Issue 77: The Systems Theory of Everything Part II

 

Issue 77 of SHAPE Journal

Issue 77 contains the second instalment of The Systems Theory of Everything.

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

The series continues with a closer look at Buddha, Marx, Hegel and Zeno for clues on how to develop Systems Theory.

Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Real Messy Development
Top-Down or Bottom-Up?

Reality-as-becoming:
The Two-Way Street of Real Full Causality

Beyond Zeno and Hegel:
The Profound Significance of Contention

The Buddha and Quantum Theory

A Comprehensive Holist Approach:
How can we effectively deal with Levels?

Systems Contentions

Systems-based Marxism

Equations: Why they lead us to nothing...

Entering the Multi-Level Cosmos

Process, Context and Recursion II

Pas de Deux (1968) Norman McLaren

BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND MOVEMENT AND CHANGE

Carrying on from the prior papers in this series, I will further establish the System Nature of a Holistic Science, as applied to the Study of Creative Dance Performance and Choreography. The last 30 years of Research in this area, has also, surprisingly, enabled me to make this contribution, both there, and for Holistic Science in General!

I, of course, did the majority of this work in tandem with another researcher, the excellent Dr. Jacqueline Smith-Autard (Jackie), perhaps the leading expert in such studies in the World. She was the dance education specialist in the relationship, so please forgive my total concentration upon the Philosophical, Scientific and Computing questions involved, based upon a long professional life in these areas, mostly in Higher Education. 

Crucially, this research into Dance, and the difficulties of analysing movement using video, led me to fully appreciate the philosophical importance of Zeno of Elea, beyond his paradoxes of movement (the dialectic of continuity and discreetness) and to the importance of the Whole and the Part - and a fundamental critique of all Reductionism. 

I terminated, the immediately prior paper undoubtedly somewhat prematurely, in the midst of beginning to establish a wholly new Holistic Approach to the Sciences, certainly only now made possible by the extensive work with Jackie in Dance Research. But also, very clearly, this was too important a contribution to be tacked on to the end of what was really only a Basic Introduction, to a turn to a major new topic, so it was clear that a dedicated separate paper would be necessary to initiate such a Major Undertaking!

But, I feel that I must also make clear, that I had spent many years aiding researchers with computer solutions, in a whole wide range of Disciplines, from Physics and Engineering to Biology, before I was enchanted by Jackie's unique requirements for Dance. My own original areas, from where I started these kinds of interdisciplinary studies, were in my original specialisms of Physics and Mathematics, terminating finally in Higher Education in a major change to both Developing Operating Systems, and ultimately Directing Computer Services in two Colleges - latterly one that was part of London University (Goldsmiths).

In an earlier Higher Education post, I had established a unique Supporting Service for Researchers across many different Disciplines in a Scottish University, and had soon been forced to go well beyond the Total Plurality of my core Subjects, in order to solve a whole new range of problems that they were encountering. The complete abandonment of actually Explaining Qualitative Changes, which dominated literally all Current Research, forced me to daily address the often terminating anomalies within most Disciplines, and attempt a consequent General Turn to Holism!

And, as I was finally realising, towards the end of that prior paper, the Determining Systemic Nature of Holism, would have to be comprehensively established as an essential prerequisite to any attempt at a Real Developable Analysis of Change, which undoubtedly require an Epoch-Making shift in literally all current research methods. The usually assumed Total Independence of Single Natural Laws, was clearly untrue, and the usual way of eliminating those effects - by severely restricting the Scope of Investigative Experiments, merely threw all these crucial effects away, which involved the assuming of greatly more complex situations, that could be achieved by the mere summation of Eternally Fixed Laws.

They never can!

And, in addition, the Pluralists believed that the Laws found by their methods were exactly the same when multiples of such Laws were acting simultaneously.

That also isn't true!

Simultaneously-acting Laws always adjust one another to greater or lesser degrees, in ways that wholly Pluralist Methods will never Reveal. So these Holistic mechanisms have to be clearly revealed: thereafter determining exactly HOW production should be both implemented and controlled.

Or, alternatively, were there any naturally-occurring Stabilities, very different to those that occur in manmade Pluralistic Experiments, that actually are part of literally all Holistic Situations, and could be effectively and soundly used, as part of a more complex on-going System? The answer turned out to be "Yes!".

But, it was discovered by the historian Karl Marx, in a very different area, well-hidden within the Key Explosive and Emergent Happenings within every successful Social Revolution. For, such cataclysmic Events were considered "un-analysable", until Marx revealed that they were perhaps the only periods of substantial change, anywhere in Reality-as-is, that took place at a tempo that Humans could possibly apprehend and understand - primarily because, there alone, the Processes of History were entirely brought about by the actions of Human Beings themselves! Marx was not able to explain the apparent Stability of those slower processes of History, which for very long periods appeared to be steadfastly Stable and Unchanging. But, within a Revolution, the Maintainers of Stability totally collapse, and concerted actions by motivated groups of ordinary people, COULD bring about Significant Systemic Change!

However, in passing, such Events also revealed the seemingly permanent Stabilities all around, which resolutely maintain the Status Quo, for often vast periods of time, but, in fact, though strongly maintained as such, were happening in a Holist World, and could therefore, in the end, certainly be terminated.

These long-existing, self-maintaining Interludes, were clearly what we are looking for, being wholly naturally established and then maintained, but, nevertheless, only as Temporary Stabilities, possibly delivering Real interludes of Stability, via which a means of Holistic Rationality could be temporarily established and used, and naturally demolished when no longer applicable.

Clearly, for this to be the case, the composition, and self-maintenance of these Temporary Stabilities must be explained! Indeed, something both flexible and persistent must, on the one hand, be capable of mostly re-establishing the prior Stability, in a wide variety of possible undermining disturbances: AND also eminently capable of re-establishing conformability, to a new stability of outcomes.

Now this is by no means easy: but the best clue to a solution seems to reside in Diametrically Opposite Processes, which Zeno (of old) certainly noticed, and the idealist philosopher Hegel, organised into a varying system, in which these could deliver one outcome, or its direct opposite, and could, it has more recently been revealed (in my Substrate Theory of Physics, for example), give absolutely NO OUTCOME at all, as they exactly cancel each other out!

And, it has become clear, that in the sequences of consequently-enabled processes, they could, indeed, be terminated prematurely by such exact and final cancellations.

Yet, we are still a very long way from explaining the long-persistence of many such Temporary Stabilities, routinely mistaken for permanent or eternal features! We must also reveal their unusual-but-necessary compositions.

