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.

The Fateful Wrong Turning

Many millennia ago, the most advanced organism upon Planet Earth collectively made a fateful decision as to how they would attempt to both grasp their given Reality, and make full use of it, in order to both further Prosper and also Develop.

It was by no means a totally incorrect decision, for it was based upon a clearly Pragmatic Premise, which at that time was both unassailable, and indeed capable of delivering a sizeable measure of success in their consequent endeavours, considering their then achieved understanding. The Premise was, in a nutshell:

If it works, it is right!

This positioned Mankind's priorities totally within what they could gain from their experience of, and consequent actions within, the World as it definitely appeared to be.

Of course, at that particular stage in their development, it could not be anything other than that, for, though, they were the most successful organism, they were still at a very primitive stage in what they could possibly be, and indeed do - so, in order to to continue to make any further progress, that approach would be the only way: and hence both the Means and the unavoidable Limiting Restriction upon what they could achieve!

It meant, primarily, that they should continually be trying new interventions, with the diverse elements of Reality, and in consequence, thereafter, only sticking-to the ones that actually-and-reliably seemed to work. But, it was never at all likely to increase their actual Understanding as to why they worked at all!

But, nevertheless, in the hands of Mankind, it very quickly promoted this fairly physically-weak species, into a privileged position, among all the other animals of Planet Earth, and the advantages that culminated in this development had actually commenced when Mankind abandoned the Trees to become a purely bipedal creature of the Ground.

Indeed, their ancestry is clear, even now, that they were members of the Great Ape Subgroup (including Gorillas and Chimpanzees), who were all highly competent, swinging about within the branches of the trees, which dramatically modified their fore limbs into Arms and Hands, and even did a similar job upon their hind limbs! They could grip onto branches with all of their limbs: but the Hands, co-ordinated with their binocular-vision eyes, could also manipulate and study things extremely well!

So, when Climate Change within their traditional areas began to clear away the extensive forests, and replace them with vast grasslands, most of Mankind had to radically alter their means of Life, and learn wholly new skills and physical natures too! There was little or no cover in the Grasslands so hiding and surprising potential prey was impossible, so even staying in contact with them, meant that Mankind, as hunters, had to become long distance runners with greater stamina than their prey species.

[This is evident, even today, with literally all the World's best Distance Runners coming from that same area in Africa]

And, that change resulted in other major changes too, as long distance hunters had often to chase and even Track their prey at a run for days so keeping cool led to losing most bodily hair, and developing sweating to reduce consequent body heat: as well as the natural skin colour being Brown for the same reasons!

Now, in another direction these Prarie-dwellers also came across Lightning-caused-Fires, that swept across the Grasslands killing the prey it overtook. And the human hunters noticed birds eating the killed-and-cooked animals, and trying it for themselves, found it delicious for them too! So, if they could transport a small fire, perhaps moved onto a flat piece of rock, then keep it supplied with further fuel, they could have their own means of cooking prey, as well as also frightening-off threatening predators from attacking them.

Now, Mankind has no enormous teeth nor big claws, so weapons had to be added to Man's means of killing Prey animals, as well as fending-off predators. They discovered Flint, a hard-but-brittle rock, which when easily shattered, was capable of delivering both sharp edges and piercing points.

So, for literally thousands of years our ancestors Knapped Flint, with increasing skill, to produce Knives, and ultimately Spears, and later Arrows (propelled by flexible wooden Bows, with strings made of animal sinews). And the Flint Knives enabled the butchering of their kills, and the extraction of skins and hides as clothing, as well as anything else they could make use of. A group of well-armed and skilful users of their weapons, were soon a formidable threat to individual animals and even small herds!

Mankind, with its simple pragmatic ideas, and effective learned means were beginning to succeed surprisingly well. And their Flint Knives became effecting tools for working Wood into desireable implements and even constructed dwellings, especially if taking advantage of naturally-occurring Rocks or even Caves.

Surprisingly early-on in the caves of Lascaux, in a valley regularly traversed by herds moving between different seasonal feeding grounds, groups of humans lived, for long periods with semi-permanent self-built Dwellings. And they drew images of their prey on the walls of their caves!

But, the Hunter/Gatherer Existence - later called Savagery - certainly had its limits, and Natural Disaster Events could easily wipe out many Family Bands, and ultimately a Social Revolution transformed many human groups, via a wholly new means of dealing with required resources. A much more static way of living, especially in conducive areas - such as adjacent to Major Rivers, and with Planted crops in protected Fields, along with prey animals also fenced-in and cared-for, for easy access.

It was the Social Revolution to Barbarian!

Significantly, though many other innovations were constantly added to Mankind's Skills and Methods including the weaving of Cloth and even winning metals from Rock Ores - the basic Pragmatist Approach didn't change, in spite of Empires being built upon Wars and the enslavement of conquered peoples, involving yet another Social Revolution!

But the complications of these new Social Forms demanded that Records be kept and written Orders required. Writing became increasingly important and regularised Speech too. The Languages of peoples had to develop along with the Social Changes:and the development of explanations and even Discussions grew very quickly among a Literate Class. Language became an alternative to "suck-it-and-see" pragmatism!

