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. 

Genes and Dialectics

Considering the currently-dominant reductionist methodology in the study of Genetics, it is crystal-clear that the same sort of drawbacks that are limiting current Sub Atomic Physics, will also restrict Genetics in similar ways.

Let us see what those ways are!

The first stance to emphasise, must involve an essential switch from Plurality to Holism, as it is clear that functional areas in a Genome are NOT merely, and or even solely, some fixed-blueprint for the construction-of, and the processes-for, that Living Organism, in the usual sense at all. For, if, I have it right, individual genes can not only influence functional processes elsewhere in the body of the organism, but also provide THE mechanism for the future Development of the whole collection of that species of organism, over successive generations. For it is THERE that the initiating changes take place!

And, the question, of course, must be "How?"

Now, to prepare to attempt to answer that question, I can only start by re-stating the alternative general Holist view of interactions. For, they naturally involve multiple, simultaneous and active factors, which, in most circumstances, do something akin to a Vector Sum, wherein individual directions are involved, as well as their more obvious contributing weights. In other words, you can get both support and/or contention from the various contributions to deliver an overall result - and that will not always be the same! Indeed, it will differ at various significant stages in a particular development.

Now, depending upon circumstances, some of these could selectively-cancel, leaving a dominant "summed" result - looking very similar to one of its components, or, surprisingly, something like that of its opposite.

Relevant studies by this author can be found on the pre-Life stages in Truly Natural Selection. These have just been re-published in the latest issue of SHAPE (63).

Issue 63 of SHAPE on Natural Selection
http://e-journal.org.uk/shape/papers/i63home.html

Both of these are cases of a Stability - maintained results, where small changes in one factor, are compensated for, by the very-same-causes, eliciting balancing (returning) changes in another opposing factor.

Now, the above ideas emerged when considering relatively simple dynamical situations, but can, and indeed must, be extended to processes and even to complex Systems.

This rich, living world is no Lego-build, as is assumed by Plurality! Looking at the building blocks alone will undoubtedly prove insufficient.

For example, if we start by considering chemical reactions (processes), the factors involved are, always, both more numerous and of qualitatively different kinds. Both resources and products are related in a given chemical processes. And, the product of one, can be a required resource for another. So, extended-linear-sequences, could be linked by products-as-resources into chains of processes. And even Cycles become possible where the End-Product of a linear sequence, becomes the necessary Resource of the first process in that same series.

So, apart from the simpler stabilities, these relatively self-resourcing cycles produce a very different kind of Stability indeed, which also can deliver a whole variety of secondary products, which have proved to be absolutely crucial in Living Things. Considering these more complex aggregations, there will regularly be both secondary required resources and consequent extra products, involving many of the successive links in such structures: and, consequently, intricate networks will result - all-of-which will be susceptible to changes in resource supplies, both overall and internally within the structures.

The problems of the usually applied pluralist approach are immediately evident. For, in ALL pluralist experimental set-ups, they are expressly designed to remove "all-but-one" of the involved factors, and then to promote the single remaining and isolated relation into an eternal Natural Law- always deemed to be totally independent of any of its contexts.

And, remember, these revelations were made when considering supposed "bottommost rungs" occurring in real world developments.

But, even these criticisms are nowhere near enough!

Mankind soon concentrated historically upon things that didn't seem to change qualitatively at all, as revealing the truly essential factors - it being their dominance that maintained things so well. We actually chose precisely those things, which effectively hid the crucial mechanisms of change, and consequently of Development too!

But, isn't the most important purpose of genes to deliver such developmental changes - so that, somehow, when a particular mutation of a gene becomes established, it, along with others, produces the advantageous change in the resulting organism that contributes to the dominance of that change by Natural Selection.

And, of course, the functions of the Genome will be far more complicated that the analogies called upon so far! For example, how does the Genome deliver its "instructions" - not only to the relevant tissues, but also internally, within the Genome itself? And, of course, exactly when do these processes take place?

