Issue 35 of Shape: The Fourth Law

 

I am reluctant to label my latest contribution “The Fourth Law of Thermodynamics”, because of the absolutely necessary context, into which such a title positions it.

The three original so-called Meta laws of Science, arose within the context of a wholly and exclusively pluralist and technological approach to Science. It could not be other, as that approach was the ONLY one that Mankind could use to attempt to both reveal and use the relations acting within Reality.

Indeed, outside of the found-to-be-essential constraints imposed upon all activities in that investigative AND producing sphere, a law such as the Second Law makes no sense at all!

It is a correct law as an indispensable rider to a pluralist approach, which never investigates entirely unfettered Reality-as-is, but, on the contrary, limits all investigations to within carefully designed, constructed and maintained Domains, without which the sought-for relations could neither be revealed nor extracted.

The Second Law is thus a permanent, accompanying foil to all such pluralistically derived laws. It actually makes totally unfettered Reality into a completely dissociating sump, surrounding the ideal Domains of all investigations and uses.

And, the merest crack in such a fortress, will therefore immediately begin to destroy was so painstakingly achieved in the purposely isolated island of interpretable Form.

Thus the Second Law is not what it is claimed to be! It is actually the World seen reflected in a wholly pluralist, technological mirror.

The incongruity of a Law of Total Dissociation, without an essential countering Law of Construction makes absolutely NO philosophical sense at all!

How can the only way be down?

This issue counters the Second Law with a proved Law of Creation and Construction.

Read Issue 35

Neanderthals: Sub or Rival Humans?

“Neanderthal Doodles hint at Abstract Thought!”, is the subtitle of a recent piece in New Scientist (2985). But, it is an amazingly uninformed quip!

Neanderthals were not apes but the closest relations to Homo Sapiens (ourselves) among the hominid group, who arose from the same crucially defining stock as we did, typified not only by a bipedal gait, but also significantly by a tool using and tool making ancestor, which became the major reason for the vast development in hominid brains, and their consequent mental abilities. Indeed, these abilities are millions of years old, originally emerging in the Homo Habilis ancestor of BOTH ourselves and the Neanderthals. So, to even ask such a question of these hominids is an example of debasing by “damning with faint praise”, and should not be the stance of serious investigators.

Perhaps indeed, such a definition moves the discussion away from whether it is our species that caused their demise. For, if they were a sub-human and evolutionary incapable species, they could well have become extinct due to their inadequate ability to cope with external changes to their environment, rather than being wiped out by the lauded “Homo sapiens”.

Of course, Neanderthals could think!

How could they make tools, if they didn’t use abstract thinking? The attempt to equate such superior mental abilities with “art” puts the cart before the horse. Before we arrived upon the European scene the Neanderthals had be there for hundreds of thousands of years, and were able hunter/gatherers – the SAME as we were when we arrived! To even conceive of a tool, then make it out of a shatter-able hard rock like flint, and to envisage what it would have to be like, would undoubtedly involve abstract thought. Bringing in Abstract Art is amazing! Could it be because we did that?

The insisted-upon step-change between pre-human species and ourselves is the usual way of considering development, and is homocentric! So, the finding of a definitely Neanderthal carving on rock of a simple “cross” design has re-invigorated the assessment of just how good they were at Thinking(?).

NOTE: It is an excellent example of how theories are always predicated upon the current level of Knowledge and understanding of those who put forward such ideas. They can NEVER be the Absolute Truth, but only, at best, the furthest that the thinker could go given his current assumptions and principles. What survives in a theory is due to an increased measure of Objective Content and NOT Absolute Truth!

Indeed, the usual set of clichés, such as Art, is frequently raised, based upon the belief that Homo sapiens is unique, and the epitome of all development!

“Were they advanced enough to make real Art?”, or alternatively, “Could they think abstractly as we certainly can?”, are the usual type of threshold-passing markers of Human superiority! And, the discussion, as is usual, gets stuck in the fabricated mire of homocentrism, with the conclusion, “These inadequate people died out due to Natural Selection! They just couldn’t cope with the changes that were happening in their World!”

Absolute nonsense!

This strain of hominid had the same roots as we did.