Could Solutions be found via Discussion too?

So, in the leading Civilisation of the time - The Greeks, they began the attempt to formalise the most important area of Mathematics (the Study of Number), with its extension into Geometry. And via the invention of abstract relations between the various Forms encountered, began to Rationally build a Formal System - Euclidian Geometry. And via this System of Formal Relations using Theorems and Proofs, a coherent, consistent and comprehensive Rationaliy was legitimately built.

BUT, the new rationality was only true of the relations between Forms: it was NOT true for anything else! And yet, the Greeks (and ultimately everyone else) believed that these discoveries were universally true, and applied them as a Rational Cure - to absolutely everything else!

And that was wholly illegitimate. For, all the relations revealed were Wholly Fixed - as relations between Formal Descriptions only: they would certainly have to be so, for Forms are a human invention to facilitate a reliable Naming between Fixed entities alone: while most of the relations within Reality-as-is are certainly NOT Fixed: they most definitely vary, and as such produce all actual changes.

Indeed, literally the only area where these assumptions are true, is within Mathematics, and hence in Absolutely All Equations too!

BUT, these forms are precisely what are used in The Sciences, as determining all possible circumstances, including all actually Qualitative, as well as Quantitative changes, whereas with Qualitative changes they CAN NEVER be so legitimately used. And, to undermine the whole of the usual assumptions, individual Laws (and hence their Equations) are NOT totally independent of one another,

The only way that such Laws, and their Equations can ever be used, is with very limited contexts and contents, in order to totally exclude such effects! We have assumed that such rigid restrictions, along with tightly controlled environments are merely to separate out individual Laws: but they never actually achieve such isolations, and, even at best, only limit divergences to deliver approximations to the actual relations, and never give the supposed truth!

Due to this wrong turning, Experimental Science is majorly mistaken.

The incessantly-used substitutions between different Equations in order to produce other Equations, are always wholly invalid! And the almost-entirely mathematical manipulations that are the backbone of Theory in Science are completely invalid too!

[Leonard Susskind should take note]

And, finally, the whole mathematical approach conceptually wrongly isolates simultaneously-acting Laws, as if they act wholly Singly-and-Separately, which they certainly don't! Indeed lt is only beginning to be addressed in new The Systems Approach to Science, where they influence one another in various ways, including Selective Eliminations of the rarest interlopers in the mix.

Indeed most apparent Stabilities within Reality are both temporary yet long-lasting, so give the wrong impression of being Wholly Permanent, and hence a basis for all our assumptions about "Natural Laws"!

Once again we must return to Karl Marx's Analysis of Social Revolutions, to correct this mistake. For only there, in the total turnover of many apparently Permanent Laws, are they discarded and replaced by wholly New Alternatives, in the establishment of a different and better Overall System!

 

Noam Chomsky's Philosophy

Noam Chomsky's intellectual approach (and what it lacks)

After watching the latest video from Noam Chomsky on YouTube - another wide-ranging philosophical contribution upon Human Thinking and Understanding, with its relation to our changing Conceptions of Reality - it became increasingly clear that, to him, this was NOT the development of various different attempts to both formulate accurate accounts describing that Reality, only in the common form of an increasingly competent, developed Language, but also never, as a revealing critique of its current contexts of different Social Organisations, involving ideas for its necessary improvement.

In his dealing with the relations between that Thinking, and the Reality it was attempting to describe, he only considers the internal relations and inadequacies of such Thinking, as the only possible-and-effective means of in any way addressing our world.

It was a wholly intellectual approach!

However, in spite of great historical breadth and an increasing intellectual depth, he also insisted upon what he saw as its intrinsic and sometimes unavoidable failures, as well as its seemingly built-in limitations.

But, Chomsky is neither a Scientist nor an Artisan of any kind: he only contributed conceptions concerned solely with Thinking-as-such, without involving any concrete means of, not only testing his ideas in Reality, but also, as Mankind had always done, not finding solutions in any consequent, concrete interactions within that Reality-as-is!

And, towards his conclusion, it also became clear that he was exclusively describing the imposed, if diverse, stances of various sections of the Ruling Class, as the only possible, as well as unavoidable-and-natural consequences of the processes involved, in only that developing system, over time.

He considered it as the sole engine of all development. He is clearly an Idealist!

So, in spite of his apparently "leftist" reputation, he had literally nothing-to-say about what had occurred in Socialist Thinking, throughout his extensive and detailed contribution. It, overall, reflected the dominant Liberal/Left Stance, most clearly exemplified in US politics, and, consequently-and-crucially also had absolutely nothing to say about real Social Alternatives, or amazingly, even intellectually about the major Pluralist/Holist diversions in Human Thinking within the last 2,500 years!

He was, therefore, wholly preoccupied with only what he saw to be both the only real means of progress, as well as the Natural and unavoidable limitations of that same Human Thinking: and consequently-but-inadvertantly, went on to demonstrate that very same limitation, even in his own analysis, dictated by his chosen-and-privileged ideas of intellectuals ONLY!