Is it before conception in the gamete producing areas?

Is it after conception, but before the development of the new foetus?

Do many achieved unions get rejected very early on: do they get ejected regularly?

And, surely, many functions will only be activated later either during the pre-birth developments, or at particular times, post-birth, in the maturation, and even in the eventual decline, of the organism.

Now, the communication problem is solved in a remarkable way, for every single cell of the organism, contains a complete copy of the whole Genome, as well as a secondary set, held within its Mitochondria, so many necessary communications are present locally within the necessary cell.

But, at far more dispersed situations, actual communications had neither direct routes to follow, or even unique "addresses" to guide the message to the right place, so the "messages" were produced in abundance, and broadcast literally everywhere, via the bloodstream, which because they were sent everywhere, would indeed finally get to its intended target, where it would be recognised by finding its own mirror-image-shape to connect perfectly with, triggering its necessary function.

But, such mechanisms generated problems, when dispersed elements had, not only to be both located and activated, but also despatched to the right place, along with others similarly located and despatched, to arrive at the right time and place to deliver the necessary functions.

I have to say that much of what I see about this the on the web fails to address these problems, and instead expects to find all the answers with its ever growing database of Genomes, but with no detailed description of the mechanisms involved.

This brief paper can do no more, at this stage, than indicate what is missing from this Science, which clearly will require a veritable revolution in the necessary underlying philosophy, before the really crucial questions can be adequately addressed.

The dialectical door was found by Hegel, and we were led through it to materialism by Marx, but the crucial domain of Science has not been comprehensively addressed from this stance, and until it has, such wrong turnings, as are evident in areas like Genetics, will not be overcome.

DNA and the Social Development of the Brain?

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

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

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

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

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

The results were remarkable!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darwin, Engels and Marx

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

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

New Special Issue: At The Bottom!

Special Issue 49

This new edition presents a collection of papers on our various explorations of the bottomost levels of reality, and why we have got it so wrong.

Immediately I am forced to ask, “Why is it that the clear idealism of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory has now ruled the roost for a full 90 years?” And secondly to wonder “Why haven’t we, as Marxists, as materialist philosophers, defeated this position long ago?”

Are we to really believe that Yves Couder’s brilliant experiments alone were sufficent to finally turn a corner and allow us to carry this through to completion?

I have been a supporter of the Marxist stance since I, as a young man studying Physics at Leeds University in the 1950s, became profoundly disillusioned with my chosen subject. It was my intuitive opposition which led me to Lenin’s powerful book Materialism and Empirio Criticsism in 1959 and to joining the Communist Party. Yet sadly, as I was still an immature youth and was never equipped by my colleagues and comrades to tackle these difficult problems, only very slowly did I realise that the primary objective of Marx in abandoning Hegelian Idealism for what he termed Dialectical Materialism, was clearly to directly unify with the best practitioners and theorists of Science - and even to this day, this has never been achieved.

In fact, Lenin’s great book, written well over 100 years ago, was the last significant contribution in that absolutely crucial area. Yet, the very tendency in Physics, then led by Henri Poincare and Ernst Mach, against whom he was arguing, was the very same tendency that developed into Bohr and Heisenberg’s final irrevocable retreat into Idealism.

Why on earth wasn’t the job done before now?

Maths-first Science? I

Use before understanding!

Introduction

Currently, Physics is seemingly embroiled in an irresolvable crisis, and to understand how it arrived at this desperate juncture, it is necessary to go back to its historical sources, and understand its initial and continuing motivations, and, even more importantly, its intellectual origins too.

From Man's hunter/gatherer origins he had effectively conquered the known World with his dexterity and intelligence, coupled with a single practical tenet, namely, "If it works, it is right", or, in a word - Pragmatism! Remarkably, with experience, intelligence and some basic arithmetic, Mankind had created Agriculture, Irrigation and even metal-working, and also, for its ever increasing trade, built roads, canals, and even sea-going ships, to supply their fast-growing cities.

