Special Issue 77: The Systems Theory of Everything Part III

 

Special Issue 77 of the SHAPE Journal

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

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

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

Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

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

Natural Active Stabilities

Assumed Restricted Scenarios and their consequent Man-Made Laws

Levels and Tempos

Mankind’s Greatest Mistake

How the Mistake Affected Theory

Levels and Hierarchies

Marxist Theory on the Nature of Emergent Transitions

No-one can seriously doubt that Discrete Levels do indeed occur within Reality.

But, the Principle of Plurality (and along with it the idea of Reductionism), assume Causality to be both universally applicable and transparently evident. And, in addition, any produced Levels are transformed into merely situations of complexity-and-convenience, rather than marking where wholly creative, multi-factor and revolutionary conversions have taken place!

For, in alternatively doing the latter, it would have totally prohibited any strictly straight-forward, and always fully-revealable, sequence of causes, as being the means by which they came to fruition.

This tenet is absolutely critical!

For, such a transition, termed an Emergence, can never be directly or fully predicted from its immediate precursors, because it then will have been a never-occurred-before transition: it will have produced the wholly new.

And as I was able to establish some time ago, within complex systems of multiple, purely-chemical reactions, in my Theory of Truly Natural Selection, an extension of something similar to Darwin's ideas, but concerning non-living processes, something of what happens in these Emergences could, at least partially, have been revealed. For, in that work, something of the holist concept of mutually-affecting processes, was clearly illustrated, including the significance of both competing and co-operating processes, in the ultimate achievements of balances-with-dominances, also delivering persisting Stabilities, and even explaining the possibility of flips between exactly opposite outcomes.

So, even in such simplified cases, some idea of both the resilience of achieved Stabilities, and the true vastness of their possible crises and dissolutions, plus even the consequent re-establishment of new Stabilities - upon entirely different and wholly new bases.

A mix of pluralist eternal entities cannot really compare with a mutually-affecting mix of holist entities in the vastness of its possibilities!

Clearly, none of this is ever possible within a Pluralist conception of Reality, for from that logical viewpoint, all things are fixed and totally independent of one another. Indeed, such mixes can only ever be seen as complex aggregations of fixed entities or even immutable Laws, and hence, natural creative innovation becomes a mere complexity of pre-existing forms.

Only the Holist Stance can deliver real Emergences!

And, a successful Emergence will always deliver a wholly new, previously-unpredictable Level.

And, without a true philosophically holist grounding, such as from The Buddha's or Hegel's damning critique of Pluralist Formal Logic, the necessary approach to "Complexity" will be very different indeed.

For, without it, the rich and turbulent trajectory of an actual Emergence will never even be imagined.

Let me relate a series of findings from my Theory of Emergences, which will give some idea of what is involved.

Fire tornado

Stability & Emergence

• Reality always involves multiple factors.

• These factors act simultaneously, but in different directions.

• Chaos seems likely, but instead Turbulence is produced.

• Usually, this finally settles into a balance of opposites.

• And, also, displays a resultant overall dominant stable effect.

• We can call this state Stability, and it can persist for a very long time.

• But, though it can appear permanent, it never is!

• At some point, the involved factors will change in some way.

• The effect will be to cause a Crisis in the Stability.

• Usually it will be resolved by a re-establishment of balance.

• But, a series of such Crises can follow, with a final Collapse.

• The stability is finally totally dissociated, heading for Chaos.

• It descends first to a Nadir of Dissolution.

• But then, as initially, it begins to form relations into systems.

• These generally fail, one after the other, until one persists.

• And further such systems are achieved, and a new balance.

• The cycle is complete a new and different stability now exists.

This level-change is a complex process, and appears incomprehensible without a holist approach to Reality. And, as described above, it is the most general description - extracted from such occurrences at many vastly different Levels of reality - where they will appear extremely different in detail, while oft-conforming to the above-described trajectory.

For example, the first analysed versions were extracted from Michelet's History of the French Revolution, by Karl Marx. Here the contending forces acting were people representing the warring Classes of that prior State-in-Revolution!

So, its embodiment at all possible Levels, down to the Sub-Atomic, as well as up to Social Revolutions, will, of course, reveal enormous differences in Content, while displaying a similar overall trajectory!

It has been applied to Capitalist Economics in Marx's Das Kapital, and to Social Revolution in the Russian Revolution, but its application generally to the vital area of Science has yet to be undertaken comprehensively, as Marx himself had always intended.

And, this undertaking is not a mere further task for Marxists, it is absolutely crucial!

As a physicist, myself, I can see that not only does Science really need Dialectical Materialism, but Marxism crucially needs that extension to Science.

With 60 years in Revolutionary Politics, always also seeking the wherewithal to defeat the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in physics, I never received what I required to attempt it.

It simply wasn't there!

But, it is now. 

The revolution starts here...

Do you want to participate?

The Contradictory Processes of Stability & Development

Introduction

In addressing Stability effectively, we must understand four sets of processes:-

I: How it originally emerges
II: How it finds a self-maintaining-Balance
III: How it is undermined and finally collapses
IV: How it then recovers from a Nadir of Dissociation

Now, in posing it in the above way, we are really positioning our analyses well beyond the particular contents of these important occurrences. We are, in fact, going beyond the Physics or Chemistry of what is happening, to a more general meta-dynamical-level, indeed the famous Dialectical Level.

But, though Dialectics releases us from the misleading bounds of the usually entirely pluralistically-pursued disciplines, it presents us instead with the currently hard-to-employ, and very different, holistic approaches demanded by Dialectics.

Indeed, the required answers will still have to be revealed in the appropriate primary discipline levels. They can, with a great deal of study, be wrested from the old pluralistically-studied areas, but only by transferring our basic assumptions and premises, to a very different dynamical perspective.

For, while traditional disciplines find all their Ground in-Stability-alone, Dialectics focuses our attention upon the determining Dynamics-of-Change occurring in real multi-factor situations. And, this-alone allows the understanding of real qualitative developments - those involving significant major changes, and even actual Creative Emergences delivering the wholly New!

Now, in spite of consolidating a few concepts at the Dialectical Level, to remain at that level can easily turn any analyses into mere, if dialectical, descriptions alone. Dialecticians, like Slavoj Žižek, do indeed describe a wide range of real world situations dialectically, but he regularly falls short of explaining anything in many of the areas he addresses.

