Yet, once more, the steady series of news comments and arguments that have been posted on this blog on Socialism, have clearly not been urgent enough to energise our readers to adopt new political positions. Yet, we know that bloggers from 120 countries have accessed our stuff, and that the socialist postings have been the most successful in getting serious numbers of hits.
This short collection of papers is a new and different attempt to elicit a more active response. It includes the following:-
1. Understanding Reality (posted below) 2. “Democracy” and the Rule of Law 3. Democracy: Services to and Control by the People
A response would be greatly appreciated. We get indirect evidence in terms of the numbers of hits, what they are looking at, and which countries they are from, so that we have recently traced important spurts in access to the Ukraine and Poland, but we really also require both positive and negative responses to our postings, to judge whether our objectives are in any way being fulfilled.
So, there are facilities at the end of each and every posting - tell us what you think!
Everybody does it – whether they are aware of it or not!
From the football supporter with his pint to the University lecturer with his publications, all of them, one way or another, try to make sense of the world they live in. They may severely limit what concerns them, or “tackle-the-lot” with some general conclusions, but no one is immune!
We, as a species, (and that means every single one of us) need to understand. It is why we are called Homo Sapiens – Thinking Man.
It is, and always has been, our main, if not our sole, weapon and tool: we can think, and naturally, therefore, attempt to solve problems, whether it is beating the offside trap or defining the nature of an electron.
So, though the majority of people could not profess to be philosophers, they actually are, whether they like it or not! They, most certainly, think about their experiences, and try to make some sort of sense of them.
But, let us be clear, to even be able to do such things is a wondrous ability. For, we, ourselves, are a product of Reality, and definitely not an outside observer. We are the most self aware and intelligent things in the Universe (as far as we know).
We are Reality’s most developed product, and we attempt to understand how this came about, by thinking both about the contents of our world and ourselves. So, though many would believe that thinking about such things is not for them, I have to disagree: for you, me and every other human being, are the only ones who can! We must not only consider things outside of ourselves, but also how we can do that, and how we can constantly improve our ideas about such things.
For, when we don’t, we are purposely misled by those who do profess to know, and have the wherewithall to propagate their preferred version. Indeed, in all forms of available information, and even entertainment, there is given out a steady stream of what they want us to think, and it is rarely the truth! Indeed, it is invariably a concoction that is biased to their own advantage, and almost never to yours!
So, we have to try to get around the propaganda, and think for ourselves.
But that isn’t automatic! We have been fed upon what others require us to believe all our lives, and mostly we manage to survive, without building our own view. But, when crises occur, then you cannot avoid it.
Just listen to those around you: everyone will have an opinion.
Everybody is concerned, for it is always YOU, who is made to pay!
They will simultaneously step up the constant stream of necessary diversions, whether Sport, or Royalty, War or Nationalism and Prejudice to feed an easy and diverting set of conceptions, and avoid a critical, and potentially damaging, response to their role in the crisis.
And, let’s face it; mostly they get away with it!
But, if you can continue to be satisfied with what you are given by a regular diet of experts in one impenetratable area or another, may I suggest you look at what is happening to the Greeks, the Spaniards, the Syrians, the Iraqis, the Pakistanis and many others.
For, they are being made to pay for any privileges that the West needs to survive, and if the crises get any worse, they will not hesitate to transfer such iniquities to YOU!
Criticisms of the usual way that Reality is investigated by Science in general, and Physics in particular, are invariably rubbished, not only by the rank and file of these disciplines, which together constitute an admittedly very fruitful approach, but perhaps even more vociferously, by the denizens of this set of disciplines.
But, I’m afraid that they are wrong, and for very good philosophical and scientific reasons.
For, the usual methods and their consequently associated theoretical conclusions simply do not address what I call Reality-as-is! Indeed, what is always dealt with is a limited and certainly modified selection from Reality.
Neither can the methods they use deal with anything other than completely stable situations – either as they occur naturally, or, in the overwhelming majority of individual situations, in totally man-devised and constructed Domains – expressly designed to make Analysis as simple and easy as possible. “You know you have it right, when the targeted relation sticks out like a sore thumb”
Priority One in preparing to do an experiment of this sort, is to first isolate a well-defined situation for study, and, thereafter, to implement a great deal of tailoring, involving both the elimination of the more confusing other, non-targeted, factors, and also by purposely holding tightly constant many others, in order to actually farm that Domain appropriately to display clearly a single targeted relation, in order to investigate that as straightforwardly as possible.
Clearly, if this could then be done separately for each and every significant relation (each with its own tailor-made domain), then the overall situation will be, supposedly, cracked, understood, and be able to be used to particularly useful purposes. One relation and its associated domain at a time.
To complete the process this farming of the chosen plot is intended to make it ideal for displaying, and then extracting by measurement, the targeted relation, and then its idealisation by fitting-it-up to a purely formal pattern or Equation, so facilitating its purposive use.
NOTE: such a process was totally inconceivable prior to the Neolithic Revolution, which changed Mankind’s mode of existence from a roving hunter/gatherer existence, to one dependant upon staying in one place, appropriately transforming a plot, and then growing what you needed.
This set of procedures is, by now, a well-honed, and highly successful methodology, turning an ever-increasing Knowledge Base into the ideal tool for subsequent Predictions and productive Use.
But, nevertheless, it only indirectly increases our understanding of Reality.
For, at no point is Reality-as-is addressed directly. Instead, and in Mankind’s usually effective and pragmatic way, it bypasses the imperative for Understanding, by instead employing the immediate and survival imperative for practical use. And, such a purpose cannot be denounced. It has led to what we call Technology, and an ever more far-reaching control of our immediate and necessary environments.
Photographs by Edward Burtynsky
It has produced our current World!
BUT, no one can say that such methods deal with Reality-as-is!
On the contrary, what is investigated is a highly unnatural, farmed set of situations, designed primarily to reveal a given, at first only glimpsed, and then targeted, relation.
The supposition is that the relation and its equation so affectively extracted, is still the very same one as exists in completely unfettered Reality. And, the philosophical justification, finally included to justify this methodology, is the famed Principle of Plurality, which insists that all simultaneously acting factors in the Real World are due to Eternal Laws, and are hence independent of their concrete contexts. Each is wholly separable, and in no way distorted by where it occurs.
Any evident variations that unfettered Reality seems to deliver are simply put down to additions of many different relations, none of which is in fact in any way modified by its co-existing partners in a situation, and which delivers what it does as merely the sum of the many independent contributions, varying only in their relative magnitudes, but unchanging in their essential natures.
Clearly, if this Principle were true, then all the tailoring of situations would be entirely valid, for they are then just an effective means of revealing the eternal, and hence unchangeable, natures of the relations involved.
But, this is merely a belief!
The major plank, for accepting it, is the occurrence, in complex situations, of dominances, where, in spite of the multiplicity of simultaneously acting relations, the sum can tend towards an integrated result, which, via dominance, implies an underlying, main eternal law.
But no evidence apart from the classical pluralist method of simplifying the experimental context is available.
The two things seem to support one another, but they are actually mutually dependent upon one another: no independent evidence has ever been gathered to prove it.
The very methodology actually prohibits any means of dealing with Reality-as-is, for the usual methods deal with Reality by significantly changing it to produce an overall, if somewhat simplified, stable situation, which is then turned into what appears to be that of an unaffected particular part, and this, thereafter, is always considered as a revealed Eternal Law. But it isn’t!