Even Pyramids of colossal size, were constructed, as well as temples and palaces, and then giant empires were built across many countries. At a certain juncture in this trajectory, and focussed in the City States of Ancient Greece, Mankind began to create an intellectual aspect in its cultural life, going beyond, but still built upon, that same Pragmatism. 

And the first developable intellectual discpline which was realised was Mathematics, or to bemore precise, that foundation stone of Mathematics, termed Geometry.

Observing both nature and his own works, Man discerned certain patterns, which recurred over and over again, and via "drawing" them in the sand, or on paper, he idealised them into Pure Forms, which could then be studied, as such!

Remarkably, these idealised extractions could, in themselves, be studied and indeed sequentially related to one another, so that a new, extended intellectual discipline was created of seemingly endless range and complexity.

It was a remarkable creation, for it certainly did not exist, as such, in Reality, but did, at least partially, reflect aspects of Reality, though ONLY in a descriptively formal and idealised way. And, crucially, it could also be used effectively, if approximately, to predict certain kinds of outcomes!

Such successes caused it to colour our thinking in general! It was the immutability of the ideal forms that seemed to enable the proliferation of both its processes and its regular extensions. So, when the same approach was applied to Reasoning - involing the implications of statements, it led to Formal Logic, as another seemingly infinitely extensible intellectual discipline. An idealised and manipulate-able parallel world, of useable reflections, had been shown to be possible, and began to grow at markable rate.

What had been involved, in these developments, was a brilliant extension of that process, which Mankind had been doing for millennia - a process which became known as Abstraction.

It extracted something from Reality, which could be, thereafter, effectively be used in Thinking, even though no individual abstraction was ever a fully comprehensive account. What it did contain, however, was often extremely useful: for it invariably had a significant measure of what is termed Objective Content.

The consequences, when the very same methods were applied in the observation of Reality, were, therefore, pre-determined. Abstractions, once again, extracted something of value, but in the form of unchanging entities and their fixed inter-relations or Laws: what was extracted and used were seen as fixedobjects with eternal Natural Laws ONLY affecting them - and, in the usually fairly stable unchanging circumstances, these were real reflections, and could be used effectively.

Of course, to begin with, such naturally stable situations were limited to things like the Observation of the Heavens, but slowly, Mankind learned how to control or "farm" local domains of Reality, into simplified and artificially maintained, stable situations that could indeed be processed effectively.

Science too was therefore inevitably built upon the same foundations. Indeed, the most profound, but unstated common premise involved-throughout, was the now standard idea of unchanging essences, and this later became known as the Principle of Plurality!

Early Methods

Now, early science, could not penetrate Reality very deeply: indeed, most observations and even measurements were superficial: they could not analyse Reality, but took it as it presented itself, and at best, when it was varying, Man could find ways of holding it still, and so making dependable measurements of that.

So, apart from dimensions and maybe weight, no underlying causes could be revealed. Gradually, though, overall conceptions began to be imagined such as Temperature, Pressure and Energy, but these were not seen as properties of individual constituent parts, but of the complex thing as-a-whole. In other words, early Science was, generally, entirely of this overall nature. And, even when it began to be realised that there, indeed, were constituent units making up a whole, it still wasn't possible to measure all the individual parts, and sum their effects.

Only overall, resultant values were measurable.

Now, as better means of penetrating things more deeply became available, various methods of relating these overall measurables to the constituent parts were developed, as were means of relating what could be determined from constituent parts to things measured overall.

A parallel suite of techniques to indiviual part measurements was developed to relate the two. It took the general title of Statistics, along with a means of top-down interpretations were part of the system, termed Probabilities.

Now, this short excursion was necessary, as it was an alternative to the a more general method of analysis, involving layer-below-layer, increasingly-detailed analytic revelatons, until some ultimate fundamental causing entities were finally reached.