And, a possible solution to this might be if the Total Contents of a Temporary Stability was perhaps composed of multiple Balanced Stable collections of paired opposing processes, which, with a relatively minor damage could recover any undermining, by eliciting opposing changes in one area, to effectively Cancel-Out any damages inflicted in another: though both of which were somehow initiated from the very same external incursion, but in bringing about thereby opposing, balancing effects.

Now, as far as I have been able to discover, literally NO theoretical or experimental work has been undertaken in this vital area.

Something must be first causing such balances, and then, at least most of the time, maintaining them. What Stabilities there are, cannot have been already, and permanently resolved by magic, but somehow form into a naturally-arrived-at balance, and the consequent maintenance of a situation, instead of a never-ending constant slide towards Chaos!

Now, what has emerged, which could throw some light upon this problem, is the "calming nature" of constantly-repeating Cycles of Processes - which seem to be abundant literally Everywhere - and at all levels of Reality. 

And another similarly acting process, seems to be a consequence of multiple, simultaneous and different active processes, which seem to selectively change the overall composition into a more permanent mix over time. Possible causes such as Selective Elimination seem to be possible, but have nowhere been experimentally established.

And perhaps the usual reasoning, discounting such possibilities, is based upon a belief in Forever Fixed Natural Law, on the one hand, BUT, contrastingly, Evolutionary Change on the other!

Now, in a recently recorded coversation with Gareth Samuel, Eric Lerner explained the natural processes of a regularly concentrating Plasma Stream, in terms of an analogy with Road Traffic. In his case, he was explaining the sudden appearance of heat, by comparing a prior self-organised, one-way traffic flow, within a multi-lane road, to an unorganised mix of traffic going in all different directions, on a single-lane road, causing multiple collisions, and hence changing KE into an increase in heat! And, of course, both modes were natural, but caused by changing concentrating circumstances.

So, I am inclined to believe, that the processes I am considering could be analogous, and could in a similar way self-organise into optimum flows dynamically, for most of the time, only to be transformed then, by a rare change in the prevalent conditions.

Issue 73 of SHAPE Journal: Holist Science II

 

Issue 73

Understanding Reality

We attempt to understand our world in order to get the very best from it: but, it is certainly a breathtakingly difficult-to-understand world we find ourselves in. It is currently determinable only by two seemingly diametrically-opposite, yet generally-available overall systems of analysis, that directly appear to often effectively cancel each-other-out, and therefore consequently majorly undermine, both the possibility of understanding its underlying, driving trajectory - or even, alternatively, not being able to predict from any overall, perceived process, exactly what would happen next. So that, all attempts at revealing any particularly long-term set of objectives, at all regularly, appear to be always doomed to failure!

Yet, nevertheless, all short-term-and-local Realities do appear to follow some seemingly Fixed Natural Laws, but only if, along with such necessary time-and-locality constraints, so that we are constantly seeking out only Fixed Laws to enable such plans - until they, as is usually the case, finally fail.

Now, these two possible Stances were both established, at almost the very same time, some 2,500 years ago, but each of them, happening in very different areas of the World.

One of them, insisted that the Natural Laws were both Eternal and separable, but, as they were often acting simultaneously along with many others, one of the contributions was then usually largely Dominant, so that its outcomes would totally swamp all others, in their overall direct joint sum!

While, the alternative stance, instead, considered that the norm for all simultaneous contributions, was one of a constant variance of all acting Laws, so that outcomes were always changing, and all predictions just had to include an extended range of possible outcomes, with, in addition, a constant readiness to switch to an alternative, if a Key Indicator so suggested a sufficient change to merit the switch.

Certain extremes of these two, were undoubtedly delivered effectively: but, the bulk of cases were always very poorly served indeed!

The former case was later termed Plurality, and was attempted to be brought strictly to heel, by rigid and long-lasting controls upon idealised situations: but these still proved impossible, unless the number of active factors within a situation were significantly limited, which enabled a kind of Stability to be much more easily achieved-and-maintained.

Now, this was justified by the rapid and successful developments during the Greek Intellectual Revolution of that time, which ALSO kept the idea of all Natural Laws being Forever Fixed, but, as their contributions, to the overall sum, did vary in magnitude - that was the supposed to be the sole reason for the different outcomes, The Laws were still always Fixed, but their overall sum wasn’t.

That did not suit the alternative Stance, as its supporters insisted that the individual Laws themselves Varied Constantly to some degree. So that was seen as the reason for varying overall outcomes, as well as being the reason. for the Variety and Beauty of the Natural World, and, particularly, those involving all Living Things, which could never be seen as being due to Eternally Fixed Laws.

This view was later termed Holism.

But, of course, neither case delivered The Full Truth of Reality!

The problem was that simultaneously-acting Laws often affected one another, and changed their Effects. So, things were constantly in a moment-by-moment, consequent on-going, melee of multiple Changes in ALL contributions! This, initially, seemed to undermine all attempts to predict overall outcomes.

But that too could, and often was, also negated, by the fact of Temporary Stabilities, caused by the forms of the interactions going on within such multiple simultaneous sets of processes! For, though some of these, in turn, were caused by the Effects due to Diametric Opposites - but only ever within on-going, multiply-repeated processes.

For Cyclically-repeated processes involving such opposites, selectively eliminated all extraneous materials, so that ultimately, Pure, constantly repeating cycles were the main outcomes. And, these could balance with their equally Pure oppopsites to cancel-out. And, what also frequently “steadied-the-boat”, was the fact that in diverse bundles of such sets, including such Pure Processes, where stabilised sets simply repeated, whilever there were Correcting Processes for every change in an existing process, occurring within another of the same set.

So, constant repeating of effectively unchanging Cycles of the same contents, due to the above effects, necessarily delivered many Temporary Stabilities, as long as those conditions remained! For, in such constantly repeating Cycles of those processes, all Non-Opposite Processess would be effectively eliminated, leaving only the Balanced Opposite processes determining the consequent Stability.

When these did change, entirely-locally, they were termed Emergences: and when they changed much more generally, over wider, extensive Systems, they were sometimes called Revolutions!

Clearly Pluralist Science and Holistic Science are very different views of the same world!

NOTE:

It is clear, to this researcher, that, though the above does correctly show the effects of constantly repeating Cycles of processes, and, in so doing, selectively-eliminating chance ingredients, and even processes, to ultimately arrive at a constantly-repeating, overwhelmingly dominant unity of the same sort of processes - the actual mechanisms involved do not, at this stage, entirely satisfy!