And, in addition, such a Principle can never explain when and why the relation will ultimately, and certainly, fail, so that a very different one takes over.
But, even these criticisms are much too weak to reveal the most damning inadequacy of this Principle, for the most important episodes in all of Reality, which have to be explained, are those when an existing stability begins to break down, until it finally dissociates completely. And not only that, for it then is always replaced by a wholly new situation, sometimes even at a higher level of organisation, and then involving its own top-down causalities to distort the remaining bottom-up factors still in evidence. For, such always involves new entities and properties, which just did not exist within the now replaced stability.
Such Emergences are always creative and not just reorganizations of the same set of Eternal Laws.
These crucial developmental interludes of real qualitative change and creation are in everyday language described by the word Revolutions, but academically now generally termed Emergences. And these are totally outside the capabilities of a pluralist determined scientific method.
For that criticised approach in Science cannot ever deal with the creation of the New, so real Developments, occurring in all the major achievements such as Life and Consciousness, are unaddressable by that methodology, which can only be applied within Stability, and nowhere else!
Now, though the physicists are adamant that their science is the Basis of all the other sciences, it is actually, not only a myth, but, in fact, a disabling detour that will never be able to address development at any level at all.
How can a science, which is incapable of dealing with development, be the Basis of all said-to-be derivations from itself? For the very qualities that make developing Reality what it is are totally unavailable from such a pluralist standpoint.
And that is a standpoint that only works within Stability – the complete prohibition of qualitative change, And, it can only be made to deliver anything at all in natural or engineered stable situations, if all developmental elements are excluded on principle, and by the methodology used.
Indeed, at present, only those sciences addressing higher levels of Reality, such as Biology for example, implicitly ask how they came-to-be: they just cannot avoid the question! And, they are also confronted constantly with qualitative change in every single living thing that is studied.
Indeed, it was, and still is, from these higher sciences that the wherewithall to address Emergences came, AND, perhaps surprisingly, came up with wholly new methods to deal with them.
Photograph by Ansel Adams
The Origin of Species was a triumph of Biology in understanding Reality-as-is - and was totally unaddressable by Physics.
Indeed, it is these creative interludes that constitute the most significant periods of qualitative changes.
In fact, they also occur even within Physics, but are totally ignored (or even emasculated) by the dominant approach within that science: so they are never properly investigated.
In all the various levels of Reality, where these interludes of creative, transformational and qualitative change do occur, it was also how all these higher levels were originally created from simpler levels. But, nevertheless, the physicists not only claim primacy for their science, but also refuse to investigate how the higher realms of Reality came to be.
Instead, they continue to insist that all higher levels can be completely explained by Physics, using only physical Eternal Laws. It is, of course, nowhere near the truth!
And to compound the felony, it also prevents physicists from explaining qualitative changes even within their own areas of study. The Wave/Particle Dichotomy proves it!
Indeed, it is perhaps the most damning evidence from Biology of the inadequacy of Physics (as it is currently considered) that it is these so-called derived sciences that managed to deliver The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, and the crucial research into the Origin of Life in experiments carried out by Stanley Miller. And, perhaps pointing the way, the crucial phenomenon that focuses attention upon the nature and reasons for Qualitative Change is embodied in the explanations of the existence and origins of Metamorphosis in living things.
The problem boils down to the inadequacy of the Principle of Plurality in dealing with Reality. The opposite alternative of Holism is clearly much closer to the Truth, and this does not see Reality as the simple summation of existing Eternal Laws, but, on the contrary, that it is a developing Reality that actually generates these “laws”, which will always depend upon context for their actual forms.
Pardon me, as I am forced to point out that you cannot see Dark Matter for two very good reasons.
First, it is invisible and well nigh totally undetectable. And second, it is also absolutely everywhere, and you can’t see the trees for the wood!
As you study in your underground laboratories, and your ever higher powered Accelerators, seeking the undetectable Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), you are completely missing the NIPs that are all around you, in such abundant profusion that they are, inconsequence, even more difficult to detect.
NOTE: with these Non Interacting Particles (NIPs), I miss out the “M for massive”, because the particles suggested have equal and balancing amounts of matter and antimatter.
Yet, the indirect evidence for these entities is also absolutely everywhere, though we invariably choose to ignore it. These particles exist as a “Paving” throughout the Universe, which actually propagates all Electromagnetic Radiation, AND they do it in quanta! NOT, I must immediately emphasize, by actually moving about themselves as carriers, but by a bucket-brigade kind of passing on of individual quanta from unit-to-unit!
[By the way, the Speed of Light, though indeed a constant, isn’t a Universal Constant: but merely the speed of transfer between these equally spaced out elements of this Paving].
They are not usually translational objects, though we humans can make them so in our many infernal devices.
Welcome to the neutritron! (Which is sometimes it is erroneously identified with the high-energy, short-lifetime version – the positronium as its normal state, which it isn’t!).
This is a mutually orbiting pair, consisting of one electron and one positron.
Perhaps surprisingly, you are already familiar with it in its modes of Pair Annihilation and Pair Production, when it either dissociates from a neutritron into its component parts, or is involved in the union of these two into a mutually orbiting, and stable pair, if the appropriate form of encounter of its soon-to-be components occurs.
It can also carry extra electromagnetic energy, above that necessary to maintain its base orbit, in exactly the same way that the atom does, via the promotion of its mutual orbits (somewhat different, of course, to the atom, because of the absence of a determining nucleus).
Oh, and by the way, I’m afraid it is also causing major confusion at the edge of the Universe, where the Paving ends.
For there, it causes Total Internal Reflection (or something very similar) of all electromagnetic radiation. And it causes trouble by giving not only by this means many extra virtual stars and galaxies, but by, also and confusingly, delivering multiple images of the same single source, yet apparently from quite different directions, as well as from different times in its past history.
If some great Being designed this particle, he (or she) must be giggling uncontrollably as the evident confusion caused by the particle, is shown to affect our most eminent scientists!
And, to compound the felony, this particle and its Paving has enabled the solving of the anomalies of the Double Slit Experiments, and is rapidly burying the ubiquitous Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.
Sleep well tonight, my beauties!
“But, how are these particles also the source of Dark Matter?”, you may well ask.
Well, all this talk about mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter makes me think what is actually happening is that it that it is them becoming an undetectable combination of matter and antimatter, as in the neutritron. Could that Universe-wide collection of hidden matter + antimatter BE Dark Matter?
Having read the article about Max Tegmark’s new book Our Mathematical Universe, my dire predictions for the unavoidable future of the current dominant tendency in Science have been sadly confirmed.
For, he discounts the whole of explanatory Physics as “mere baggage”, and endows what Forms are currently dealt with by the vast majority of current sub atomic physicists as the only True Essences of Reality.
What is more, it is these admittedly abstract Forms that are the drivers of Everything (he “subtly” puts it that they also constitute Everything, but that doesn’t help either). He has finally gone the whole hog to Idealism!
Materialism, as the usual basis for Science, is just another type of “baggage”: that is it is consequence rather than a cause. And the Universe acts solely in accordance with purely formal relations – as extracted and investigated by mathematical physicists.
Such an amazing standpoint has somehow to be established, so he stresses the various alternative explanatory physical theories as non-essential baggage, merely mistakenly added to the revealed, formal essentials. He doesn’t say it as such, but what he infers is that all such “baggage” consists of man-made inventions, while what mathematical relations deliver are aspects of Absolute Truth.