Early hominids such as Homo habilis were their ancestors too. They had the important crucial changes, while they were the very same species as we were. They even left Africa long before we did and successfully moved into Europe a hundred thousand years before we managed to get there, and survived many significant changes in climate successfully.

They were indeed our closest cousins, and DNA evidence proves conclusively that they interbred with Homo sapiens successfully with offspring that were viable. What more proof is necessary, that they were NOT fatally inferior to us?

So, are the usual legends true?

The Novel The Inheritors by William Golding didn’t see it that way. Two species found themselves in the same areas – both as hunter/gatherers – needing enormous areas to support such a lifestyle. They would inevitably be competitors!

And the historical record of Homo sapiens, when they have come across other branches of the homo group is not good! In Asia (Indonesia) a small-statured branch was most certainly wiped out by members of our species, and even very much later in America, the English colonists in the East wiped out several native American tribes, who grew crops, and were genetically identical as ourselves.

They did it to get their land.

So, all this homocentric discussion avoids the real questions.

Did we wipe out the Neanderthals? In spite of proved inter-breeding, the newcomers could only relax when they were gone! So, those scratches made by Neanderthals, and found in Gibraltar have been dated at 39,000 years ago, and Neanderthals lived for many millennia after that date.

And, here is another relevant question, “If homo sapiens did wipe them out, what were they be likely to do with any found remains and signs of the people they had removed? What would they have done with their artefacts and remains?

Would they have kept them and cherished them?

And, we know what allowed the development of Art in humans, even while they were still hunter/gatherers. It was only possible in highly conducive conditions of life. The Lascaux Cave Paintings were at a place where the migrating herds of wild animals could be counted upon to pass that way, and Men could remain in one place, and not only survive, but actually flourish.

And later, after the Neolithic Revolution, which caused a mammoth change in lifestyles with farming and animal husbandry, which had a very similar effect upon those humans involved – staying in one place and having time to do other things apart from just surviving.

If you wanted to really to really address this question, there would have to be a looking for those enabling conditions in undisturbed Neanderthal remains and sites.

The present-day investigators using today’s morality and prohibitions, will unavoidably mis-interpret how “God’s People” reacted to an alternative and competing species.

Socialists for an Independent Scotland!

It is clear that all the pro-capitalist parties in the UK oppose Scottish Independence.

It should tell socialists that these people couldn’t give a damn for the people of Scotland. They have used it as a dumping back yard for generations.

The Scottish People deserve better!

And they wont get it as part of the UK.

Independence will change all political agendas. And because of this all socialists must support Independence.

Why?

It is because the Scottish people have been socialist for a long time. Kier Hardie built the Labour Party for the Working Class. There is only one Tory MP from the whole of Scotland! Even among the SNP there are socialists.

What has been missing both in Scotland, and in the rest of the UK has been a clear and resonant socialist call for Independence!

Think about it!

If Independence is achieved, what will be the agenda of the SNP? They will have achieved the reason for their existence, so what will they do then? The answer is NOTHING! They will no longer have a populist and invigorating policy! Their leaders will revert to being what they have always been – pro-capitalist!

But, what will the people of Scotland expect as a result of Independence as the Will of the People? They will expect Socialism! The nuclear backyard will be kicked out! And they will expect the Oil and Gas reserves of both the North Sea and the Firth of Clyde to be used soley for the benefit of the People of Scotland!

We must shout loud and clear for an independent Scotland!

Forward to Socialism!

Dialectics

What is Dialectics?

Dialectics was a discovery of Frederick Hegel – the German Idealist Philosopher, who, some 200 years ago, considered his area of study to be Thinking about Thought, and realised that all our conceptions about Reality are unavoidably constrained by our experiences and the current extent and depth of our understanding. He further realised that such understanding would always be compromised, most particularly, by what we still didn’t yet know, but also, and primarily, by our own arrived-at assumptions, concepts and principles.

The journey to a “full understanding” was not only never-ending, but was also strewn with passage-impeding rocks of our own making. Now, that doesn’t sound either very profound, or even optimistic! Indeed, it is often used as an argument for – “Give up now you’ll never do it!”. But that wasn’t Hegel’s view!