That approach, termed Reductionism, soon dominated, though it was never carried through completely: instead it was just conceptually-assumed, to underpin all partial investigations. And, the same approach took all found relations, as direct consequences of Laws at a lower level, and so on level-below-level, until at the bottommost, fundamental level, there would be the final eternal Natural Laws generating all of Reality via a hierarchy of consequent levels.

So, wherever possible, this would be implemented, at least partially, and when it wasn't, the reliable Statistics and Probabilities were resorted to instead!


The Final Crisis

Now, though usually ignored as being merely due to current ignorance, there were many intractable anomalies in the results obtained, due to the various differing and even contradictory premises and philosophical stances, that had been adopted by different groups of scientists doing different things.

But, the consequent, overall amalgam survived by a division of the participants involved, into different specialisms, who did their bit, within their particular stances, and passed over their results to other specialists, to be used as they saw fit!

Addressing the Massive Conceptual Crisis in Physics

Now, this admittedly cursory introduction has been necessary, in order to tackle the significant retreat adopted in Sub Atomic Physics in response to the perplexing discovery of the Quantum, on the one hand, and the increasingly unavoidable anomalies and contradictions on the other.

In fact, the most basic definitions seemed to be being totally undermined, as Particles seemed to, sometimes, act like Waves, while Waves, occasionally, appeared to behave like descrete Particles.

So, the tendency that depended upon, and trusted most, the embodiment of discovered relations into Formal Equations, knew that they, as always, would be able to mirror all phenomena in such Forms, and denounced Explanatory Physics, at least, at the Sub Atomic Level, as mere self-kid.

Reality was said to be determined by formal equations (Natural Laws), and they would be found in this area too.

So, the reason for this writer's preamble will now become clear!

Bohr and Heisenberg, along with many others, gradually achieved their formal claims, by using Probabilities and Wave Equations in a physically unjustifiable ways. There is a name for such tricks in Mathematics: it is termed a frig!

There was NO underlying physical explanation for what they achieved, but, the ancient and still existing "If it works, it is right!" justification was used to finally dispense with all explanations other than "Obeys this equation!"

The new stance was termed The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and its increasingly-emerging clear inadequacies had to be papered-over with an increasing number of speculative inventions, and further abstract extensions in Pure Mathematics.

Now, some physicists still refused to submit, including Einstein, but neither side had the faintest idea what in physical theory itself, had been the problem.

For, the problem was most certainly the Pragmatism-driven amalgam of contradictory premises, upon which Classical Science, Formal Logic and even Mathematics had all been built.

But, the key pragmatic botch-up was certainly in Sub Atomic Physics, where Materialism, Idealism and Pragmatism had been patched together upon the same premise of Plurality, with "If it works, it is right!" Indeed, it could only exist by repeated separations into distinct "specialisms", with defined and limited spans - all created at the precise points where blatant contradictions became unavoidable. But, of course, they were avoidable - by setting fixed boundaries exactly where the anomalies presented themselves, and "agreeing to differ" with co-operating colleagues in adjacent specialisms.

Indeed, throughout the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the consequent form of Capitalist Economics in the 19th Century, Science had merely become the "Richest Mine" of new discoveries for Technology's proliferating and profitable applications. There were "sound financial reasons" for the necessary blinkers!

So, try as they might, the Classical lobby could not defeat the Copenhageners.

They were simply too philosophically ill-equipped to do anything about it. David Bohm, and later the neo-Bohmians, tried with their suggestion of an accompanying Pilot Wave to every elementary Particle, but nothing theoretically was achieved.

The problems went far deeper, and unless they were made clearly evident and tackled head-on, absolutely no progress would be made.

Yet, 200 years before, the German idealist philosopher, Friedrich Hegel, had, in his Thinking about Thought research, begun to tackle the iniquities of pluralist Formal Logic, based, initially, upon the Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts that had, 2,300 years earlier, led the Greek, Zeno of Elea, to formulate his famous Paradoxes - based upon the alternatives of Continuity and Descreteness.

