Development and Evolution

 How life changed tempos radically...

In beginning, to explain the Natural Development of Reality-as-is, and having to consciously change from the once primitive Approach by assuming a single All-Embracing Rationality to a strictly Formal One, epitomised solely by Mathematics: it gradually (and haltingly) became clear that such an Approach was far too restricted - excluding all relevant causative factors, to highlight only those that are wholly defined by a Set of Forever Fixed Laws - just like those of Mathematics, and hence making those rationalities entirely Pluralistic.

So, if the readers of this (as they should) require a comprehensive proof of this important conclusion of mine, I can refer them to many evident arguments, culminating in this stance, within SHAPE Journal - compiled over the last 12 years by this writer: where the main intention was to win over participators to the Alternative Holistic Approach, as originally initiated by The Buddha, though only finally and extensively established by the historian/philosopher, Karl Marx, very much later, in the 19th cebtury - some two and a half millennia after The Buddha.

But, Marx never extended his crucial changes into any of The Sciences, which turned out to be an absolutely vital omission: so he did not complete the necessary transformation, thereby leaving his version of Holism, woefully lacking in many important and indeed necessary areas. And, most important of all, he did not establish sufficiently an All Embracing Version of Holism!

For, it should also have comprehensively tackled the problem of multiple, simultaneous and mutually- affecting factors, that would have involved what I have called The Systems Approach.

But, even those meagre additions, by this Thinker and Writer, turn out to be nowhere near enough, as FIRST: The Emergence of Life totally transformed the available mechanisms within the properties of the now newly available agents of all the possible concrete development, namely ALL Living Entities, and the then, ultimately, the qualitatively different Thinking, finally possible by Mankind!

Now, the latter undertaking is now somewhat underway, but the former involving the effect of Life itself, has, as yet, NOT been addressed. So, the purpose of this paper will attempt to begin to sufficiently fill that vital gap!

For the tempo-and-nature of Development, itself, was majorly-and-qualitatively transformed by the Emergence of Life - as embodied in the unavoidable, appaerent limitations delivered by the relatively Short-Lengths of all the Lifetimes of the interacting living entities involved, and also significantly also compounded by the only possible concrete legacy between generations, being via the sexually-produced, and hence genetically-defined determinators, combined within the produced seeds-or- offsprings: and which always being distinctly genetically- different to the contributing individual parents, and, thereafter directing the competition of those differently- endowed others of their type.

For, the somewhat inferior products would always survive less well, and, over time, the genetic stock of the various populations would clearly improve and even their means of life would change and be passed on both purely genetically, and by parental instruction! And though other factors would undoubtedly be involved, there would be significant tempo developments via Evolution, than was ever possible before the Advent of Life!

From two very ordinary Working Class families, including my Grandma, who could neither Read nor Write, my son now has a Doctorate and directs a significant course at a well-eatablished English University!

Yet, nevertheless, actual ascending trajectories of possible individual development, are not yet what they should be, as the World Economic System grinds increasingly haltingly towards an inevitable Worldwide set of Devastating and even Existential Crises, in many different directions, each with no obvious solutions, being either pursued, or even proposed.

The opportunities that are still possible, are increasingly opposed by those who for a very long time have been reaping most of the rewards available , and doing it in such a way, that, on a Global Scale, they work against such developments, if applied generally, and instead re-direct the driving imperatives involved away from the general involvement of all populations, so that they show themselves as driving things, at least partially, only to their own working populations, so that they are ever more likely to be blamed. Global calamities such as increasingly irreversible, yet wholly Damaging Climate Change, and the also ever-growing impoverishment of the majority of the World’s poorest Populations!

And, by so doing, attempting to divert the blame for all of the Crises onto ordinary people, and certainly not the fault of the decision makers, who actually caused it, as long as they didn’t suffer!

The Objective of the Ruling Class is clearly to ensure their own well-endowed future, while everyone else bears the brunt of any fall-out, even though to continue to get away with it all, they will act as if they are struggling against colossal odds outside of their control, while they continue to try to alleviate the lot of the Common People “as best as we can!”