I have to admit that I want to take every word that this man utters, and force it back down his throat with some real Reality-based Philosophy, but to go to such lengths gives altogether too much credence to what he has to say. But, he has finally admitted what the majority of present-day Sub Atomic physicists believe, which will, inevitably, deliver its demise.
Interestingly, he puts it very differently. He says that anything less than a complete subscription to Form alone, will certainly cause the end of Physics.
But, of course, he is confusing what he, and his mathematical colleagues do, with the Science of Physics – the scientific effort to understand Reality. What the consensus (including Tegmark) do is Mathematics – the detailed study, NOT of Reality, but of its universal shapes and patterns that can be both extracted and then idealised from Reality, and into a World of Pure Forms alone, which we term Ideality.
Now, of course, this Sub World of Form alone is not an invention. It does exist, but nowhere as such in Reality.
For each and every relation is idealised into a Pure Form as it would exist, if and only if, it could stand entirely alone – without any other relations or even any concrete Reality: it is the World of Purely Formal Abstractions!
Now, of course, such a sub World of Form, and nothing else, is not some totally arbitrary invention.
It does, indeed, exist, but as a very limited reflection of Reality, like the shapes of the shadows it casts. Mathematicians study these in preference to Reality itself, because it is much easier, and seems to directly deliver Absolute Truth - which is impossible when studying an actively changing, indeed an evolving, concrete Reality.
The simplest analogy that I can give is that it is like a study of the shadows cast by real objects: for they are determined by the real objects, but do not in any way contain the substance and active relations of that Reality, but only derived and content-less Forms of it. Hence, they will reveal relations, but only as disembodied and idealised Forms!
Clearly, as such, they cannot be either arbitrary or invented, but they have stripped out completely what actually casts that shadow leaving only a very limited set of formal features of the severely limited views and their rules.
Now, though by no means exact, this analogy can also address the surfaces on which the shadows fall, from purely flat planes to all sorts of other topologies – delivering very distorted, yet expressible, shapes that occur upon them. So, in that sense, Mathematics is incomparably less than Reality, while also extendable beyond its concrete source in all its possible distortions.
To the man in the street, unaware of modern Sub Atomic Physics, what Tegmark expresses is either totally unintelligible, or alternatively “beyond his ken” - magical truths revealed by the only true experts in studying Reality at that level.
Yet, the first conception was the right one. Such people as Max Tegmark are what are termed mathematical-theorists of Physics. They deal wholly and only in mathematical forms, believing they are true essences of Reality. And, in that they are totally wrong!
The question is, “How do they get away with it?” And, “Why are they not trounced by other physicists occupying themselves with concrete Reality itself?”
Well, the reason is that the opposing group (what is now left of them) were, and still are, also incredibly compromised in their own basic standpoint and approach.
For centuries they have all based their studies and experiments on the fundamental Principle of Plurality, and this has led them into a complete dead end in attempting to continue ever deeper into revealing the true Nature of Reality. For, Plurality enables their banker technique, which they call Analysis. It is assumed that numbers of eternal Natural Laws act together upon each and every situation in Reality, but only sum in various ways, with different dominances that deliver very different resultant scenarios.
Their only approach is to tease out what they assume to be these “entirely separable” laws, in order to explain what they have observed.
Experiments are purposely constructed with the objective of clearly revealing a particular “law”, so that it can then be extracted. Multiple reapplications of such methods can be arranged to reveal each and every acting law in a given situation, and once they are all known (or, at least, the most important ones in the given context), they can be summed with different weightings to explain the overall unfettered Reality that has been directly observed.
BUT, Plurality is the Principle that insists that these laws are wholly separable, and that such methods are therefore entirely valid. But, it just isn’t true!
The World is certainly NOT pluralistic, but, on the contrary, it is Holistic! The laws extracted by these methods are NOT eternal, but actually caused in each situation by many different factors, which mutually modify each other and deliver what we actually see. The assumption of entirely separable laws is a man-made construct!
ONLY, in appropriately constrained conditions can such ideas and methods be made to work, but absolutely NEVER in totally unfettered Reality!
Plurality is a man-devised strategy to make of Reality what enables investigations to deliver such “laws”, and thereafter to use them to both predict and produce as long as the conducive, restrictive and filtering conditions are maintained throughout! Such “laws” are limited to the conditions in which they were extracted. Outside of that context, they are different, and will fail!
Now, this development, historically, was entirely unavoidable! For, in spite of Holism being much closer to the real nature of Reality, it could NOT suggest any means of investigating what was going on.
NOTE: Buddhists might disagree, but their whole philosophy is mankind-based, and is about the “perfection of the individual” in their personally realising Reality in all its simultaneity.
The pragmatic purposes in manipulating parts of Reality to both analysis and useful tasks, was much better served by control and maintenance of Parts of Reality assumed by Plurality, and implemented by extensive “farming” of contexts. Indeed the whole of Science is generally pluralistic!
In addition to this important flaw in conceptions and consequent methods, this meant that all Theories were also unavoidably flawed too. The pluralistic methods did indeed reveal very clearly entirely extractable and also useable formal relations, BUT ONLY in the simplified set-ups that had always to be both constructed for extraction, and also maintained for effective use.
And unsurprisingly such intended idealisations meant that the very same Pure Forms were found in many different situations.
Such idealised Forms were indeed universal, in such carefully perfected and producing contexts.
Yet, this was damagingly turned into a belief that the Forms were the motive forces of Reality: they all over the place, made phenomena act as they did. The preoccupation with Ideal Forms, automatically endowed them with causality, and hence turned believers into Idealists rather than Materialists.
As Hegel had clearly demonstrated, incorrect assumptions would always lead to the establishment of a Dichotomous Pair of mutually contradictory conceptions, which had to be switched between as and when each delivered what was needed.
Science had long been afflicted with such an impasse, but pragmatically soldiered on; unphased by their contradictory based Sciences, and even Physics became an amalgam of separate specialisms with different philosophies – Experimenters, Theorists and Technologists!
Now, Mankind, being what it is, these approaches were speculatively extended with a view to explaining the World. And together they gave both an explicable view, as well as a pragmatic useable Form. But, while one, the explanatory View, could never deliver the “Absolute Truth” of Reality, the other, the mathematical one, could indeed deliver the Absolute Truths of Pure Form!
You can see the unavoidable problem!
Now, re-reading the whole of the article on Tegmark again, you cannot but be struck by how static is the World he describes. And such a stationary World is also not true!
You would think he is saying that he is attempting to reveal the eternal laws, which supposedly add together to make Reality what it as (as strictly pluralistic as that of his opponents), so, nowhere do you get any kind of inkling of the actual Development of Reality, and, most importantly, its undoubted creations of the wholly new.
He might disagree, but frankly such things are so important that to not even mention them means indisputably that he doesn’t consider them as significant. I can only assume that he is a supporter of the “ever more complex mixes” attitude, wherein all the acting laws are totally constant, but come together occasionally in new quantitative mixes, and thus deliver what seems to be wholly new, but is actually just a re-arrangement. This would make Life – merely a re-arrangement, and Consciousness – yet another! NO!
Emphatically, Tegmark is not only a mathematician, but also a pluralist, and a rejecter of what are usually termed Emergences - or short episodes involving creations of the really wholly New! To miss out this absolutely crucial aspect of a Developing Reality, also condemns his standpoint completely, and makes his philosophy a study of Stability only!
Nowhere does he include interludes of crisis, collapse and emergence. To him, presumably, his elementary particles have just come together in a particular way, in, say, the human brain, and when he and his fellow physicists have all the fundamental laws within their hands, they will have no real difficulty, not only in explaining Consciousness, but also in being able to construct it on the very latest computers.