Hegel unearthed multiple Dichotomous Pairs, which always brought Formal Reasoning to a dead halt - to a logical impasse, which could never, rationally, be transcended, but were always pragmatically "got around" by suck-it-and-see try-outs of each alternative to see which allowed a transition to further reasoning beyond the impasse. Absolutely no explanation of why that worked was ever revealed: it was a purely pragmatic (if it works, it is right) get-around!

But, Hegel found a solution: he unearthed the differing premises of each of the Dichotomous Pairs, and by correcting what was amiss or inserting what was missing, he healed the wound and restored a continuing Logic, at that point at least!

He also, as a holist (the direct opposite of Plurality) opened up the Dichotomy into a range of possibilities, both ends of which could dominate in differing circumstances, and even flip from one to the other, dynamically, at crucial overall transitions in complex situations. He developed the Interpentration of Opposites method of seeing complex situations from BOTH opposite points of view, and so began to get some sort of grasp upon Qualitative Change, which Formal Logic could never deal with.

But, Hegel was an Idealist: all things considered were only objects of Thought, while most answers could only be found in concrete Reality - that is by materialist scientists!

This was realised among Hegel's followers - The Young Hegelians, including both Feuerbach and Karl Marx, and they switched over to becoming materialists, while retaining Hegel's brilliant discoveries termed Dialectics.

In fact, Marx began to construct what he termed Dialectical Materialism, to distinguish it from the so-called Mechanical Materialist mish-mash of the current scientists. His objective was to create a Union of Science and Philosophy upon his new stance.

But, in spite of his wonderful contributions in History, Politics and Economics, he didn't ever get around to that crucial central task. His Mathematical Manuscripts revealed his efforts to get to grips with the other side, but as a mathematician and physicist, myself, it is clear that he didn't manage it.

It was simply too much to ask of a single individual, no matter how dedicated he was.

So now, we have another slant upon the current Crisis in Physics, as well as a direction of necessary research, but as both Marx and Lenin proved, it would require investigators who were professional mathematicians and scientists, who had also been won to Marxism, and, crucially, fully understood its philosophy and methodology.

Now, when put like that, it seems the required investigator has to be myself, but, committing to doing it is much easier said than done, for though I called myself a Marxist when aged just 19, it has taken me over 50 years of high-level research in my primary professions, namely Mathematics, Physics and Computing, with a career finally ending up as a professor in a world class University, before I finally believed I could do it.

In fact, I have already developed a non-Copenhagen Theory for the Double Slit Experiments, produced a definition of a Universal Substrate that can poropagate Electromagnetic Radiation in quanta, and deliver both Electrical and Magnetic fields subtended around initiating charged objects. I have also explained quantized electron orbits within atoms, without resorting to the Copenhagen stance, and am currently tackling Quantum Entanglement!

The reason it took so long was that I didn't really understand Dialectical Materialism, until I was forced back into studying both Hegel and Marx by demanding research into the Analysis of creative Human Movement in Dance. Not only did that research reap valuable rewards in those studies, but helped myself and my co-researcher win A British Interactive Video Award for excellence.

So, finally, after a long and necessary justification, I can, at last, begin to address the only research that would be considered valid by the Copehagen opposition [for they are convinced that their philosophic stance is totally adequate, no matter what I say].

But, arriving at their frigged formulae via a totally antagonistic set of premises and explanations, may just do the trick!

To be continued in Part II...

New Special Issue: Computerised Solutions

Special Issue 46

Computerised Solutions,
The Nature of Mathematics
and The Necessary Revolution in Philosophy


The Myth of the Intelligent Computer:

With so many media fairytales about so-called “Intelligent Computers”, projected with confidence, by seemingly all pundits, into all our futures, we must, from a both well-informed and sound position, trounce such hopeful or even fearful myths completely.

The statement, “The computer says...” is, of course, total nonsense, as all computer programs are written by people, AND, crucially, limits the means they use to considerably more restricted methods, than can be carried out in the best of Human Thinking.