And, in watching one of Gareth Samuel’s “See the Pattern” videos, about the processes taking place in the Sun, it became clear that he too was arriving at seemingly dominant sets of processes, that had been similarly refined into constantly repeating systems, that must have emerged from initially complex sets, that only gradually arrived at what he concluded were the final regular forms: so, it seemed likely, that these could have been arrived at in the same way as the processes I was considering.

In addition, it was clear that, in spite of their seemingly constant arrived-at state, they also were never permanent: so the ultimate transformations to other steady states might also reflect such changes elsewhere too.

What is usually generally called Science is actually no such thing: we might more accurately term it Technology, for as a wholly pluralist undertaking, it is not even derived from any dependable form of Science, which would have to be, to some degree, Holistic in its philosophical Stance, to be able to deal with Reality-as-is!

But, because that cannot be distilled into a collection of Pluralist Fixed Laws, the practitioners involved, by taking the route of greatly modified and controlled situations, did manage to effectively enable a Pluralist version, always limited to only very highly constrained situations - but sufficient to also deliver a wholly achievable, and increasingly broad and useable Technology.
But, of course, the required extension into a generally applicable Science, within which it was intended to reside a comprehensive and Explanatory Means, was always impossible! Indeed, researches have proved conclusively that a Science, based upon Plurality, can’t help us understand the natural world, even though a functioning Technology certainly gives us vast control over our environments - and has effectively transformed the world to suit our means of understanding it.

The revelation of these crucial flaws, were revealed very soon after the Greek Intellectual Revolution, by Zeno of Elea, who was able to demonstrate the failures of Pluralist Science in his work called Paradoxes, in which he was able to reveal irresolvable Contradictions in Movement, using the Rationality discovered legitimately in Mathematics, but then wholly illegally applied in both General Reasoning and the Sciences, and from which, they had done it, in spite of Zeno’s valid revelations.

In fact it wasn’t until the early 19th century, that Hegel took Zeno’s work and applied it more broadly to logical Opposites, that the truth was finally generally revealed, by Hegel’s follower, historian and philosopher Karl Marx, who began the mammoth task of applying those dialectical ideas, first to History in General, and then to a major Critique of Capitalist Economics! But, nevertheless, since Marx’s death in the 1880s, no-one has attempted the task of applying Marx’s Comprehensive Method to any of the Sciences, so that in spite of Lenin’s warning, in his book Materialism and Emporio Criticism, the most important areas have still NOT received the necessary treatment, resulting in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and a similarly disabled Cosmology!

 
And, in fact, Modern Holistic Theory, which has been wholly a product of the 21st Century, has not been applied to anything comprehensively, though many individual papers have already been published here in SHAPE Journal - and in the near future the writer of this paper is nearing the completion of an alternative to Copenhagen. While a short pamphlet upon Holistic Science is also completed, and will be published, in print, this Spring. There is still much to do.

Special Issue 70: Truth and Illusion

Read Special Issue 70 of the SHAPE Journal

This special edition of the journal is co-authored by science philosopher Jim Schofield and artist researcher Mick Schofield.

Art, Science and Philosophy all share the same ontological quest of approaching truth, albeit with very different methods, ideologies and results, but there are countless pitfalls along all three roads, and many of them share the same origin. All three rely on appearances and forms as their basic material. Even the most apparently unmediated of these, are still Abstractions from the material world, and can already be deceptive. And that is long before we start categorising, rationalising, manipulating and combining forms, in all the elaborate ways we have learned to do, but which ultimately push these forms further from their original contexts in reality.

We primarily rely on our senses to confirm whether forms are true or not, but many philosophers over the centuries have shown that this can be a mistake. Optical illusions are often used to demonstrate how we cannot trust our senses - that there is some barrier between us and the truth of the material world we observe. However this is a limited view - it fails to take into account the fact that most of the time our senses serve us very well, we find our immediate realities completely intelligible. They also fail to take into account a key paradoxical fact, that illusions can actually give greater access to reality, than our senses alone can offer.

Think of the mirror, for example. Until we encounter a reflection we have no idea what we look like.

A reflection is certainly an illusion however, and one we routinely trust to tell us the truth, despite the fact that it flips the entire world front-to-back. For Jacques Lacan the mirror illusion was fundamental to how we see ourselves and our relationship with the reality around us. The mirror stage is a crucial phase in the development of human infants, where the ego begins to develop as we see ourselves as an ideal image, and fundamentally separate from others for the first time. Before this, according to Lacan, we live in the Real Stage, where we are only concerned by our immediate bodily needs and a lived unity with our mothers.

Another crucial illusion we rely on to access information about ourselves and the world, are moving pictures. These are based on photography, which also makes clever use of mirrors and tricks of the light, to present authentication of how things look. The photographic illusion, while synonymous with evidence, is compounded when we use machines to play back one photograph after another. All moving images present a basic illusion of movement - a motion that is constructed from a series of stillnesses. This isn’t how motion works in reality at all - and yet, we have simulated it well enough to trick the eye with ease.

The illusions of moving images provide us with reliable evidence of things all of the time - augmenting our senses and providing access to aspects of reality we could never approach without such technological prostheses. Marxist theorist Walter Benjamin talks about this in his famous essay on The Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction, calling this new technologically-aided sense, the optical unconscious.

But there are certainly limitations to our amazing inventions. We become so reliant on them for information, we cease to notice their shortcomings and distortions of the truth. Jim Schofield’s research with Bedford Interactive into the capturing of dance on video for motion study, showed how much dynamic information is lost when we rely on a series of stills to record it. His use of Zeno’s paradoxes and dialectical reasoning in attempting to resolve the problem shows this is more than just an issue of inadequate technical solutions. The very contradiction of trying to understand motion through stillness was bound to surface sooner or later, even if this particular illusion is adequate for most purposes.

This conundrum also reminds me of Henri Bergson’s view of our cinematic view of reality - another philosopher influenced by Zeno. Bergson used the “cinematographical apparatus” as an analogy for how the intellect attempts to deal with truth - always fragmenting, abstracting, analysing phenomena into discontinuous constituent parts, and then attempting to understand the dynamic whole from these debris.

“Such is the contrivance of the cinematograph. And such is also that of our knowledge. Instead of attaching ourselves to the inner becoming of things, we place ourselves outside them in order to recompose their becoming artificially.” Bergson, 1907

The video camera is a science experiment. It takes small pieces, samples, data, and tries to understand the dynamic whole. But something is always lost. Such illusions can be very useful, the difficulty then lies in working out what isn’t translated, and the extent to which we might be kidding ourselves.

