Did the Eskimos Discover America?

Could Ice Age Mariners have got there first? 

On reading the latest contributions to the problem of, “Who were the first Americans?”, in New Scientist (2910), and thereafter re-viewing Alice Roberts TV series on “The Incredible Human Journey”, that addressed the conquering of the whole World by Homo Sapiens, another alternative seemed to demand inclusion in the list of possibilities. The assumptions, without any doubt, which seemed to delineate many of the opposing arguments, about who made that first journey and when, were about the total exclusion of humans from the regions dominated by the ice – usually described as Ice Sheets many miles thick.

Now, the immediate questions - about surviving in snow-covered and winter conditions, were surely only investigatable by studying how the Eskimos and other Arctic peoples have managed to survive until today. It cannot be that long ago, when all these peoples were still squarely in the Stone Age, or perhaps more properly in the Pre-Metal Age. And for truly vast periods of the year, they had to survive the most atrocious conditions, and find food in environments that seemed incapable of delivering any adequate sustenance.

By hunting seals and fishing through holes in the ice they have survived for millennia, and the very nature of their later means of finding adequate sustenance seems to indicate that the sea was most probably their main source for these essentials. Indeed, such groups, living at the edge of the sea, and with some means to migrate when necessary, most probably by boats, they could certainly have moved to stay in contact with the sea’s edge even as the Ice advanced.

Once you have a people so closely connected to the sea for both food and transport, this changes radically the migration possibilities as described in Alice Roberts Series. After all, even without assuming boats, these “out of Africa” humans, covered prodigious distances to get as far as Australia at a very early juncture. And to make that last step into a new continent, meant they even they would have had to have some sort of boats. Also the later conquest of the Pacific by seemingly primitives cultures in Micronesia, inferred not only boats but also profound knowledge of travelling by sea. Also early settlements, in the north of the British Isles, indicate very clearly, that passage overland was considerably more difficult than by sea. The seas were clearly how they got about, and what we would now consider to be the edge of possible habitation, in the Hebrides and Northern Islands, were evidently key posts along well-used routes – by sea. And closer still to our time, the best sea going boats and sea navigation was practiced by the Vikings, who we know got to America themselves.

The point I am attempting to make is that early man being a hunter/gatherer, and hence having to be constantly on the move to find new virgin areas, to supply their needs, would simply have to have boats. For with tides and currents, the sea and the shorelines were constantly replenished with eatables. To cope with the sea in every way must have been crucial. Even in Alice Robert’s piece, the general migrations were always along the coasts, perhaps because food from the sea was the most reliable source from time immemorial.

The question must be, “Could people like Eskimos, but endowed with coastal maritime skills and craft, have made the kind of journeys that seem unavoidable in the various America-reaching suggested explorations?”

Any scenario that has such peoples leaving vastly more conducive areas to set up permanently in the ice-gripped north is surely wrong. It is more likely that the first people reaching that continent soon after its impossibility due to ice and ocean had been reduced, would be by peoples already familiar with the conditions that they would encounter on such a journey, indeed, they are likely to have come from very similar climes, and believed that they could get past those conditions to something they knew that they could cope with, and have it to themselves. And they may well have stayed because, in spite of harsh conditions, they already knew how to cope, but would also have access to a superior range and number of prey animals both on the land and in accessible waters.

In particular, the areas adjacent to seas that would be unfrozen for part of the year, and lakes with could be fished the year round through holes made in the ice covering. Surely, such people would have been master of those conditions when they arrived?

Remember, early Man, being the only intelligent hunter/gatherer, could NOT stay in one place (except in exceptional circumstances), and had to constantly be on the move, to find what they needed in sufficient amounts for them to survive. Indeed, in a land entirely empty of people, they would be by far the best and most successful hunters, for apart from their superior intelligence, to animal predators; they also had many man-made weapons and social organisation to hunt as teams with well-established strategies.

And finally, with such a developed set of skills, if always close to or easily connected to the ocean, with craft and past knowledge, would greatly strengthen their ability to provide sustenance from that rich source too.

Striking off into the middle of an ice-field, or a desert would almost certainly be much too risky. But, following the coast with small easily-handled and even easier carried craft, and a familiar and regularly refilled larder of the inter-tidal zone, let alone the sea itself, would put such people at an advantage. Indeed, their speed of advance along a coastline would be surprisingly high - with a return the way they came, always a known option in face of difficulties. And, that rate of advance would be increased if they were constantly getting into ever-warmer territories full of an ever-wider range of accessible foodstuffs.