Noam Chomsky on Natural Law

At no point, did he ever address the Idealism and Materialism aspects of Philosophy, and, in particular, had zero to say upon the Dialectical Materialism of Karl Marx, and its role in the Major Social Revolutions of the 20th century. Nor, of course, did he trace the declines, both in historical gains, and within its own self-defeating short-comings, in the hands of its Theoretical developments and Political Organisational Forms.

Frankly, by his contribution in this event, you would think that he had given an extremely comprehensive account, but that was very far from the Truth. Indeed, the actual significant interactions of openly Marxist Parties in the active motivation of the Masses, into effective political action, including their damaged successes in the largely still-feudal countries, such as Russia and China, and their universal failures in the advanced Capitalist Countries of the West.

And, of course, absolutely NO acknowledgement of the fact that Dialectical Materialism was never ever comprehensively extended beyond the area of Capitalist Economics - including absolutely no such attempt to develop that key methodology across the whole range of Sciences, or absolutely crucially into either Philosophy or Language - so that consequently, it had nothing to say upon the reactionary developments in Sub Atomic Physics, and no absolutely essential and transforming contributions in Biology - particularly concerning the study of Evolution.

It was clear that throughout this presentation, Chomsky was NOT explaining his position to ordinary working people - for his whole approach was aimed at privileged middle class intellectuals, like himself, as the language he used totally betrayed his target audience, very clearly indeed!

And, I have myself suffered from exactly that type of deliberate exclusion - for though I have worked as a professional educator all my adult life, my paternal Grandmother could neither read nor write, and my Father (her son) was always an unskilled labourer. Throughout my successful career, I always refused to ape "my betters", and kept my Northern Working Class accent! So, I was usually treated as someone, who wouldn't understand the intricacies of Real Intellectual Argument, until I deigned to join in and prove the theses of "my self-assumed betters" wrong!

The method always employed in such Public Lectures (and Discussions) always uses the Names or Titles of Arguments, rather than explaining their actual contents, so that, unless you are constantly involved in such ideas with all of your time, you would not know what they meant, and your consequent "lack of understanding" would invariably be put down to your stupidity. And so, to terminate any possible explanations from me, the deliverer would show great surprise at one's ignorance of such essential Titles!

My own education, concentrating primarily upon Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, of course suffered from the same "Intellectualism", as I am here describing with Chomsky. But my Working Class background indelibly imprinted by my upbringing and status, always impelled me to attempt to transcend its clear limitations. Initially this broadened my interests to include, first Painting, and then Sculpture, and finally Computing - and slowly, in particular, due to the way I was treated in my chosen career. I was first a schoolteacher among my own Social Class, and then later in a Grammar School (educating the children of the Middle Class), after which I spent 10 years in a Further Education College teaching mature Working Class students how to program computers, along with the very best skill training Engineers for Local Industries.

I finally, after many rejections, I got a post in Higher Education, but it was only possible by attempting to get such a post abroad. I got a job in a Polytechnic in Hong Kong, where I was soon promoted to Senior Lecturer. And returning home to the UK on completion of my contract, I got a similar post in Glasgow in Scotland, where within 2 years, I was promoted to Principle Lecturer.

I decided to terminate my teaching, and concentrated instead solely upon devising and producing tailor-made Computer Software aids for researchers across the whole range of disciplines, which significantly adjusted my conceptions of Theory: as I had to help deliver exactly what my Discipline Expert Required!

And during the 1980s, many important Programmes and published research Papers were produced.

Finally, in a Director of Computing role, first in Bedford and finally in London University, I worked with an exceptional teacher of Dance Performance and Choreography, to deliver the Control and Flexibility she required, in using recorded footage of exemplar performances, that was subsequently used all over the world.

This career was sadly terminated early due to ill health, but working entirely from home I continued producing original research and software tools, and when this became impossible due to my failing eyesight, I worked with my son, Michael, who by then was a PhD, and a lecturer in Leeds University, to attempt to tackle the inadequacies of Intellectualism in Philosophy!

SHAPE Journal was my attempt to tackle Philosophy differently... 

This undertaking has taken me 14 years, 12 of these publishing over 150 issues of SHAPE Journal and this blog, involving over 1,000 separate papers. The initial project was to tackle the mess descended into within Modern Sub Atomic Physics, particularly addressing the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and the Modern Version of Cosmology, arising from the Copenhagen Stance. And latterly an extension of Dialectical Materialism in dealing with Modern Science...

Now, I will not even try, at this stage, to "correct" Chomsky's claims on the impossibility of explaining Effective Causal Explanations, which is the universal cornerstone of all his diverse arguments about the Impossibility of Real Understanding - because, in his particular restricted presentation of that problem, he was correct! 

But, in spite of his seemingly comprehensive arguments, he omitted (or more likely was totally unaware of) the effect of the alternative to his universally Pluralistic intellectual stance, in all the means that he referred to in his otherwise comprehensive treatment. And that was because, ever since the Greek Intellectual Revolution, almost 2,500 years ago, the only way literally ANY consistent and effective Rationality was considered possible, was by limiting the experiences involved to solely pluralist situations - which did NOT allow any real Qualitative changes, and, hence, would, if rigorously implemented, profoundly limit all relations to fixed exclusively quantitative Laws, so the Rationality involved could never ever explain the real Essence of an Evolving Reality, which is therefore definitely limited to both Constant Laws, and only episodic, and always inexplicable Qualitative Changes - NEVER involving significantly any reasons for those changes.

