Issue 79 - The Systems Theory of Everything VI

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The last in this series of papers on Jim Schofield's Systems Theory deals with how science needs to move on from a mechanistic understanding of systems and evolution, and finally embrace dialectics.

Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Natural Multi-Factor Interactions

Dialectical Materialist Evolution

Addendum: Emergence and Randomness; Order out of Chaos?

Systems Structures & Top-Down Causalities

A Revolutionary Understanding

The Need for a New Approach to Theory in General

 

Issue 74: The Infinite Rabbit Hole!

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This edition continues philosopher Jim Schofield's recent attempts to define what a Holist approach to Science should be. This time around, the focus is on why it hasn't really been attempted before, and why, when we do try holistic methods in Science, we usually fall back on tried-and-tested Pluralist forms of research. 

The problem is complexity. The Natural World is incredibly dense, interconnected and with many hidden levels and systems processes. The straight-jacket of the Pluralist Scientific Method is the only way we have historically managed to control situations sufficiently to try and analyse and understand them. The problem is, that this gives us a very distorted, simplifed and ossified picture of what we're examining. We remove many hidden factors which might turn out to be be vital, and even more crucially, we remove the possibility for natural Qualitative Change to take place.

Art Director’s note: 

For this issue we have chosen the dark, dense paintings and sculptures of Anselm Kiefer for the illustration. We are always looking for abstract art which invokes change in some way, and the complexity of evolving reaity. With a keen interest in mathematics and science as well as mythology, Kiefer’s work deals with concepts such as the passage of time, cosmogney, chaos and death. His most recent exhibition Supertrings, Runes, the Norns, Gordian Knot, is influenced directly by studies such as String Theory - but not without a pleasing degree of skepticism. Of the work he says: 

“These advanced mathematicians are attempting to find a theory of everything, but each time they open a door, many other doors reveal themselves. It is all abstract mathematics, of course, so nothing is really yet proved. The more I read about it, the more I think they will never find the answer.” 

There is certainly abstraction and form in Kiefer’s work, but also a very messy materiality. He is interested in and influenced by science, but unlike many mathematicians and artists alike, he is not seduced by beauty, simplicity and perfection. He knows that this would be Idealism, and the Real world is much more labyrinthine and impenetrable than we like to think.

The Crucial Outstanding Tasks for Marxist Theorists

Gustav Klutsis

What is to be Done: IX

The essential tasks for the Marxists of today

The very unavoidability of the Origin of Life on Earth could NOT be tidied away. It demanded explanation, and slowly but surely using Life as a template method, initial definitions of Emergences as radically transforming Natural Events began to be formulated.

Surprisingly, these were NOT lead by the Marxists. Instead, individuals and small groups of scientists began to formulate these generally.

Many Wrong Turnings

Various diverse groups embraced the area of study “from their own discipline standpoints”. Green campaigners were enamoured of the approach, but did little to develop it scientifically (Lovelock comes to mind). The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Laughlin in opposition to the consensus in Modern Physics also lined up on the side of Emergences. Emmeche from the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen published a joint paper with two colleagues from other areas of study espousing the Emergentist approach, and finally Murray Gell-Mann and colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute in America also insisted that they were ”of the same persuasion”. But though I suppose that these were a significant and diverse group of supporters of the idea of Emergence, I’m afraid that they did not turn any significant corners. They were, of course, ill equipped to address the real problems and tasks involved, for these were unavoidably philosophical. In addition it turns out to be impossible for anyone to make contributions in this field who are still following the standard pluralist approach of the majority of scientists. It is clear to me that such researchers, no matter how dedicated, cannot overcome the problems inherent in the pluralist approach. After all, the most essential feature of Emergences MUST be that they are creative! In the same way that Evolution was incessantly punctuated by the entirely New, and involved a regular opening up of new Potential and Form, so it was with all Emergences. The creative aspect of these Events was anathema to most thinkers.

The iron grip of strict Determinism on the one hand, and still-existing religion on the other, were sure they had ALL the answers already. They had always had the answers, of course! To depart from strict Determinism was condemned as Metaphysics on the left hand side, and Sacrilege on the right.

The epitome of the Scientific approach was embodied in the work of Holland (at Santa Fe), who along with ALL his colleagues it seems, was convinced that he could “demonstrate” Emergences via
Computer Simulations.