It may appear defeatist, but that wasn’t what he took from this discovery. He recognised that our assumptions were absolutely necessary, to make any progress at all, and, crucially, they were never pure invention. On the contrary, they were always based upon some aspects or parts of an as yet unrevealed Absolute Truth. And, this content gave those conceptions a definite measure of objectivity. But, invariably, such extractions from Reality would be useless if each of them only applied to a single solitary thing.

Mankind wanted more general conceptions that could be used across the board. So the correct parts and aspects were turned into “general truths”: and that was both a breakthrough, and an error!

For, the incompleteness of these forced generalities - clearly unavoidable when they were made, would also unavoidably confer a distorted outcome upon our subsequent uses of these generalities. Though they would work in many cases, they would also, and inevitably, lead to a point where they would deliver contradictory pairs of consequent concepts. These pairs were clearly mutually exclusive: they were in direct contradiction to one another, and yet were BOTH outcomes of our earlier assumptions. They couldn’t both be true! Yet, neither one nor the other could be sufficient to cover what the pair delivered. They were both wrong!

Now these Dichotomous Pairs indicated to Hegel (just as the Pair Continuity and Descreteness had indicated to Zeno some 2,300 years earlier) that the underlying assumptions, in spite of containing a measure of Objective Content, were also, in fact, both at fault in important ways.

The question was, “How can we possibly transcend both these erroneous concepts, and come up with better ones that were not contradictory?” Hegel, therefore, used this to set about finding ways to transcend these impasses that seemed insuperable if we were to keep both of the contradicting concepts.

By a careful study of the members of a Dichotomous Pair, he was able to reveal the assumptions upon which they were based, and his task would be to replace them with other assumptions that could deliver the positive aspects of both, while removing the contradictions. The impasse would only be transcended and a better basis for understanding put in place, if the new suggestions dug deeper and revealed more aspects of the truth than were embodied in those they were to replace. He knew, of course, that even if successfully achieved, this would nevertheless be a never-ending oscillation. For each new premise would, in spite of the gains it had delivered, in the end, reveal its own shortcomings by producing yet another Dichotomous Pair, and with it another seemingly final impasse.

Hegel called this method Dialectics, because instead of obvious adjustments to one or the other of the Pair, the solution had to deal with both, testing what was suggested for one, as it affected the other. In the end the premise had to be as good as possible for both: the process was a dialog between the requirements to solve both the members of the Pair. At the end of the process a single new basis, which dealt effectively with both, had to be delivered, if the achievement was to be anything other than a clever frig.

Clearly, such solutions would never be easy to achieve, and the underlying causes, would not only be well entrenched, but would have repercussions in many different areas. The new assumptions would be revolutionary!

Clearly, the most important feature of Dialectics was that it rejected the methods based upon Formal Logic, for they underlay massive tracts of the prevailing culture. The building of greater truths out of lesser truths, as was the basis in Formal Logic, was totally rejected. Instead of a mere accumulation of new knowledge being sufficient, it was clearly a transformation of how we thought about things that had to be achieved, And, this had to be done every single time! [As V. Gordon Childe, the great archaeologist said, “Man makes himself!”]

Hegel’s contention was that the building of Truth could never be cumulative, but came in fits and starts as prior, misleading bases had to be demolished and replaced on a regular basis.

You may have heard of Dialectics as the method used by Karl Marx, and the evident basis of Marxism, which it certainly was, though, of course, Marx had transferred Hegel’s methodology wholesale into a materialist perspective, and hence renamed his method Dialectical Materialism! But not many know what it actually involves?

Following Supernovae

What happens next?

A completely non-living example of an Emergence Phoenix is, of course, the final “death” of a star in a Supernova Explosion! After a whole consequent series of collapses and “rebirths”, as available fusible elements are necessarily created and then successively used up in different fusion reactions, the last and seemingly final step in this sequence was that which produced Iron (Fe) in that sort of fusion of nuclei, characteristic of the smaller elements. But, that “”final collapse” was different!

It was not the end of the story, for though there were no possible ongoing fusion reactions left, to counteract gravity’s inwards pulling, the star inevitably kept on collapsing down to an unheard of tiny size, which caused not an ongoing state, but an Event – a cataclysmic triggering of the simultaneous fusion of not only everything available, but also their products in one almighty Bang of multiple simultaneous fusion reactions. And, out of that (cosmically) “point source”, the most colossal explosion occurred, outshining whole galaxies of normal stars! Indeed, all the elements, from above Iron, all the way to Uranium were produced in this cataclysm!