I must concede that he does get closer to the mark in his "explanations", when dealing with Psychoanalysis, due to his admiration for, and study of Lacan, but, that is eminently possible without making the necessary transition from Idealism to Materialism: in other words both Žižek and Lacan remain as purely Hegelian Dialecticians - as idealists!"

Psychoanalysis; Dialectics; Idealism
https://experpractice.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2013/08/07/zizek-how-to-read-lacan-ch5/

Žižek recently included a chapter on Quantum Physics in one of his books, which, without-a-doubt, proves the above point emphatically. For, his evident ignorance of Physics allowed him to claim that the currently dominant tendency in Sub Atomic Physics (embodied in the ill-famed Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory), as being "on the same side" as himself and other "Marxists".

As both a professional physicistand a Marxist, myself, I couldn't believe it, so I undertook a detailed critique (published as Special Issue 50 of SHAPE Journal in April 2017 on the Web), which exposed that ignorance very clearly, and also demonstrated that he is far from being a Marxist.

The lesson for this paper was emphatically proved! It isn't sufficient to apply Dialectics to a serious discipline, without being an expert in that area of study too. Indeed, absolutely all the principles established in the Meta-Discipline of Dialectics were initially discovered within a single particular discipline: and though that was initially only in Thinking (by the idealist Hegel), Marx's transference of all the gains achieved in Dialectics, into the very different Materialist Stance, extended the possibilities enormously!

He was able to apply them effectively in his primary area of study and qualifications, namely History, but in then turning his attention to Economics, he effectively had to become a professional Economist to carry it through. It literally took him the rest of his life, to complete that vital process.

You couldn't just apply general principles, as Žižek does, you had, always, to actually re-discover them, and in so doing, greatly enrich them via every new area addressed. And, as with all Materialist Theory, these too must be verified within Reality itself, to be also be justifiably included into the Higher realm of Dialectics.

Now, this introductory short paper cannot deliver a full account of all that is involved. But the work has been undertaken, and will soon be made available online.

Past relevant Issues of the SHAPE Journal already available are:-

Special Issue 1: The Theory of Emergences
Special Issue 3: The Theory of the Double Slit
Special Issue 48: The Limits of Žižek
Special Issue 50: Žižek's Ontology of Quantum Physics

It also might interest readers that we are imminently publishing the 100th Issue of SHAPE Journal
after eight years since our launch of

SHAPE Journal, SHAPE Blog & SHAPE Youtube Channel.

David Malone & Chaos Theory

Revisiting David Malone's High Anxieties documentary from 2008 (you can watch it below), he seems, at first, to blame the collapses in social situations to ordinary people's own-and-increasing lack of confidence - their damning negativity, but, he then moved on to explaining that negativity upon to the discovery and vocabulary of The Mathematics of Chaos. 

He also recognised a generally-adopted Prejudice-of-Safety, which he put down to the prior widespread belief in Stability, as the absolutely necessary norm for Reality - for it, alone, seemed to allow the delivery of both reliable Predictions, and effective human Control of natural phenomena, via a mechanistic Newtonian-Laplacian kind of causality (taken from Mathematics).

But, clearly, the main assumption in such a stance, was the idealist-belief that what happened in the Real World was wholly determined by wholly-separable and eternal Formal Laws.

Remarkably, in the documentary, dominated by images of the debris of crumbling, abandoned factories in what had once been flourishing, industrial cities like Detroit, Malone sticks to his "revelation" that absolutely nothing is exempt from the ultimate inherent Chaos latent in literally everything that exists.

It is easy to see why some people, including Malone, are so pessimistic.

The only possible conclusion seemed to be, "Give up now, you'll never do it!", for you can't do a thing about it!

Detroit

Malone, and seemingly his version of the rest of humanity, are all locked into a philosophical Dead End, totally ill-equipped to deal with such cataclysmic events. There is not the wherewithal, in their assumed stances, to suggest anything that could possibly be done about these unavoidable calamities: "they are inbuilt into all aspects of Reality!"

But, of course, he is wrong!

The universal stance, which he tried-and-failed to accurately describe (and blame?) is not the only possible position to take philosophically. If you study Philosophy, with a view to equipping yourself to actually get closer to understanding things, you can trace its development from the Pragmatism of early Homo Sapiens with, "If it works, it is right!", down through the Idealism of the Ancient Greeks, as shown in both Euclidian Geometry and Formal Logic, and then to the beginnings of Materialism with Aristotle.

All of which, surprisingly, then co-existed with prior stances for literally millennia, which were due to the universally-subscribed-to Principle of Plurality that crucially made all causative factors separable-from-each-other, so that they could (though only very occasionally) be extracted as eternal Laws.

But, even, at the very outset of this adopted amalgam, the Greek Zeno of Elea did discover-and-reveal (in his famous Paradoxes) important contradictions, due entirely to this messy-and-incorrect mix-of-stances, but, even he had no idea what to do about it. Indeed, it wasn't properly addressed for a further 2,300 years. And, long before that turning point was finally reached, Mankind had found a pragmatically-effective way of "making-it-all-work-out", by imposing a version of Plurality upon defined and controlled areas of Reality, which they had constructed deliberately to reveal, as clearly as possible, a single, targeted, causative factor.

Now, this turned out to be a major breakthrough, because it enabled the reliable use of what could then be extracted, as long as the situation-for-use exactly replicated the prior situation-of-extraction!

Indeed, without further developments, this important change enabled the whole Industrial Revolution via sequences of processes, each one delivering only a single causative factor, so that after sufficient of these stages, the required, "predictable outcome" was finally achieved.

And, it was this that enabled the mounting growth and dominance of factory-based Capitalist Economics!

Abandoned factories in Detroit

Now, Malone seems to be totally unaware of this trajectory, and instead, can only mistakenly-identify its definite undermining via "discoveries in Mathematics". But, all his conclusions are only true, if all the underlying conceptions and consequent resultant Laws are assumed as being absolutely true.

And, that they most certainly are not!

The amalgam of Idealism and Materialism, made "possible" by Plurality, and the flaws of this illegitimate amalgam, got around by the regular use of Pragmatism, was bound to generate multiple contradictions.

The resultant Dead End was true only if such a mixed stance really did reflect Reality.

And. the initial proofs that this certainly wasn't the case were delivered by Hegel around 200 years ago, when, on the basis of the very different Principle of Holism - "Everything affects everything else!", was able to show that Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts were inevitable with the current mistaken pluralist stance, and even showed how such impasses could be transcended by the seeking-out, finding and correcting of the underlying premises that had led inevitably to these dead-stops in Reasoning.