But, though the tempos of development involved in Society were vastly increased, those improvements were NOT directed in the very best directions, for the benefit of the majority of the population. But, always aimed in the directions that affected the tempo of monetary benefits selectively to the Owners and Directors of all Productive, Transportive and Distributive undertakings! The needs and benefits for Employed Workers did NOT figure at all in these remunerations!

Theory:

Without a doubt, further progress in the intellectual developments that Mankind has pursued, is needed in order for us to survive beyond this century. Literally ever since we abandoned the Trees of the Equatorial Forests for the significant Emergence of the new open expanses typified by the unsustaining grasses, with their populations of grazing, fleet-footed animal inhabitants, along with the fierce predators that preyed upon them, so clearly having the strong effect of selecting for ever increasing speeds of the prey animals, in order to even survive! Surely, that didn’t seem at all coducive as a habitat for Human Beings! So, what was it that even gave them a chance of surviving? They were NOT fleet- of-foot: nor did they possess dangerous teeth, claws, or remarkable strength!

Those Hominids seemed hopelessly ill-equipped for the wide open Praries, and far better off remaining where there closest relatives, the Gorillas and Chimpanzees chose to remain, with the protection and relative abundence of the fast shrinking Forests... But, they didn’t do that!

So what features in the lives, suggested that the Praries were the best place for them?

They had already abandoned the trees for the Ground! For by doing so they enabled their forelimbs to become manipulators of things: and their hands evolved very differetly, into brilliant manipulators of many different things. The became bipedal, with NOT tree-grasping “hands”, but running feet! They had already found ready-made rools in the form of sticks and stones, and could maintain a naturally caused Fire, both for warmth and to scare off predators.

And these changes radically altered their ability to THINK! It was as yet still similar to how they used their brains in the Trees - but was changing fast! The new environment was greatly more challenging than it had long been in the forest: for there was literally no secure places to go to when challenged by predators. Somehow early Humans had to stand and fight and arrive at effective wasys to do that! They had to constantly think of how they would survive: and those who didn’t measure up, perished! There was a selective pressure upon them that fairly rapidly selected for the cleverest!

They found caves to use as refuges: and ever better weapons to fight with, including spears and Fire itself; and, accordingly, only the best thinkers survived, and, along with the developments in intelligence, the Humans (or, most probably, their immediate ancestors), rapidly adapted to make the best of this new environment for their survival and development. In particular, they lost most of their body-hair, and rapidly adapted sweating to further cool down their increasing temperatures - while also adapting thier legs and feet, for extended necessary running. They became ever better animals of the plains!

Now, such swift and concentrated adaptions also demanded major changes in their brains, but, most significantly, in how they solved the very different problems of Survival: for without that ability too, they could not have continued their conquest of ever new environments, which they continued to do until they were literally everywhere upon Planet Earth!

But, to assume that all these developments were based upon ideal ways of internalising the Truth of these New Situations, you would be very wrong indeed. For, there was Absolutely NO Easy Access to such “Truths”! Reality-as-is is far too multi-layered and complex for that to be directly achievable by mere Experience of it.

Indeed, all such achievements ONLY had to marginally increase the possibility of survival - and that has to include something of the Truth!

So, literally NONE of the improvements ever enabled Human Thinking to alight upon any absolute Truths at all: they were all only ever partially true, and would, every single one of them, lead to error in all attempts at analysis!

Our concept of both the Nature of Reality-as-is, AND of of our predictions from it, have so far been inadequate, as every New Area of Study only ever reveals wholly New, previously-hidden features, that, even when they are fully addressed, are STILL not by any means, the Whole Story! Indeed,these revelations prove undisputedly that the Holist View and Approach to the study and control of Reality-as-is is absolutely correct, and that from the tiniest morsel of Matter to the Infinite Universe, there will exist many, many very different Systens, Structures and Laws, which, nevertheless, naturally co-exist, and even contribute to one another: YET at each Level deliver different dominances and hence a surprising measure of temporary independance, while still via Emergences, are always capable of changing overall situations dramatically - even into what appears to be a Direct Opposite situation!