As Jim Schofield investigates in his paper on Charles Bonnet Syndrome in this issue, a form of illusion lies at the heart of vision itself. As with Bergson, this isn’t just about technology, or even scientific methods, but about the ways we think about reality, and maybe even something fundamental about how our brains work.

Mick Schofield, October 2020

Read Special Issue 70 of the SHAPE Journal

Beauty?

Scultpure by Henry Moore - its beauty is nothing to do with symmetry or formal perfection

As an artist (I am primarily a sculptor) as well as both a professional scientist, and a philosopher, I always justifiably jib at sweeping definitions of Beauty, from one or another supposedly fundamental stance! So, when today I was assaulted on YouTube by a series of such declarations, I was impelled to pen this essay.

The most glaringly false declarations, as you might have guessed, were inevitably about Mathematics!

Wilczek swoons at its towering and breath-taking "Beauty", while another is staggered by the importance of Number in the Universe.

But, it is also clear, that neither of these 'prophets' were in any way aware of the fundamental weakness at the very heart of that Mathematics, which makes it totally incapable of dealing with any qualitative developments whatsoever. For, its power resides solely in its artificial simplification of all things to reveal only their superficial Forms or Patterns.

Mathematics is the study of forever-fixed Pure Forms, and as such was, and is, a truly remarkable advance, but certainly NOT the Revealer of all, or even any, Causative Essence. The invention of this formal approach, by the Ancient Greeks, was indeed a major Revolution in intellectual studies: but it wasn't carried out by an omnipotent, all-knowing and all-seeing God - but by mere human beings.

Darwinian Evolution selects for Survival and effective Reproduction only - so our Hominid-Line knapped pieces of flint for literally millions of years, without any significant intellectual development occurring at all. For this 'intelligence' was not congenital, but certainly had-to-be both a solely socially-acquired, and passed-on ability.

Indeed, the undoubted proof is clearly evident, from the revealing studies of Palaeontologists, who also immediately recognised the tremendous significance of the Neolithic Revolution, when Mankind successively changed-over to staying-in-one-place with others of their kind to productively both Farm-the-Land, Domesticate Animals. and discuss with one another. Only then could increasing-social-interactions begin to develop in both the regular Exchanges of things, and revealing Discussions, delivering a consequent development of productive activities and crucially also both Language and indeed Thought itself!

Now, the above short diversion into Human Evolution was absolutely essential, as without it, the inevitably inaccurate initial misconceptions about the Nature of Mathematics would inevitably intervene to prevent any understanding of its accompanying significant weaknesses. So, unavoidably demolishing any promotion of it to a universally fundamental role in the Consciousness of Mankind!

The Ancient Greeks had achieved a remarkable thing conceptually, in their Intellectual Revolution - they invented a wholly new kind of Abstraction - with regard to Forms, that enabled the valid construction of the very first Intellectual Discipline in their History - namely Mathematics!

I call them "Simplifying Relatable Abstractions", and they were a remarkably empowering original invention! They stripped down certain formal conceptions to an absolute minimum content - indeed, so tiny were they, that they were useless in isolation - BUT, as connecting-enablers, they alone legitimately linked certain things together, delivering a sound means that could be legitimately repeated into delivering a substantial complex and coherent spatial Discipline.

But, there was a flaw!

All so-produced-things must be permanently fixed.

They could never change qualitatively into something else!

So, what had actually been inadvertently and unavoidably subscribed-to was the Principle of Plurality, and, most certainly, not everything was legitimately so permanently limited. But, abstract Form most certainly was!

Now, here beginneth the inevitable drift into significant Error, from this initial success. For, immediately, The Greeks, delighted with what they had been able to do with Form, exported the same sort of qualities into both Reasoning and a nascent Science, where they were wholly illegitimate as universal premises!

But, the disaster was, by no means immediately evident, particularly if those so-produced Disciplines were to be only used within naturally Stable and Unchanging Situations.

And also, crucially, in Science, investigators quickly learned how to both achieve-and-maintain such situations, for both relation extractions and also subsequent effective use of extracted eternal Natural Laws. While in Formal Logic, the Reasoning was limited to fixed concepts, which could suffice in most stable situations!

NOTE: But, almost immediately, Zeno of Elea had revealed the unavoidable falsities that emerged from Contradictory Fixed Concepts in his Paradoxes.

Now, as both a competant mathematician and a well-informed philosopher, I have developed these ideas, particularly with respect to the damaging Role of Pluralist Mathematics in Science, wherein I have established it as unavoidably both pluralistic and idealistic, and hence totally inadequate as any sort of assumed General Ground of Concrete Reality, i.e. in Science.

Indeed, all of its many extensions no longer exist within Concrete Reality at all, but are situated solely within Ideality - the realm of Pure Form alone.

Jim Schofield's Theory of Abstraction

So, when Wilczek and his like wax lyrical over the Beauty of Mathematics, he is actually describing situations in Form-Only Ideality!

The breath-taking intricacies and "beauties" of these investigators, are NOT about The Real at all, but, instead, only about the extensions of formal definitions into the infinite, but not concretely existing, features of Pure Form Alone within Ideality.

[It applauds the infinite extendibility and intricacy of Symmetry with Fixed Forms, and totally excludes the Real World Beauty of Creative Development entirely]

It just cannot be Science any longer: for it is, at best, a form of Art, based upon the Real, but artificially extended to extreme limits, outside of Reality, to display their Formal Beauty!

[Remember: Reality also contains properties, qualities and causalities, while Ideality contains only Form!]

But, why then is this unreal World indulged-in so extensively by scientists?

Having shot themselves in the foot via the Universal extension of Plurality to literally everything, they walled themselves off, permanently, from Developing Reality, and the Holistic and Dialectical means of dealing with it, so were forced to permanently give-up Understanding, for mere Prediction, and hence had to look elsewhere, NOT, it must be emphasized for Explanations, but instead, to seek only Descriptions-of-Forms that might possibly then be used as Disembodied Forms, enabling Prediction, without-Explanation or increased Understanding.

It is actually a retreat to an older pragmatism, disguised within sophisticated Abstraction!

Quantum Electro Dynamics via PBS Space Time

As is becoming a regular feature of my current theoretical work criticising The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and its various contemporary developments, I turn first to the young presenters on the PBS SPACE TIME platform of explanatory videos on YouTube - because they do their very best to deliver the consensus theory, warts-and-all, in the clearest and most honest way they can - which is commendable.