It was, of course, his assumption of Holism that alone gave him a handle upon the real situation of Reality, and which led to the addressing of qualitative changes - impossible with the pluralistic fixed-and-separable Natural Laws.

A very different stance was established, which had complex mixes of causal factors, which didn't merely "sum-unchanged" in varying amounts, but, instead, actually modified one another, until some sort of balance was obtained, which invariably consisted of the dominance of one of them, within a balance of the rest!

Such a situation, which mostly only changed as a variability, around a single dominant relation, was defined as a Stability, which had the appearance of being both predictable and permanent.

BUT, in fact, the actually simultaneously-acting multiple factors could not be extracted as they really were.

And the one-factor-at-a-time method that had been developed, always gave different factors to the ones actually acting together in unfettered Reality-as-is.

So, the sequence of processes, one for each factor, though they produced an end product which could be predicted, NEVER delivered what unfettered Reality-as-is would deliver naturally.

And, most important of all, the times when the Stability in the Real world situation was finally undermined by small but crucial qualitative-changing of the contributory factors, for then, things changed in a major qualitative way, which could never be delivered by the pluralist methods described.

Hegel realised that a situation under study in the real world, without both the simplifications and idealisations into separate processes, would instead by a varying nexus of factors, emerge often with two exactly opposite possible dominances, and which of these predominated depended upon the changing mix of contributory factors.

His studies of such situations, which he termed Dialectics, could identify these opposites and consider what might occur due to the particular changes involved.

He termed his method the Interpenetration of Opposites.

But, of course, there was an important handicap! Hegel was an idealist, so he was speaking only of Thoughts, whereas these alternatives were much more generally true. Indeed, as I have slipped into describing them above, as of Physical processes too.

So, to do more than be a criticism of Formal Logic, Hegel's Dialectics had to be transferred wholesale to a Materialist stance - a task begun by Karl Marx.

Thus, the whole analysis of the situation which Malone was attempting to deliver, in High Anxieties, was like asking a non-scientist to explain Quantum Physics. Neither he nor his supposed audience would have ever been equipped with what is necessary to address such questions, and, of course, social positions with a whole array of political beliefs as well!

Stability and Change

Sculpture by Tara Donovan

Quantitative Pin-heads & Qualitative Revolutions

Let us start by comparing Formal Logic with Dialectical Logic!

The former is universally applied across the board, and has been a significant method for explaining the causes and the consequences of phenomena via what are termed Natural Laws, as well as in discussions and arguments, where it reigns supreme to this day.

Yet, some 200 years ago, the brilliant German idealist philosopher, Friedrich Hegel, condemned it as inadequate in innumerable, developing situations, and consequently struggled for years to construct a better alternative.

His criticism was that Formal Logic only worked out the consequences of sets of fixed Laws, and, as such, failed in dealing with things that changed qualitatively.

It was solely the method for dealing with things that only changed quantitatively, and hence didn’t ever become something else. He, therefore, sought a Logic of Change, and made significant gains in that direction – in particular, in his alternative method of reasoning, which became known as Dialectics!

Clearly, the crux of the problem was whether Reality was solely the product of fixed Natural Laws, or whether it self modified - that is it actually evolved!

For, centuries Mankind had struggled to distil “Eternal Abstract Laws” out of complex and often confusing Reality, in attempts to understand it, solely in terms of fixed material things and fixed abstract laws of purely quantitative change.

But, there was a crucial rider to this aim: which was expressly to enable the use of what was extracted to certain desired ends. Initially, at least, the reasons for the undertaking were almost entirely pragmatic. If what was achieved could be profitably used, then “it was right!”

Now, there were extremely important problems with these objectives from the outset, but they appeared to have been solved by adopting the ubiquitous Principle of Plurality, which certainly seemed to deliver a logically- tight system of handling these extractions effectively and reliably, but only as long as certain preparatory conditions were always established and maintained throughout both investigations and subsequent use!

This was achieved, and many gains were made possible by the resulting system, which was termed Formal Logic. 

Sculpture by Tara Donovan

But, Hegel’s chosen area was “Thinking about Thought!”, and he compared the implicitly assumed Principle of Plurality with its opposite - that of Holism. For, this alternative turned out to be brilliant at exposing the complex causes of phenomena, and to a remarkable extent, dealing with qualitative changes too. But, there was NO practical, purely quantitative system of using Holism as had been developed with Plurality. It was clearly superior in Explanation, while, equally clearly, useless at dealing with quantitative questions. 

It became Hegel’s task to attempt to remedy this lack: he was determined to devise a Logic of Change.

But, its whole object involved tackling the creation of the wholly new, as he was aware certainly happened in Thinking! So, it was clear he had to investigate the crucial interludes, when such qualitative, conceptual leaps occurred, to reveal what was actually happening. [Surprisingly, human beings thought just like he did, but, unlike Hegel, they hadn’t the faintest idea of what actually occurred in generating new ideas. The processes of the mind were wondrous but inexplicable to them.]

In actively seeking such creative events, Hegel happened upon what he termed Dichotomous Pairs of concepts, which were clearly directly contradictory ideas, which couldn’t possibly both be true, but which had nevertheless seemingly emerged from the very same generally-agreed premises! And, Mankind, whenever this happened, always found themselves at a logical impasse. 

They simply couldn’t use Formal Logic to go any further, so they merely terminated that line of reasoning, kept both arms of the dichotomy, and switched between them entirely pragmatically.

Hegel knew that these impasses AND their pragmatic work-around, had to be dispensed with. He had to unearth the actual causes of these Dichotomous Pairs, and somehow, find sound “logical” way to transcend both, to reach solid and developable ground beyond them.

 

He had the ancient example of Zeno’s Paradoxes as an obvious starting point, for they demonstrated clearly the inadequacies of Formal Logic in dealing with them. Zeno, some 2,300 years earlier, had noticed the dichotomous pair Continuity and Descreteness, and proved their total contradiction via his cleverly constructed Paradoxes. It was, indeed, an ideal place to start, for since Zeno no one had made any further contributions to such contradictory concepts, and, certainly, if anyone did transcend a pair of contradictions, it certainly wasn’t then turned into some sort of generalised method.

Hegel set himself the initial task of revealing the source of the contradiction, and, thereafter, devising a reliable method of always being able to transcend the impasse, thus opening up such dead-ends in reasoning to further developments.