And, to ever address explicitly such changes, situations would have to be Holistic - as was defined at the same time as the Greek Intellectual Revolution, but wholly separately, by The Buddha, many thousands of miles away in India!

Now, neither subsequent Western Plurality nor Eastern Holism, ever dealt comprehensively-and-explicably with a qualitatively developing World, and Mankind's uses of their consequent ideas to understand Actual Development does not yet exist!

For, Reality does not conform completely, with either of these simplifications of it, mainly because, in both cases, the occurrence of the many, clearly obvious Stabilities, were never understood correctly!

Plurality, in fact, made Stability the basis of Everything! Whereas Holism failed to understand their persisting occurrences, completely, making Constant Change its credo! And Mankind, for a very long period indeed, could countenance no other method, when relying exclusively upon a Single Conformity occurring straight-through all possibilities.

The idea of an actually-existing Hierarchy of different Rationalities, at different Levels, as well as the actual causal connections occurring between those apparently independent Levels, were for a long period, totally outside of any such considered possibilities - until thinkers like Karl Marx and Charles Darwin began to reveal irrefutable evidence of such important natural transitions, simultaneously with innumerable contradictory components, strongly keeping situations as they were over long periods of time!

How can you even approach these questions without reference to Marx and Darwin?

Indeed, Contradiction was considered an absolute anathema!

And until Contradiction was properly understood (outside of the formalisms of Logic), such changes would certainly remain wholly inexplicable - and so they are inexplicable to Chomsky! In the universally-applied Mathematical Rationality, all Contradiction was dismissed as impossible, and therefore revealing an error of Logic! And, it wasn't until Mankind's breadth of Study was extended well beyond the Strictly Local, in both Time and Space, that such things could no longer be avoided.

Nevertheless, most "theorists" had developed their theories separated from the Real World, and instead as a wholly cerebral exercise, and so could never personally implement any of their then necessary experiments, so to even carry them out they had to employ skilled artisans and engineers, to achieve behaving systems for them.Yet, their both avid and universal subscription to the Principle of Plurality, could not be lightly dumped, as it did successfully "legitimise" the reliable Production of manufactured goods, both solved-and-delivered by those artisans and workers, and especially for the leisured intellectuals, who were never involved successfully in such activities anyway, and so didn't consider whether they were legitimate or not - but only that they delivered the objects and services that they required.

Yet, an ever-growing army of artisans and engineers, whose credo pragmatic credo was "If it works, it is right!", were increasingly rejecting the intellectual, theoretical stances of the scientists, and, in particular, the incredible-but-necessary theoretical assumptions of Modern Sub Atomic Theory, and always instead trusted their own Pragmatic arrangements and understandings, at which they were the consummate masters, and were always relied upon by those theorists, to make their experiments fit their way-out theories!

You may well wonder how this arrangement ever worked out, until, that is, you see the kind of Mathematics that the theorists always resorted to, to make it fit. For that Discipline, being wholly Pluralistic, naturally extended well beyond Reality-as-is, and well-into Ideality, so when the technicians were setting up the required experiment, they too could do the Maths, so they would physically organise the experiment to artificially deliver exactly what the Pluralist Theory predicted!

It was an unhappy coalition, as far as the pragmatists were concerned, and they increasingly began to look elsewhere for Real Theory. This situation has led, in Physics, to what is termed The Electric Universe alternative! And while this alternative was compromised by its Pragmatism, it has certainly challenged the conformist position in both Sub Atomic Physics and Cosmology, with valuable and demanding alternatives!

You can read more about the pros and cons of this in the latest issue of SHAPE journal:

Special Issue 68: Redefining Philosophy

Read the latest issue of the SHAPE Journal

Redefining Philosophy? 

You would think after two and a half millennia that a Universally-Agreed-Basis for Philosophy would by now be well established, but that is not only far from being the case, it is also inevitably so!

So, let us reveal the unavoidable trajectory of Mankind’s Intellectual Development into a real perspective. Rational Thinking of any developable kind is at most 2,500 years old, in an overall hominid historical Trajectory of several million years. Man began to try to think rationally in the last 0.0005% of that time, leaving 99.9995% when they didn’t, and indeed couldn’t think rationally at all.

And, of course, the actually-occurring tempos of that development have certainly not been embodied in a constant upwards climb: for sometimes progress was at zero for long periods. Sometimes things went backwards.

For 2,300 years after the Greek Intellectual Revolution it was fatally damaged by an assumption that few philosphers recognise - the hidden assumption of Plurality. This assumed that all relations, properties and Laws are fixed qualitatively and separable from one another.

Only in the early 19th century did Hegel, the German Idealist Philosopher, attempt for the first time to integrate Qualitative Change into General Reasoning.

But even that was not universally accepted.