They don't actually succeed in convincing me, of course, but they do allow the inquisitive viewer, such as myself, to extract at least some of the key premises involved, in order to attempt to establish a vital alternative to theirs, by revealing both their limitations, as well as, hopefully, defining-and-presenting a better, coherent and comprehensive alternative view.

Certain defining premises are immediately evident:

• First, that a Description of what occurs is always the objective!

• Second, that the means used will always be Mathematics!

• Third, that its real test will always involve Predictions!

• Finally, that Experiments will confirm their validity!

But, what do these seemingly sound premises actually infer?

• Descriptions deliver the way things appear, but never "Why they are so?"

• Mathematics delivers only Ideal(ised) Forms and is unavoidably wholly Pluralist!

• Predictions deliver possible outcomes without any real Explanation.

• Experiments always involve a purposely farmed-and-maintained context only.

But, all of these cannot deliver Reality-as-is, but only a tailor-made, subset context, with almost all "supposedly-inessential" things suppressed. And, for it to work, Reality itself would have to be totally pluralist - that is constructed solely of eternal Natural Laws, for such a method to reveal the true components.

And the proof of these criticisms? You have to replicate exactly the conditions of extraction to subsequently enable effective use of such Laws! And, Reality-as-is and totally un-tailored is always Holistic. So, predictions based upon pluralist laws are similarly compromised.

From the very inception of the disciplines involved in that approach, by the Ancient Greeks, flaws were already evident (see Zeno of Elea's Paradoxes), so a parallel and holistic set of Explanations involving Properties, Causes and Effects were also considered essential accompaniments to the purely formal relations.

NOTE:But while descriptions, equations and predictions were always locked together as absolutes, Explanations (being attempts at the Real), never enjoyed that unanimity, because they were never absolute: they were composed of current and temporary Objective Content, so were always being updated or improved, while the contents of the Pluralist extractions were always "absolute"!

So, as long as Understanding was not as important as Use, the pluralist monolith would continue to dominate science. BUT, crucially Pluralistic methods, unavoidably, also always involved Idealisation- for all the data from experiments were used to fit-up Ideal Formal Equations, taken from Pure Mathematics, but as those were, by no means a comprehensive data set: the formula's validity was NOT intrinsic to the whole causing situation, but limited to a defined range alone!

So, Idealism was also imported along with the Formula.

Can you guess what happened to the Mathematics involved, in response to ever wider use in Science?It had to develop enormously in order to continue that defined use value. But, never, it must be emphasized, in delivering an explanatory value! Mathematics can't do that! Unless, that is, you abandon Materialism for Idealism, and consequently believe that the World is the way that it is because of the Mathematics which drive it!

For then, a study of the Purely Formal World of Ideality becomes a study of the sole drivers of Reality.

Are you recognising Modern Physics yet?

Now, developing Mathematics, without in any way compromising its Plurality, which, remember, was what had given it its descriptive power from the outset, really meant doing something you can do in Ideality, which you cant do in Reality. And, that is extending it exponentially, while maintaining its premises absolutely!

This was such a significant turn, so that in my Diagram of the Processes and Productions of Abstraction, the realm of Ideality had to be situated outside-of Reality altogether, which correctly included everything else.

The processes and productions of Ideality were defined as never ever getting validated by references of it to Reality!

So much for the underlying premises, but what about the "Physical Theory" which purports to additionally deliver an explanatory narrative alongside the Mathematics?

Well, the presenter, in addressing the heart of Quantum Electro Dynamics, first presents the classical electro dynamical explanation, involving a spinning, charged ball, only to then, immediately, dismiss that because - "It isn't a ball and it isn't spinning". But, his alternative explanations are incredible!

He imports the old Greek simplification of treating the particle as a Point-of-zero-extension, totally forgetting why that simplifying fiction was so useful, and instead making it an accurate description of the physical world: it isn't!

And, he does all this, while he, at the same time, continues to talk about spinning and/or orbits. along with charges, in other parts of his explanations (very inconsistent). He excuses this contradictory stance by insisting that Sub Atomic Physics is actually A Different World entirely!

Nevertheless, he carries over, with the very same names, concepts from classical Physics like Angular Momentum, and Magnetic Dipole Moments - features from the Classical World, which there are due to extended entities and real spinning or orbiting.

Notice that the pluralist tail now wags the holist dog?

His reasons for abandoning physical explanations are the simplifying abstractions of Plurality which converted the real world into one which could be both manipulated and developed pragmatically - but elsewhere! There IS still a real world in there, currently obscured by Plurality, but definitely requiring a switch to Holism, as the only way to address it.

And, as they certainly wont do that, they have to somehow reflect the main features of a Holist World, within the premises of their Pluralist world - Ideality, but only at the Sub Atomic Level! Now, how can they possibly do that?

They will do it the only way they know how - by extending Mathematics, along with a new concept of the underlying nature of Space itself, which becomes the source of Everything!

Now, if the alternative of Holism is indeed correct, the above wont mean a thing, unless that alternative is thoroughly described and understood, in particular, via its very different mode of Qualitative Development - its Evolution!

Now, this is no small task, and certainly too big to effectively include within this short Review, so here I will limit myself to contrasting it with Plurality.

NOTE: Now, this major task had already begun in this theorist's Theory of Emergences, along with his Theory of the Double Slit Experiments, Truly Natural Selection, and his papers on Abstraction. Finally, the first instalment of the demolition of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory is already available as A New Approach to Science.


Holism?

As distinct from Plurality, Holism does not see Reality as composed entirely of the various summations of multiple, strictly eternal Natural Laws- in other words, all aspects of Reality being produced by mere Complication, and thus legitimately-allowing the usual way we do experiments by targeting, via a selecting-simplification of the context, to a situation with only a particular single and "totally-unaffected" Law clearly evident!

For, instead, Holism takes the entirely-contrary view that all multiple, simultaneous laws always affect one another, to some greater or lesser extent, so that any apparent dominance, for whatever reason, is always only temporary, AND, crucially will be terminated when these cross-influences finally undermine the prior dominance, and a wholly different mix emerges following that former stability.

It explains switches between pertaining laws causally, whereas the best that Plurality can do is to merely switch due to some previously noticed threshold in a given parameter being passed, as yje switch occurred!