Now, this task was by no means easy! Within the Formal Reasoning tradition, there really was no way of explaining such contradictions at all: it had to involve very deep-seated and often implicit assumptions, that users were not even aware of, and, if revealed would undermine long established methods and consequent conclusions too.

His initial discoveries were that Dichotomous Pairs always occurred at some point, and when they did that would permanently terminate that line of reasoning, full- stop! Now to dissuade any efforts in this direction. an essential “by-pass technique” had become the pragmatic work-around: the “use what works” trick! But, clearly, such frigs merely papered over something very important and wrong in normal reasoning methods.

The affect upon the cornerstone assumption of Reductionism was clearly evident.

Every single line of reasoning would always be terminated by this same phenomenon. And, yet the overall stance of strict causality from bottom to top was still adhered to, though, in its current premises, it couldn’t possibly be true.

Human understanding came to look like a much divided bush of logical reasoning, with every single (or terminal twig) ending in one of these impasses.

“Wisdom” had now declined into merely knowing which arm of a dichotomy to take - like leaping from rock-to-rock across a raging stream.

Hegel finally realised that qualitative change was the problem: dealing with fixed, unchanging entities and even Laws would always end that way: it was a strictly limited system. And, the solution could be no easy fix. 

Sculpture by Patrick Dougherty

The dichotomy marked the point at which some sort of qualitative changes were occurring, and switching around between formal and fixed laws couldn’t possibly resolve the problems.

Deep below the resulting Dichotomous Pair, there had to be a very different kind of qualitative process, that didn’t have a single outcome, but at least a Pair, and any “law” to be revealed had to change with differing circumstances to give both outcomes!

Hegel had to dig deep enough to reveal the fixed erroneous premises, where a variable law should be. The task was not only to bring out the key premises, but also criticise and replace the cause of the problem. If this was done then the anomaly at the top level would be removed. The impasse would have been transcended!

Indeed, the key mistake was in subscribing to the Principle of Plurality. Clearly, Reality was not a mere addition of multiple fixed Formal Laws: it actually in certain circumstances changed qualitatively. The reason for the inordinate delays in addressing these anomalies is understandable. For, what was necessary was a major change in premises, not just for an individual impasse, but for all of those caused by these universally assumed, but rarely overtly stated assumptions.

To break through was more than dealing with a particular problem, it meant a positively wholesale revision, with consequences everywhere. And, it didn’t help that the old to-be-replaced premises could still deliver required outcomes in appropriately arranged-for circumstances.

Why should there be a revolution, when individual solutions were still possible, for productive ends, in carefully arranged-for circumstances?

The major imperative for change was philosophical! It was about Understanding rather than mere Effective Use, so it was never a priority!

And, of course, being a philosopher, Hegel’s achievements didn’t impact a burgeoning growth in Science, and wouldn’t to this day 200 years later, while it was exclusively about human thinking.

Only when Science itself was brought to its knees by irredeemable cascade of such impasses, would the challenge be imperatively addressed, and even then as a Revolution, rather than an adjustment!

It also required the next stage, which was to extend it to all areas of thinking and indeed, all areas of Reality too: it had to be transferred wholesale from Idealism to Materialism. 

Now, this was achieved by Hegel’s best student, Karl Marx. But, Marx’s applications, even though he was fully aware of their power across the board, were focussed primarily upon Economics, History and Politics. The important full-scale application in the sciences did not occur.

Now, as this researcher (Jim Schofield) discovered in his own work in this area, at the present time, the “thinking solutions” recommended by Hegel in revising erroneous premises were too concerned with Logic. Yet, the premises discovered to be crucially at fault in Science were not just with regard to concepts.

They definitely included contents as well as conceptions of Reality. For example, the long held idea of a Universal Substrate, even though its existence was never proven and it was totally dropped in Physics, this “physical premise” has turned out to be the most important error transforming Physics, ever since the discovery of the Quantum in the late 19th century.

Indeed, literally from that moment onwards, physicists made retreat after retreat, until at the Solvay Conference in 1927, Einstein and other classical physicists were defeated by Bohr and Heisenberg, when they persuaded the majority of those attending to subscribe to their purely mathematical Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

At no point did any scientist take on Hegel’s (and more importantly Marx’s) criticisms. For, though Hegel could be dismissed as an Idealist, Marx should not have been, for he was a Materialist!

And, hence, no investigation of premises was undertaken, instead, the whole fabric of physical explanation was dumped, for the “supposedly primary” determinations provided by Purely Formal Equations. In effect, Theory was abandoned for pragmatism and formal equations - as the driving essences of all Reality. Sub Atomic Physics became a purely abstract sub-division of Mathematics.

So, for the last 200 years Hegel’s gains have never been generally applied in any Science, except unintentionally by holist scientists such as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace and later Stanley Miller.

You would have thought that Hegel’s revelations would have changed their World, but they certainly didn’t think that!

Human Thinking was not only considered a “foreign” and incompatible tradition to Science, but was considered merely as a transparent conduit for “Real Formal Ideas and Relations”.

Hegel’s criticisms cut no ice with scientists, who were committed Materialists, and had no truck with Idealists such as Hegel.

Dealing as they did with eternal Formal Laws of Nature and their precise embodiment in formal equations, they were convinced that carrying on in the same way as before, they would ultimately have all the equations they needed to explain everything.

Even though the relevance to all knowledge had been realised by Hegel’s best student Karl Marx, who along with several other Young Hegelians, decided to move all Hegel’s gains over wholesale to a Materialist standpoint.

But the whole group were philosophers, with not a single scientist involved.

Now, this group realised that the possibilities that they had transferred over were all-embracing, and would apply to all concepts and reasoning, but because of their specialisms, they naturally started by applying them to the things they were most familiar with such as History, Economics and Politics. In those areas they made significant, indeed, revolutionary contributions. But, in spite of making it clear that Science would also be transformed, none of them were in a position to do anything fundamental about those possibilities. 

The Dialectics of Nature and The Part Played by Nature in the Transition from Ape to Man, were valuable indicators of direction, but professional scientists were needed to be recruited to address the major problems in their disciplines. And that did not happen!

Science was never given the necessary attention, and was unaffected by the Marxist revolution in other areas.