Indeed, it couldn’t be, whilever Philosophy remained idealist: for the solution could not come from Thinking itself, but in the our understanding of Concrete Reality. Only with the extension and vast further development of those ideas, which Hegel termed as Dialectics, was the possibility of a breakthrough even possible.

And, when it was attempted by Marx in the limited area of Capitalist Economics, it took him the rest of his life to address that single discipline, And in doing so, he was developing the stance as much as applying it.

Qualitative development was in everything, and every significant area of study, such as Science, would have to not only receive the same sort of attention as Economics, but would also be as much another voyage of discovery, very much more complex and unknown than Economics had been for Marx.

And in the the 140 years since Marx’s death, this task wasn’r even attempted. It has taken this Theorist and Philosopher over 10 years to lay the most basic of foundations.

But they have been remarkable!

To even begin the process, a wholly new approach had to be researched which produced the wholly new. For all Qualitative Change must produce the wholly new.

In all reasoning previously established using Fixed Laws and Pluralist Logic, the rationality involved, when it could be used, produced actual results - and the same ones every time it was used, and whoever used it! But Qualitative Changes are Dialectical, produced in what used to be seen as impossible developments, for which they were termed Emergences.

To grasp what an Emergence actually is, we must compare it to one of the previous pluralistic Laws, all of which have predictable outcomes.

The outcome from an Emergence, on the other hand, is NEVER predictable prior to its commencement, Indeed, you have to be an exceptional Dialectician to even predict the next phase of such a transformation, and only when the final result is imminent, can the culmination of a completed Emergence be guessed at.

So clearly the revolution in Premises and Bases required here will be very different from the prior Pluralist Methods.

The classical Qualitative changes involved in an Emergence start with a Stability, the destruction of which originally appears to be totally impossible, but which is then threatened by a whole series of crises, which usually, but ultimately, would cascade down into a total dissolution of the Stability, towards what seemed to be impending doom, but could, and often did, begin via series of crises attempt to build towards a new, and finally achieved self-sustaining Stability!

The new philosophical approach would have to reflect all of that too, in order to deliver an understanding of Real Development.

Theory and Practice

Which one delivers the Path to Truth? A serious attempt at an answer!

Science presents Mankind with an amazingly stimulating promise.

But, are we really aware of exactly what that promise is, and where it resides in our thinking and our actions?

Such questions must be adequately addressed, in order to affect just how much of that promise is fulfilled. And, it is the early history of Homo Sapiens that can remove a few of the more blatant errors, in dealing with such questions, but certainly by no means all of them.

For, the vast majority if Man's existence as a separate species, there was absolutely nothing that could be called Science, but there were developments in how Mankind managed to survive, and even occasionally, to prosper! So, what were these developments, and how did Mankind arrive at them, and then, begin to think about them?

The only real evidence, for the majority of that time, resides in the varying cultures that have been uncovered, concerning the knapping of their flint tools, which can be sequenced by where they occur in layers left in the ground beneath our feet, and so still investigatable now, as sequences in the deposits accumulated in the ground. The other vital evidence, from such deposits, is to how far human beings migrated over time, and how long such wanderings took.

Now, in spite of the evidently incredibly slow rate of development revealed by these deposits, they do reveal a dextrous and intelligent life-form, but not yet equipped with the intellectual wherewithal to transcend that initial hard and limiting lifestyle.

Yet, all of these revealed cases are about exactly-the-same-species as we are now! There have been no significant genetic developments of our species since that time, so any progress absolutely must be due entirely to new social reasons.

Most of our development as a species regarded practice

The vast changes in the tempo of development, over the whole trajectory of our species, seem, initially, to be wholly inexplicable. But, really, it actually demonstrates the colossal differences within such developments, revealing seemingly impossible impasses in mind processes, which along with inappropriate Means of Life, could, and clearly did, lock our species (as with all others) into a literally almost-stationary mode for colossal periods of time, even though as later developments show very clearly, what was needed was actually there for the beginning, but was inaccessible until a particular "vital social point" was surpassed, after which, things took off like a veritable rocket!

Put into modern Dialectical Materialist terminology - an Emergent Episode or Revolution occurred.

The crucial question is then to explain why such an extraordinary Event did finally happen and changed things for good. The Transforming Event was that instead of constant wandering, as small family groups, seeking the means of Life as Hunter/Gatherers, Mankind discovered how to farm-the-land, and domesticate-animals for food, milk, clothing and even transport! They could then stay in one place in significantly larger numbers - and pool what they knew and what they found out. Language then developed at a rapid rate, and instead of a re-cycling of remembered family myths, they daily encountered different ideas and discussed with many more different people.

It was this Neolithic Revolution that vastly accelerated the tempo of developments.

Now, throughout the long Hunter/Gatherer period, developments had been occurring, but at a very slow rate, and they were all essentially concerned with Practice. The development of flint knapping Cultures identify that the developments were mainly centred around the wonderfully dextrous Hands of human beings. Indeed, though my earlier description was limited to Homo sapiens, it had also been true of earlier, non-human hominids, over literally millions of years, significantly ever since Homo Erectus, when our ancestors freed The Hands from being used primarily for locomotion, to be used, instead, in a variety of new ways. And significantly by Homo Habilis, who first began to use tools, significantly out of flint shards.