In addition, Holism sees the trajectory of Development of Reality qualitativelyin terms of periods of self-maintaining Stabilities, separated by turbulent Interludes of major Qualitative changes, termed Emergencesor Revolutions.

Finally, two things have had to be included in the pluralist Mathematics of Quantum Theory to somehowreflect:-

1. the holist simultaneous presence of multiple mutually-affecting factors, and

2. The presence of an undetectable Universal Substrate delivering propagation and much else within the supposed purely "Empty Space".

Now, Plurality is inadequately-equipped to deliver such things consistently: they neveroccur in a Pluralist World. So, "something-similar", in consequence, had to be devised-and-constructed, via a mix of illegitimate philosophical imports on the one hand, and a crypto-substrate on the other, termed a Field!

Now, such additions would seem to be impossible, but Mankind has been effectively using contradictory concepts for millennia, by means of the pragmatic tenet - "If it works, it is right!", so they couldn't be defeated by the Classical Opposition to Copenhagen, who had been using similar excuses for their own contradictory inclusions for even longer periods of time.

And, of course, they did have an almost infinitely extendible means, and the appropriate philosophic stance, to be able to construct, via a distorted, idealist Mathematics, the Ground to deliver what was needed.

And it isn't by chance that at the heart of that frig was a use of the Wave Equations developed for use in physical media, but here applied to their non-material Field!

And, in addition, illegitimately-modified to deliver not positions (as in the prior use), but merely a full set of probabilities of each and every possible position being possibly currently occupied!

Of course, such a method could never deliver the actual situation at any given moment, but could deliver over-time results, as with the Statistics it was borrowed from!

But, and this is crucial, without further frigs, this system still couldn't suffice - so ever deeper burrowing-into, and even further construction-of, an extended Ideality seemed absolutely necessary!

Feynman had found a purely abstract way, by developing his "Feynman Diagrams" to deliver the required results for each-and-every possible outcome in any given interaction within a Quantum Field, which could then be somehowsummed, over-all-possibilities, to give the actual outcomes. And, as more and more of these diagrams could be included to increase the accuracy of the result, computers had to be involved, which are now enormous, as they get results accurate to ten decimal places.

NOTE: But what are they ralking about?

What exactly are they summing: it is not only reminiscent of an extended Wave in a substrate, but even uses Wave Equations developed originally in those prior studies. And, nevertheless, it can be applied to an effect uypon an individual Particle!

Now, as usual, the presenter does his best to describe all of this, but without causal explanations, what he does, at best, is to also deliver an "accompanying narrative" to what has been found to pragmatically give accurate results.

But, it does imply an extended activity underlying phenomena which he infers is due to Wave/Particle Duality, but which I explain by the presence of an underlying and undetectable Universal Substrate - containing and delivering, by various kinds of propagation, the means to produce the actual physical effects, which are distortedly-reflected by their pluralist, simplified and idealised formal analogues of the Copenhagenist interpretation!

There are many problems with the kind of criticism I am forced to make, because it is never allowed to be a contention between two alternative explanations. For, where I, as a scientist, have to deliver a coherent, consistent and comprehensive explanation, tackling everything physically involved, the contrary position has only the rules of Abstract Mathematics, applied to an almost infinite body of researches in Ideality, PLUS a confusing collection of extractions by pluralist physicists, AND a pragmatic principle that supersedes everything else, namely - "If it works, it is right!"

For, that illegitimate unifier, effectively smoothes-over the impasses and contradictions - "to be dealt with later, when we know enough!" In other words, a pragmatic and useable path through the situation supersedes ALL explanations!

And, their philosophic basis stands out clearly - all explanations are invention anyway!

The essences of reality are purely formal!

The only stance is Idealism!

And, one particular consequent method has to be exposed.

It is to take legitimate spatially distributed and multiple effects, but apply them to a specific locality.

Now, you can do this with the effects of overlapping fields upon a particular location, but they don't have such here. Nevertheless, they are summing multiple influences at a particular location. supposedly due to a summed-over-time(?) oscillating effect at that location.

Remember, these contortions are absolutely necessary, because they are NO LONGER dealing with Reality, but the simplified and idealised, pluralist realm of Ideality.

Interestingly, I, with my Reality-based alternative approach, can legitimately use summations at a specific location due to overlapping, different Fields, all propagating within a Universal Substrate, and it also allows that summation to deliver a vector sum of the differing directions, of the contributing fields, to change the orientation of the Magnetic Dipole Moment in that precise unit of the Substrate.

More to come...

You can see the referenced videos here:

Issue 62: The Whole and the Part

Read the latest issue of SHAPE Journal on The Whole and the Part: a loose collection of recent papers aiming to develop a nascent Science of Holism, by looking closer at the crucial oppositions involved: Plurality and Holism, the Whole and the Part.

The Whole and the Part

The Hermeneutic Cycle

Thought for Today

Bringing Holism into the Methods of Science

Why Holist Science and Iteration?

A New Holistic Iterative Method

Plurality & Holism, Mathematics & Reality

Multi-variable Relations

Dialectical Emergence

A Crucial Turning Point

Turning Point by Philip Johnson

When major redefinitions are both necessary and difficult

After almost a decade, as a full time writer upon Science and Philosophy, it was becoming increasingly clear that the wherewithal to fully address all the regularly-occurring, and clearly-evident problems, was still not yet sufficiently defined to enable me to "Make the Necessary Turn!". I had published almost 1,000 papers, and written a further 1,700, and most were sound in reasoning. But the core objective, which had gradually become clear, was still far from having been coherently presented as an integrated whole.

It would have to include a total demolishing of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, in Sub Atomic Physics, and also a much wider-ranging definition of a fundamentally different philosophical Stance, which would have to be Holistic.

The difficulty was, and still is, that literally all intellectual disciplines since the Ancient Greeks have been entirely Pluralistic, and have become intrinsically imbued in all the available and acceptable methodologies for all of my professional career in Universities in three different countries. Indeed, I had usually succeeded in academia largely because I could do the pluralistic stuff, and would still unavoidably commence any new problem via the old ways first.

But, so many attempts have come-to-a-stop resulting in classic Hegelian contradictions, and their unavoidable impasses, that I had to attempt to take his Dialectical Logic much further than Hegel had ever managed to do, and even Marx had not developed his Dialectical Materialism deeply-and-profoundly enough to tackle many Scientific Conceptions and Reasoning, such as occur in Mathematics and every single one of the Sciences.

As a competent mathematician, I naturally read Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts, but they did not help, so I had to begin to address the problems myself.