This paper is taken from the latest issue of SHAPE Journal (76):

Developments in the Human Brain

Elsewhere, recently, I have found it necessary to consider the Effect of the Emergence of Language upon Human Development and Understanding. And, in those studies, it clearly is significant just how the Patterns of Thinking seemed to change profoundly whenever a particular Form was also given a Name, and then discussed, along with other things, and in the same way as everything else. And, this was unavoidable, of course, because within Language, a Name must be totally-fixed, to thereby allow Language to both effectively and unambiguously deliver any ideas involved!

For, whereas, a Form is never once-and-for-all uniquely determined - they most certainly-and-importantly DO change, into various other and significantly different Forms as Development proceeds - Names, on the contrary, cannot do this, for a mutually understood definition must hold, in order for it to play a meaningful role within communication.

This is both mostly unacknowledged epistemologically, and highly important, as Language is our only means of Explaining Things. Such a limitation can often be wholly incorrect when applied to dynamic Forms and Systems in particular, as it is often not immediately evident, as profound Change doesn't happen most of the time, in many areas. They are then regularly used as just another normally-unchanging (constant) elements of Language, Words: and this can cause major errors in Explanations, when those Forms suddenly change into other quite different Forms, in Emergent Development. 

But today, I came across another See The Pattern video on Toutube, by the creator and presenter of that series, Gareth Samuals, in which he considers a study from a US University, in which the actual Shrinking of the Human Brain, generally, has been clearly established! 

Now, I gave been engaged for some time upon the Emergence and putting the Effect of the restrictions of Language, above those nrcessary for Human Thinking, which has seriously affected it, in both some great advantage, as well as also, other clearly disbling ways.

For, the direction that The Sciences have taken since the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC, there has been been an effort to take the Forms, along with all other elements as being totally constant, by putting the needs of the Consistent Language (in Explanation) well above the need to the development of the Forms, thus vastly distorting all supposedly Scientific Explanations, by the needs of Language over those required for Forms.

Now, in addition to the above point crucial other changes are involved. For, something about the processes involved in Thinking about Things generally, must surely have significantly changed the structures and processes involved in a major qualitative changes in the forms of wholly new features that were recently necessary that were NEVER necessary previously, and some replaced those left over from a majorly different System, no longer relevant!

It would seem that whatever changes happened (and remember they actually were NOT universally implemented) still involved a shrinking of our Brain size.

What could possibly have caused it? And did it mean a reduction in the processes necessary,  caused by   simplfied Thinking techniques!? And, if so what exactly were these changes?

We have long been aware of physical changes due to excessive exercise: but this discovery is undoubtedly significant - for it seems to link a Loss-in-Structures, coupled with a significant Gain-in -Performance!

For, if this is a rare if General Rule, it infers a very different - nay revolutionary - relation between Structure and Performance, and a significant re-writing of Development and Evolutionary Changes!

But, it shouldn't surprise us, if we are already committed to the Revelations delivered by Dialectical Materialism! For, though, most of the time, things do remain unchanged, we are beginning to address the Clear Fundamental Interludes of Significant Qualitative Changes, AND the significant Role of Contention in the creation of the Wholly New! So, it cannot be avoided that the Material World changes too - And NOT just incrementally - they also happen in the thinking abilities and even physical capabilities of organisms, which can only mean that these developments must also reflect the capability of physical Changes in those organisms too!

Thought-and-Language simply must have some physical manifestations - for, indeed revolutionary transformations in Thought cannot merely be a mere new arrangrmrnt of a totally unchanging physical entity!

For, we must remember, the relatively short lifetimes of individual people, and their only way of passing physical capabilities on being via Sexual Reproduction between different individuals, in a definitely clearly dialectical development of the production of a Single Egg (synthesis) - formed from both contributing (and contending) parents, but thereafter wholly contained within and automatically sustained by the Mother! Until finally, in a cataclysmic change termed Birth, suddenly becomes a separate and unique individual - having to breathe and feed for itself! If that isn't a Revolutionary Physical Change, I don't know what is!