May I say it?
It is a very stupid philosophical or scientific standpoint!
ENDS
This paper has been published as part of Issue 34 of the Shape Journal entitled Myths of Tegmark
This long series of papers, in both Science and Philosophy, may seem like an intellectual self-indulgence, but that certainly is not the case! For, such flights of brilliance can only be indulged in by the very clever, who can always make silk purses out of sow’s ears with relative ease, and have the requisite vested interests to pass off such frauds as the real thing.
No! These particular efforts are the culmination of a very difficult 55 years of effort in the attempted resolution of difficulties within my chosen specialism of Physics.
And these studies were both made harder, and yet were also remarkably revealed, by a much wider set of experiences (to a serious level) in many other equally demanding disciplines from Politics to Teaching, to Geology and Evolution, and even to Sculpture to Ballet.
But, unlike the Hegelian Emergences (in Thinking alone), this realisation has had a truly enormous gestation period, along with other major threats to health and even life, which made the effort to find a solution both increasingly conceivable and also extremely urgent too.
The real problem has been the major crises, which beset Mankind in its attempts to understand Reality. For, each and every major gain has also, and inevitably, always then been an ever more debilitating restraint on taking things further, and the Emergences necessary to transcend each consequent impasse have become all the more difficult to arrive at.
Conceptions of “Truth” are always over-rated, and get in the way of taking things further, in the form of ideas of “progress” and “correct method”. For, such realisations, when they occur, are indeed miracles of an amazing order. For, here is a remarkable product of the evolution of Reality – namely Life, which, in its further development in Mankind, has produced the first product of this evolutionary process to be in a position to attempt to understand it! Yet, in no way was Man endowed with the readymade tools for the job.
For, as with the early hominin Homo Habilis, he had to learn to actually make the tools necessary for effectively tackling such questions. And also, in the same way as Homo Habilis’s flint tools, they would not only open up entirely new vistas, but even brand-new ways of thinking too, while, at the same time, be strongly-limiting fetters, incapable of going beyond a certain level.
In modern Sub Atomic Physics, the gathered masters of that area of study finally insisted that Mankind could never understand this crucial area, as it was totally outside our experience, and hence our ability to make sense of what was occurring there. You simply had to give up trying to actually understand, and instead use pragmatic rules and laws to get the required results.
But, of course, they were entirely wrong!
The whole history of Mankind has been one of self-construction! Man may not have been genetically equipped with all the necessary tools, BUT he was genetically developed enough to actually find wholly new methods. There is NO congenital limit to Homo Sapiens - ourselves. Its adaptions for success have been primarily in the development of its brain and thinking. It doesn’t come with anything but the most basic congenital skills: most of what Mankind needs and uses has had to be both found and learned, and in that no other known organism in the Universe gets anywhere near Man’s abilities in this area.
Yet, periods of transcending the old and established, and constructing the new, don’t just fall into our laps. Many Dark Ages can last for millennia, and some of the restraints upon Mankind’s current thinking have been unchallenged for several hundreds of years.
The Solvay Conference, at which the physicists gave up the imperative to understand Reality, was in 1927 – 87 years ago, and until now (2014) no one has been able to demolish that disastrous Copenhagan Retreat, and construct an alternative. Until now, that is!
As a famous revolutionary once said, “The situation for a revolution isn’t just ready for occurring, it is now well over-ripe”. And so, it is vested intellectual and financial interests that are now so well entrenched that wars are more likely than revolutions. And, to overturn the current establishment is now a great deal bigger than a national revolution: it has become a global task!
But, that is what, in Physics, is beginning to happen.
At first, slowly and spasmodically, individual scientists attempt to transcend the limitations imposed by past gains, and consequent vested interests. Ever since Charles Darwin, and (much later) Stanley Miller, individuals (like Yves Couder) have continued to make new kinds of attempts to tackle the seemingly impossible problems inevitable from the working through of past banker positions.
In the last decade Yves Couder has developed a wholly new method of experimentation, which involved the deliberate construction of a tailor-made analogue set up, to help to solve the seeming impasses in Sub Atomic Physics, by moving the action wholesale into the much easier macro areas.
All such trail-blazers were, and still are, Holistic in their approach to Science, rather than pluralistic, and in their work and methods are the key pointers to a new and essential approach, which, for the first time, can tackle Reality-as-is, rather than the usual artificially set up and maintained experimental Domains.
Before us lies a new Ocean, of colossal extent and a new richness, and to glimpse its possibilities must be like the very first view of the Pacific, from a Peak in Darien many centuries ago.
This issue of the SHAPE Journal is basically a response to Max Tegmark’s work as revealed in New Scientist (2952), but to deliver a meaningful critique, we must first clear up a few important questions.
Now, as is becoming clear, there are already many different responses to Max Tegmark’s various recent articles and publications (including his recent book Our Mathematical Universe), but though he represents an extreme position in modern science, his basic conceptions are not only adhered to by the majority of his colleagues in his, and related, areas of study, but also that such a standpoint is fundamental to their own positions too.
So their entirely-within-house criticisms are way short of what is required here. For, as they either partially, or even wholly, subscribe to his fundamental bases, they simply cannot demolish his ground, as they too are standing squarely upon it! Two sets of papers are therefore proffered by this more thoroughgoing critic.
The first set addresses Tegmark’s contributions, while the second set is a direct critique of the basic assumptions that he makes, and these are made from a position, which is both materialist and holistic, whereas the tendency containing both Tegmark and the vast majority of his colleagues in Sub Atomic Physics are both idealist and pluralistic.
P.S. Subsequent to the writing of these papers, Tegmark has produced yet another rocket, in which he insists that Consciousness is merely yet another Phase of Matter, along with Solid, Liquid and Gas.
So clearly, more will follow to debunk such nonsense in the near future. JS
It is now abundantly clear from the attention the SHAPE Marxist websites are getting, that there are still many socialists in the Ukraine, and citizens, with arms in hand, are taking control of many key buildings in a range of cities and towns.
Whether they know it or not, they are on the threshold of a Revolution! They do not want the further encroachment of European Capitalism, nor do they want the oligarcs that took the people’s institutions for their own, when the Stalinists were no longer able to keep control.
They want their country back, but this time run for its people!
Though the SHAPE sites are accessed all over the World, the current leading contenders are the Ukraine and Russia itself! What does that tell you about the people of these countries? And, these sites are avowedly Marxist, and do not hide their opposition both to Putin, AND to the Stalinists that preceded him.
But, these new activists must NOT be diverted into Russian Nationalism.
The Ukraine is yours!
Russia is currently a capitalist country, run by ex-stalinists who are now capitalist oligarcs!
The current “Cold War” is no longer between the Capitalists and the Socialists, but between different Capitalist powers and their sought-for hegemony worldwide. Yet, behind the false leaders, in Russia and the Ukraine are many who were, and still are, socialists, and want their country back!
Unite for a Socialist Ukraine!
All genuine socialists must support the rebelling citizens of the Eastern Ukraine!
Oppose the Ukrainian middle class who want capitalist advantages purely for themselves.
This issue has been compiled to
address one of the Key Questions in both Philosophy and Science, while
seemingly residing solely in the most esoteric regions of Pure
Mathematics.
It attempts to find an alternative to the currently universally accepted
formalism, and also the basis for all theories in Science, which is
dependant upon the usually unstated Principle of Plurality, but turns
decisively away from this now standard approach, to the alternative that
sees Reality as more properly characterised as deeply holistic.