Indeed, they are mostly iterative techniques for getting closer and closer to a sought, quantitatuve solution. Their value is that they can carry out such processes at colossal speeds, delivering useable results very quickly indeed.

But computers cannot think...

The Eternal Golden Braid

A Matter of Approach IV

Reality is indeed complex!

But, what kind of complexity are we talking about? For, in “Mathematical Chaos and Complexity Theories” there is a special kind of “emerging” phenomena suggested, which are very different, indeed, from any holistic view of an Emergence, as a creative and, indeed, Revolutionary Event. So, let us attempt to clarify.

Starting with Laplace we had the classical idea of Causality, where natural causes produce entities or situations , which, in their turn, can cause another layer of complexity - but completely predictable from the causalities involved.

Now, such a sequence delivers a wholly linear conception, which can always be traced both forwards – as Prediction, and backwards - as Reductionism. Yet, attempts to trace backwards never succeed beyond a few, same-level, steps, and can never be carried through-and-beyond any full- blown Emergence Event – in either direction! So, such conceptions are rarely held with conviction these days.

Yet, versions of such are still legion, including the fabled “Complexity”, wherein many such simultaneously- present, “linear causalities” produce overall mixes of consequences, which can have very different results and varied overall properties.

It is these higher level consequences that are incorrectly termed Emergences – because they seemingly “emerge” from a given complexity,

In such cases, an important principle is involved, though only very rarely overtly stated. It is the crucial Principle of Plurality, which effectively asserts that that all the causal strands involved are completely separable, and the resultant, “combined laws” so coming out from that situation are considered eternal!

With such a premise, the validity of the widely-used statistical approach is said to be confirmed, and many “Laws”, of such a composite nature, can be revealed and used. And, theoretically, at least, the causal strand is involved, and, being “totally separable”, can be traced back. But, it doesn’t take a great deal of research to undermine the assumption of Plurality, for it can never explain any kind of qualitative change, nor, most important of all – the actual Evolution of things.

To attempt to reduce Human Thinking, in such a way, is derisory. Indeed, you simply can’t! Plurality has been useful, especially in carefully designed and maintained situations, but it certainly isn’t true generally. It is a pragmatic trick!

So, what other way of dealing with Causality do we have? It has to be the opposite conception to that of Plurality – indeed, it can only be that based upon the Principle of Holism. For, within that concept, “Everything affects everything else!” And, this means that any found relations are NOT separable! There can be NO eternal Natural Laws, such as those assumed to be delivered by carefully organised pluralistic experiments. What Plurality delivers is a simplified and idealised general relation, which will always vary in different contexts, due to its unavoidable modification by everything else!

The pluralist route can give us a first order of approximation, as to what is actually going on, but it does not deliver the fabled eternal Natural Laws!

Clearly, to impose such fixed Laws in all contexts is erroneous. If the reader doubts this analysis let him consider the USE of pluralist Laws. To ensure that they are obeyed, the exact same conditions as were necessary for extraction have to be replicated in use! If a complex item is to be manufactured, it can never be achieved in a single, fixed context: every single step of its construction will require the right conditions for each Law used – sometimes quite separate factories are the only way to achieve success, with each specialising in its own limited set of processes!

So, how are we to consider so-called Complexity? For, surely, that is actually the simultaneous occurrence of multiple causal effects, all happening in the very same context? 

It cannot be that the pluralists’ eternal Natural Laws are acting, exactly as they were found, each one in its own special tailor-made circumstances. So, the simple addition of those Laws (exactly as found) has to be incorrect. 

While Plurality is supposed to just “weave-them-together unchanged” – in an “Eternal Golden Braid”, Holism sees them unavoidably affecting one another, which can result in an overall effect – they have all both “changed and melded” into an overall effect at a higher level!