But, though there was no one to predict the inevitable crisis in Science, it happened anyway,

For, the 200 years since Hegel’s important contributions and even Marx and Engels transfers to materialism, none of it had the least effect upon the scientific community, who increasingly as the years rolled by were less and less concerned with philosophy, and still in the 21st century have a contradictory set of bases as their underlying premises. They may have overthrown their classical amalgam of materialism, idealism and pragmatism for a more limited dependence on Form alone, which, if anything, can only be a step backwards into a fairly consistent idealism. They still hobbled along with a contradictory stance, but now it involved Pragmatism and Idealism in preference to Materialism!

The , now very long-in-the-tooth imperative of carrying over Hegel’s achievements into the heart of Science, still requires to be achieved. And, clearly, with the scientists hostility to such encroachment into their realm, the only possible assault, just had to be a head on attack upon the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and particularly upon its main cornerstone - the famed Double Slit Experiments.

Both these have been adequately explained by the gains of Hegel and Marx, and the rubbishing of the current theories of quantization are now almost complete.

All we need is for some physicists to be confronted with these results.

Issue 44 now available

This paper is the third in a series of articles to be 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

Real Holistic Natural Relations

Photograph by Michael Coldwell

That ubiquitous Dichotomous Pair – Plurality and Holism - does indeed simplify Reality. But in very different ways they modify the Real Natural Relations, which do occur, while, simultaneously, delivering as a completely contradictory pair of views that each convey important, but limited, aspects of that Reality.

Let, us attempt to plumb the depths of this dichotomy, not by merely trying to decide, which option has primacy, but, instead, and more profoundly, by attempting to consider the common premises to both of these contradictory positions.

It isn’t easy, for you would expect that such common premises are not likely to exist, but Hegel’s brilliant researches showed that such do indeed exist, AND their study, criticism and replacement, is, in fact, the ONLY way that such impasses can ever be transcended. For, all other “get-arounds”, though indeed useful, amount only to pragmatic and always “local” frigs.

Let us start, by getting things as simple as we can!

2001 A Space Odyssey

Clearly, Reality is not monolithic: it certainly doesn’t conform to a single, all-embracing principle.

Indeed, the very fact of its evident Evolution, over vast stretches of Time, proves that it must involve opposing factors, that, in the end, are the causes of such developments.

Reality contains multiple entities, with various properties, which associate together to produce other more complex entities, and all of these, at all levels come into contact with, and consequently affect, one another.

It isn’t a static set up at all! Remember, we are dealing with a Reality that goes all the way from the simplest material particles, via a veritable galaxy of both Non- Living and Living Things , and their Evolution, all the way to Mankind, and even Human Thought.

The old classical Laplacian Reductionism will never encompass such a complex, rich and forever developing Reality. The way things are, and how they interact, are certainly not by simple aggregation and the mere Summing of fixed Natural Laws.

The basic question, as Hegel showed, is posed in our discovered Dichotomous Pairs. Do the aspects of Reality merely Sum as the Principle of Plurality avers, or do they always affect one another, as is suggested by the alternative stance of Holism?

Now, the battle between these two stances seemed to have been settled long ago.

For, there is little doubt that Plurality has for some time been the preferred option, and for sound reasons too – yet, those are not the ones usually put forward. Plurality insists that if we can expose and extract a relation from Reality, we have actually uncovered an eternal Natural Law.

It may be acting almost alone in our necessarily farmed Domain of investigation, but it is deemed to be “unchanged” there, from when it is acting in the highly complex situations of totally unfettered Reality. So, those means of revealing such relations are therefore supposed to be entirely valid, and delivering a generally applicable eternal Natural Law. But, that is certainly untrue!

Now, if this is the case, why do I also say that Plurality and all its assumptions are important?

The usual arguments are to do with the possibilities of Prediction and Production, and the fact that the whole of Technology is built upon assuming Plurality. 

2001 A Space Odyssey

But, though that is most certainly true, there is another reason why Plurality is important. It is the fact that unfettered Reality, in certain complex situations will naturally move into situations of Stability, and when it does, Plurality closely approximates to what is discovered there.

Stability is a natural feature of Reality, but paradoxically for purely holistic reasons.

Quite apart from the usually specially arranged simplified (farmed) situations in all scientific investigations, which are our standard basis for both Analysis and Reductionism, there is also a regularly occurring natural mutual arrangement of multiple simultaneous factors which produces a self-maintaining situation, which, for sometimes quite extended periods, keeps things pretty well THE SAME.

But, it isn’t due to an eternal Natural Law at all! It is due to an achieved balance between many simultaneous factors, which, for a time, at least, gives the appearance of a permanently static situation.

Indeed, such situations are very common. But, they are never the same as the usually assumed results of some single eternal Law. It is very different to that idealisation, because it isn’t permanent!

At some point the contributing factors will always get progressively out-of-kilter, and all Stability will eventually dissociate!

Now, because this complex form of Stability occurs time and again, we misinterpret it in terms of our artificially conceived pluralist simplicity, and thus we are totally unable to cope with the dissociation when it occurs! WE simplify this active and complex Stability, with our idealised and invented version as delivered by our beloved Principle of Plurality. Indeed, we treat them as exactly the same, and even extract “eternal Natural Laws” out of them, which is, of course, completely incorrect.

Now, it is this mistaken idea of the true nature of Stability, which causes us to choose Plurality as our “correct stance!”

And coupling this with the natural consequences of Plurality – namely very conceptually useful Analysis and Reductionism, and the assumption was concreted-in as the most important stance to take in studying Reality.

And, for a long while, it did indeed suffice!

Though Holism is undoubtedly more true, just as it stands, it certainly cannot deliver any sort of pragmatic methodology, anything like approaching what Plurality has been developed to allow.

Plurality as a philosophical stance may be profoundly mistaken, but its clever amalgam with pragmatism has found a stance, which can in many carefully arranged and maintained circumstances deliver an enormous amount of valuable productions.

It does not, of course, address Reality directly, but indirectly via a skilled farming of circumstances and imaginative simplification and idealisation (via mathematical forms), it has been a major advance on what it replaced in Mankind’s efforts to understand Reality. 

Farmland from Space NASA

We have to remember that for almost 200,000 years Mankind, as a hunter/gather for most of that time, and a farmer for only the last few thousand years. And, in that vast amount of time, had, via his superior intelligence and Pragmatism, managed not only to survive, and even spread successfully to literally all parts of the Earth, but also latterly to actually prosper.