It has become a truly major undertaking, not only because of the
difficult problems that have been encountered, but also because of the
significant breakthroughs that have already been achieved with this
alternative approach.
And, these gains have been primarily in what is usually termed
Mathematical Chaos. These achievements have been primarily
philosophical, for they have questioned the usually agreed ground for
this area of Mathematics, by a careful study of the implications of
iterative assumptions and methods, NOT, as is usually the case, in
pragmatic assemblies, but in the generation of the now renowned Chaotic
Forms that they can be persuaded to produce.
But, its status here is not solely dependant upon these researches, but
also, and perhaps even more importantly, upon extensive resonances with
these forms both in Physics and in Philosophical studies too.
The crucial and revealing studies have been in tackling the need for a
scientific methodology, based upon the assumption that Reality is not
pluralist but most definitely holistic, yet though this is often
conceded, NO feasible methodology or formalism has so far been achieved.
Holism, though probably the more correct view of Reality, seemed
incapable of providing Science with any means to rival those delivered
by the assumption of Plurality.
Yet, in this relatively small group of papers, a possible way has been devised.
It may not be what mathematicians want to hear, and the vast majority of
physicists, immersed up to their necks in the now consensus Copenhagen
Interpretation of Quantum Theory, will certainly be directly opposed to
these ideas. But, in the opinion of this theorist, these papers
represent a significant contribution, and lay down a sound basis for
further research, and, maybe even a Major Revolution!
In the last 15 hours I was surprised by the relative flood of hits on the first instalment of our new series entitled How Do We Get Socialism? There was a three-fold increase in the number of accesses that usually take place at this time in the week. Most of these hits have come from Russia... and this got me thinking.
I had noticed that in Putin's reasoning for his "annexing" of the Crimea, he had surprisingly referred to the Bolsheviks in a positive way. Why would a neo-capitalist do that? Also, why should "The West" react so strongly to this event? Russia is now a capitalist power just like them. Why should they react similarly to how they did when Russia was a socialist state?
There has to be more in this than meets the eye!
I immediately recalled the circumstances of Margaret Thatcher's re-invasion of the Falklands Islands in 1982, after they had been invaded by the Argentines. Not only was Argentina reacting to a political crisis at home, but so was Thatcher, with recession returning to the UK.
Could Putin be reacting to domestic problems in Russia with similarly nationalistic moves? For the increasingly positive reactions to Marxist articles on SHAPE and this blog, from this part of the world, seem to indicate that in that country there is now mounting support for a socialist Russia: this time in accordance with its original intentions, and not the Stalinist distortion.
Interestingly the other major number of hits came from the USA - either this indicates a surprising interest in Marxist revolution among the American populace (unlikely?), or maybe increasing activities of their spy-services in monitoring such subversive ideas on the internet - and have passed on their conclusions to their masters, who are now "acting accordingly"
I have also noticed a marked increase in interest from another country - in the Ukraine itself! Though I have a feeling that the "listeners" in the USA and the Ukraine have very different motives.
Now the real testing point for what is claimed to be Marxism today, is not, as you might think, in how faithful today’s theorists are to the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky – frankly, any irresponsible spieler can cherry-pick from that century-old canon, with ulterior and even totally contrasting motives to our founders. It must be in what are the present day contributions to that philosophical standpoint that will reveal where they actually stand. And anyone ONLY quoting from the masters must never be trusted. Marxism isn’t a religion: it is a Philosophy and method, and must be constantly applied and improved. The best historical Marxists did not constantly refer to the Fathers of our Theory, they added to it day-by-day. Like Lenin, who had to rewrite much of political activity to be effective WITHIN a happening Social Revolution, for example.
So, what are our current Marxists adding?
For, perhaps the most important tenet of Marx and his colleague’s standpoint was that nothing is eternal: change, and how it occurs, is the absolutely essential basis for addressing things. So, no matter how excellent were the contributions of those first Marxists, they would be transcended as everything developed, and became something else. The essence of Marxism is never in the individual analyses, but in the holist, dialectical and materialist method.
As Trotsky said, “The revolution must be permanent!” You must constantly attend to every change occurring in any situation in order to understand it: any reversal of this, such as the fitting-up of the new, to some truth of old, cannot be correct. Understanding doesn’t come from past examples, but from a developing understanding of an ever-changing World – especially, of course, in a Revolution, but also true in all things, but maybe not at such a breakneck pace.
So, they deliver an excellent test, which sorts out the fakers from real, serious, dedicated and genuine followers of the Philosophy that Marx revealed to the World.
For example, bourgeois Physics has been in a major crisis now for 100 years, and the cause of this impasse is philosophical, and, as both Engels and Lenin, himself, believed, tailor-made to be solved by dialectical materialists.
The question must be, “Why hasn’t it been done?”
The fact that it hasn’t, in a whole century, should tell us something significant about the latest generations of professed Marxists. Even as a raw, ill-informed youth, aged 19, and with only my reading to guide me, I knew immediately that the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory was rubbish, and I said so. (I was, at the time, a first year Physics student at Leeds University in England), but not only were my criticisms ridiculed by my tutors, but also by my fellow students both in the Physics Department, and outside, and including those who called themselves Marxists.
It may well have been impossible for a young student to demolish that standpoint, but it should have been easy for a real and able Marxist. After all, 100 years ago Lenin himself had taken the then manifestation of a very similar standpoint and demolished it totally in his book Materialism and Empirio Criticism.
Later on, I became politically active in a revolutionary Trotskyist organisation, but even there, my preoccupations with Physics were seen as a get-out, and, more or less, a diversion from the imperative “real tasks”.
But, the primary task then, as it has always been, was to develop Marxism, and the methodology of Marxists, not only in day-to-day activities, but also crucially in the serious disciplines of all human studies and endeavours. And, to win the best minds for the Working Class Movement, we would most certainly have to address the impasses in the theories of bourgeois academics on all fronts, and most especially those where they were so evidently in unsolvable crises – such as Physics! We should bury such nonsense with superior and revelatory theories.
Now, after a lifetime as a Marxist, and of being a teacher and lecturer at every level from Teaching infants to aiding graduates in Universities, and significantly, over a wide range of very different disciplines, I got from that involvement things that were totally unknown to my political colleagues, yet clearly amenable to the dialectical materialist standpoint and methods. At my best, I was a multi-discipline advisor to post graduate research in many disciplines, and even produced world-beating aids (believe it or not) in the Teaching of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.
But, in truth, I was pulling myself up by my own bootlaces, and it took many years before I was in a position to tackle the enhancement of the then current, inadequate versions of Marxism, and become a producing Marxist theorist myself. Then, the paucity of new and necessary work by competent Marxists was very soon becoming alarming.
The few, so-called Marxists writing upon the crucial impasse in Physics, for example, were, almost universally, bowing down before the idealist retreats in this Science. That on-going Crisis in Physics had begun to infect Marxism.
Believe it or not, the current standpoint in Sub Atomic Physics is closely related to Empirio Criticism, yet considerably worse, for it is wholly idealist, and has abandoned materialist explanations entirely.
Truth is now supposed to reside ONLY in formal equations – extracted from carefully isolated, modified and maintained localities within Reality.
So, with that brilliant legacy, why has there been no final blow to such nonsense?