The combined result cannot simply be analysed from a summation of the unchanged, “separable” components involved. They will all have new forms in such a combined context – more like the formation of a functional “tissue” than a mere knitted braid of unchanged parts. The various contributions have been both changed and merged into something else, with its own properties.

Pluralist analysis may correctly identify what components were involved, but it will say nothing about HOW they have been changed, and HOW the forms behaved to produce what finally came about!

The alternative the holistic version of an Emergence, involving different orders of complexity, can, indeed, be meaningful at every level of Reality, all the way to Human Thought.

But, though the analysis is assumed to be easy in an assumed to be pluralist world, it falls to the ground in an holistic World. For, we cannot merely separate each and every cause, and manipulate them into an “explanation” of the higher level behaviours merely via the “addition of fixed Laws”. We have, on the contrary, to see what Qualitative Changes are most certainly involved, which can never be derived from the “producing” level. There is, though, a chance that, once occurring, the new situation could be explained NOT purely as a summation of separate and fixed causes, but as the creation of something wholly new, where possibilities are instituted with completely new properties. Indeed, real Development or Evolution requires such creation: it can be explained no other way!

Yet, such things don’t necessarily happen immediately, or even automatically. In fact, they are rare, and are usually stopped from occurring for very long periods, by prior inhibitory structures, which we term Stable Systems.

These Stabilities are largely self-maintained Systems, which intrinsically react to prevent innovation and maintain the status quo, against any significant Qualitative developments.

Now, this role of Stabilities modifies the trajectory of changes in such Systems radically. Normally, such Systems resist change for long periods, but are never permanent set-ups.

There will always be crises, which are resolved to re- establish an adjusted version of the Stability.

But, always, changes at some point in a crisis, are sufficient to precipitate a wholesale collapse that is not recovered, but swoops ever downwards into a total dissociation of the prior System.

But, it must be emphasized that it is the system- maintaining-factors that are overwhelmed: the majority of the contained processes continue as before, but are no longer constrained into a persisting System of Stability.

Now, what we end up with is “something like” Chaos. For, now innumerable processes are un hindered and all continue without restraint. This transforms the situation radically! Inter-relation associations occur, and multiple mini-systems, of kinds previously prohibited, now grow unhindered, and gradually a new Stability is constructed. Interestingly, the key solidifiers of the new system, will be its defensive processes to prevent competing alternatives from getting a hold.
With the integration of cooperating processes and the defensive palisade of prohibiting policeman processes, a Stability finally emerges.

Issue 44 now available

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

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

Issue 39 of SHAPE: Philosophical Papers

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This new issue is a kind of review of how far we have got in describing and assessing Man’s struggle to understand his world.

It has not been a straightforward history, for Man had had to literally change the game, in order to make any progress in understudying both his own context and, indeed himself. But in making that significant progress, it has been undoubtedly a heroic trajectory!

It is very important at this stage that a difference between Knowledge and Understanding be established. For, the latter was never an automatic development from the former.

To use the common description “Man has had to pull himself up by his own bootlaces” - or to use V. Gordon Childe’s appropriate title Man Makes Himself. Attempting to understand the world has not been at all easy, and perhaps surprisingly, has been predicated upon just how successful Man has been in more everyday tasks of survival and even prosperity. For, his basic general method was initially to grasp whatever was to his advantage, whatever that entailed, and gain himself both a measure of leisure and repose.

The brilliant ideas did not come first! For, it proved almost impossible to solve all the many problems of Mankind’s usual hunter/gatherer existence, including the many seemingly unavoidable and unbridgeable impasses in his contradictory development.

For well over 90% of human history, Homo Sapiens roamed the Earth in small family groups, his most sophisticated tool being a sliver of brilliantly knapped flint. Clearly, significant developments in his mode of life were impossible without large gains in that sphere. And while there were brief interludes during that long “childhood”, when he was able for a time to acheieve remarkable things - such as the cave paintings at Lascaux: they were brief and excenptional events. Something permanent in his means of life had to occur, to enable real and persisting gains. 

