materialists could ever address the questions posed in this area. With a multi-discipline approach, and taking in ALL the developments since the time of the great Marxists, we should attempt a Marxist description of Emergent Events, and to do this believably, we must first tackle, then reveal, and finally destroy the prevailing scientific consensus methodology based on Plurality. We must bring about the demise of Reductionist Determinism as the main barrier to progress in this crucial area ( as well as many others)

The undertaking is about Epistemology – the task of understanding and explaining Reality, and about Method – the means by which we do this. The established methodology CANNOT address what we must deal with here, so we must first criticize fully, and then replace, the old methods. We must see the flaws in the old reductionist/Determinist methods and define the necessary alternatives. Not Plurality, But a New Holistic Science.

Now, earlier in this paper, I already intimated that Plurality is not only a purely pragmatic approach to the study of Reality, but also, and unavoidably, imposes the consequent conceptions of Determinism and Reductionism upon how we see things as a whole. These ideas “unify” our global conceptions into what seems like a coherent and comprehensive Whole. But, it is merely a useful myth.

Its opposite, Holism, fared even worse, for though seemingly more all-embracing, still delivered NO effective methodology with which to deal with Reality, and, in any sort of scientific way, reveal its inner workings. So, we are presented with this pair of alternatives, neither of which is adequate to the required task. Therefore, though it seems incomprehensible, our task is defined as having to work through this dichotomous pair to another, different approach, which really does reflect the real situation.

We must explain in detail how these alternatives have in the past only led us astray, and following this attempt a synthesis which transcends their evident contradiction.

No easy task!

First, we must reveal the unavoidable dead-ends involved in a purely pluralistic methodology, and then without clanging over to the opposite extreme of ineffective Holism, point the way instead to a superior methodology.

Of course, such a task is a supreme undertaking, and of course, way too big for a single paper, or even for a single contributor. But a start must be made, for only by such actions will other additional forces be recruited to this fundamental task.

Charlie Chaplin

What is Wrong with Pluralist Technology?

Let us first establish irrefutably the limitations of the now universally established Pluralistic Method. By the processes of isolation, extraction and abstraction we separate embedded relations from their Real World context, control or ignore formative, as well as seemingly trivial, simultaneous factors, and then limit the ground for their intended use, so that they do indeed deliver what is required when used there.

We construct stepping-stones across the veritable river of changing Reality, without tackling the torrent as such. Of course - we are aware that each and every extraction is limited to its own Domain of Applicability – our secure stepping stones, and that if their limits are transgressed, our formulae fail, and we step into the midst of the torrent, and are swept away to oblivion.(For once beyond these limits the formulae are totally useless and give false values for all crucial variables). Indeed, the experienced user of these methods knows, that to ensure any progress, we must abandon our last stepping stone for another in the next Domain.

Our feeble attempts at transcending these boundaries automatically are similar to constructing makeshift bridges from one stepping stone to the next. Such “bridges” can only be retrospective, as each and every stepping stone has to be separately investigated to produce its pluralistic formulae. Only then can these purely artificial bridges be constructed.

The method is what I call “Additive Complexity”, where the various Domains and their formulae, become different “terms” within a cover-all single equation. The terms are integrated in such a way that as we move from one domain to the next, the old term vanishes, while the appropriate new one comes into dominance. It is a clever (and once again pragmatic) trick. But it delivers NO explanation of the transition at all. It is a purely retrospective frig, to deliver a practical, mindless solution..

Though, highly popular amongst engineers, these frigs tell us nothing about what is actually happening, and why. They could not by any stretch of the imagination be called Science. They are mere Technology!

It HAS to be asked, “What is really happening as we move across such boundaries?”

It is abundantly clear that our pluralistic methods cannot address this question, because the answer MUST be contained within the VERY FACTORS that we have either “nailed to the floor” or totally ignored. Clearly, our selection of what was vital, ceases to be true. Our banker, dominant factors will melt away and themselves become negligible, to be replaced by others from those we cast away. Indeed, the very factors necessary to deliver the changes are unavailable, as our pluralistic methods disposed of them as irrelevant.

This post is the ninth in a new blog series entitled "What is to be done?" on the crises in both Marxism and Science, and how a revolution is necessary in both. This body of work is now available as a Special Issue. Read it all here!