So, as an individual, and finding NO help anywhere, this Marxist had to address these questions in Science alone. Imagine where we would be now, if such an approach had been taken on across all the academic disciplines. We would NOT of course, change the minds of the leading incumbents there, but we would cause an influx of great and dedicated specialists into the Working Class Movement, NOT to transform it, but for themselves to be transformed, both in their own discipline, and in their political standpoints too.
So, what you will find in this series are the contributions to Marxism NOW! They will not at this stage cover all the disciplines, but they will certainly cover Sub Atomic Physics, as well as Cosmology and Evolution, and most important of all, an extensive set of ideas upon Emergences.
Well, it certainly isn’t Stalinism, which ruled for most of the 20th century in the "socialist" countries of Russia and China.
It isn’t solely a guide to political action for socialists.
And, in spite of what is claimed, it isn’t Scientific Socialism!
And, to also deal with its detractors, it isn’t the Devil’s work on Earth.
What it is primarily, and most importantly, is a Revolutionary Materialist Philosophy!
It has appeared to become many things since Marx turned Hegel “on his head, or rather upon his feet”. For, what Marx achieved was that he was able to carry over the significant gains of German Idealist Philosophy (where it profoundly addressed Qualitative Change) into Materialism, and thus transformed the previous ideas of materialist thinking from mechanist to dialectical. Hegel’s magnificent achievements were wrested from their idealist context to integrate qualitative development into the materialist approach. This was its primary, continuing, and essential contribution!
And, we must be crystal clear, for up to that point Science itself was, though revelatory and pragmatically useful, still purely mechanistic, and could not cope in any real way with qualitative changes and real creative development.
It was the brilliant contributions of Hegel that Marx wanted to integrate with both the achievements in Science, and the newly emerging understanding of Social Development in the History of Mankind!
And, be warned, as soon as this crucial transformation is lost sight of, forgotten, or shelved for later study, you will retrench back to prior forms, and turn these essential intellectual gains into lifeless rules, without any real, transformative understanding. You have only to read the words of innumerable self-professed, present-day “Marxists” to see where such an omission is certain to lead.
Now, I feel it necessary to start in an unusual place to re-iterate, and rejuvenate, this standpoint and method, and to indicate its necessary future development. I need to severely criticise Modern Science!
And the major criticism is just how unscientific it has become!
Alas, Science was always somewhat compromised from the outset, for in spite of being firmly materialist (which opened up entirely new ways of both studying and interpreting Reality, and, indeed, finding its natural imperatives), it had to significantly compromise its standpoint in several crucial ways.
Yet, the reasons for these mistakes were understandable. The concrete World was certainly not easy to study!
For, in all areas, it is a complex of many diverse, simultaneous factors, such that almost every single situation is made increasingly opaque by these many constantly varying factors. And this means that, at best, any evident relations could only be glimpsed momentarily, before vanishing again.
So, faced with this impossible-to-study blur, the first investigators had to seek around for those few areas where relationships appeared simple and maybe also understandable.
They found such a situation by looking upwards to the Heavens. And, there, among the stars, they did find relations, which did not vary or vanish: they were the most dependable relations anywhere. And, in the nightly and seasonal movements of the unchanging stars, they had a realm in which they could reliably match events to precise times, so the first measurements were calendrical, and enabled correct predictions to be extracted.
Hence the first scientists were astronomers, for in the night skies they found the first studiable patterns. And in places like Ancient Egypt, the matching of star positions with the timing of the essential Nile Floods enabled the organisation of a brilliant agricultural nation, and one of the most culturally rich civilisations of the Ancient World.
Now, that experience suggested that the whole of Reality was likely to be similarly organised, but was usually confused by the multiple conflicting factors, which inevitably made most things very difficult to reveal and then study and understand. But, the more ingenious investigators began to control situations, in an attempt to reveal the underlying relations, or “Laws”, which, it was thought, “made” the situation what it was.
Slowly, by isolating such areas, and removing as many confusing factors as possible, while holding others constant, these early scientists revealed quite clearly particular relationships that they could measure, turn into “laws”, and use (as long, that is, as they maintained these carefully organised circumstances).
This methodology was, and still is, what we call Science.
But, that initial contribution meant that while only in possession of such a “Law”, those scientists could not but attempt to go further and also attempt to explain why those things behaved as they undoubtedly did.
These further new considerations made possible an Explanatory View of Reality, and what much later became known as Scientific Theories. And it was then that these became THE major purpose of Science.
Now, let us be clear, several stages were involved in these revelatory methods, and it was only in the third and most significant Phase that the understanding of phenomena was attempted. And this is surely the most important, and difficult, Phase of all.
It has to be this Key Activity, which makes the whole thing scientific, and it is with this meaning that I say that certain professed “Marxists” are certainly not scientific, and their supposed version of Marxism is definitely unscientific.
But, we must not laud the gains of Science too much.
For, from its inception, and based upon the above described experimental methodology, it devised and formulated the fundamental assumption of the Principle of Plurality, which apparently validated both their practical methodology, and their derived theories. For this Principle insisted that complex Reality was composed of many different Natural Laws that were eternal, yet merely added together in various sums, could deliver all actually existing natural phenomena. It validated the usual selective and restrictive experimental conditions, achieved by the careful control, filtering and strict maintenance of its experimental situations, and were mistakenly seen as removing the blur of many other "laws” to be able to reveal, in all its natural glory, each purposely targeted “Law”. And the “Laws” so revealed and extracted were considered to be exactly the same, wherever they appeared and in whatever particular mix. This assurance was the ticket to validate the colossal development of Science, BUT it was also a false and crucially misleading straightjacket, for it really only allowed the Analysis of constrained and purposely stabilised situations. Plurality and its consequent assumptions and methodology made them the Science of Stability only!
Now, it has to be admitted – there wasn’t any other possible approach as far as those practising scientists knew, so they never hesitated in their prodigious surge forwards. And, in addition, they also seemed to have very reliable allies, who also fully subscribed to the Principle of Plurality: they were, of course, the mathematicians.
For, long before the first “scientific” investigations, Mankind had already tackled many of the patterns that occurred in this World, and, by intelligent simplifications, had developed both Arithmetic and Geometry. And, their conceptions of Reality were that the relations they were both finding and formulating via Patterns and Forms were, in fact, the “real determinators” of Reality. And, needless to say, these “Laws” were eternal, and hence in full conformity with Plurality!
Indeed, the data extracted by the scientists could always be fitted up with one or another of the mathematicians’ many standard Forms. These two disciplines seemed to be made for each other!
But, the philosophy of the mathematicians did NOT gel with that of the explanatory scientists, who desired to understand as well as accurately describe Reality. And, this saw the mathematicians’ Formal Laws as making Reality what it actually was. While the scientists had concrete Reality with its properties and consequent causes actually producing the revealed Forms or “Laws”. The mathematicians were idealists! While, the Scientists were materialists.
Nevertheless, on a thousand fronts, these two groups made a worthwhile alliance! Yet, never was there such a glaring example of Cognitive Dissonance!
And, of course, it couldn’t last forever, for the time would surely come when their differences would outweigh the advantages of such an uncritical alliance.
It did, however, survive much too long!
Indeed, the important turn by Marx could have provided a new direction for Science, and though colleagues like Engels made an energetic contribution in that direction, he wasn’t a scientist, and what was required was for the new philosophic stance to be taken up by full-time, professional scientists.
Now, the fact that this never happened was because marxists were forgetting their crucial bases, and concentrating upon too narrow a range of priority concerns, just when the most important general, philosophical questions were presenting themselves in key areas of Science.