Forgive me while I fall about laughing uncontrollably. The idea that a retrospective form such as a computer simulation could possibly produce creative Emergences was unbelievable. But, remarkably, that turned out to be the Determinist/Reductionist consensus. Quite clearly such people could never tackle the problem: the Emergence of Life on Earth could never be addressed merely by a re-mix approach.. All they would be able to do is emasculate it! They might be able to turn it into a vehicle for their careers, but they could never address its true essence.

So, Who Could Tackle This Problem? It should be obvious WHO should be doing this work. IT IS YOU!

Indeed, as far as I can see ONLY dialectical materialists could ever address the questions posed in this area. With a multi-discipline approach, and taking in ALL the developments since the time of the great Marxists, we should attempt a Marxist description of Emergent Events, and to do this believably, we must first tackle, then reveal, and finally destroy the prevailing scientific consensus methodology based on Plurality. We must bring about the demise of Reductionist Determinism as the main barrier to progress in this crucial area ( as well as many others)

The undertaking is about Epistemology – the task of understanding and explaining Reality, and about Method – the means by which we do this. The established methodology CANNOT address what we must deal with here, so we must first criticize fully, and then replace, the old methods. We must see the flaws in the old reductionist/Determinist methods and define the necessary alternatives. Not Plurality, But a New Holistic Science.

Now, earlier in this paper, I already intimated that Plurality is not only a purely pragmatic approach to the study of Reality, but also, and unavoidably, imposes the consequent conceptions of Determinism and Reductionism upon how we see things as a whole. These ideas “unify” our global conceptions into what seems like a coherent and comprehensive Whole. But, it is merely a useful myth.

Its opposite, Holism, fared even worse, for though seemingly more all-embracing, still delivered NO effective methodology with which to deal with Reality, and, in any sort of scientific way, reveal its inner workings. So, we are presented with this pair of alternatives, neither of which is adequate to the required task. Therefore, though it seems incomprehensible, our task is defined as having to work through this dichotomous pair to another, different approach, which really does reflect the real situation.

We must explain in detail how these alternatives have in the past only led us astray, and following this attempt a synthesis which transcends their evident contradiction.

No easy task!

First, we must reveal the unavoidable dead-ends involved in a purely pluralistic methodology, and then without clanging over to the opposite extreme of ineffective Holism, point the way instead to a superior methodology.

Of course, such a task is a supreme undertaking, and of course, way too big for a single paper, or even for a single contributor. But a start must be made, for only by such actions will other additional forces be recruited to this fundamental task.

Charlie Chaplin

What is Wrong with Pluralist Technology?

Let us first establish irrefutably the limitations of the now universally established Pluralistic Method. By the processes of isolation, extraction and abstraction we separate embedded relations from their Real World context, control or ignore formative, as well as seemingly trivial, simultaneous factors, and then limit the ground for their intended use, so that they do indeed deliver what is required when used there.

We construct stepping-stones across the veritable river of changing Reality, without tackling the torrent as such. Of course - we are aware that each and every extraction is limited to its own Domain of Applicability – our secure stepping stones, and that if their limits are transgressed, our formulae fail, and we step into the midst of the torrent, and are swept away to oblivion.(For once beyond these limits the formulae are totally useless and give false values for all crucial variables). Indeed, the experienced user of these methods knows, that to ensure any progress, we must abandon our last stepping stone for another in the next Domain.

Our feeble attempts at transcending these boundaries automatically are similar to constructing makeshift bridges from one stepping stone to the next. Such “bridges” can only be retrospective, as each and every stepping stone has to be separately investigated to produce its pluralistic formulae. Only then can these purely artificial bridges be constructed.

The method is what I call “Additive Complexity”, where the various Domains and their formulae, become different “terms” within a cover-all single equation. The terms are integrated in such a way that as we move from one domain to the next, the old term vanishes, while the appropriate new one comes into dominance. It is a clever (and once again pragmatic) trick. But it delivers NO explanation of the transition at all. It is a purely retrospective frig, to deliver a practical, mindless solution..

Though, highly popular amongst engineers, these frigs tell us nothing about what is actually happening, and why. They could not by any stretch of the imagination be called Science. They are mere Technology!