And, these constant renewals, many thousands per day, alongside the inevitable terminations, ultimately, of both parents of the prior generation, SIMPLY MUST involve other major changes too, also significantly sometimes including, the creation of the Wholly New! Yet, exactly how all those changes in Thinking, physically emerge-and-modify what happens in the Brain is NOT known.

There is no developing Physical Model of the Brain: it, instead, is conceived-of, as an eminently-flexible organ, with potentially infinite capabilities - to which I must profoundly disagree! For, what could possibly have given this matter such capabilities?

You can see why a God had to be considered as The Prime Architect with these assumptions - but it has long been just a necessary Myth!

And, with the usual regular errors imposed upon all discusions of causes, due to the confusion about Names, especially when they are applied to things such as Forms, as explained earlier in this piece - so that NO meaningful conclusions are arrived at, and making regularly sound conclusions impossible to achieve, and the consequent generated problems are thereafter rarely, if ever, addressed.

Yet, surely, it must be possible, from a real understanding of how Forms do ultimately-transform, via explicable processes, into something quite different, without letting the basic rules of supposedly intelligible Language, forever lead us into the mire!

Of course, to be able to do this, one must have seriously embarked upon a dedicated journey into The Dialectics of Change, which is NOT the accepted wisdom currently, though there are increasingly many areas where that is the only worthwhile Approach.

 

Speculation!

Speculation

via

The Historical Development of Thinking in Mankind

involving 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, ended up within, perhaps, its most significant area of achievement, to ultimately be satisfied-theoretically only with... 

mere 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 is entirely Man-made, and has developed along with Mankind's changing abilities and understanding: so it could only, at any time, 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 currently 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 damning characterisation, but it is nontheless 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!

[For that could be Real Science and without such concrete proof the theoretical ideas are certainly not established]

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 workarounds!

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" valid cases under that "Natural Law".

It isn't Correct!

For, I have been an exceptionally-able mathematician, literally 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 essential Scientific means of confirming Theory is totally unavailable in Cosmology. 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! 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 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 short essay does not convince you of the truth of these ideas, may I recommend a thorough study of Current Cosmology, 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? Certainly not!

There are alternatives, however!

In 1970 Hannes Alfvén 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!

Play

Play and its role in learning

I have been watching a BBC TV documentary about the role of Play on animal learning (especially in the young). The general conclusion was that Play was more important than it is usually given credit for.

But, any analysis of such things must start from a sound basis - one which must necessarily address a great deal more than the accumulation of just everyday knowledge and skills.

Indeed, to really get at the processes involved, it cannot be purely an aggregating mechanism, but also, in some way, informatively address unavoidable crises, and even the Emergences of the Wholly New.

Now, useful contributions can be made without such a stance, but it will never address the significant Qualitative Changes that are the essential ingredients in real Development - or The Evolution of Undertsanding, rather then the aggregation of Knowledge only.

So, though many of the points made were of some value, they could not address the more important questions.

Let us look once again at the Play of young animals in their early years, but let us consider it in terms of the diverse capabilities endowed to the animal in question by its Quantitaive Evolution!

For embedded in the baby animal, from birth, is a complex system of bones and muscles capable of a significant number of movements and abilities passed on to it by it Evolution over, perhaps, millions of years. The potential for what that animal could do, is already built into its form, and certainly NOT due to its actions and experience.

So, what is the primary role of Play?

It is to reveal to the individual the built-in potential of its inherited form, but as a form of pleasure and fun, rather than mere functional exercise - to encourage them to do it all the time. Part of that inheritance will be the endorphins and pleasurable emanations also released by such new movements.

It is a process of already available discoveries of the young animal's built-on potential, BUT, it is not how they discover the wholly New.

And it is not how Evolution takes place!

In the most advanced animals, like us, it is NOT how they qualitatively change their understanding of things! That is a very different process which has been termed Emergence, and must never be confused with the incremental accumulation of Knowledge, which ultimately just recreates what is already knowable.

Indeed a valid alternative word for what an Emergence reveals is that it delivers a Revolution: and such can be both in their Living Processes and in their Thinking. But in the latter it is NOT merely New Knowledge!

