A Revolutionary Understanding

Lenin was very critical of Positivism

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

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

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

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

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

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

That became their primary motivation!

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

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

The age of advanced technology effectively killed Science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But beware of false Prophets!

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

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

Not Alliances, but Understanding! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Odessa Steps

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

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

And these two sets of conditions produce Very Different Possibilities!

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

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

So, they donít even try!

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

The Required Revolutionary New Stance

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

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

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

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

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

Let us attempt to address this problem better NOW!

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

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

It isnít.

Indeed, Absolutely Nothing is!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Conclusion

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

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

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

Reality-as-is is NOT already fixed!

Neither does it change within limits!

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

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

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

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

How about that for a truly demanding Discipline!? 

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

Qualitative Causes and their Investigation via Systems Means

Now, the sort of Investigation mentioned in the title of this paper, cannot but take us into a Wholly New Realm! Though, it must also be clearly emphasized that it involves an absolutely imperative change in the way all of The Sciences MUST, henceforth, be conducted.

For, the Greek Intellectual Revolution of 500 BC, though undoubtedly an absolutely essential Step Forward in Mankind's Thinking, also achieved - what all such innovations of that kind invariably also install - the usual Inevitable Diversion into misleadingly inadequate Over-Simplification!

Many Inevitable & Damaging Detours are always totally unavoidable as a necessary Unifying Product of the very same Commonly related Developments - for Mankind - is embodied in attempting to understand the processes, which ultimately will totally leave unaddressed the very processes that have produced the investigators too! Think where that omission positions the Investigators, and their employed means...

But, the increasingly evident superiority of the Investigators, unavoidably would be distorted by their clear differences to absolutely Everything else: and, the most obvious conclusion would always be that THEY were specifically included, as some sort of Reflection of an all-powerful Creator!

So, they certainly never saw themselves as a mere part of the remarkable Vista (which they were increasingly converting to Their Own Uses), but outside of it somehow (Idealism): and by their Analyses and Explanations they revealed ever-more about The Supposed Supreme Creator of it all - and especially as they, in their own way, were revealing The Creator's Intentions!

Frida Kahlo, Moses, 1945,

The separation of Theory & Practice was physically embodied, for centuries, with Many Different (currently dominant) Social Classes, wherein all the Practical Work (and even New Inventions), were unavoidably-situated with the Skilled Workers, which I term "Artisans", while whole "Explanations" of the World were reserved for the Educated Class of Owners.

So, the many mismatches between these two Class Worldviews (and Approaches), were to some extent softened, by the somewhat privileged positions bestowed upon the Very Best Artisans. Indeed, perhaps surprisingly, easier ways of advancement were afforded to the best Soldiers (for example), and on which side they used their skills against their own Class!

But apart from the "Privileges" that certain highly skilled soldiers could achieve, real Class Mobility was not possible then - prestigious Positions, could happen, as long as they didn't have to Read & Write! But, even that was too much of an economic disadvantage in the end, so the tendency became increasingly to Educate the Working Classes, but to still maintain Class Differentials, as far as possible.

I can speak with some authority on this subject, as I came from an unskilled Working Class background, and after getting Eye Glasses, following General Tests within All Schools in the 1940s, I soared across most of the Qualifying Hurdles, including to everyone's surprise, Passing the 11-Plus Examination to win a place at a prestigious Manchester Grammer School! Where, over the next 7 years, I had an illustrious Career, finally winning a place at University in Leeds! And following an extra year in Leicester University to Qualify as a Teacher, I started out upon a Teaching Career first in a Middle School, then a Grammar School, and finally in a Further Education College.

Schoolboys at Manchester Grammar

But as soon as my steadfastly alternative view of things became evident - certainly different to the accepted Norm - it was then that my Career quite definitely had a restraining lid placed on it! I could not be allowed to in any way "Join the Club",  with all its advantages! It soon became very clear that my abilities were there to be Used by their Class, rather than applauded!

It is easy to explain, by the subsequent perpetrators, by adding that I just wasn't up to the task: but a continuing extension of successes elsewhere certainly didn't confirm their prejudiced conclusions. For, having learned to Read & Write long ago, before I was 5 years old, I was, always, an avid regular visitor to any Local Public Library, and the always assumed usual Lack of Knowledge, that was usual in my Class, was certainly NOT the case with me!