It HAS to be asked, “What is really happening as we move across such boundaries?”

It is abundantly clear that our pluralistic methods cannot address this question, because the answer MUST be contained within the VERY FACTORS that we have either “nailed to the floor” or totally ignored. Clearly, our selection of what was vital, ceases to be true. Our banker, dominant factors will melt away and themselves become negligible, to be replaced by others from those we cast away. Indeed, the very factors necessary to deliver the changes are unavailable, as our pluralistic methods disposed of them as irrelevant.

This post is the ninth in a new blog series entitled "What is to be done?" on the crises in both Marxism and Science, and how a revolution is necessary in both. This body of work is now available as a Special Issue. Read it all here!

A New "Constructivist" Experiment

Long Exposure of double pendulum with LED at end of each pendulum

Here is a suggestion for a Couder-like constructivist experiment, to attempt to get similar stable effects as results. The key elements for such experiments have to be in the tuneable interactions of mutually affecting oscillations, underpinned by a constant applied vibration, that also interacts significantly, but is also the crucial energy supply, which keeps the resultant system going.

It is hoped that a final, overall rotation will again deliver the required cup de grace – Quantization!

To deliver the appropriate conditions, let us choose a Compound Pendulum as our starting point, for even without any of the intended extra additions, these produce fascinating and complex behaviours. So, that if it is successively modified and appropriately “tuned”, it will take us through a range of stabilities, and even a final extra example of quantization – entirely as a result of oscillations and rotations alone.

But the usual form of a compound pendulum will require several additions in order to tune it into the possible stable forms that we are seeking. The diagram below shows the necessary construction.

This new form would commence by changes to the structure of the pendulum and the overall vertical vibration to attempt a “Walker-like” stability. Once this has been achieved, we could add a horizontal rotation via the included motor, and see the effects achieved at different rates.

If the discoveries of the Couder “Walker” experiments are applicable generally in appropriate circumstances, when driven by an overall vibration as a key component, that is also a continuous source of energy, we should expect to get both the establishment of a stable system, and, even more important, the clearly quantized results of the various added horizontal rotations.

Who fancies having a go at this task?

Capitalism’s Major Flaw

Profit!

The article in New Scientist (3022) entitled "Capitalism’s Hidden Web of Power", questioned the current analysis of the 2008 slump. Yet, the slump, itself, was more or less taken for granted, and the only important questions to be addressed were deemed to be about how to police irresponsible companies, so that such things could be “nipped in the bud”, and retrieved before too much damage was done. The idea was that, with sufficient information, an impending crisis could be avoided. The recession would not be so deep, and the recover would be much swifter!

These correcting analysts insisted that the criteria for assessing risk were inadequate. Various institutions and involved researchers now vied to add the obviously as yet excluded component, which they termed “Complexity”.  [Not the many other meanings of this word, but merely how complicated many companies had become was what was meant]. But, of course, they were wrong too!

Complexity as it was now being revealed is there on purpose - to HIDE things!

But, it isn’t the methods used in organisation that are the unintended reasons for this problem, but exactly what they are always trying to hide!

The reason for these desperate swoops is the nature of Capitalism itself! And, of course, this has to be hidden at all costs. Tell me, are these regulators going to rearrange things so that the real causes are plainly evident? Of course they aren’t.

No one really looks closely at how Capitalism works. It is treated as a natural given, and all efforts are concentrated upon re-organising the deckchairs on the sinking Titanic!

So, why do slumps occur? For that they certainly do! How can a system sustain itself in the face of the most unavoidable chronic crisis?

If Capitalism, as is claimed, delivers, of itself alone, “a better life for all”, why is it so frail, and so regularly (and catastrophically) compromised? Can you really blame it all on Complexity? Of course not!

It is much more likely that it is inherently and fatally flawed. And simply cannot avoid these major calamities. Is it not inevitable given how Capitalism actually works? Whilever the so-called experts are studying Complexity, no one is studying modern Capitalism as an economic system. And, no one is addressing its regular crises and inevitable, ultimate collapse.

What is the guiding Principle of Capitalism? It is the acquiring of PROFIT! And, what precisely is that? Is it like wages for work done? NO, it certainly isn’t! It involves having wealth, and investing some of it to get a nice regular addition to it! It is “Much getting More” without really doing anything for it.