The method was not to directly address Reality as it actually is, but to “fence-off” an amenable area, and then filter out was wasn’t helpful, and increase what was understandable (as in farming the land), to achieve a situation, which was sufficiently maintained in the best possible way to begin to correctly find out what factors were there.

These methods did not reveal the accurate determinators of Reality, but they did deliver simplified and idealised versions that could be successfully used, as long as the same conditions were maintained in use, as had been available when the “laws” had be “discovered”.

It was the epitome of a pragmatic solution to a seemingly intransigent problem. And, of course, at the time, none of this was available via Holism: it may have been excellent in explanation, but it was inadequate in practical use! So, in spite of the ease with which Plurality can be philosophically demolished, it is, nevertheless, the best stance, so far, for intervening in Reality to achieve chosen ends.

In other words, that dominance rests upon a much more primitive and very old stance – that of Pragmatism – “If it works, it is right!” Indeed, the whole of Science has been constructed upon that Principle, along with the perennial, Pragmatism, and even attempts at explaining what is going on in natural phenomena have to some extent been facilitated by what that approach allows.

BUT, it has to be made absolutely clear, that Plurality is the stance, of the exclusive study of phenomena occurring only within Stability. It is Stability-within-Reality that gives it believability. And, hence, its main and significant failure occurs in situations where Stability fails, and a wholesale collapse takes over, swooping down to a nadir of dissociation, and, if things go right, a following, soaring ascent to a new and different Stability takes over.

Clearly, between the fairly easily modelled periods of Stability, there are the qualitatively different game-changing Emergences, in which all real development occurs. And, without an understanding of which, Reality is simply, and exclusively, separated into Stable chunks, without any means of explaining the trajectory of getting from one to another.

In a nutshell, we have NO idea of how a Stability is either created or destroyed, nor can we explain the transitions between those events. If we, at this slow stage of our own development attempt to start at some beginning, we will most certainly, get it wrong. For, we have hardly begun to tackle such developments effectively.

So we must (and indeed did) start with currently investigatable situations, and work outwards from there. Clearly, the pluralists have a useable methodology when it comes to Stability, but cannot explain its creation, nor its inevitable final dissolution So, it must be these that are the most relevant areas for immediate study!

But, of course, such is much easier said than done, because the actual tempo of developmental changes can be hopelessly out of synch with human tempos, and even lifespans. Important changes can happen so slowly that things appear to be totally static. But, as luck would have it, we can, indeed, find areas of Reality, where the sought-for dramatic changes mesh sufficiently with such human tempos, to be fully experienced in detail, and hence available for serious study. And, this remarkably available example of observable development occurs in Human Society – in its Revolutions!

Societies which have been stable for centuries, and give the appearance of a natural and permanent Stability, can, suddenly, undergo significant crises, which, in certain circumstances, develop into wholesale dissolution, and a following recreation upon a very different basis. 

So, it was in this area that the lessons of Hegelian Dialectics and Dichotomous Pairs could be, and indeed were, employed by philosophers like Karl Marx to begin to understand development in its key Emergent Interludes.

Yet an understanding of both Dissolution and consequent Creation, must be preceded by a thorough understanding of Stability itself.

How can diverse processes relate to one another – not only involving connecting Causes and even Resonances, but also consequent sequences and even self-maintaining cycles of change? Stability has to be where initially independent processes become relevant and even dependant upon one another. Maybe one process took in a resource, and from it delivered a product, which was the necessary resource for another process. So, these will prosper in tandem, so that ultimately chains of such linked processes are possible, as are even loops or cycles of process sequences.

So, without any other imperative, such systems of processes could arise, and, in special circumstances, become self-maintaining – if not permanently, then, at least, in on/off cycles.

Clearly, in situations of increasing complexity, such systems could both arise and persist. Yet, it is much harder to see how they could do so for long.

It may be important here, to take an example from the Evolution of Life, to illustrate what I am trying to reveal. Photosynthesis in plants is just such a self-maintaining system, and it has persisted literally indefinitely, because its Key Initial Resource is Sunlight, which goes on for billions of years.

Such a system effectively becomes permanent, unless an all-embracing cataclysm destroys everything, including the Sun!

Issue 44 now available

This paper is the second in a series of articles to be 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

Stability within the Atom?

Internal Turbulence & External Context

A General Introduction

One important consideration when dealing with vortices within a substrate, must be to include the initial background state before their creation. For, such would most certainly affect those vortices, in addition to their clearly obvious causes by any moving material intruder.

And, what is most clearly shown in the turbulent atmospheres both of the Earth, and even of Jupiter, is that the vortices occurring in those circumstances are not simple consequences of the causing limited-swift-flows, or intrusions of some kind alone.

In the case of Earth’s atmospheric disturbances, one of the key causes-plus-results of the overall situation is the high-speed of the clearly determining Jet Stream, which itself has causes, governed by the heat supplied by the sun and the spin of the planet. Whereas on Jupiter, the initial causes, at least, seem to come from processes inside the planet, itself, along with a similar context of planetary spin.

Clearly, the spinning of both of these planetary bodies significantly affects the moveable, cloaking substrate of the atmosphere, and, once again, the results react back to become further affecting causes in themselves.

Now, though all these considerations are vital, particularly in the examples mentioned on the planetary scale, the key question arises, “What will be different when considering a Universe-wide, substrate, composed of micro components, inevitably also extending to within the Atom?”

It is just possible that “down there”, we could profitably assume, as a simplifying, first approximation, that NO such external disturbances will be significant. We could locally assume a totally quiescent substrate only disturbed by the extremely close effects of internal components, and especially the orbiting electron (when considering, of course, a Hydrogen atom as the simplest possible case).

And, unlike the majority of disturbances in atmospheres, the situation within that enclosed space, must be affected, from the outset, by not only delivered effects, but also by the recursive effects of the vortices, caused by the orbiting electron acting back upon their original causes. For, with orbits the conditions are constantly being repeated time-after-time with each and every orbital return of the electron to previously affected parts of the substrate. 

And, of course, these “same again” effects will either accumulate to dissociate the atom, or, much more likely, settle, somehow into a stable and persisting situation.

The situation is crucial, because, almost uniquely, this set up produces Quantised Orbits of the electron involved. And, this means that a fixed set of allowed orbits results, of different radii, and hence a consequent set of fixed energy levels. And, it is these, which allow the storing of electromagnetic energy therein, and, in turn, govern precisely both the frequencies and emitted energies of any released quanta.

The processes involved, in these energy transactions, are brought about by the demotion of a previously promoted orbit - from a higher orbit and Energy Level to a lower one.