I had realized their purposes, and then by-passed them, by thereafter following any success I had achieved, by an immediate move to another institution. And it worked very well until a post in a University, when a few days off with an old illness gave them the chance to try to terminate the job by asking me to resign! But this, I refused to do - and after confirmation of the non-terminal and easily coped-with nature of my illness by a Harley Street Surgeon, I obtained a Full Early Retirement, and, instead, returned to continue my prior Researches into Motion Study, for the next 10 years, with my Dance colleague, and all that despite an Aneurysm, which did lose me a couple of years!

I finally realized that I had to take a termination of those Researches, when I was presenting a Paper upon my work on the Laban Pure Form, at a Conference in Athens (Greece), when it was finally clear that my eyesight was critically impaired, so that all my usual activities depending critically upon that Sense, would have to cease forthwith!

Jim Schofield presenting his research into the Laban Pure Form

Needless to say, this didn't lead to a restful retirement, but instead to my Final Career as a Full Time Philosopher and Writer, which extended for the next 16 years. For, with the help of my son (who has a PhD, and is a Course Leader at Leeds University) I was equipped with a four-and-a-half-foot-wide Screen for my Computer, plus a helpfully Coloured Keyboard, and radically re-coloured Screen, with much larger and easily variable Font Sizes.

Indeed, for the first time in my career, I was able to pursue, Full Time, the many differences that have emerged in my Academic Interests, that had become evident in my very first Term at University, when I had begun to attend to study Physics, at the very beginning of my career. And, it was clear to me, from the very outset of that Physics Course, their whole approach was damagingly mistaken!

For, in the early 20th century two different kinds of Physical Law had been reliably begun to be revealed: the first was the traditional Causal Laws, which concentrated upon being able to Explain Why things behaved as they did. But, increasingly, there had begun also to also be revealed Solely Empirical Laws, which related measured quantities, BUT explained absolutely Nothing!

Now, these were clearly true! No matter how many times they were repeated, the exact same results would always be delivered. But the Results from the solely Empirical Laws could never be associated with any single Property - so they explained Nothing!

Much later, it was decided that the numeric results DID NOT refer to any Single Known Property: BUT, instead, to a whole set of very different and, as yet, currently Entirely Unknown Properties COMBINED via their numeric Effects alone. And, as we didn't know exactly what they did, OR how much of each were involved, Absolutely NO Crucial Individual Contributions were available!

Indeed, only a combined purely Qualitative overall Effect, in a single associated overall quantity would be available. But, without a breakdown into Individual Qualitative Effects, and the proportions delivered to each, it could still explain Nothing!

Indeed, for these to be combined purely Quantitatively, it also indicated that these combined numeric contributions were of THE VERY SAME THING! It wasn't of different effects, but something common to them all: like Temperature, or some similar accompanying and definitely additive quantity.

Clearly, the 2,500 year old method of carrying out Experiments, supposedly to deliver what happens in Reality-as-is, has been a catastrophic Failure for our Understanding, even though it was completely adequate for accurately guiding Production. Indeed this Wholly Pluralist Mistake has been profoundly misleading in Absolutely All Attempts to Explain Anything!

Instead, a tidy and achievable alternative was established solely with Production in mind, and the Science of Physics was actually-replaced by its many uses in Engineering and Technology.

However, the Theories of Physics DID NOT soundly inform the Processes of Engineering: indeed, it was the Practices of Engineering which ultimately determined the Theories of Physics!

The Full Physical Theories of Reality-as-is are still Unknown! Neither Physics nor Engineering currently deal with any Reality beyond our Technological Control - which instead creates a new Reality that we routinely mistake for Reality-as-is. 

To maintain this effective illusion they must be always strictly limited-to Methods & Materials that can be relied upon to perform as our scientific Disciplines require, and hence always demand Absolutely NO self-modifying Techniques have ever been built into our constructions! When they fail, they Fail!