It wasn’t until the invention and spread of agriculture and animal husbandry in the Neolithic Revolution that the developments in human understanding really took off. For instead of constantly living on the edge of survival, Man could then settle and gather in growing aggregations of people.

Even then the trajectory of developement was never smooth or incremental. Indeed, it was characterised by a series of “false leads” which enabled progress to be made, but which always, in the end, ground to a halt in yet another impasse.

So this brief foray attempts to trace out the subsequent paths, dead-ends, and hopefully the way forward, from where we have finally reached.

Issue 30 of Shape

Entitled Changing Tracks, this collection of short papers links Philosophy and Science under the banner originally erected in the 19th century by Hegel, and then, even more radically, by Marx and his followers.

But it is not a eulogy to Marxism. Indeed, it is highly critical of the stance of most modern professed Marxists, particularly in their failure to develop Philosophy, and significantly in their cowering attitude in the face of the most idealistic retreats by Modern Physics.

This series has been produced by a professional scientist, philosopher and Marxist, who is totally convinced that the crucial path forward into all these areas has been lost, and progress no longer occurs in any of them.

Such a small collection as this cannot possibly deliver chapter and verse to the standpoint taken, for this is merely a brief introduction. But such a comprehensive treatment does exist and is regularly being added to within the Issues of SHAPE Journal (now rapidly approaching its 50th Issue (including Specials).

This set of papers address what are considered to be the crucial questions fundamental to this standpoint. They are:- 1. Is Form Essence? 2. Plan or Process? 3. Reductionism 4. What is Objective Content? 5. An Animation to Illustrate Objective Content 6. Holist Science: The Path Forward?

Read here

This video on Objective Content was created to accompany an article in this issue.

An Irresolvable Argument?

The basic dichotomy in the Philosophy of Science

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

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

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

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

That is our job, and we will do it!

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

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

A New Path to Truth?

Are we addressing our World correctly?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Understanding Intelligence?

If I was going there, I wouldn't have started from here!

Photograph by Mick Schofield

The expression "You can't see the Wood for the Trees!" is ever resonant in the ways that we usually consider the World. I never realised it before, but it relates to our profound belief (our assumption) that Plurality is the way of the World; that the essence of all phenomena is contained within their "constituent Parts", and the converse of this - that properties of the Whole can be totally reproduced by means of the mere provision and juxtaposition of all these Parts.

Indeed, the major criticism of Plurality is that it exactly equates the Parts revealed, isolated and extracted by artificial erection of Domains, with its "brother" relation, as it exists, in the coherent real World Whole.

But, of course, that is NOT the case! It is merely a "useful" simplification used by scientists.

No matter how much we learn about the specimen forms of trees, grown in splendid and perfectly arranged isolation, such knowledge can never reveal, from that alone, the full full qualities of the Wood or Forest.

Yet, this assumption is ubiquitous (hence the saying above to counter it), and once you realise it, clear cases of it appear absolutely everywhere, and then stick out like sore thumbs, where previously they were "invisible". In a recent New Scientist (2784) there is an article entitled The 12 Pillars of Wisdom which is introduced in the very first sentence with:

 

    "Can we ever understand intelligence? Only by building it up from its component parts"

The point is proven, is it not?

Now I could belabour the point throughout the whole length of that contribution, but I won't. The key point necessary has been made! Clearly the writer believes he is going to bring together as many aspects of "intelligence" extracted by various pluralist means, in order to deliver the nature of intelligence. But that is impossible. Many new things may be there, and the article will be worth reading for those things alone, but they will not, and indeed cannot deliver the secret of intelligence!

That would certainly involve a very different approach grounded soundly upon some understanding of the episodes of revolutionary qualitative change known as Emergences. For only when we begin to grasp how all such changes emerge, NOT as the consequence of the mere juxtaposition and summation of only small incremental changes, but as the reality-changing result of dramatic revolution.

Issue 8 of Shape

Read it here