It is clear that this vast prehistory, prior to human beings, did indeed change the capabilities of the Hominid brain, but not yet to actually Think, as we do now. It was, initially, used in arriving at the best methods of surviving and manipulating our immediate environment, judged solely by Pragmatism- "If it works, it is right!", and thereafter remembering them. And, with a woefully inadequate language, even that was no mean feat.

Indeed, physical rituals were by far the best means of embodying such methods in memory, and, later, also involving chants. But, language was still, for most of this development, wholly inadequate to the task, and do-as-I-do demonstrations were far more effective.

Indeed, to this day, this pragmatist tenet - "If it works, it is right!", still plays a vital role, even in Sub Atomic Physics!

Indeed, intellectual pursuits are comparatively modern, dating only from 500 BC, with the intellectual achievements of the Ancient Greeks. They say, "The Greeks had a word for it!", but, they had to allocate them to the many wholly new intellectual ideas that were beginning to be used and argued about.

And, here's the rub!

They, and everyone ever since, didn't get-it-right. Indeed, how could we, for we aren't all-seeing and omnipotent? Indeed, to use the language of Science, what is called Absolute Truth is NEVER known, nor can it be. For, look who is attempting to describe things - we only invented the first approximations to many things a mere 2,500 years ago!

So, what is it that we name, argue about and use? It is at best a partial reflection or aspect of the Truth, that is termed Objective Content!

But, this attempt isn't pure invention: it often contains enough to be useful, but always in limited contexts. So, as we extend our studies, we will always stray beyond the locality, in which our Objective Content pertains.

Very soon after the inital Greek Intellectual Revolution, Zeno of Elea was able to list a whole set of cases in his Paradoxes, wherein the uses of the concepts Continuity and Descreteness inevitably led to logical contradictions. So, these concepts did NOT exist as everyone used them.

They were OK in certain uses and arguments, but not in others. Significantly Zeno had chosen the very area - Movement, wherein the usual meanings were inadequate and often WRONG! Yet, any sort of general treatment of such Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, was not re-visited for 2,300 years, when the German idealist philosopher Hegel was able to identify many different cases, over a wide range of circumstances, and also, and profoundly, identify the cause of incorrect use in the inadequacies of Formal Logic, which took NO account, whatsoever, of Qualitative Changes: it dealt only with things that qualitatively remained-the-same.

It is a wholly Pluralist discipline!

He then embarked, as well, upon a study of the premises for such concepts. and was able to prove his case by removing unbridgeable impasses in reasoning by correcting the premises of the involved concepts. But, he also knew that Formal Logic also had to be radically changed to include Qualitative Change - he sought A Science of Logic.

But, of course, that is an impossible aim for an idealist!

To validate the meaning and premises of anything needs a reliable, objective basis for confirming any ideas, and that can never be a mere consistency within a set of man-made ideas and their rules of relation! It can only be within Concrete Reality. For, only there can improvable Objective Content about anything be both tested and improved.

To limit criticism only to the meaning of words omits the Real World as final arbiter - for example, it does not depart from an idealist stance: that is all that Hegel could do in finding a "new way", but it still needed Marx, to insist upon a switch to a materialist basis, for the problems generated to really have any chance of being addressed.

Now, the underlying Pragmatism, which has played such a major role in Thinking throughout Mankind's History, has always emphasised Practice as the most fundamental of the joint integration of Theory and Practice, but that very History proves such a decision to be wholly mistaken.

For most of that time, Practice alone was present, and development was, therefore, doomed to proceed at a snail's pace over enormous periods of time, as the objective was merely to do again what you had successfully done before!

Indeed, it is only in what is termed Theory, that we attempt, not only to describe phenomena, but also to crucially begin to explain them too. And, perhaps surprisingly, such Theory does not have to be 100% correct to enable real progress: it only has to contain more Objective Content than was available previously.

Practice without Theory is embodied in 100,000 years of flint cultures, achieved by Homo sapiens (modern humans): they were NOT pre-human hominids - they were identical to us biologically, but they had not developed any theory.

So the Emergence of Theory was truly revolutionary!

How else can the Neolithic Revolution be understood?

Why should what had been happening all around them throughout that prior period, would then begin to be controlled by Man, and the revealed means spread like a wildfire throughout Mankind.

Theory was a new process, infinitely superior to even perfected-but-unexplained Practice.

And, it did NOT require Absolute Truth to be an adequate engine of Progress. It did, however, require Objective Content - parts or aspects of the Truth, which reached beyond a particular phenomenon to deliver a more general applicability. Indeed, such "truths" would, nevertheless, inevitably lead, in time, to seemingly untraversable impasses - yet they could, and indeed would, be transcended.

For Theory was not only about Concrete Reality itself, but could also be reflexibly applied to itself!

It isn't a mechanistic method: absolutely everything comes within its aegis!

The process is not only one-way.