Now, it is clear that without such supernovae there could be none of these elements! And, therefore the favourite humanising parable by astronomers concerns this fact – that Life itself, and, of course, ultimately Mankind too, could never have happened without such a final catastrophe. “We are all made of star stuff!”, is their mantra!

So, once again, though on such a colossal, and much slower scale, the cataclysm of the collapse and its following explosion finally (and retrospectively predictably) produced wholly new elements, which were not predictable directly in the usual way. They were not only new as such, but also displayed many wholly new properties too, and hence many previously impossible further interactions and developments.

This undoubted Emergence had created a wholly new context, and consequent set of possibilities, which though very, very slow to begin with, ultimately concentrated under gravity - first into clouds, and finally into new stars and planets, but NOW containing this vast array of new elements, which, as Earth has shown, could, and indeed did, lead ultimately to Life.

NOTE: By the way, if that wasn’t enough for you, how do you now consider what the Big Bang is most likely to have been?

This post is taken from Special Issue 28 of the Shape Journal entitled The Phoenix. Read the rest here.

New Special Issue: The Phoenix

 

The poets knew it long ago, but could only describe it. Yet, profound though their accounts were, their tale certainly needed a more comprehensive explanation to take their wise observations further. Clearly, the lack of such an answer as to why it was so, shows that the role of the poet is to make profound observations, which others too often, if not invariably, miss!

I am, of course, referring to the description of “The Phoenix arising from the flames of destruction!” Though it is indeed a special and important revelation of seemingly contradictory processes, it does also require not many only good, concrete examples to be described in detail, but also for them to be thoroughly and more generally explained. How and why does such a seemingly inexplicable process actually occur?

To make any progress beyond the cryptic revelation, we also need to know what exactly is being described by such a process. The event is clearly the outcome of a totally dissociative or destructive initial phase, having as its surprising and following outcome, a real, constructive and creative step forward. And, in so doing it certainly completely contradicts common sense in the normal way of predicting future outcomes from current processes.

Read Issue

Defeat the Tory Onslaught!

Forward to Socialism!

So, what is happening now, some six years after the worldwide recession in Capitalism? How, indeed, could a system, based solely upon fictitious credit, recover itself, and be able to continue exactly as before? There could be only one way!

They would have to convince themselves and their investors, that the Working Class could be forced right back – lose all its gains, and indeed actually pay for the reconstruction! Their initial answer was clear!

Sack many, many workers, particularly those in the “unproductive” public sector, that wasted resources on Services. Cut those remnants of Socialism to the bone. And, such a step change in employment, as well as the efforts to reduce the pension commitments, would not only greatly arm the employers to drive down real wages, but would also drive many pensioners to seek part time jobs in retail, where the wages would be low and the trades unions weak!

But, how could they get away with it, without it becoming crystal clear who was being made to pay for the mess?

As usual, especially with a blatant right wing Capitalist Party back in power, the policies carried out would have to be carefully managed to disguise their intentions, so they could pretend that they were concerned about unemployment and committed to getting jobs back for those thrown upon the dole, as well as the six years worth of young people leaving full time education, with literally no chance of getting a job, never mind a career.

The lie was revealed by a capitalist called, I believe, Green, who on the day of the massive collapse in Iceland, was over there like a shot, attempting to buy up enterprises at rock bottom prices!

Do you think he was keeping all his workers in the UK safely in employment?

The Tories had the answers!

It was zero hours contracts and Part time jobs. Both of these would give boosts to the total numbers in work, while ensuring that pay would be as low as possible.

Now, during periods of prosperity these same politicians always blamed Inflation upon a grasping workforce and their selfish unions – screwing excessive wage increases out of the hard pressed employers, who were forced to accede by the blackmail of threatened Strikes. But what are they saying now? We have current Inflation consistently higher than wage increases, which means that wages are constantly going DOWN in real terms.

We can buy less and less with our wages all the time, which are not only smaller, because of the new types of employment involved, but shrinking consistently as well in real terms. UK Capitalism is still clawing its way back financed by the British Working Classes.