And, without extensive reflections of True Reality-as-is in our constructions and methods, many limitations within these edifices will NEVER be allowed-for, and the necessary, indeed, the whole constructional (and even medical) built-in changes instituted - due to appropriate continual monitoring, and consequent triggered remedial corrections, will NEVER have even been considered.

Take the obvious medical requirements of at-risk-patients: instead of nurses carrying out somewhat irregular testing: these could be permanently in place, with even immediate automatic changes in treatment coupled with detailed results sent direct to those responsible & capable of checking and in instituting the necessary modifying treatments. But, clearly, Research and Development teams would have to be radically expanded in the range of Disciplines, and Particular Skills present in the team, or available very close at hand.

For 7 years, in two British Universities, I made myself available to all active Researchers, across the institution, as a ready-and-waiting Highly Skilled & Experienced Programmer, to assist them where I could. And these were absolutely NEVER mere technological interventions.

Perhaps the most surprising was in Dance Performance and Choreography, which actually won a British Interactive Video Award in 1989. While another transformed the attempts of a Biologist to Classify (and easily identify) the World's Tardigrades, which was highly successful. With another Intervention I helped a Mathematician, who was attempting to model The Actions of The Human Heart, wherein my help revealed both the equivalents of both Fibrillation and even Heart Attacks in his suggested model.

Many other valuable contributions proved possible, and these were only available from an able Computer Programmer: yet I can think of many other Disciplines even more appropriate in many such Researches. And having specialized in both suggesting and joining such teams, the gains made have been so remarkable, but generally were still very rare at that time, and that where such have been attempted successfully, there has still been a dominating reluctance to recognize where the credit should be both admitted and celebrated!

Interestingly, in one post, I had a visit from the Local Examinations Organisation, because they couldn't understand why my students were so much better than literally all the rest in our Region, and certainly absolutely no credit was allocated within the Institution where I worked! Indeed, the Examination Board also asked me to become their Chief Examiner in my Subject, as part of a concerted effort to increase standards generally: but, at an Assessment Meeting the Teachers involved thought the the Level achieved by my classes were due to favoritism! But, the scores in question, commenced long before I was Chief Examiner, when I could do Nothing about the marks awarded... Meanwhile nobody elsewhere within my own institution were at all aware of the success either!

So, the question arises - "How can such successes be used to encourage successful means across involved instutions generally?" It surely has to be regular Informative & Celebratory Events, and maybe even consequent courses, along with sample materials, exhibitions, and even awards for success, by the Board, for informing & helping interested Teachers.

Now, these things are never as straight-forward, as they should be, Research can never be entirely limited to a Single Discipline, and even when it does involve a measure of co-operation with experts from other Departments, it is NEVER usually officially organised and involving a truly Joint Team! For, the inter-Department-rivalries for difficult-to-obtain Research Funding always puts paid to such official forms of collaboration. Funding is always allocated-to individual Departments, and cross-department co-operations are always strictly ad hoc, and residing in a Single Department officially. Projects involving people from several different Departments are invariably Unofficial, AND always fraught with difficulties!

I managed to make it work, in only two Institutions, fully successfully, and in only one other where I managed it only once! The first was in a Further Education College, where such Research was almost totally unknown. But, in the two Universities, it was only possible by the inter-departmental involvement being coordinated by The Computer Services Department! And that worked because Computer Services was NOT a potential competitor for Research Funding: it had to be a Servant-to-All! And several good projects were unofficially undertaken, but not without some unavoidable calamities.

Indeed, even this solution ran into difficulties, as Computer Centres in Educational Institutions were invariably islands of Electrical Engineers in an Institution of Academics: and they didn't like what was happening to Their Ground! There was undoubtedly a Class dimension to this too

Indeed, in retrospect, it surprises me that Computer Centres were ever willing workers in Projects dominated by Organisers and Academics! They were only really happy looking after machines and keeping them working...

...

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

Speculation!

The historical development of Thinking in Mankind involved accurate observation, prediction, and finally Understanding. It is, at the very least, a veritable tragedy, that this absolutely vital trajectory in Human Thinking, has as its current culmination, after many millennia of development, to ultimately be satisfied-theoretically only with Speculation!