And, it is never merely an addition in either sphere: it is always cataclysmic and destructive. For it to occur, elements of what went before, first get challenged, in a series of usually overcome Crises, but ultimately do deliver the Emergence, where these have to finally cause an overall Collapse of the Old System, in what seems to be a debilitating Dissociation, but in so-doing it also dismantles the self-maintaining features of the past stability, and thereby enables a natural construction of a wholly New System.

This is always totally unpredictable from the prior seemingly permanent Stability.

And, if you dont believe it.....What was the Origin of Life, and the much latter Appearence of Consciousness? What was the Neolithic Revolution, when Mankind, after hundreds of thousands of years, switched from being Hunter/Gatherers to Farmers and Domesticators of Food Animals?

Also what were the English, American, French and Russian Social Revolutoons?

And why is all of this not a part of the Thinking of Mankind?

It is due to one of these Revolutions that took place 2,500 years ago in Ancient Greece - The First Intellectual Revolution, where the breakthrough was to assume the fixety of all fundamental categories, Names and even Concepts, by the universal adoption of The Principle of Plurality. For this excluded Qualitative Changes from Mathematics, Reasoning and even Science, where it still rules to this day!

The interesting thing about Play is that it limits what has to be passed in via genetic Materials, for in many animals and all plants literally everything that is needed is passed on in genetic material, but when Play is passed on, it both reveals the potentiality of bodily capabilities and also teaches the young animal how to use them in different ways - its more flexible.

There is NO training in flying insects how to fly, it is genetically transmitted: but in Humans Beings and many higher animals the transmission of playing, and parental care is far more efficient, if longer to acquire. Needless to sat Humans have an exceedingly long Childhood, while certain seabirds, for example, "fly" and swim straight from the nest, and are effectively "on their own" within weeks!

Evolution has equipped the higher animals in very different ways via actual Emergences, though they have never been clearly evident until Darwin and Wallace's revelation of Natural Selection, though even they didn't fully understand exactly how these radical developments occurred - they just discovered that they had happened.

The philosophical Revolution that began to tackle Qualitative Change did in fact begin seriously in the early 19th century, via the criticisms of Formal Logic by the German Idealist Philosopher Hegel, but he only applied his Dialectics to Human Thinking, and the task of applying it effectively across the board, and particularly in Science has only begun to make inroads there in the 21st century, with the recent successful attack upon the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

Now, there is still an enormous amount yet to be addressed, but Qualitative Change occurs in literally Everything so the current domination of Plurality in most Intellectual Disciplines, has still got a long way to go. Apart from the recent application to Sub Atomic Physics, the only extensive and indeed, at the time comprehensive prior definition and application to concrete Reality was undertaken in the Study of Capitalist Economics by Karl Marx in the 19th century, but both denounced and suppressed by an academia dominated by the pro Capitalist Ruling Class across the World, clearly because Marx's conclusion was the necessity for a Socialist Revolution...

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.

New Special Issue: Computerised Solutions

Special Issue 46

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


The Myth of the Intelligent Computer:

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

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

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

But computers cannot think...

New Special Issue: Thinking!

Special Issue 45

Exactly what thinking is has always been a problem for Homo Sapiens.

For we are clearly animals, yet seem to be very differently endowed from even our closest relatives among the Great Apes.

Yet we continue to study what we think of as “intelligence” in various non-human animals, and attempt to define what it is that separates us from them, and exactly how it could have developed in only this single species.

Indeed, we often characterise what we do as “Thinking” and picture it in a very homocentric way, as in Rodin’s famous sculpture of a man with his hand upon his chin and with head bowed. He isn’t looking at an object or doing anything physical: he is Thinking!

We like this because it doesn’t seem to fit with how all the other intelligent animals “think”. We seem to do our reasoning solely in our heads, using what we call abstractions, and we are convinced that only we can do this. There can be no doubt that it happens. But what actually is it, and what can it achieve? Indeed, the number one question has to be, “Can it actually settle upon the Real Truth?” The answer has to be “No!”