The zenith of development in Marxism was clearly achieved during the successful Russian Revolution by the most advanced practitioners and theorists ever, with people like Lenin and Trotsky, during and immediately after that Event. But, unavoidably, and essentially, this trend in developing Marxism was almost entirely dedicated to intervening in the trajectory of a Revolution for the benefit of the Working Classes, and any serious attention to Science was completely left out in the cold.
Before the Revolution Lenin did attend to Science via his book Materialism and Empirio Criticism, where he both made important philosophical points, AND pulled back some of his Bolshevik colleagues from drifting towards the accelerating direction that Science was moving in.
But, the crucial task was never carried through. And, not only was Marxism diminished by this omission, but so was Science.
By the beginning of the 20th Century the dichotomy between Mathematics and Science was coming to a head - precipitated by both the discovery of the Quantum, and an increasing number of inexplicable anomalies, particularly occurring in Physics, and presenting a whole series of non-transcend-able impasses due to both Plurality and crucial unsolved problems of the Nature of Empty Space, the Propagation of Electromagnetic Waves, and also Action at a Distance. Indeed, the philosophical questions could not be delayed any longer, and by 1927 at the Solvay Conference, the only solution that kept both Plurality and mathematical Forms as primary was the abandonment entirely of Explanatory Theory, and a total subscription to the idealist belief in eternal natural laws as embodied in equations.
Now, this was the most significant opportunity for the only philosophical stance that could address these conundrums – Marxism, to step in, and by solving these questions gain tremendous genuine status among scientists and re-invigorate Marxist Theory in a very important area. Indeed, such a success would undoubtedly have gone on to involve many other disciplines, and recruit some of the very best minds to the Working Class cause.
But, that didn’t happen, and what claimed to be Marxism (in Russia and China) was nothing like what its initiators had intended it to be, and, as such, was incapable of addressing such questions. The prestige of the Russian and later the Chinese Revolutions gave credence to this mockery of Marxism, so no real continuity was remaining. It was down to individuals and small groups, without the numbers, resources or training to tackle such questions
So returning to the initial implied question, “What is Marxism?”, it certainly cannot be left in the hands of many who profess to be its current theorists. They are not Marxists and cannot tackle the crucial questions related here.
It is my convinced contention that the real Marxists can only be revealed by the solution of the current crisis in Physics. They who crack this impasse will reveal those who have both maintained and developed what its creators were struggling to achieve.
Now, this short piece was written as an introduction to a new series to be published on the SHAPE Blog entitled, “How do we get Socialism?”, which will be available in regular instalment during the rest of 2014.
Jim Schofield ; Marxist and Scientist, March 22 2014
Couder and Copenhagen: Is the Sub Atomic Really A Different World?
The following paper has a fascinating, yet demanding objective.
It intends to relate two sets of phenomena occurring in very different physical realms, in order to necessarily undermine the consensus Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory by the analogy of the sub atomic phenomena that it is supposed to apply to, with a set of phenomena created by Yves Couder entirely at the macro level, yet showing amazing similarities with those at the sub atomic level.
Couder, himself, at first merely glimpsed certain resonances between the two areas, but, thereafter, worked consistently to construct an ever closer analogue of that micro world, but entirely at the macro level. His objective was clear!
At the level he was working, absolutely nothing would be beyond revelation and analysis, and via such detailed explanations, he hoped to throw a revealing light upon the current, perplexing detours being “explored” in sub atomic Physics.
And, his efforts produced results far beyond what his expectations. For, his materials and arranged-for performances were merely based upon a single silicone liquid and a series of different oscillations, chosen specifically to cause both resonances and recursions.
What remarkably emerged was a stable sub system, which he termed “The Walker”. And, thereafter, one-by-one, he proceeded to create and display behaviours that were supposedly uniquely confined to the sub atomic realm! And, all of them were occurring at the macro level!
Of course, such things would not normally occur at that level, for in normal circumstances much more energetic and dominant macro oscillations would swamp the sort he was purposely creating and promoting. But, clearly, his main purpose was being fulfilled. These were not only confined to the sub atomic level, and the unique theory associated with them, which was also re-writing many tenets of Physics as it did so, and could indeed be profoundly mistaken! Couder even managed to make his “Walkers” perform “quantized “orbits!
Now, of course, many “Supporters of the Faith” dismissed his creations as mere coincidences, but they were most certainly wrong! Couder had produced a worthwhile analogue at a directly observable and analysable level, without the quantum, and in so doing unavoidably put in question the main tenets of Copenhagen. The “Key Things” at the micro level were indeed the quantization of energy levels involved in sub atomic orbits within the atom, encapsulated in the ubiquitous Planck’s Constant, “h”!
Now, if analogous situations could be created at the macro level, the key tenet of the Copenhagen standpoint would most certainly be brought into question, as the quantum could NOT be the cause in any of Couder’s macro set ups. Let us clarify what were being compared.
At the sub atomic level there were the descrete energy levels involved in the electron orbits within atoms, along with the seeming Wave/Particle Duality in many related phenomena.
At the macro level Couder, using oscillations, resonances and recursions, managed to create a stable entity, which he called a Walker that was composed of a bouncing drop, and also included a Standing Wave associated with it in the oil bath substrate.
And this surprising amalgam could be set to perform what appeared to be quantized orbits.
Though, many other analogues of what happened at the micro level were also achieved, it was this quantization that was the clincher. If Couder could explain that solely in terms of oscillations, resonances and recursion in an integrated stable system, the myth of Wave/Particle Duality and probabilistic predictions due to naturally indeterminate features would be scuppered. You could not claim such features in his Walker, and yet it displayed very similar behaviours.
Now, the questions were posed, but how could the theory at the micro level be demolished?
Clearly, a complete explanation of Couder’s Walkers was necessary, and perhaps the data could also be addressed in the very same way, as had been done for the micro situation.
If this were done, we might well end up with equations very similar indeed to those for the micro level. Yet, instead of Planck’s Constant, “h”, there would be another, which could not be explained away as the Copenhageners had done for “h”.
So, the initial task is clear – it must be to display the currently-used equations for a basic case at the sub atomic level – those for the Hydrogen atom, and a single photon (quantum) of electromagnetic energy emitted from the atom, occurring when a promoted electron returned to its base orbit. The required equations are shown below :
Now, before we go any further, we must dispel the myth that these equations direct what happens in Reality. Of course they don’t! They are nothing but purely formal descriptions of what has been extracted from that situation: they are the Forms that occurred there!
And, crucially, they are not unique to that situation alone. But, are in fact Universal General Forms that can occur in many other places too. This being the established case, they cannot be the causes of what occurs, but merely formal representations or descriptions. So, it should be possible, if analogous forms appear elsewhere to fit those same general forms there too.
Hence, ultimately, we would have the same equations representing both the micro level phenomena AND those for Couder’s Walker! The only differences will be in the particular constants necessary. Clearly, if that could be achieved, there would also be possible a physical explanation to accompany the equations for the Walkers, for it would be straightforward at the macro level to explain all the generalised phenomena. Absolutely NO magic Universal Natural Constants would be necessary. Everything will be explicable in terms of physical properties and relations. So, then we don’t just have a similarity of Forms in the two disparate areas: we have sound, physical analogues!
And, an alternative, physical explanation of the micro phenomena may well be possible, using the same sort of reasons, as did the job at the macro level.
So. This is the task!
But, it would be wrong to limit this critique to this pair of situations alone. The victory of the Copenhagenists would not have been so complete, were it not for other major, and long-standing flaws and contentions in the then current standpoint in Physics.