For, let us be absolutely clear, Mankind, when it emerged initially, had NO Language, and certainly no Logical Thinking as we now consider it. Human Thinking therefore is entirely Man-made, and has developed along with Mankind's changing abilities and understanding: so it could only reflect their current state of development. It is, most certainly, far from perfect, and must NEVER be assumed to be universally capable of formulating Absolute Truth.

For, what we now have, is this treasured final achievement: and we must be clear as to what makes it considered to be so special. It is considered to be the highest-possible Product of Pure Thought alone, in interpreting the Real World, without, in consequence, being able to both theoretically accurately Explain, and then further Predict what will happen next... Of course, there will doubtless be a unified Chorus of Dissent at this particular characterisation, but it is nonetheless True!

For NO such wholly theoretically-arrived-at Predictions were involved in the usually accepted characterisation: they actually depend primarily solely upon Direct Observations as such, very carefully arranged-for, and NOT as Direct Predictions from Theory alone!

So, to make such an amalgam work, the "theoreticians" follow up such hopefully-confirming observations, by the absolutely necessary inclusion of either New Free Parameters (and even concepts) or indeed both, which are so designed as to look like Theoretical Reflections of Reality, instead of Pragmatic, cleverly-invented tricks!

And, yet another, illegitimate Rational System (when applied directly to Reality), is that of Mathematics, which is only ever brought in by matching measured Data into General Mathematical Forms, having only unknown constants, and evaluating these via Simultameous Equations from that Data! That is how legitimate Data "becomes" a Mathematical Equation, which is THEN taken as The Law delivered by that Data.

It isn't!

It is instead merely the adjustment of valid Data into a Forever Fixed mathematical relation, turning the specificity of individually-measured Data into a Forever to-be-obeyed purely Mathematical Law!

It can, and indeed is, then fed into the Amalgam, as a "Confirming Proof", that the overall system is both sound and sufficient! And, used, thereafter, to supposedly deliver "absolutely all possible" vaid cases under that "Natural Law".

But it isn't Correct!

I have been an exceptionally-able mathematician all my Life, and have undertaken both significant research within that area - working with other world class mathematicians (in particular upon a modified Van Der Pol Equation, as an approximate model for a beating Human Heart), and have also written extensively upon the Philosophy of Mathematics! I know exactly what Mathematics is, AND what it isn't!

Mathematics is an entirely Pluralist Discipline, dealing ONLY in Forever Fixed Laws, and hence incapable of accurately reflecting a Developing Holistic World, which actually EVOLVES!

The absolute clincher in proving these ideas, has to be Cosmology: because the absolutely essential Scientific means of confirming Theory is totally unavailable in this discipline. Predictions are not products of Theory, but entirely delivered by fixed mathematical forms fitted up to past observations, which is certainly NOT Theory. For Theory would have to also Explain Why things happen as they do, and not just replicate what has happened before, at some point.

The Key is revealed when something New occurs.

If the "theory" cannot deliver that new occurence, it isn't a Theory! Neither is it one if it cannot deal with Qualitative Change in an Explanatory way.

Indeed, all Qualitative Changes, in all real Developments, are omitted in such "Laws" :for they are then as they must be, merely Pluralist Laws. And, such a System will always be totally incapable of explaining the Evolution of Reality - from the Everyday, to the Cosmic!

And such Thinking, though it purports to be Theory: is, in fact, Mere Speculation (pretending to be Theory)!

Now, you might well wonder why, such a slip is so consistently made!

The reason for this is successful Technology, which (most of the time) doesn't have to know Why? but only How?

So the Engineer, within his carefully contrived-and-maintained wholly Pluralist Situations, can legitimately depend upon the relevant Formulae to deliver exactly what will happen. But, of course, that isn't Science, which has also to know Why?

If this essay does not convince you of the truth of these ideas, may I recommend a thorough critique of Current Cosmology Theory, with its Big Bang "Theory", its Inflationary Period, followed by its ever Increasing Expansion of the Universe, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Black Holes, and even Multiverses!

Do you think that they have all been proven? explained? predicted? understood?

There are alternatives, however!