The greater generality of Theory enables it to extend understanding, and even direct further Practice to proving its applicability in new areas. And its generality presses users of it to ask "Why?", in addition to only "How?"

Theory is never "absolutely correct", but it constitutes the only path to Truth.

Special Issue 60: A New Basis

Special Issue 60

The End of Copenhagen & A Wholly New Basis

The current major crisis in Sub Atomic Physics is actually the clearest evidence of a much larger, and, therefore, more general set of definitely terminal dead-ends, in literally all intellectual disciplines, and primarily resident in both the philosophic and scientific underpinnings of them all.

Indeed, an apt metaphor, for the current state of Understanding, has to be that it is like a finally totally stunted-and-dying Bush, with every single, finally- produced twig permanently terminated by a seemingly totally, non-transcend-able impasse.

Apt because it is now an entity with absolutely nowhere to go, with literally everyone switching from twig to twig looking for a way out, but always finding none!

So, both the depth of the crises involved, and the fact that the producing-situation has been in place for some 2,500 years, without any significant improvement across the vast majority of the human population, also attests to the difficulties involved in making any sort of necessary and transforming change, which could even begin to address the almost endless impasses now terminating ALL attempts at real understanding.

It doesn’t mean, of course, that there are none. Just none on this bush (in this situation): the problems were set- in-place much too long ago, on a long-passed initial twig, which has now become the supporting trunk of the resulting thicket of dead-ends!

Yet, such a devastating opening to this paper was, I’m afraid, absolutely essential, for what is required is no mere Change-of-Course, but a truly Revolutionary Transfer to an entirely different tree, currently depended-upon by no-one, but nevertheless in sight, and available, if the leap across can be effected.

Don’t get me wrong! There will be some branches, upon the dying bush, that could be effectively transferred by grafting it onto the new Stock, but all their terminations will have to be savagely pruned, and the saveable graft properly cleaved-in and wedded to the new vigorous stock.

So, let us systematically reveal the diseases involved in arriving at this dire state, which were, surprisingly, initially significant advantages, but which gradually became liabilities, as the overall entity grew significantly in size and scope.

Indeed, all of them will be shown to have the same sort of disadvantages, actually never having the more-general- applicability, with which we mistakenly endowed them, and hence becoming increasingly debilitating features.

It has been a difficult trajectory, and really nothing like our usual assumption of a simple aggregation of ever more “understanding”, ultimately destined to explain absolutely everything.

For, definitely no-such-mechanism even existed prior to the first appearance of Mankind. Thinking, as such, was a human social invention, initially pragmatically assembled, via various arrived-at-means that “seemed to work”, but were always, at best, only pragmatic solutions, in particular contexts, and never ever general truths. Indeed, they couldn’t possibly be anything else!

In the several million years of the hominid line, and, of that, the only 200,000 years of Homo sapiens (humans), Philosophical thinking only really started around 2,500 years ago. And, for almost all of that prior history the Pragmatist tenet - “If it works, it is right!” was all we had.

So, the following series of papers has had to attempt to describe that trajectory of development in a very different way - NOT as some systematic erection, but instead as a series of always insufficient attempts, all of which, at crucial points, had to drastically rebuild its foundations in order to proceed further. As V, Gordon Childe always insisted - Man makes himself!

The “available alternative bush” mentioned earlier has to deal with dynamic reality, based upon Hegel’s Dialectics, but radically altered from a system which was limited to Human Thinking, to one transferred wholesale to a materialist basis, and hence applicable to all of concrete Reality too.

The project will reveal its efficacy (and its inadequacies) in its application to Sub Atomic Physics.

Issue 49: The Tree Metaphor - Modelling Human Knowledge

Read issue

This issue looks at various analogies for the evolution of human knowledge, and how they might reveal where we have gone wrong.

Can we establish a sound metaphor for how we usually establish Human Knowledge - a Model or Pattern for how we do it now, and maybe how we should do it in the future?

The purpose of such an idea is that it delivers an overt Model for how we have done it, heretofore, which, at the same time, gives us a basic framework, to enable us to both criticise and improve upon it, independently of the content that we pack into it. Put in another way, we are attempting to make clear the philosophical bases for this vital process, which are, usually, not only implicit and undeclared, but also rarely even questioned.

The Imperatives & Trajectory of Writing

A Muse by Scientist and Philosopher 

Jim Schofield

Having been a full-time writer, initially, of directed academic papers, and, thereafter, individual essays, for a developing period of almost nine years now, I am, in retrospect, interested in the unplanned trajectory that I have been directed upon by that experience.

Initially, my topics were extremely varied, not only coming from my later career in Further and Higher Education - as a Lecturer and Researcher in Computing, but also from many, much earlier phases, when I was involved in teaching Physics, Mathematics, Biology, Music and even Revolutionary Politics.

Though, I occasionally also wrote upon Art, it was as a practicing Sculptor that I put in the hours there, and though I did write extensively for a time, on Music, it was as a rather incompetent performer, and perhaps a somewhat better analyst, that I spent my time in that area.

Writing was an intellectual activity, and initially, was limited by my own current inadequate knowledge, though I always found that I had something to say upon the latest News, and upon articles in Scientific Magazines, the results initially were invariably just critical one-offs.