I soon began to unearth holistic truths within my usual professional researches into providing Computing assistance to a wide range of professionals studying in many very different disciplines. The Key Revelations finally occurred in addressing real, complex and expressive movements in Dance, in order to enable both the teaching of accurate Performance, as well as that of Choreography too. And, ultimately, I devised the first effective way of successfully delivering what the Dance expert required, with appropriate Access-and-Control, using computer controlled Multimedia of recorded resources.

Surprisingly, the main problems were caused in the very same way that both Zeno and Hegel himself had noted in dealing with Movement, and the latter had even begun to understand, and then concentrated upon, but, with him being an idealist, the sort of impasses I came up against were not what he would ever have encountered, never mind tackled.

Though this work certainly greatly enabled my necessary assault upon the required Philosophy to address Reality-as-is, there was still another major problem to do with the premises underlying any Coherent, consistent and comprehensive methodology in pursuing such a path.

The problem resided in the omission of an absolutely vital premise in Physics!

Towards the end of the 19th century, Michelson and Morley had conducted an experiment which "proved" that there was NO Universal Substrate involved in the propagation of light - no Ether, as it was then called, and a whole significant branch of Physics based upon the assumption that such a Substrate existed was dropped as untenable.

It most certainly couldn't be detected, but the formulae based upon assuming that it did still worked.

Maxwell's theoretical aether

Indeed, James Clerk Maxwell had devised his brilliant set of Electromagnetic Equations developed upon his now-discredited Model of the Ether, so I had to re-institute the Universal Substrate as an existing, but currently undetectable entity, and applying that concept alone, to all the Double Slit Experiments, enabled me to dispense entirely with all anomalies of those experiments, and all the assumptions of Copenhagen that had been devised to deal with them altogether.

But, that wasn't all that was required! There just wasn't a useable Holistic Methodology in Science at all. There was, however, a kind of holistic stance, but applied with a pluralistic Logic.

Clearly, I should explain.

Science, since the Ancient Greeks, had been an Amalgam of several contradictory stances, but always using the still-agreed-to basic tenet of Pragmatism - "If it works, it is right!", those involved in dealing with such things, simply switched between stances, until they found one which worked.

So, a "holist-component", within this approach, attempted to explain phenomena entirely in terms of the known properties of the components involved (it was that aspect which persuaded me to become a physicist). But, also severely modifying that sound stance, was the universally adopted Principle of Plurality. which insisted that all causative Laws were wholly independent of one another: they were fixed- everything could be explained merely in terms of the summations of eternal Natural Laws.

So, clearly, this severely disabled that stance from effectively coping with a clearly holistic and developing Reality. And, finally, those laws could be "correctly-encapsulated" in the Perfect Formal Equations of Mathematics - which is, of course, Idealism!

Now, believe it or not, this Amalgam was considered to be "The Scientific Method". It was neither consistent nor coherent, but it appeared to be "Comprehensive" due solely to the ubiquitous Pragmatic Tenet.

And Holism without Plurality and Pragmatism seemed to be totally impossible to apply, as its tenet was "Everything affects everything else!": and the key unanswered question was "How?" Just how, and in what ways, did the many affecting factors change one another?

Hegel called his solution to a complex changing reality, Dialectics, but he was only concerned with Thinking. Marx recast it as Dialectical Materialism, but never comprehensively addressed Science.

And, here's the rub, not only did Science need Dialectical Materialism, BUT Dialectical Materialism also needed Science.

And all this still had to be systematically addressed. Literally nothing had been done!

So here goes.......

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.

Jim Al-Khalili and the "Two-Slit" experiment

Al-Khalili has learned nothing on the Copenhagen Interpretation of The Double Slit Experiments

In a recent lecture (see the YouTube clip below), Jim Al-Khalili repeats the usual Copenhagen Interpretation of the ill-famed Double Slit Experiments, and his arguments have not changed one iota.

The video is captioned: "If you can explain this using common sense and logic, do let me know, because there is a Nobel Prize for you.." 

Well Jim! Have you seen our video?

Many years ago I listened to an In Our Time radio programme presented by Melvin Bragg, in which a gaggle of prestigious supporters of the Copenhagen Interpretation of that same experiment, put forward an identical account. But, neither version could transcend the contradictory accounts of particles "sometimes acting like Particles, but at other times acting like Waves".

Ever since Zeno's Paradoxes in Ancient Greece, applications of Formal Logic to certain puzzling scenarios would always end in such contradictory endpoints - entirely inexplicable in Formal Logical terms.

The problems were not trivial!

They were caused by a founding principle of both Mathematics and Formal Logic termed Plurality.

And, the reason that this crucial flaw was never addressed was because the Greeks purposely limited their intellectual disciplines to concepts and things that did not change - they remained the same qualitatively.

And, perhaps surprisingly, it proved to be an extremely empowering stance to take! For, assuming, or even ensuring, such stability in situations, certainly made them predictable.

First, this was the essential Foundation Stone of Mathematics - and legitimately established a whole new and extendable discipline, absolutely-valid for things that remained the same qualitatively: it enabled an effective Discipline of Forms and their Quantities.

But, its powerful methods of Extension and Proof, persuaded the Greeks to carry them over to a system of reasoning, later termed Formal Logic: so the new discipline could only be applied to concepts that did not change.

The logical contradiction of the Double Slit can be traced back to Ancient Greek Philosophy

This same supposition was also embedded in the initial approach to Science too.

In fact, NO real attention was given to this important disability, for about 2,300 years, when Hegel finally realised that Qualitative Changes were just NOT addressable within Formal Logic as-it-then-was, and he determined to unearth as many of these Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts as he could, in order to find out their disabling bases.

He was successful in a whole number of cases, where he found that both concepts in such a Dichotomous Pair arose from the same-inadequate-premises, which would have to be changed to turn the usual non-transcend-able impasse, into a transcend-able Logical Fork.

Now, following this initial success, a great deal more has followed, enabling a major transformation of Formal Reasoning to include the tempo, processes and even the causes of truly qualitative changes.

Yet merely the application of Hegel's initial discoveries, to the Double Slit Experiments, would be sufficient to address every single anomaly of that confusing evidence. For, the mistaken premises can be both incorrect or actually missing: and the inclusion of a currently undetectable Substrate within those experiments did indeed physically explain everything!

Michelson-Morley disproved Luminiferous Aether

Now, of course, no such Substrate has ever been found, and the Michelson-Morley Experiments had seemingly banished and then denounced that assumed-to-be-present Ether, as non-existent. But, that did not banish any currently undetectable Substrate that was, nevertheless, both affected-by-and affecting-of interloping entities.