In 1970 Hammes Alven was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics with his Theory of Plasmas (Electricity and Magnetism in all possible Spaces)!

For, it has since been extended into an alternative Theory of the Development of the Universe - based for the first time upon Plasma Theories, which have turned out to be likewise applicable in experiments in Laboratories upon Earth, yet acting in exactly the same way in the Cosmos!

They are Scale Invariable...

The Problem with Classroom Physics

Semi-Pluralist Science: 

Schoolroom Physics

Having watched a video from the USA supposedly presenting the very best of Schoolroom Demonstration Experiments in Physics, I immediately recognised exactly the kinds of experiment that was done in my own own school as a boy, when I first started studying the subject.

For, I am now able to see why my efforts, and that of my fellow pupils', in those unavoidably delivered circumstances, were, (despite my being proven as excellent at the theory) all so poor when it came to experiments, and also why some of my fellows students did so well in that area.

For, whereas I did exactly as I was told, and consequently got the poor results, in fact, all of these poorly-equipped investigators should have affected everybody, yet at least some of my fellow students "looked up the expected answers", or asked previous year students, to see what they should be getting, and made damn sure they got something like that themselves! But, I was convinced by the Theory, and expected invaluable confirmation in the "proving experiments", so when they didn't, I accepted that I was a lousy experimenter!

And, it didn't get much better, as an undergraduate at University. For, once again, I was a top student at Physics Theory, but "poor" in experimental work! Nevertheless, I still usually ended up top, particularly in Mathematics, which did seem to conform exactly with Real World applications.

And it is only now, a lifetime later, that I can clearly see what was amiss...

Even in Higher Education, most of my peers had quickly learned to cheat, for the Experiments were both too badly conceived-of, and even set-up, to ever give correct answers. So, while I misguidedly struggled to find "The Truth", in what I believed to be the true scientific way, my fellows just wanted the right answers and got them by other means.

Sadly, these experiences put me off Experimental Physics, though I continued to excel at Theory: and I consequently had many rows with the postgraduate "demonstrators" who were supposed to aid undergraduates with their experiments. And, as they were the only real contacts between the Staff and the students, my stock with the powers that be in the department was soon declining rapidly...

And it is only now that I know why!

The reason was that the Pluralistic Mathematics intimately-involved in both in how the experiments were conceived-of and carried out, and even in the so-called Theory that we were taught, were mutually gelled-together, as well as possible, between the two, but only if "correctly" carried out "perfectly" on the experimental side. But, neither side actually delivered Reality-as-is at all!

The crudity of the Experiments meant that the matching with results became increasingly difficult, and even often impossible to obtain, and if and when they did, it was NEVER the sought for Truth, but an approximation based squarely upon an assumption of permanently Fixed Laws.

NOTE:

Indeed, this major error, over many years, had separated those involved, into those delivering Experiments, and the Theorists who interpreted them, into two very uncomfortable groups of bedfellows, who, nevertheless, were indispensable to one another - precisely because of their very different priorities in maintaining a simplifying fiction.

So, by my fellow students cheating, the true inadequacies of the Experiments were masked, and, consequently, literally no-one was comprehensively adequately trained in all aspects of Experimental work. Indeed, if by some prior good teacher of experimental work, a particular student actually got exactly what the experiment could deliver, it would, nevertheless, be marked as wrong, because it would still NOT exactly match with the "Theory"!

Let us see why such a scenario was wholly unavoidable.

Ever since the Greeks, the Results of Experiments were always treated totally pluralistically! All were aimed for particular Laws, that were assumed to be naturally forever FIXED.

Nature was falsely assumed to work only via such eternally Fixed Laws. 

But the real unfettered world is not fixed in such a way, and to get anywhere even reasonably near to that situation, the rigid control-and-maintainance of the constitution of the Experiment would have to be absolutely perfect: and that, of course, was almost impossible to achieve without great expense and sufficient time being allocated to ensuring that supposed "perfection".

And, needless-to-say, that didn't ever happen with entirely student-run lab experiments!

By the way, in Professional Science contexts, the experimenters and practical product deliverers were Technologists rather than Scientists, while the theorist interpreters of the resulting data were the actual Scientists.