But, being aware of those inadequacies, I resolved to attempt to overcome them, and read a great deal to that end. And, crucially, as a life-long teacher, what gains I made for myself, I wrote up as if I was teaching a class - so my style was never very literary - with the none of the usual abundance of quotes, references and examples of relevant experience.

I saw writing as teaching, and delivered accordingly, as if I was there in front of a class (though I had to imagine for myself any puzzled expressions and probable consequent questions).

I invariably got an inordinate number of criticisms from "professionals", who felt it necessary to dismiss my "style", punctuation and incorrect language, as betraying clear unprofessional inadequacies. But, as a highly successful teacher for over 40 years, I felt that I knew better.

I was never attempting to earn a place in Academia, but merely to teach what I had learned.

Now, as a qualified computer expert, I had managed to land my perfect job - helping Higher Education researchers (across the whole range of disciplines), by both devising and delivering computer programs to help them with their work.

I wrote tailor-made and usually completely original software aids for research in disciplines as widely different as Engineering, Taxonomy, Control of complex testing and analysis machines, Nursing Care Plans, Mathematical Chaos, and I finally won a British Interactive Video Award, for The Dance Disc - a multimedia aid for the teaching of Dance Performance (all of these were, of course, only achieved along with top experts in the discipline-field involved).

The language I used, when talking with my co-workers, was exactly how I wrote, and, it always seemed to work very well.

What I am keen to communicate here, is how my writing changed over the years.

From the outset of the current, writing-only phase, I worked 7 days-a-week, 12 months-a-year for a minimum of 4 hours a day ( and often a lot more), and quickly reached the level of output of a "Paper-a-Day". I began to fill 80 page display books with printed versions of my work, which rapidly grew to over 150 volumes, at which point, I switched to much more capacious A4-size polythene boxes.

A current estimate of my writing is around 6 million words, and after only a couple of years into this phase, I (with the help of my son, Michael Schofield) had set up three dedicated websites, where my work was published.

The most important site was SHAPE Journal, which, by October 2016, had published 91 Issues, each containing around 6-10 original papers. It didn't take long for us to, in addition, publish what we called Specials, which were originally conceived as SHAPE Issues dedicated to a single theme.

Now, from the very beginning of this endeavour, I had been losing my sight: so changes to my writing facilities were regularly necessary.

Initially, I wrote on paper with a pen, but soon had to switch to a more readable fibre-tip marker, and enlarge my manuscripts. The second stage was always to type from the MSS into my computer, but, then, the text on screen became too small to see, so a bigger screen became a regular update. And latterly, I couldn't even read my own manuscripts, so I switched to direct-typing-in, using a truly mammoth screen.

Another development in method was also derived from teaching, for I frequently changed course within a lesson, as a response to evident problems and questions - and, following an unresolved question, I even made sure I had cracked it by the next lesson.

So, when writing, I had to be my own sternest critic, particularly during a reading of what I had just produced, so necessary additions were then carried out, and inserted within the prior text. Many times, it was incomplete premises, assumptions, or prior ideas that were mistaken or even missing, so resolving these, produced Prefaces and Introductions, and topics often stretched into series of related papers. 

Perhaps the most important development was the Necessary-Interruption-Technique - where I realised the need for a necessary area of work. So, I immediately suspended the current writing, and diverted to researching the as yet unresolved question that was required, before I could complete the prior paper. But, most directly-available information was rarely an Explanation, so I regularly had to sit down and think it through for myself.

Brief notes helped guide my later writing, but clearly the Thinking Sessions were becoming more and more vital. The gathering of mere Knowledge was clearly insufficient!

In the present World Knowledge has, indeed, become the main objective, but that is surely NOT the main purpose of Education: that is now, and always has been, the Understanding of phenomena.

In addition to "How?", we have also know "Why?"

Instead of the mere dissemination of prior Knowledge, the emphasis changed markedly to explaining why things behaved as they did, and my writing became Original Theoretical Research.

As a qualified physicist, I tackled the infamous Double Slit Experiments, in Sub Atomic Physics, and managed to arrive at a comprehensive Explanatory Theory, at variance with the now consensus Copenhagen Interpretation.

In research into the work of the philosopher GWF Hegel, and his famous student Karl Marx, I finally arrived at an original Theory of Emergences.

And, elsewhere, also managed enhancements to Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, as well as significant improvements in Stanley Miller's famous Primeval Atmosphere Emulation Experiment, which had naturally generated the absolutely vital amino acids in less than a week.

Having had a very wide experience over a long career, I was able to not only write, but also make original contributions across a range of disciplines, and despite my increasing blindness (I have advanced Macular Degeneration), I have accelerated my rate of production considerably.

In the coming Summer (2017) we will celebrate with the 100th Issue of the SHAPE Journal online, which will be a Special - composed entirely of the Illustrations, Montages, Diagrams, Graphic Art and even YouTube videos - all selected or created by my son and colleague, Michael Schofield, who is currently studying for his Ph.D. in Photography at Leeds University, England.

It will be quite an issue!