“But”, I hear the cry, “we are risking our wealth!”

No, they aren’t! The Stock Exchange guarantees that. Only the uninformed small investors will be wiped out! The big boys never get ruined. They even make money out of slumps. NOTE: In 2008 a famous British Capitalist was seen in Iceland, as its economy was collapsing, buying up whatever he could get for a song! How do you think he did out of his hurried trip?

PROFIT is an added overhead above all real costs and payments, to pay both owners and investors an unearned bonus. And, indeed, some of these playing the Stock Exchange don’t even care what their investments finance. For as soon as a profit is to be made they SELL!

  

Now, you may well ask, “How on earth does it ever work (between the slumps of course)?”

It is because there is always the promise of unearned profit literally forever.

That keeps moneyed people investing, and others setting up companies. But, the values generated by such activities are never real values. So-called confidence inflates expectations and hence Market Values always above Reality. Yes, always!

Indeed, within Capitalism, inflation is not only inevitable, it is actually essential, for it helps the company owners in two different ways. First, it decreases the current values of the wages they pay their workers, and, second, it also decreases the real value of any capital loans that they must pay back. [Just imagine what a mess they would be in when Deflation is in charge – the value of borrowed loans increases, and the value of their workers wages increases too]

Capitalism is a system for owners, and is built upon Credit in its every corner.

And, of course, the mismatch between Reality and inflated values occasionally gets revealed, and the whole edifice begins to crumble.

And who then is made to pay?

Who is still paying for 2008 today?

Contemplating The Precipice

Dealing with Holisitc Complexity

To say the least, my current deliberations are getting more than a little ”hairy”, and I feel that I am skating upon very thin ice. For, in chasing the basic conundrums of Modern Physics, it has become very clear what had always been avoided, to a significant extent, and were now almost totally ignored, were the actual explanations of phenomena. And, this had been achieved by taking the much easier, alternative path of merely describing, and then formulating the purely quantitative data from phenomena into deemed-to-be essential equations.

But, this route can no longer be followed, and I am forced into uniquely tight corners, by the inherent contradictions generated by the one-sided, and indeed, the aberrant and misleading methodology that is usually employed.

For, in attempting to base yourself on past achievements (in which you can have no choice), you invariably find yourself constantly seeking causal sequences of explanation, yet always hitting the premature termination of each uncompleted series, and having to attempt to “do it for yourself”!

For example, my professor, many years ago, at Leeds University was world famous for his “Stoner’s Sub Groups”, but in my efforts in attempting to integrate atoms into a non-empty background, I had then, unavoidably, to explain the Copenhagen Interpretation’s probabilistic methods in terms of an actual filling or substrate of Empty Space, actively interacting with a nucleus-electron system within an atom.

The “usually necessary”, almost total isolation of investigated subsystems, and the consequent separate theories and equations, invariably meant that many transitions could not possibly be included. And changes of system always meant the abandonment of one theory and equation for another. You rummaged about in the “bag of solutions” to find a form that fitted, and the causes of the transitions were never properly addressed.

So returning to Stoner’s Sub Groups, I reckoned that my earlier suggestion of the actual existence of a space-filling paving might be relevant within an atom, and an explanation of Stoner’s discovery might well throw important light upon what was happening concretely inside an atom with its own internal substrate.

I reckoned that such a substrate, as I had postulated for my Theory of the Double Slit, would, in this particular set of circumstances, have to not only surround the atom, but also exist within it too!

If this were the case, the orbiting electron would have to negotiate through the internal substrate, as it attempted to respond to the electrostatic relationship between the electron and its nucleus.

After all, I have never understood how the demotion of the orbit of an electron in an atom (with its clearly physically caused electrostatic and magnetic properties due to a concrete set of circumstances), could transform the energy released into a wholly disembodied form that maintained complex electrostatic and magnetic properties in an infinite oscillation. The question, surely, had to be , “How?”

But, elsewhere, in attempting to explain Fields in a vacuum, surrounding a charged particle, and the effect of the “field” on any other interloping charged entities, if I had also to deal with action-at-a-distance, and I was forced to again define a substrate that could articulate all these effects.