Any Fixed Laws, extracted in such experiments, were never generally applicable either: they would only behave as such if the Applying situation was totally identical to the Extracting one - the complete control of these environments is technology!

Modern physics is impossible without advanced technology

So, in other words, the true guardians and implementers of the aimed-for Pluralist Science were ONLY EVER the Technologists.

The scientists, on the other hand, were initially holists, seeking Natural Laws, which in that Real World of multiple simultaneous and mutually-affecting Laws, were impossible to extraxt as such, without a radical pruning and thereafter continued rigid control of the situation: and that could NEVER reveal the same Law, as applied in Reality-as-is.

For the Laws did not just SUM: they changed one another in various different qualitative ways! So the Laws in Experiments were DIFFERENT to those Laws in Reality-as-is!

A FIXED Law as was evident in a perfect Pluralist Experiment, actually never existed as such anywhere in Reality-as-is!

Now, for Science-in-General, and even in the professional World of scientific endeavour, a further totally-mistaken assumption was made. It was assumed that the Fixed Law extracted, by these methods, was the natural, underlying Law present in absolutely ALL relevant situations, usually along with others, all of them being of the very same type. They just combined somehow to deliver Reality-as-is. And, this belief was embodied in the universally-accepted Principle of Plurality.

What that meant, was that absolutely NO Qualitative Changes could ever occur, by the action of Natural Laws: all real Development and even Evolution were put down solely to mere Complication alone.. And this is clearly wrong!

So, why was it adopted so emphatically?

You have to remember exactly-when it was first achieved, and what a remarkable Revolution it precipitated within Mathematics! For, it was first implemented, as such, in Ancient Greece, almost 2,500 years ago, in what later became known as Euclidian Geometry, and thereafter and equally legitmately extended to the whole of Mathematics - as it then was. For, the use of a wholly new kind of Abstraction had been involved that only referred to Relationships, and consequently had, for the first time ever in Human History, enabled the sound construction of a whole new Intellectual Discipline, by using these Revealing Abstract relations, via a totally reliable New Rationality.

Indeed, the Revolution was incorrectly-assumed to encompass Absolutely Everything: and was immediately, and wrongly, applied to both General Reasoning and all the emerging Sciences too.

Now, to further explain that more general use, we have to consider the special situation of Stability: for, in the Rationality of Mathematics, it was also validly applicable in Stable Situations of all kinds, as long as they remained as such! And Mankind had long been "holding-things-still", while they used them, for a very long period prior to the gains in Mathematics! So, the extension was obvious, and, as long as the Stability was maintained, it remained a valid application.

But, an intellectual Rule that only worked in special pragmatic situations was NO GOOD for valid-and-comprehensive explanations, even if it was adequate pragmatically: in other words, it was OK for Technology, NOT for real exploratory Science!

So, these two stances for dealing with the very same things, naturally drifted apart, and pragmatic problems were solved by technicians, while the scientists persevered, under increasing difficulties, with the consequent pluralist Theory!

Now, Experiments increasingly were set up "to work" by necessarily-attendant technicians, while the scientists carried out the Experiments and attempted to fornulate the "Fixed Natural Law" supposedly involved. But they usually got somewhat different results, each and every time they carried out the "supposedly very-same" Experiment. Now, it was always put down to "randomly-varying conditions", so that by taking averages over several runs, the underlying "Fixed" Law might be extracted.

But there isn't such a Fixed Law! The real World is holistic, wherein many simultaneously-acting Laws, both modify each of them AND the overall final effect too! And, that variability in results would be an average of all those, still making some sort of contribution, BUT by randomly varying as would always be cancelled by averaging, but "all-in-its-own-single-way" for each and every as yet still not-completely-removed contributor.

Sum the achieved average would NOT be of a fixed underlying Law, with randomly varying context, but, instead, an average of the involved and still-acting remnants of the supposedly-removed natural and multiple, usually accompanying contributions.

Which is why, in the title of this paper, I termed it "Semi-pluralist"!

And, which, at best, delivers only a poor approximation to an actually non-existant supposedly Fixed Law anyway!