It isn’t the rich, who used to be able to live well entirely off the interest on their invested wealth. But, those who can having more and more confidence in investing in firms using the new means of employment that were allowing the absolute maximum exploitation.

They are still buying their super cars, as current statistics show!

So, what has to be done?

The employed Workers are held over a barrel, with no easement of their regular commitments , but both declining real wages and unreliable jobs, not to mention the ease with which they could be sacked, if they stood up for themselves. The Red Flag of Socialism must be raised!

Demos must be threatening in their demands!

No single issue demos at all! But general and massive gatherings of ALL who are affected, particular those in current action, for wages, jobs and the removal of hard won pension rights and other privileges.

But also the old, the disabled and the youth must be drawn into the struggle, with the absolutely maximum proportions.

Between now and the General Election, the most damning campaign must be mounted! And it is YOU who must be involved!

Democracy: Services to and Control by the People

It is hard to disagree with the concept of the organisation of a Society for the benefit of its people – The Idea of Service. Just as it is similarly obvious that such an organisation be under the control of the populace – The Concept of Democracy. So, historically, it has been necessary for those in power to in some way subscribe to both of these principles (or at least pretend that they do).

Let us look, critically, at some significant examples.

The fabled properties of Democracy, both as the will of the people, and also their overall control, are, of course, total myths in current so-called “Democratic States”, and the evidence for these assertions can be found everywhere, and can show exactly whose wants and needs are serviced by this lauded system of rule. Of course, it must be where both wealth and power reside that has to be addressed, but, in a somewhat distorted way, for the nearest thing to what is desired is delivered, if only marginally, by Local Democracy, where known and accessible representatives do things that immediately affect people – that is in local or District Councils of various types.

For, one aspect of these organisations did take things out of the control of the oligarchs, and it was in the services owned and run by these elected Local Authorities. Of course, the composition of these Councils would represent the area, which elects it, and in affluent areas the local authority would see its task to serve that constituency, and its occupants. Whereas in a working class city, the majority would have very different priorities, and these would be, sometimes at least, evident in the actions of their elected Council.

But, that is Democracy, and a comparison of how such different Councils see their priorities is very interesting and informative, and always distorted by misleading comparisons such as in efficiency and expenditure priorities. Clearly a prosperous area would not need to allocate large resources to support the poor, nor would they have any sympathy for those Councils that did. They would compare expenditures and condemn the “high-spending” Council that have large populations of people needing all kinds of essential support.

Now, it is precisely these kinds of criticism, that are used to discredit “Serving Councils” for the affluent take pride in “paying their own way”, while assuming that those who cannot are lazy or worthless, while, at the same time, lavishing vastly more on their own ill family members than could ever be spent on a poor patient by a social service.

So, let us look objectively at certain social services, which have shown great contributions to the good of the populace, and were and occasionally, still are supplied by Local Democratic Organisations.

Public Transport

Let me start by giving an example from my own experience.

It also should be made clear that I am a working class person from the City of Manchester in England, and was born and brought up in a slum area called West Gorton. I am certain you would get a very different story from someone in Withington or the Stockbroker Belt in North West Cheshire, but their view is available everywhere, whereas the one I will give certainly isn’t.

Oh, and just in case the reader has already pigeonholed me. I finally retired some 20 years ago as a Professor in London University, so what I relate cannot be dismissed as sour grapes from a failure in our society (as is regularly slapped onto any working class critics).

In the 1950s I used to go, every fortnight, to watch my favourite football team, Manchester United, and an average home gate of around 53,000 spectators was got to the ground from all parts of the enormous conurbation by Manchester Corporation Transport in a large fleet of special buses, which were organised like clockwork. In a very short time literally all of these were delivered to the ground, and then removed, just as efficiently, at the end of the match. It was both cheap and vastly more efficient than private cars could ever be, and being a Local Authority Service NO profit was involved. Each and every double-decker bus was packed, and the flexibility of tailor made routes (only used for this purpose) was unachievable by any other means.

Indeed, such an effective and wide-ranging transport system was largely self-financing and economical for its users.

But now, after 60 years of “progress”, no such system exists. The bus companies are now privately owned, and work to a very different imperative, instead of being an efficient and economic service, they now must make a profit – without which they simply wouldn’t exist.