NOTE: as you can see, each thing led to another. And, if a genuine causal chain (which is always assumed to be there) was to be found, and itself explained, you quickly zoom off to you know not where.

One thing incessantly led to another, and I found myself having to explain Stoner’s Sub Groups in terms of the inter-relation of orbits, fields and substrates within an atom.

So, as you can see, the imperatives involved are Real Physics, and not just the usual, formal descriptions, but I have to admit to frequently becoming swamped by what appeared to be “infinite regress”.

But, that is, of course, unavoidable, and was why for hundreds of years pluralist-based Science has dominated. For, it tidily avoided such precipitous routes!

The advantages, of pluralist assumptions, are that all such causal sequences are unnecessary for effective use of a single equation in its appropriate Domain. You could isolate! And, such considerations were sidelined as “theoretical” or even “academic”, and Science motored “ahead” with its small “steps in isolation”.

“Can we use it now?”, was the insistent cry. “I don’t want to know “Why?”, all I need is ”How?”

So, as soon as you decide to take the holist route, the endemic pluralist simplifications of past Physics no longer deliver the crucial essences of Reality, but are merely pragmatic simplifications, and manipulations of “the appropriate ground”.

The fact that these simplifications also were effective in revealing dominant factors, and hence facilitating “situation farming”, made accelerated (though aberrant) paths very easy to construct and follow, while everything else was ignored. And, the justification, the Principle of Plurality, made this methodology “sound”, as all extractions were deemed to be “separable”, and hence independent of context.

In addition, the collection of individual relations was sufficient for most practical applications, and the crucial drive towards inclusive, and indeed, ever more comprehensive theories was abandoned, with a measure of “justification”.

But, the Principle of Holism (the opposite of the Principle of Plurality) is that you cannot do that!

You can simplify, but NOT to reveal Essence, but only to reveal the more dominant contributions, and then in a purely formal, idealised and usually entirely quantitative form of relations - Equations. And, of course, such procedures are fine in limited and controlled contexts: the dominant factors can be made to work “almost alone” and in an idealised form. But, such an approach makes the important transitions from one qualitative situation to another impossible to address in an explanatory way.

“This happens when that threshold is passed”, is NOT an explanation. It is a placeholder for a missing explanation!

Causality becomes increasingly impossible, for each and every local truth has been found by actually removing what in unfettered Reality takes the situation to a very different set of phenomena.

The dynamic of a rich and changing Reality has been surgically removed, and replaced by only a series of artificially “true” snapshots of what was really going on.

Current Science is no longer the philosophic standpoint, from which the meaning of Reality-as-is can be addressed, but instead an equation-led, pragmatic bag of practical, unchanging equations!

It is increasingly breathtaking just how much is never explained, and how eclectic are even the very best of scientists. Without a qualm, such scientists will put aside one theory and pick up another, better-fitting one, and leave any explanation for the caused transition completely unaddressed.

Now clearly, such tasks are not individual, and limited in their content: they are too complex for one person to deal with. If ever there was a form of investigation that MUST be addressed socially, it is the current Crisis in Physics. There has to be too many balls in the air for a single juggler to cope with. You need a team, and a trained and integrated team at that.

Modern Physics is dying fast, and the present ideas and paradigms are simply not up to the tasks presented in the current era.

Figure and Ground

The Dangers of Simplification

 

This seemingly interminable series of papers on Fields is a product of the way we always attempt to deal with such phenomena.

We have learned that the most productive approach is to avoid confusing complexity, and, instead, work to simplify situations as far as we possibly can. So, we select & isolate situations, attempting to leave only what we are seeking: we simplify first conceptually, and then concretely until we have both a revealing and amenable Domain - ideally conducive to our further studies.

By now, we are, without doubt, the masters of such isolating and constraining of phenomena in such a way as to “completely reveal” their supposedly “Key Relations”.

It has, indeed, become the fundamental approach for all our experimental set-ups, and, therefore, produces not what we think we have revealed – Fundamental and Universal Laws, but, on the contrary, specific and limited relations locked fast into the specially arranged, conducive situations we have erected.

Thus, our “Truths” are always fragments – particulars. And so, though we crave overarching and universal laws, we never actually get them.

We get a multiplicity of particular laws-plus-their-contexts.