Every single anomaly was easily explained by assuming auch an intermediary.

But it had to be established that such a Universal, yet-undetectable, Substrate could both exist, and, deliver physical explanations of everything involved. It was initially undertaken to establish, theoretically, just such a Substrate - composed entirely of various mutually-orbiting pairs of Leptons, with diametrically opposite properties.

The first of these was a stable version of the Positronium, which was re-labelled as a Neutritron. This was a remarkable entity, neutral in every way, which could exist in three different modes and associations, and also be dissociated back into its separate components - one Electron and one Positron.

A very loosely-associated medium, termed a 'Paving', was possible, which could propagate Electromagnetic Energy at the Speed of Light, but could also be dissociated into its individual Neutritrons - identical to Photons, which could behave like a random Gas, or be driven into energetic Streams and even into Vortices.

A Substrate of particle-pairs like the Positronium, could be an invisible medium for EM radiation

Now, every kind of Substrate Unit was, because of their mutually-orbiting nature, also capable of carrying quanta of electromagnetic Energy via the promotion of that orbit: and could deliver such quanta by the demotion of their orbits.

And, elsewhere, it has been possible to explain the quantized orbits of Electrons within Atoms, by the dissociation of the Paving, and driving of Neutritrons into accompanying Streams and Vortices, which because of the constant return of the driving electrons, can find stable orbits wherein the net transfer of energy between electron orbit and maintained vortices arrives at a balance via stable maintained radii.

I could go on, but my sole purpose here is to counterpose the above Physics to what Al' Khalili peddles.

What do you think?

True Emergence

Dialectics not Mathematics

In a recent YouTube video out of California, the Quantum Loop Gravity tendency in Modern Physics claims its own Theory of Emergence, in a slick, but totally uninformative video presented by a pretty girl. As the author of the 2010 The Theory of Emergence, and also a physicist myself, I am of course, bound to comment.

You can watch it here, if you must!

I will not go through the details of that video, for they are both insulting to their overtly intended audience - "the layman", and packed-full of unestablished assumptions - all restricted to a multi-dimensional Mathematics, and "caused" or "selected-from Random Chaos by a Universal Consciousness"(?). 

Good Lord.

Frankly, this is not worthy of a detailed criticism, but it does use the same rhetorical methods as Trump uses in the political sphere, which indicates the methods to be used to convince the uninformed, without ever actually informing them!

But, its claim to a "theory of emergence" must be torpedoed by someone, such as myself, who has been involved, all his adult life, in revealing the damaging errors both in Formal Reasoning, Politics and even Science, due almost-wholly to the inadequacies of Mathematics in explaining Reality. Indeed, to even limit it, temporally, in that way, reduces its major significance over the last 2,500 years.

Ever since the creation of Mathematics by the Ancient Greeks, its enabling distortions in representing Reality, not only greatly expanded its pragmatic use, but also revealed a means of relating individual "discoveries" into an extendable and consistent intellectual discipline. And, these were very quickly carried over into Reasoning to produce Formal Logic. And later, became similarly built-into the new discipline of Science.

Yet, almost immediately, after the initial gains were achieved, the Greek, Zeno of Elea, had revealed major errors in Reasoning, when addressing Movement, in his work on Paradoxes. And, these were never properly addressed, for over two millennia, until Hegel, the German idealist Philosopher stumbled upon the major flaw - Formal Logic did NOT ever address Qualitative Change!

Indeed, to construct the founding discipline of Mathematics to actually work, all Qualitative Changes were prohibited, and, in addition, all Forms were changed into only perfect versions. Mathematics was never a description of Reality-as-is!

And, in its changed state, it had been made to conform to The Principle of Plurality - where those assumed features were mandatory: they alone, in fact, gave Mathematics its consistency and extendibility! But, in carrying over the properties of Mathematics into defining Formal Logic, they also implanted these same restrictions into it too. And, later the same disabling features were delivered to Science as well, as Formal Logic was the required reasoning tool.

Consequently, Science could only make any progress at all if the situations to be investigated were constrained to only deliver such features. It would only work within Stable Situations.

It was The Science of Stability!

Now, let's be crystal clear: "What is an Emergence?"

In my book, as the author of The Theory of Emergence, it is when something qualitatively different emerges out of a seemingly persisting stable situation, changing things permanently. But, for all those who depend upon Mathematics as the unifying "consistent" basis of their studies and determinations, such Qualitative Changes are summarily banned! Their pluralist basis (Mathematics) always requires Stable situations: so what must they mean by their claims to deliver Emergences?

Well, in spite of deliberate obfuscation, the designers and deliverers of this video use the oldest trick in the book. They first allow such a mess of complication, that almost any outcome seems to be possible, and they put down what selects from this enormous menu of possibilities, to a "Universal Consciousness" (which they insist is not God), but a product of the overall entire-causing-system, that can then choose the actual outcome.

Now, what is my alternative?

All pluralistic Laws, as dealt with as above, have limits to their applicability. We call them Singularities, and if delivered of the appropriate values of the involved parameters. which take the situation to those terminations, then the equations give meaningless results - like infinity for example.

Clearly, to a Holist, such as myself, the domain of applicability of their strictly-pluralist-equation has been exceeded, so it no longer describes the situation. The boundaries of the required Stability have been exceeded, and the Stability dissociated!

Close to that boundary, in non linear cases, the limited region of Mathematical Chaos, can be encountered, but not for long, for the situation quickly descends into what seems to be Total Chaos..... but, then coalesces into a new relation in a different Stability.

And, "How does that occur?", you will quite rightly ask!

It occurs because in Reality-as-is, there are many simultaneous relations all-acting together, but they DO NOT just sum, as the pluralists insist - but both affect and change one another, some co-operating, while some are opposing.

Indeed, for a time these always changing mutual modifications do deliver something like "chaos" - but only until they form a new self-maintaining system, when seemingly damaging changes in one, are compensated for by consequent opposing changes in another.

Indeed, Hegel's simplification of this was his Interpenetration of Opposites, the simplest examples of which are the Dichotomous Pairs, discovered by Zeno, and explained in terms of mistaken or absent premises, by Hegel.

In place of the idealistic and pluralist conception of an Emergence, may I offer The Trajectory of an Emergence, shown above. It is clearly no magical conversion, but a complex transition, involving a dynamic change between two Stabilities.