Indeed, in comparison with Yves Couder’s experiments in a silicone oil substrate, with the establishment of a stable entity (termed The Walker) in that case, and the possibilities, which that also strongly suggests as also being relevant for the Atom – means that they both seem to indicate a sufficiently undisturbed environment for such stabilities to be established purely internally.

Indeed, the case of Couder’s Walker seems to suggest a very similar conjunction of resonances of various oscillations plus recursive feedback to be the crucial physical, formative causes for the remarkable occurrences in the atom too.

To get a better idea of what this means, let us take a more common case – the products of vortices by a narrow and fast moving stream entering and passing through a still pond. It seems to be a relatively simplified situation, but is nothing like as localised and indeed “locked-in” as is likely to be the case within the atom. First, the causing stream is unlikely to be close to behaving with the usually-idealised “streamline flow”. On the contrary, it is certain to carry with it disturbances, from its own forming history.

So, these are also brought into the still pool. 

Also, there are no close constraints upon its subsequent passage, so vortices would be created, and then inevitably left behind, throughout its subsequent passage, to simply dissociate into almost random disturbances, while the continuing stream continues to generate more vortices elsewhere, thus contributing to its own ultimate demises a discernable, coherent stream.

But, within the Atom, on the contrary, the causing orbiting electron is a constantly returning enmity, repeatedly interacting with its own previously created vortices. And all of this is happening within the close confines of the atom, within a tiny, local area.

So, as with Couder’s Walker, stabilities could, and indeed must, be possible, if all the interactions are appropriately tuned to elicit the observed special effect of stable quantized orbits.

NOTE: Intended here is a suggestion, by this theoretical physicist, that the physical arrangement of the atom is such that an electron NOT in a stable (quantized) orbit will inevitably lose energy to the substrate, and so reduce that orbit until it matches an allowed level, at which it will become stable, and will stay the same until some external conditions cause it to change internally.

Now, clearly, these few inclusions are nowhere near a full explanation. The reason, for getting as far as we have in this problem, is the concrete evidence of Couder’s Walker, where with only a substrate and various oscillations a stable Walker was not only produced, but also maintained as long as the producing conditions persisted.

That alone was sufficient to begin to assume the possibility of a similar occurrence within the Atom. 

http://fuckyeahfluiddynamics.tumblr.com

But, just as with the Walker, where considerations and consequent explanations of the properties of the substrate and the bouncing drop, and of course, the absolutely essential matching of the involved vibrations, the situation in the atom will unavoidably also include many other considerations.

For, each element’s atom is different, with different quantized levels, and hence the influence of the many different nuclei (which also perform their own small orbits), will have to be included in a final and comprehensive Theory. 

Postscript:

The current state of play in these theoretical considerations has now been taken beyond these brief notes in the SHAPE Special entitled The Atom published in SHAPE Journal on the Internet in July 2015. You can read that issue here.

Naming Things

What is it?

Let us consider an entity involved in some sort of process of change!

It could be either changing in its position (moving), or it could be changing its actual nature (transforming) into something else.

Now, we have to ask, “Is the former a meaningfully possible conception?”, for, it will surely depend upon what it is moving with respect to, whether something other than itself, or even some substrate through which it is moving? And, in addition, we have to deal with the apparent fact that absolutely everything is always moving, so to isolate an apparent stationary state, or any particular relative movement cannot be the full revelation of its movement anyway.

And, of course, any variation in distance from something else will vary the effect that our object will have upon it and vice versa, so even separating out movement is leaving aside such changing interrelationships.

So clearly, apart from totally internally caused changes within our entity, all others will be indissolubly linked with relative positions to other affecting things.

Yet, it is clear, all our conceptions of a thing always actually extract it from its real, full context, and, by doing so, remove it from what makes it what it is. Hence, by defining it in that way, we are turning it into an eternal something, identified only by its then appearance and what we decide to call it!
Can we do that without distorting it in a fundamental way?

Of course, not! When something is removed entirely from its real context, what is there left to determine it? Most certainly, there are its inter-relationships, and hence also its properties too. So, in even conceiving of such a totally isolated state, we can only talk about its appearance, if subject to absolutely no effects outside of itself.

Now, such an approach would appear to be impossible, or at best “ideal”.

The conception of something, independent of all external affecting factors, can only deliver an idealisation of the thing! For, in ignoring those causations, we are making it eternal, or, as-it-is-now, for we will never be in a position to predict all future forms. And, this will also be of NO value when it comes to it having any relations with anything else.

So, let us suppose, therefore that as a first approximation, we can isolate it in this way. If we could, what exactly would we have? Surely, only its appearance to us by whatever means we have to observe it? And, what will have given it that appearance?

There will be only those things still within it (and, of course, its now unavailable history). If considering it without any recourse to these will only allow a Naming and Describing, in order to recognise it when we see it again, and nothing more. We certainly don’t by any means understand it!

NOTE: This sounds very much like the patterns we discern in its appearance by our means of observing it, and nothing more! And it is these forms and patterns, that we measure and relate in scientific experiments, where we assume that we have removed all external distorting influences, and are getting only what we can from it alone.

The easiest of such measureables is surely Position.

And we measure this “ideally” with reference to some totally inert, non-affecting reference frame (which by definition cannot change it in any way at all). This was Newton’s method!

Now, the relation of a series of positions with respect to different times (another absolute reference system) gives us a relation, and it is possible that an Equation might be found to fit those data. But, in such, could there be any explanation of why it moved in that way? Of course not: it could be any number of things that caused it to follow that path. The equation can only be a description of the result of it being moved – an answer to “How?”, but certainly not to “Why?” And when we do so, and infer that there is a cause of the movement completely defined by the equation alone, it has to be total nonsense! Forms, which occur in innumerable contexts, cannot possibly ever deliver explanations, only the differently caused recurrences of universal formal patterns.

Now, we know that things appear to be totally unchanging for long periods, and therefore can as a first approximation, assume that they are constant. We also know that interludes of significant qualitative change are bound to occur – Emergences, when the thing will become, at first a whole series of intermediaries, until a new stability is finally established, when our thing will have become something else, which will then seem to be entirely constant once more!

So, though we might get away with, during periods of stability, a conception of any one thing being constant (or even eternal), it will not be the truth!

For, to get to the inevitable transforming period, things must have been getting slowly to a position where the constancy of many things is being undermined, so that the nature of the given entity, along with many others, will be rapidly coming into question.