So, with such a complex area as Fields, and indeed ALL actions-at-a-distance, this fragmentation is multiplied even more.

Yet, before this revelation gets too depressing, it has to be emphasized that we certainly know how to use what we currently extract. Our methods have been very successful, for we know precisely where to apply our “partial truths” – in the appropriately constrained situations! As long as these correct contexts are accurately constructed, we do indeed have places where our laws work: we can predict, and hence also produce!

Our methods equip us for production, but also inevitably disarm our ability to explain why things are the way that they are, and behave in the way that they do, when left to themselves!

We are very adept technologists, but not adept scientists (though we think that we are), and, most certainly, are nowhere near being even competent philosophers.

Now, the pragmatists will dismiss any such criticisms of both their method and standpoint, because their purposes are in no way compromised by the inadequacies of their approach.

Continuing “Progress” still appears to be continuously assured. But, of course, without the essential development of understanding as well as straightforward use, what we get can only be an aberrant growth.

It is really a maximal exploitation of a partial truth, rather than a step on the path to an ever wider and deeper understanding of our world. [Like the young man who built me a working Amplifier, but could not tell me why it worked, or what the various components were actually doing: neither could he use what he had to design something new].
Indeed, if the stream of scientific explanations ceased forthwith, technology (as with my young electrical constructor) would etiolate and die, like a pea shoot without sustenance.

Science is the source and lifeblood of technological progress, and even more important, it can also be the means to actually understand the world.

Now, returning to our problems with Fields, the difficulty is that our isolating and simplifying also walls us off from what we are trying to understand. For such things are not appropriate to such methods: for Fields are certainly NOT isolatable phenomena! Why can I say this?

It is because the “Figure” and the “Ground” in such situations are not only inseparable, but also actually mutually defining and determining! We simply cannot separate them without destroying what they are.

For example, is a Field actually erected by its “causing” charge, or is it actually a response of the Background to the presence of that charge?

For we usually assume that our Grounds are always totally inert – mere formal references, whereas the holist suggestions outlined above change all of that!

The two always have a reciprocal relationship, and perhaps an evolutionary one too.

Now, rather than halting the conclusions here, and arguing whether these assertions fit all cases or not, let us first concede something called Dominance.

Though the philosophical basis for the ideas being explained here constitute Holism, they are NOT the same as that early version espoused by The Buddha, though it is still much closer to his position, than it is to the sub atomic physicists of today.

It does, in contrast, admit that things are not all of equal weight, and in many situations, particular relations can dominate to such a major extent that they can be fairly easily isolated, extracted an then used in the pluralist sense described above as the usual scientific experimental practice.

But, “Exceptions always make Bad Law”, and Dominance is not triumphant either everywhere, or permanently.

It is a surface effect, upon a holistic World, where literally everything does indeed affect everything else, and in many crucial areas we have to deal with not only Systems of Processes, but also hierarchies of such Systems too.

A great deal is always going on simultaneously, and our Simplifying, Isolating and Constraining in order to extract any usable order does indeed change the overall situations that we are trying to understand.

The classic example is, of course, the Weather, but there are many cases where such situations also defy Analysis by our usual pluralistic means.

My favourite is Miller’s Experiment, wherein he attempted to make an emulation of the conditions upon the primitive Earth – before Life had emerged, in the hope that he could reveal something of the developments leading to that revolutionary Origin of Life.

Sealing “everything necessary” in a glass containing-system, and adding heat and electrical discharges (as lightning), he set the system in motion, which was as near as he could get to the actual primaeval Weather System, in order to see what might occur.

As we all know, after only one week, the water in his system had already turned a deep reddy-brown, and on dismantling of the system, he was able to show that amino acids had somehow been synthesized.

But as to how this had happened, there was no way that he could confirm the processes involved.

The absolutely essential isolation from any present-day contributions, also prohibited any time-based Analysis, and most certainly, many strands of changes must have been happening throughout that momentous week, both as parallel simultaneous processes, and as parts of crucial ongoing and changing sequences. So, without any possibility of intervention, NO further explanations were possible.

This is, and always gas been, the classic dilemma of investigating a Holist World using the only available methods - pluralist science could get nowhere in such investigations. They seemed to be Unknowable. And in spite of the undoubted success of Miller’s Experiment, it was also the “end-of-the-line” in most scientists’ eyes. Pluralist science offered a great deal more and it was there that ALL the research was concentrated.