NOTE: Imagine how different hospitals would be if they too had to make a profit!

For example the evident virtues for both passengers and transport workers of the old Driver and Conductor arrangement have finally been completely dispensed with after privatisation was finally established as the universal method of provision. Such things as helping old people and mothers with children, on and off the bus were, to say the least, “not conducive to making profit”, so they were dispensed with. And the advantages for speed of service made possible by the collection of fares while on the move, has been replaced by the driver doing all that himself at every single stop and for every passenger, which, it has to be admitted, did wonders for the profit margins now available to the new owners.

Indeed, for a very long while, a significant part of the transport systems were entirely electrically driven in either Trams or Trolley buses, with vastly superior environmental effects than occur with present systems.

The care and maintenance of all these vehicles was undertaken by Council owned and run facilities – again a service with no profit involved. Both my uncle and my brother-in-law worked as bodybuilding specialists in one of the main garages, and were highly trained and well paid, having had apprenticeships, along with Tech-College linked courses. I worked for 10 years in such a College, and the quality of the lecturers and instructors, as well as the qualified engineers that they produced were second to none (I know this because I employed such people as technicians and they were a valuable contribution to the department).

NOTE: By the way, these Colleges were also a service, run by the Council, and, of course, non-profit making.

Funnily enough, all sorts of other, seemingly unconnected things declined too. For example the Public Service Vehicle license (PSV), which all public service vehicle drivers had to gain before they were allowed to drive such vehicles, were then clearly superior to what they are now. I wonder why?

Also behind the scenes in Public Transport mechanics, with similar rigorous training, kept the engines and safety systems up to scratch, while a large army of cleaners kept both the insides and outsides of the vehicles at an acceptable standard.

I’ll leave the reader to consider what has happened to all these aspects too, and for the very same reasons!

Whatever criticisms there were of Public Transport, there is also little doubt that the imperatives involved were for Service rather than Profit, and usually the workers unions were given much better access and facilities than are ever provided in most private companies.

Even local and national regulation was vastly more efficient, for one visit of an inspection team to the enormous garage where my relatives worked could cover far more and far better, than could be achieved in innumerable visits to multiple small transport companies, and their sub-contracted support firms too, as is the case now. Finally, the economies of scale also made the large publicly owned organisations superior to tiny shoestring alternative: there would be the right kit and an appropriate range of trained operatives, from those with years of experience down to apprentices constantly monitored and instructed in best practice.

All this is indeed a taster of Socialised Services, much better 60 years ago than they are now!

Yet, the directing of these services was NOT directly in the hands of the populace, or of their elected representatives in Local Government. The people did not elect the managers of these vast undertakings. They could vote off their known, local and available councillors, and could change the councillors in office at regular elections. But, such a system wasn’t naively bottom-up controlled and run. It required specialists to do that. But, nevertheless, if truly democratic control was in place, the electorate could act at the ballot box. The job of elected councillors was to establish the Service Ethos in their employees, from bottom to top. And even way back in my youth, there was ample evidence that this was achieved in many such organisations. To judge appropriately you merely have to compare then with now.

Do you really think that modern transport firms are run with the service approach? They wouldn’t last long today!

This brief visit to the past was not meant to define a Golden Age. It was never that. But, it showed here and there how Services should be run and most important of all BY WHOM!

Education

 Now, Public Transport may not be considered the most important area that involves services to the people, and I would agree.

In a long career in Education, with posts at every level from Junior Schools to Universities, I can speak authoritatively about these services, as by far the most important.

Now, it is in schools and colleges of all kinds that Local Democracy has a major role. And, once again, the differences between how this totally non profit making and countrywide service is delivered, and how it contrasts with organisations dedicated primarily and predominantly with the production of profits for those who have no other necessary qualification or general knowledge, but can extract profit, and hence do have the money to invest, is remarkable.

Once again, the quality involved in how such a service as Education was delivered to the Community, is vastly better than in any profit-making concern.

Indeed, there are no bonuses for teachers, and none desired, or expected. The calibre of those who choose such a demanding and worthwhile career is uniformly superior to any other organisation, if your criteria are to do with what is delivered to the community served, and for what reasons.