My suggestion is that an Eskimo dimension to the wanderings of early Man, especially into America is well worthy of further study.

Thoughts Upon Real Local Democracy

The problem with Democracy is that it can only really work straightforwardly in very small numbers of participants, with no hierarchies of economic power, for both these and large size, coupled with clear imbalances in influence quickly destroy its essential virtues, and turn it into its exact opposite.

So, can such an idea ever be constituted effectively in anything larger than a village of equals?

That is the problem, and as with all embryo conceptions, they have to be developed, if they are to maintain what is desired in new and wider circumstances.

And, even if and when it is achieved, it will certainly be different from its original implementation in (very) small City States. Clearly Democracy is NOT a given, but must be constantly fought for and developed to maintain it primary virtues and purpose – the Rule of the People.

As the Tory Government in the UK gradually starves the Local Authorities of the cash to effectively deliver essential local services, you can contrast the magnificent 19th century constructions of past Councils, be they Town Halls, or reservoirs, Libraries or Swimming Baths, or the comprehensive Public Transport Systems of the big cities, and finally, of course, the extensive Council Houses built by them in the 20th century, with what little can be achieved nowadays. And when you do this, you realise that an important aspect of local Social Services is being successively dismantled.

And, it hasn’t helped the survival of these organisations that, as they are increasingly emasculated by insufficient resources, the very people who are inflicting this upon them, are also those who blame those same authorities for not doing enough, or even doing it inefficiently.

Being an effective and authorative liar has always been a necessary skill for every Tory politician! For it is only among those whose fulfilling intentions are to serve the community, that the very best of humanity exists.

Yet, as socialists, we do not merely want to be elected to run these palaces of the past. We know that a revolutionary overturn will sweep away many of the old, under-control systems, and will be constantly setting up their own new forms, particularly at the local level.

And, therefore, we have to think about these possibilities now, to be in any position to go forwards, along with the transforming rush of the people, while ensuring best practice when we can, and addressing the problems that will undoubtedly occur from a multitude of different and maybe incompatible creations of the people.

Clearly, the priority has to be more local democracy and not less!

For, without self-evident, effective and affect-able local services, the actual Democracy becomes both distant and even detached, and the actual populations will lose confidence in it, and regard it as merely a con.

Of course, the enemies of such a version of Democracy say that any extra layers will merely result in more bureaucracy, but that is another lie.

If that multiplicity of levels were in the present system, that would most certainly be true, but the whole demand of the people in revolt will be for a constant say in how things are being done. And the major difference will be the control by the electorates over their representatives. That will be totally transformed, and must, therefore, maintain a control on them through the layers involved.

The crucial failure (of so-called Democracy within Capitalism) stems from the total lack of any kind of immediate re-call facility of all the elected representatives. For, once in place in the current system, the elected members are “safe” for a full term.

  

In the case of the UK Parliament, that amounts to five years. And when it is coupled with the wealth, and hence the reach and power of the Parties, then the ordinary voter is not only given few opportunities of making a change, but when the election finally comes, the choice is between parties that they don’t want, and who dominate the media and deliver their options with expensive and constant propaganda.

NOTE: It must also be essential that the Parties themselves are democratic, which is not the case now. What the policies of a Party are do not come from the maximum opinions, but from the ideas of the leaderships – not even made evident during their quest for election. Once in power, leaderships are dictatorships and can expel dissenters at will.

It has to be said that Democracy under Capitalism is a myth!

And the same can be said for the Democracy under the Stalinist regimes too.

In fact, in Russia and China, you can only choose between members of a single allowed Party. Indeed, as is currently happening in China, the national leadership changes over only every ten years. Clearly, neither of these "alternatives" is really democratic at all!

Now, there was a time in Russia when Democracy did indeed rule. It even led to temporary defeats, as in the July Days. But, the sailors of Kronstadt had decided in their own Soviet (elected Council) to march on Petrograd, fully-armed, to turf out the so called Provisional Government under Kerensky, who had insisted carrying on with the War. Whatever else you say about that event, it was certainly democratic (at least in Kronstadt).