There had always been a continuing case of what is usually called Cognitive Dissonance, ever since the birth of Modern Science many centuries ago.
At the heart of Science were two opposite assumptions, which most certainly contradicted one another, yet both had proved invaluable in certain contexts.They were essentially the Materialist standpoint, involving Matter and both its properties and its inter-relationships, and the Idealist standpoint, which believed that Reality behaved entirely in accordance with eternally-existing, abstract Laws. Now, these are, indeed, opposites, philosophically, but could be “lived with” quite well. For, the materialist view would look to explain Reality in terms of matter and its properties, while the idealist view would concentrate upon revealing the natural quantitative relations in the most concise language of mathematical equations.
Now, clearly these can exist simultaneously in most pragmatic situations, but they were at extreme variance in the Explanatory Theories extracted from Reality. But, the basis for such a continuing subscription to both standpoints was made possible by both sides subscribing to the very same Principle of Plurality. For, this defining rule insisted that Reality was indeed composed of many different factors, which came together in an almost infinite variety of different sums to actually produce very different phenomena. The Principle claimed that these factors were never changed by their associations in the various arrangements: they all remained exactly the same in their pristine eternal states.
All variety was caused merely by different sets of factors and their quantitative differences, and that alone was enough to generate such infinite variety. The individual component factors were always totally separate in their natures: they were completely unchanged by all possible contexts.
Now, this was crucial to BOTH standpoints, for by careful construction of the conditions, under which investigations could be carried out, it would always be possible to so select and control these to make possible a clear revelation of a targeted factor. All other confusing factors could be either eliminated or held constant, so that the selected one would be effectively revealed. Now, something was indeed always revealed by these methods, and could be extracted and fitted up to an appropriate Form, but the assumption of it being exactly as it would be in totally unfettered Reality, was a consequence of this Principle of Plurality. It could not be demonstrated as the actual case in Reality: it could only be used in the exact same conditions under which it was revealed and extracted.
And, of course, these features were enough for both tendencies in Science.
They both accepted the extracted rule as being the actual available-everywhere “truth”. And, this meant that the idea of Analysis was always possible, and hierarchies of such relations could be conceived of as acting in what was termed Reductionism.
An overall general picture of Reality was delivered to both tendencies in Science, which defined an Experimental Method, plus an arrangement for effective use, and a hierarchical system of such explanations. The materialists were quite content with this, but so were the idealists, who by these means built up ever more eternal relations, which were the causes of all phenomena.
NOTE:
This was proved when Wiles finally proved Fermat’s Last
Theorem, because he was able to bring together many relations from a
wide variety of real world investigations, and weave them into his
“complete and ideal Proof”.
The two tendencies learned to live together, though never considering the other’s philosophical standpoint as anything more then a Belief!
Now, for those interested in Philosophy, similar Dichotomies had been recognised for several millennia, at least starting with Zeno and his Paradoxes, and occasionally raising it head, throughout subsequent history, until Hegel defined such occurrences as Dichotomous Pairs – the clear emergence of which not only signalled a crisis in our conceptions, but could, nevertheless, still co-exist for remarkably long periods of time, totally unresolved.
Yet, significantly, without a resolution of such contradictions real progress could never be achieved.
NOTE:
That doesn’t mean, of course, that NO progress at all could be
made, for it certainly could, but it would be, inevitably, an
aberrant growth, with some useful content, but lacking significant
understanding to allow major gains to be made. These growths would be
like etiolated plants, getting ever weaker and thinner until they,
finally and unavoidably, perished. Real
progress required that these impasses had to be transcended!
So, for centuries these two opposing, yet partially complementary, strands did indeed continue to co-exist. The trouble was, of course, that the halt in real understanding would inevitably, at some point, be impossible to ignore. Papered-over cracks would widen into unbridgeable chasms, and Zeno’s Continuity versus Descreteness dichotomy came to smash Physics asunder in the so-called Wave/Particle Duality, as a result of the discovery of the Quantum.
Sub Atomic Physics was banging up against this dichotomy constantly, with NO integrating new conception in sight. As long as Plurality was sacrosanct, the problem could never be even realised. Both sides in the crisis never questioned Plurality: it was both common and indeed essential to BOTH – and hence never even questioned!
But, it clearly WAS the problem!
And, its alternative in yet another Dichotomy needed to be addressed.
This opposite to Plurality was Holism! But, with this having the principle of “Everything affecting everything else!”, not to mention, “Change is always occurring!”, no systematic scientific method of investigation, or of Analysis in the formulation of phenomena. seemed even remotely possible.
NOTE:
Interestingly, the main exponent of Holism, The Buddha, had
lived at about the same time as Zeno – about 2,500 years ago.
All the methods occurring in Mathematics, Logic and later in Science, had been developed only via a belief in Plurality. Progress had been possible compared with the situation prior to this consciously-chosen Principle, NOT by addressing Reality-as-is, but by farming Reality via modified, filtered and then rigorously maintained Domains, in which relations could be both clearly displayed AND applied to achieve some intended purpose. To throw that away, for what appeared to be holistic chaos, seemed wholly reprehensible. So though artists, writers, religions and philosophers never totally abandoned Holism, it certainly had NO place in Logic, Mathematics and Science. Until, that is, Charles Darwin broke the prohibition with his entirely holistic theory of The Origin of Species!
So, with that entirely necessary diversion, perhaps we can return to the major crisis facing physicists in the early years of the 20th century? There was no getting away from it, current ideas were foundering upon the rock of Wave/Particle Duality. What had been seen as continuous waves, now sometimes only made sense as descrete particle-like gobbets of pure energy, or quanta, which became known thereafter as Photons. And, to compound the felony, particles like the electron, occasionally acted as if they were waves.
How, on earth could they be integrated into a new all-inclusive set of conceptions? They couldn’t! The real bases for these emerged dichotomies were NOT understood, so the physicists had to have a “revolution”: it seemed that they had to dump one or the other of their two co-existing standpoints! They chose Form, and totally rejected Explanation! They embraced Equations as the real essences of Reality – the actual drivers of all phenomena. They, and they alone could be trusted as being Truth itself! Explanation was demoted to fairy tales, which might give the appearance of truth, but were in fact totally man-made inventions. The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory was precisely this new standpoint!
Now clearly, several things were necessary to retrieve the situation. The most difficult of these to get across, was undoubtedly the philosophic one of explaining and then debunking Plurality, and in its place promoting Holism: no one, at this stage would possibly “but that”, if only because Holism could not compete in supplying a delivering scientific method. So, it would have to be tackled initially experimentally with set-ups that totally torpedoed Copenhagen, and theoretically by showing fully working explanations in the relevant areas without any retreats into the Idealism of the Copenhagen standpoint. Two cases can be shown to have been successful in fulfilling these necessary objectives.
The first was by, this theorist, was the explanation of the seeming Wave/Particle Duality in the famous Double Slit Experiments, without any of the Copenhagen revisions.
And, the second was the Yves Couder, macro level experiments to reveal similar quantization features to what was occurring in the Sub Atomic level, yet existing wholly at the macro level, where the physical causes were clearly evident, and purely physical explanations could be extracted. The former of these two has been published as a SHAPE Journal Special Issue on the Internet, entitles The Theory of The Double Slits, and as a YouTube animation on its SHAPE Channel. While Yves Couder’s revelations are by now well known via his various academic journal publications, and have even featured on Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole on TV.