And, for some considerable time, now, whenever they got into power, the Tories, would make yet another assault upon State Education, while, of course, sending their own children to private, fee-paying schools, where they would receive, primarily, the appropriate social connections and command training for their future ruling roles in society.

For, the mass of the population are, in their eyes, only educated in such ways, and to such levels, to service the current economic system, Capitalism, and its essential role of producing ever-larger profits. For, unless what was done in such institutions was limited to such ends, such places would only foster discontent with the "Natural Order". Such totally unproductive educational content must be actively swept away, to produce the ideally prepared workers for this, “the only possible system”.

Indeed, it had been coming to their notice that in certain areas pupils were being educated in such a way that they would have happy and fulfilling lives, and that could certainly only “lead them astray”!
What is clear to these traditional rulers, is that educational institutions must be, primarily, to fit all their products to the needs and wants of their future employers, and concentrate all learning upon only what they will need in their assigned-for roles in society. Education that encouraged them in any other prospective futures was both unkind to them, and destructive to an ordered and healthy economic future for Society. Crucially, thinking for themselves and being creative, artistic or maybe politically active would be well beyond the Pale.

And, we must see all their changes in Educational Policy in this light.

Even the current attacks upon Birmingham Council, under the guise of attacking Moslem extremists, is basically yet another attempt to wrest this jewel of real Social Service out of the hands of Local Democracy, and into the hands of people who agree with their pro-capitalist policies.

Indeed, in a recent news programme on TV (June 2014), the ministers in Parliament, and even the newscasters, themselves, steadfastly refused to either ask, or answer, the Key Questions, and, in fact, purposely misled ordinary people as to both what was actually going on in 21 Birmingham Schools, who was responsible for them, and what their own agendas were for Education in particular, and Local Democracy, in general.

Clearly, Education should never be in the hands of those who don’t really care about anything but making a profit, and should demonstrate the most democratically controlled service of all!

New Special Issue: Analogistic Models I

An Important Breakthrough in Theoretical Science?

For those who have attempted to follow (with understandable puzzlement) the extended search for a new standpoint and method for Science based upon Holism, rather than Plurality, they may be pleased (or merely relieved) to read this new collection of papers on Analogistic Modelling.

Though such an alternative has been partially grasped for some time now, it was Margaret Morrison’s article in Physics World on “Fictional Models” that focussed the effort to formulate this absolutely essential change in Science, concerned with Modelling and Truth.

It wasn’t that Morrison “saw the light”, but rather delivered her variations upon the same universally accepted premises, and this made it absolutely clear that the usual fragments of criticism were simply not up to the now urgent task, and this theorist had to “pull up his socks” or “bite the bullet”, or whatever is the apt description for a root and branch critique, coupled with a thoroughly thought-through alternative.

It would clearly be a major undertaking, but sufficient successes over the past decade or so, are now surely sufficient to begin the construction of new premises and assumptions to replace those that have both taken us this far, and have now, finally, led us damagingly astray.

After a series of regular publications over the last five years and a whole spectrum of contributions by others, the long (seemingly interminable) gestation period had to be brought to the conclusion of an actual birth!

The collection is simply called Analogistic Models, and will be initially published as a series of threeSpecial Issues of the SHAPE Journal on the Internet.

The contents will be:-

Analogistic Models I
Introduction
Idealism or Materialism?
How Do We Find Truth?
A Model of Empty Space
The Electromagnetic Effects of the Neutritron

Analogistic Models II
Introduction
The Bases for Plurality & Holism
Mutually Orbiting Particles & the Methodology of Holistic Science
A Critique of Margaret Morrison’s “Fictional Models”

Analogistic Models III
The Crucial Crossroads
Models and Truth
Why Analogistic Models contain Significant Content!
Hierarchical Levels of Stability and their Inevitable Dissolutions


Now, these contributions are current research, so they both enlarge and deepen day-by-day, and hence these are by no means final and definitive descriptions.

More is most certainly in the offing!

Read the Issue.

Democracy and the Rule of Law

While our scientists concern themselves with revealing the “Eternal Laws of Nature”, which “make absolutely everything what it is”, our rulers insist that no country will ever prosper unless and until it agrees to the Rule of Law in all its undertakings.