Clearly, to conquer Reality, in all circumstances - absolutely essential if the many anomalies and crises, currently totally inaccessible outside of the artificially-fixed version, are also to be fully dealt with, what they simply must be tackled with a comprehensive knowledge of the Real Holistic possibilities.

A Holistic Version of Science must how be both unearthed and systematically developed!

Maybe one day we'll see holistic experiments in school Science labs...

Equilibrium

When nothing much is happening?

When postulating all Stabilities as temporary, and all real Qualitative change as emergent, to a lesser or greater extent, as I most certainly do, then the undoubted objective of obtaining Equilibrium in experiments, before ever taking any measurements, must surely require clarification!

First, what is going on in such situations, that initially prevents that Equilibrium, and what is happening in the Nirvana of it finally-being-achieved?

The scenario described is both that in the school chemistry lab, and that confronting all early scientists.

First, whatever were our prior actions, and about which reliable results are required, and having done everything that was necessary, nevertheless, any immediately taken measurements would still be totally useless!

Why?

The reason is that they would be different, not only to everyone else doing the same experiment, but even your own re-measurements taken immediately after the first!

You have to wait. 

Because the thing you are trying to measure is clearly made up of many parts which can have individual properties of their own. So, all your initial problems are because what is sought, isn't everywhere fully there yet!

In fact, it will only be there when all the unavoidable changes caused by our actions have communicated themselves throughout what it is that we are measuring - so that the many different parts settle down to a similar state, and that is not only never immediately achieved, it is also NEVER finally achieved either.

So, even after an initial thorough stirring-or-shaking, and a further wait, a single measurement can never be trusted as accurately describing the entity as a whole.

So, many re-measurements will be essential!

And, they will be similar, but not identical.

So, what is going on, and how do we finally get our required result?

All of these experiences demonstrate that our studied thing is NOT a single totally-homogeneous-entity: it is a collection of entities in close proximities to one another. And, we want them to "become-the-same", and they do gradually approach a common state. But, their modus operandi isn't simple: they are all vibrating, and affect one another, and only very slowly, does a sharing of what we are trying to measure, gradually approach what we might call Equilibrium!

So, we take a number of measurements - at the right time, and take the average of them all! 

Indeed, if all the parts, making up our overall entity, were separated, then they would all have different values for what we want. Indeed, we will ONLY get a single answer when they are all in causal-contact and have maximally shared the thing being measured,

It can only be a measurement of them all together.

The measurement achieved can even be something which is meaningless when applied to any single part in isolation, it can only be of the aggregation of all of them together: it will be of something like Temperature or Pressure!

Such measurements occur at a given Level.

So, if we go down to a lower level, they will vanish as such, so the causal descent through many such levels leaves behind prior quantitative measurements, and look, instead, into new ones. Yet, each level delivers a similar situation - always presenting something with key entities composed of lesser components.

And totally unfettered nature is even worse!

Indeed, to have any hope of extracting anything at all, we have to impose an Artificial Stability upon a situation, as well as carrying out all the above methods to get anything useable at all! We remove as many affecting factors as possible, and hold others constant, in order to be able to target a single and extractable relation. This is the same in practically all experiments.

We have to do this because Reality is Holist- a multi-factor World, with everything potentially affecting everything else. That is why nature evolves- producing the wholly New, like Life and even Consciousness.

Yet, we "hold it still"! We stop any natural change occurring. We never study the real Holist World, because we don't know how to!

We not only impose Stability, before we investigate, but actually believe that this reveals the Essences of Reality!

But, it doesn't!

So, to justify this fiction, we sanctify the Principle of Plurality, which has all active components independent of one another, and hence simply summing in various mixes to produce all the many different phenomena. And, this Pluralist Science aims only to reveal "Eternal Natural Laws",which alone are considered to deliver that Fictional World - fictional because Formal Relations, as such, can deliver absolutely nothing in the concrete world, for they are only abstractions of really-existing influences and effects.

And, real entities with their properties and influences must be the actual causes behind such purely formal descriptions.

Now, this aberrant path does not lead into mistaken subsequent actions, because the exact conditions achieved for extractionare always replicated for use! So, Technology is well served, while Explanatory Science is certainly not!