So, these inevitable cul de sacs in attempts to develop a Holist Science did dissuade anyone else from embarking on such a seemingly doomed-to-failure route.

Yet, it would be wrong to consign this approach to the dustbin just yet. Darwin’s Origin of Species was a masterpiece of Holist Science, and other major holist contributions have also been made. But, the philosophical ground, and necessary methodology for a general holistic, yet scientific approach has still not yet been defined. It still awaits a generally applicable methodology!

Now, this author has attempted to apply such a method to the infamous Double Slit Experiments, beloved of the currently dominant Copenhagen School in Sub Atomic Physics, and he was finally able to explain all the anomalies involved, without any recourse to Wave/Particle Duality or the probabilistic formulae of the Copenhagenists.

So, with this demonstration the Copenhagen View was proved to be NOT the only possible approach, and he has since embarked upon a particular area of Physics, which has long annoyed him.

It is, of course, Action-at-a-Distance, the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through totally Empty Space, and, of course, the “daddy-of-them-all” FIELDS!

So, let us assume the very worst!

Let us say that our “Figure” is really composed of multifarious and mutually determining processes, while our “Ground” is not only very similar in its diverse content, but also both determines the behaviours of the contents of our supposed “Figure”, and is, in turn, modified by them.

Now, here is surely a suitably messy situation to attempt to make sense of.

How might we do it?

Well, we do have a vast set of pluralist techniques, that though compromised conceptually, do give us “something”; and what we get is never merely pure invention, it always contains some aspects or fragments of the Truth. So, as long as we don’t wander off down the usual road, we can use these gains in a different way.

Though all gains made by such methods are always predicated upon restricted and maintained Domains, they do include an important measure of what is called Objective Content.

So, rather than careering off down the pragmatic sweet, downhill road to Production, we should gather as many closely related sets of pluralist Results as possible, and attempt to make some sort of conceptual integration out of them instead.

And, with such a change of philosophy and of methodology things can change profoundly.

We now consider all the skewed, pluralistic evidence, knowing that it has been extensively processed, and hence treating much of what we have with a measure of scepticism, and instead, attempting to formulate a common explanation, that would, in each biased pluralist set up, produce what has been extracted, but would integrate all cases into a single explanation.

Now, at this point we must address the universally applied frig that is the traditional answer to their “sets of pluralistic results”

That frig is the belief that each pluralistically obtained relation (a Law) is in fact the actual Truth for those factors, and if we simply add all such obtained Truths together, totally unmodified, we will get True Reality.

It replaces the true inter-relating integrations with crude Complication. The various Laws are summed to reconstruct what really happens.

NO THEY DON’T! What has to be done is to attempt to merge the individual isolations into a functional and integrated whole. That is much more difficult, but is essential!

NOTE: The alternative to the Copenhagen explanations of the Double Slit Experiments that was my own holist alternatives were amazing different in every possible way. And though the Copenhagenists could immediately motor off with their probability equations, they also brought understanding to a dead halt. Whereas, the holistic explanation have opened up theoretical prospects not only in these areas, but generally!

New Special Issue: Stability

Read it here

Previous papers on Stability, though essential, have not adequately dealt with the full Nature of, and reasons for, Stability, and why this happens is, when you think about it, very clear. For we are talking about Systems, and these are not unidirectional as are all simple processes, but indeed include many very different, and even contending processes, which nevertheless arrive at some overall system-state, in which opposites are both transcended, yet at the same time maintained. They are neither wholly removed, nor are they cancelled out. On the contrary, they continue unabated, but only because they are contained within a higher order, overall balanced system, where they do not determine that state, but are included within it, and are part of the overall balance.

Now, such statements can seem to involve hard-to-accept contradictions, until it is realised that the new Stability is based primarily upon other things, and can maintain a balance, actively, without cancelling out its clearly directly contending components. It is not a co-operative, all-pulling-in-the-same-direction system, but an effective compromise, which manages to deliver by working at a higher level, with all things balanced for those higher-level purposes.

To help illustrate some of the rather complex issues raised by this study, Shape commissioned a short film entitled The Problem with Science, which aims to address the current myopic consensus on Stability and Emergence, and to proffer an alternative way of looking at the world around us.