Surely, the nearest thing to getting an accurate generally applicable conception of the thing must be when it is visibly changing, for only then are the things that are changing it revealed.

Yet, we insist in treating it in the very opposite way, and characterising it when it is temporarily constant. In doing this we are ignoring all the significantly contributing factors that are involved, and which will, at some point, change it into something else!

Indeed, we could use that characterisation generally, but have the details swamped by one or another dominance, that for a time will hide the many still present processes that continue to be present, and give once more the illusion of permanence to its current appearance.

Indeed, only careful analysis, moment-by-moment, during an emergent interlude, will reveal a host of affecting factors with each and every temporary mix, resolving into one temporary dominance after another. And, such a tumultuous sequence, will, in the end, have exposed a whole series of affecting factors, which can, and do, affect our entity, but varying in dominance in the differing sequence of contexts. And this set will even be true during its time as an apparently constant thing, during each period of stability.

Now, the observant reader will have noticed a set of assumptions, by the writer, as to “things-in-general” and “over time”, and that is indeed true! No matter what we do, we will always bring to our observations such basic assumptions. But, they are not the usual ones assumed by the majority of the human population. They are the assumptions extracted from a host of experiences, which have concentrated upon qualitative changes, and not, as is usually the case, assumed constant or even eternal factors!

And, it must also be admitted, that the most important generalisation has been the realisation of unavoidable alternate periods of Stability and Significant Change (Emergences) that characterise all development. And in these periods of change – the Emergent Episodes, there always arises the absolutely New.

Now, the key template Emergence, to be used as a general model for these episodes, has to be the Origin of Life on Earth, but there are innumerable others in the history of the Cosmos, all the way from the supposed Big Bang to the Emergence of currently living entities today.

Now, it was useless characterising something entirely from its apparently eternal features during some period of stability, and instead finding what constituted it during an Emergent Event would certainly be considerably better, but we will still have been totally unable to include what has emerged as totally new, within that complex transformation.

So, several questions are bound to arise!

Can we determine such brand new features, by studying the situation before the changes occurred?

The answer to this can only be, “No!” There will always be absolutely no trace of it prior to the transformation that produced it!

Can we, alternatively, therefore, study the situation, after the change, and trace our identified new factor back to its actual moment of birth?

Sadly, the answer to this will also be, “No!” And this is because the nature of such an origin is never a simple, linear causal sequence. On the contrary, it is the result of a complex, holistic mix that hasn’t exactly as such ever have occurred before, and a whole trajectory of changes delivering a myriad of temporary phases, all happening simultaneously and affecting each other, until some sort of final emergence of a new stability, containing these new features finally come to be.

Once again, the only place to have any chance of finding and studying the trajectories, which led to these new features, will be within the Emergence itself!

Now that, I am sure you will agree, is well nigh impossible! For, in almost all of these episodes, the process has already finished, before we discern its revolutionary new contents. How could we possibly investigate such things?

Well, surprisingly, there have been such interludes that were so investigated, though they happened at the Social level of organised matter: they were, in fact, Social Revolutions – particularly that which occurred in Russia. For there, the main revolutionary faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party was a Marxist organisation, and had this standpoint as the ground and method for understanding what was happening in the midst of revolutionary changes.

Now, these are not common occurrences, and when they do, the chances of there being an organisation involved capable of addressing these crucial questions would be extremely unlikely – especially as those current parties that profess such a standpoint have, in fact, long since abandoned it.

And, of course, such experiences are only very indirectly applicable in other areas of study.

The question of what to do in all these very different areas is what we have also to address. How can we investigate such Emergent Episodes?

Well, we have to actually construct a mini Emergence, and study that! And there are scientists who have attempted to do it.

Perhaps the most significant was Stanley Miller, in the experiment he devised and constructed based upon the known contents of the primaeval Atmosphere of the early Earth.

For, he was successful in his attempt, and at the end of only one week, he was able to show that amino acids had been produced, some of the most important building bricks of Life. Now admittedly, he couldn’t take his experiment further, nor could he reveal a single process that had occurred within his system. He could not penetrate his apparatus without destroying its natural systems. But, we can do this now!

This author has already re-designed a new version of Miller’s Experiment, but with defined physical paths for the movements of the substances involved to follow, and with time-based analytic tools positioned throughout. With such a set up, it would be possible to begin to disentangle the various active processes taking place and their sequences, and to do it for several simultaneous strands too – all related to a master timing system.

And, such experiments are not the only possible forms for Holistic Science.

Yves Couder decided to move the phenomena that continue to cause chaos in Physics from their Sub Atomic level with all its inherent difficulties, into a possible analogous situation at the macro level, where analogous phenomena could be much more easily investigated. His artificially conceived-of set up was of course nothing like that at the micro level, but he reasoned that such situations must involve the interactions of various different oscillations, involving both resonances and recursions. So, he constructed a surprising set up for his investigations. He started with a basis for his required structures, which was a shallow tray of silicone oil constantly subject to a given vertical vibration. He then released a drop of the same liquid onto the surface of this vibrating substrate. Of course, it was merely absorbed in the substrate. Yet, by varying the few parameters under his control, he managed to get the drop to not only cause a wave in that substrate but also bounce upwards again. Now, the upwards moving drop slowed down under gravity, until it reached zero velocity and began to fall again, to again to once more come into contact with the substrate. But, again merely by the available adjustments he found he could ensure that it not only bounced again, but would thereafter continue to bounce by always coming into contact with the substrate wave coming up. Such a permanent, continually repeating cycle could only be achieved by getting the required energy from the forced vibration of the whole substrate, and causing recursively a forced oscillation of the drop too. A Local Zone of the surface of the substrate had become a kind of standing wave, and the system of drop and standing wave (termed a “walker”) could move about across the surface of the substrate, and several phenomena that were similar to those at the sub atomic level were made to occur.

This was a remarkable kind of experiment.

It based itself on analogies and purposive constructions in the most amenable of areas, to attempt to reveal comparable situations to other currently impenetratable phenomena at the sub atomic level. What could be extracted from Couder’s experiments were indeed remarkable.

But, clearly the efforts of Darwin, Miller and Couder are merely the very first steps in developing a new approach to Science, which no longer insists upon both stability and total control to reveal “essences of Reality”, but purposely attempts to ride the tiger, and investigate Emergent Episodes as delivering the real truths about Reality.