So is that elusive Equilibrium sought to reveal the defining Stability of Reality?

NO!

Indeed, though Natural Stabilities are very common, they actually hide the complex of mutually-affecting causal factors that always can find a temporary, if long-lasting, Stability in a balance of those contrasting and even opposing elements.

And, to Understand, rather than merely Describe and even Use, Explanatory Scientists, as distinct from Applying Technologists, must seek out the Causes for all the Qualities evident in our remarkably rich World - and they are NOT revealed in formal descriptions of Stabilities whether Natural or Arranged-For (in experiments and technology).

Face Recognition Surveillance

On whom, by whom and why?

A recent TV programme in the UK considered, at length, the opinions of a police commander and various others engaged in "Counter Terrorism", such as the previous problems with the IRA, and the current ones with the Islamist jihadists, with regard to new facial recognition software, which could be linked to surveillance cameras at key places.

So, before I consider the arguments, for and against the current proposals, I feel that I must refer back to the questions raised in support of the already-existing surveillance cameras all over the place, when first proposed, which were argued to be vital in combating crime.

And, now this country has the greatest concentrations of such cameras in the World, so clearly that argument did then win the day. 

So, I have to ask, "Did they really make the difference in the fight against crime?"

For, the answer is surely "No!", and one of the reasons has to be the colossal overheads in gathering collating and generally studying massive quantities of such footage, time-after-time over significantly extended periods.

They certanly didn't have the manpower for that, and surely would require substantial resoures-and-people for any new initiative, for no matter how "automated" such systems may now have become, it will still need intelligent and trained people to make it really work.

And, of course, the vast reduction in police numbers under the Tories mean that they couldn't do it. So, they will ceertainly now argue for an increase in police and intelligence numbers, but make damn sure that they will be mostly in the latter, and not in the former categories!

The software that would have to be involved (and I am software developer so I have a good idea what would be needed), would have to have been trained, by previously having been delivered with prior images of a suspect individual, to parameterise, in a wholly unique way, their facial features. 

A single shot from a particular angle just wouldn't do!

It would have to be an undertaking in many different circumstances, angles of shot, and lighting conditions. But, with sufficient exposure of this sort, a reliable means of identifying an individual could be put into a database, and, thereafter, made available to be used subsequently for identification purposes, by similar means.

Now, the above points were NOT emphasized in the content of the programme, but they are important, because the question arises, "How is such definitive amounts of shots to be compiled?", and, "Who decides who should be targeted?". The arguments aired in the programme were based upon a List of 23,000 known Islamist terrorism "sympathisers", and the fact that monitoring a single individual for just a day or two could involve 40 different officers, if carried out by current man-to-man surveillance methods.

Clearly, those charged with "keeping-an-eye" upon possible suspects were greatly in favour of a distributed system of surveillance cameras with access to a comprehensive database compiled by such a software system, along with an Interrogator System, for matching just-seen faces with that record. Surely, if what was seen was only a momentary glimpse, and at an inconvenient angle, it would be unlikely to be sufficient, so the obvious factors would include optimised positions for the most useful, easily-analysable views, and a following system of other cameras to have a chance of confirming the supposed recognition, no matter how inadequate were the new-images.

Now, IF all this is to be automatically gathered, without decision-making operators, then the recognition alone wouldn't be enough. They would also have to be timed, specifically situated and linked to other recognitions at various places and times, and checked for similar movements by other contacts on the database, or even requiring newly-occurring contacts to be decided on as being necessary additions to the list.

We are talking about a significant surveillance system, which would unavoidably also capture many images of the general public too. Clearly, such a system could, and indeed would be most definitely misused!

What would stop it being used against political opponents of the Government, for example? 

Notice how meetings by Jeremy Corbyn with Sinn Fein politicians many decades ago were used to say he supported terrorism!

This could, very easily, be the first step towards a real surveillance state!

And, with the increasing crisis of the Current Capitalist Economic System, it would undoubtedly be used against all agitators for the end of that system! They would be labelled as terrorists, and both monitored and hassled in all possible ways to disrupt their agitations...