Issue 20 of SHAPE

Read it here

This issue of SHAPE Journal contains a closely related series of papers, in which the trajectory of significant qualitative change in an Emergence is tackled,diagrammatically. Of course, the elements of such considerations are still concepts, processes and transformations, but the spatial idioms of diagrams delivers that extra “dimension” of simultaneous portrayal, which does, indeed, allow quite involved transitions to be laid out, considered and significantly improved.

A words-only argument can be as much about winning as revealing, and it is clear to this author that without these kinds of diagrams, we would not only find solving such problems considerably more difficult, but we would also be bereft of the best initial means of communicating the ideas involved too.

The trajectory of Creative Change in an Emergence, such as that of the Origin of Life on Earth, involves contradictions, phase changes, and major transformations – even of the probabilities of events, and it is these features that must be understood. These papers do not complete the job, but they were fundamental in the creation and publication of this author’s Theory of Emergences in 2010.

The Earth Simulator

How Plurality Misleads

Here we go again!

In the introductory paragraph the article The Earth Simulator in the recent New Scientist (2784), Philip Ball first mentions the bankers as the cause of the recent Bank Crash, and subsequent world-wide recession, but within the same sentence switches to the real culprit - “the complexities of a system…which allows this…to morph into ..an unavoidable.. systems collapse”.

Now this “necessary admission of the truth” then goes on to suggest the only way that we could avoid such a reoccurrence in the future, albeit in another area, but with similar consequences. That new way, it seems, says we must harness the number crunching power of modern computing with our emerging understanding of the Physics of Complex Systems, to enable us to rebuild our theories of Economics from the bottom up.

But, that crisis wasn’t caused by ignorance, but by knowledge and dishonesty. The perpetrators didn’t “lose their shirts” by themselves backing very dodgy long shots! On the contrary, they made damn sure they would walk away early with pockets stuffed with money, while others would be left to foot the bill, and ultimately (as is crystal clear now with the new Tory government) the ordinary people would have to pay in lost jobs, lost services and poorer education.

And therefore the “solution” proffered here must be seen for what it is - another tired and wilfully dishonest means of tidying away the real truth, and blaming it on mere natural and unchangeable Complexity.

For the suggestion about bringing in Complexity Theory will do nothing except make it easier for the same type of thieves to succeed again, without being sussed until it is too late, and they are already cruising out the subsequent crisis in the South Seas.

There is a system to blame however, but it is nothing natural.

It is the Capitalist System, and its crises are due, as always, to the unavoidable declining rate of profit. Where are they to get the funding from to finance the necessary innovation, and the expected returns on investment? Surely, only by telling lies!

The experts have to “use” that system to persuade, those who invest money on other people’s behalf (like pension funds for example) to “back this new certainty”, and while building the coffers of the Funds they work for, can do very nicely for themselves while they are at it.

Now, this is not a political paper. But it is, nevertheless, essential to demolish the seemingly authorative advice given by these “well-informed” people. We have to sweep away the papering over and be clear on what really happened.

But, in addition, we must also be informed of the total lack of substance in the promises made here about Science enabling us to avoid such “mistakes” in the future.

Now, I do not know who Philip Ball is, and why he should be in a position to be able to supply the solution to this problem. But, I doubt that he is as well qualified, and experienced as myself to pronounce on the methods that he is proposing.

I ended up as a Director of Information Technology in a College of London University, after previous posts in Hong Kong and Glasgow, where I was an expert in the application of computers to all kinds of serious research - from computerising complex kit such as Gas Liquid Chromatographs, and sophisticated Engineering rigs, and in difficult Physiological investigation via new taxonomies in Zoology, and even in the Teaching of Dance using Multimedia Resources (for which I and my colleague won a BIVA award).

For a time I was involved in helping researchers into… guess what? Chaos and Complexity Theory, and have recently published a Theory of Emergences after many years of personal research.

It is therefore not by chance that only one week before the issue of this particular New Scientist containing this article was published I was moved to severely criticise the whole standpoint revealed in the above position, and to tackle it from their own supposed ground. This resulted in the paper The Myth of Simulation: Pluralistic “holism” and the Real thing.

This paper is included here today!