But clearly, these are not the “Eternal Natural Laws” sought by the scientists. They are quite different – always laid down by a country’s Ruling Class to maintain the status quo, whether the lawmaker is a king, a Council or an elected Government. And, what gives these ruling bodies the power to enforce these “laws”?

It isn’t the consent of the population: they are never actually asked! Indeed, the nearest they get to having any sort of input, is that every five years or so, they are given the chance to choose among a small group of Political Parties (none of which is remotely what the majority of the people want), which one should rule the country for the next five year period. So if the people don’t determine the policies and Laws of the land, who does?

Well, you can never ask such a question entirely within the present! For every such situation exists within an already established structure of wealth and power, and hence to answer the question posed, we must see how such structures were originally established.

Well crudely and quite evidently the historical acquisition of power to lay down the Laws of a society always resided in those who could dispose “bodies of armed men” to establish their will! These could be a private army, a police force, or even a nation’s armed forces.

But as the populace gained more rights, a new mechanism was developed, which gave the appearance of such “ruling and enforcing” organisations bearing the stamp of carrying out the wishes of, and conforming to the ideas of, the majority of those ruled.

This great illusion was, of course, Democracy!

But, it was always a confidence trick! When the chips were down, and the mismatch between the people and their rulers was strikingly evident, the enforcement of the Rule of Law, was clearly still in the hands of the very same lot, who wielded the bodies of armed men to enforce the will of the real rulers – themselves. And, who were they?

They were NOT the ruling majority in the elected parliament, for they certainly did not own nor control the nation’s means of Production, Distribution and Exchange that were the real sources of wealth and power in Society. They were, most certainly, in the hands of unelected individuals who had amassed their wealth and power by very different means indeed.

The analysis of what is usually called Primitive Accumulation shows that the methods used were never in conformity with any agreed rules, or “Natural Laws”.

For violence and War were the original initiators of this process, along with the largesse of the victors to their supporters, which enabled the building of a large penumbra of these followers to act as enforcers and get wealth and privilege for their contributions.

In Britain the best-known prototype was the invasion of William the Conqueror, who crossed the channel with his army, beat the current rulers, and confiscated all their assets, to be distributed among his followers. And, in spite of the later inclusion of Captains of Industry in this ruling elite, none were legitimate rulers, in the sense of being the choice of those who were ruled. They had taken the country by force, in order to own what was originally someone else’s. They decided upon the original Laws of the Land, and they were all in defence of their acquired loot and status. No contribution was allowed from their subjects, yet this ruling class now “owned” literally everything!

Now, over the centuries, in spite of the struggles of the people, which forced some concessions with regard to what is termed “political representation”, the ownership of wealth and real power were never touched. And the duality of a powerless government and a powered Ruling Class was the means by which this basic state could remain untouched, though masked by the “false front” of Democracy!

How could this ever be changed?

Clearly, a state with the wealth and real power in the hands of unelected owners would have to be terminated! The elected government would have to own literally all these crucial engines of production and power. The state would have to own the lot, and yet itself be subject to the control of the people.

Democracy as it is currently established is totally insufficient. For it only marginally serves the population at large. Its main purpose is to support the owners of wealth and their investment of capital in what they consider to give them the best return. Serving the populace comes nowhere in these determining imperatives. What is done is there to hopefully prevent the revulsion of the masses and the possibility of a revolution.

The means of Production, Distribution and Exchange have to be nationalised – taken into State Ownership, and the State itself must be entirely elected by the people.

The name for this is Socialism!

Postscript:

Yet how this can be made to work has to be very different from the current arrangements, for whatever political parties are set up to deliver, the fact that the wealth remains primarily in private hands means that they, as a group, have the wherewithall to buy their wants and needs from those who are supposed to represent the people at large.

Whichever such resources remain in private hands, the undermining of whatever democratic institutions have been put in place will be unavoidable.

The still outstanding questions are about personal wealth!

Socialism: A New Set of Posts

There is no getting away from it!

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!

Understanding Reality?

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!

Physics is not the Basic Science

 It is, at best, the earliest.

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.

Metamorphoses Post

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.

They are simply not eternal!

Dark Matter?

No, I’m afraid you've missed it.

It’s behind you!

 

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?

The Worship of Form

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

A Peak in Darien?

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.