So, socialists cannot merely accept the forms of Democracy imposed upon the people within Capitalism, just because “everybody has the vote”! Real Democracy must be entirely different, and crucially also be well informed.

It must start locally, making choices between candidates that they know, and they must also know enough to be clear what they are voting for. And even then, the chosen one cannot then vote as he or she thinks fit in the higher body. On most important matters, the elected candidate will also be mandated how to vote on particular issues by a general vote within the sending electorate.

NOTE: Imagine the difference that the Internet could make to this process, if all participating Parties were limited to the exact same costs in their propaganda!

The usual bureaucratic and geographic definition of Constituencies, with regular farming of the boundaries to give the greatest advantage to those doing the redrawing, MUST be replaced by units that are real.

The Soviets initially were this because they had no formal rules on areas or range.

Individual regiments, or even battalions within the army, and individual ships within the navy, set up and elected their own Soviets. They were all different sizes and with different principles of composition, but the electors knew their chosen representatives, and could change them at the drop of a hat if they proved incapable of carrying into the elected body the standpoint of those who had elected them. And this could be achieved merely by decisions within a general meeting.

Now, the defenders of bourgeois Democracy would insist that such a form of Democracy as the Soviets would lead to chaos and unfairness (which is ripe, coming from the unfairness of their alternatives). For they would insist that such organisations were “not representative”. But, of course, they were indeed completely representative, but only of their forming constituencies. Suddenly decisions were in the hands of the people, and not of those who could either manipulate towards, or alternatively just buy their own preferred requirements.

But, at the same time, many things could not be decided in innumerable and usually small Soviets. Some certainly had to be decided upon in larger representative units. You cannot organise an army in battle from the bottom up! There would, even in Socialism, have to be a hierarchy of democratic forms. BUT, crucially they should not be separately elected!

In the midst of the Russian Revolution (in 1917) there were two different forms of higher democratic body occurring simultaneously.

One, insisted upon by the bourgeois “socialists”, was the Constituent Assembly – elected by the usually implemented General Election methods. While the other was the Congress of Soviets – with representatives elected from within each Soviet by their usual local methods.

And the differences were significant!

When the chips were down and the Winter Palace was being stormed under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the bourgeois “socialists” were walking out en masse from the Congress in protest against this “Bolshevik Coup”, and putting their faith in the Constituent Assembly to act as they required.

The question is, “Do you think that the Constituent Assembly would have completed the Revolution?”

You know the answer!

But, with maximal Democracy at the lowest levels, it had to be the Soviets who should decide on their representatives at the higher bodies, and always have the power of immediate recall, so that they could at any time pull that elected candidate out from all the higher levels, if he no longer stood for what his electors wanted. Low level maximal choice would only then still affect the larger bodies.

Indeed, at times of crisis, decisions made at the lowest levels could ripple through by such mechanisms to cause major turnovers in important meetings at the highest levels. Emissaries from the Soviets were constantly arriving with either mandates, or authorized orders to replace the current delegate.

Now, I know what happened in Russia, and with a single party State, the “Democracy” of the system finally put in place by Stalin and his henchmen did indeed remove all of this control from the people via their Soviets.

And that occurred even after a successful Revolution!

Socialist Democracy is not a simple and easy matter.

And, of course, Russia at that time was surrounded by hostile capitalist powers, which not only invaded in an attempt to put down the Revolution, but even after they had been defeated in that endeavour, they constantly intervened all the way from funding a Civil War between the supporters of the prior Tsarist system, and the revolutionaries, to imposing a major economic and trade blockade against the new Socialist State.

At the time, their agents (well funded) within Russia did everything they could to sabotage this worldwide threat to their hegemony. All these things contributed to Stalin’s rise, and his system within Russia.

So, no real socialist set up was possible, and the “police and defensive processes” morphed into anti democratic control systems for the Stalinist elite.

Lessons need to be learned from the failures in both Russia and China, as both march back into Capitalism at an increasing pace, but with literally zero real democracy to oppose it.

The Inevitable Idealist Beginnings of Science

At the base of Man’s first thinking-awareness of his surroundings had to be himself!

For this remarkable and intelligent animal had been successfully surviving and even prospering in its world for millions of years. And he knew exactly what he had had to do to achieve that.

So, he began to consciously observe his surroundings, and see them as the deliberate results of a like-thinking, but all-powerful, super being that had produced that World. He was idealising this super being in his own image, and his relations with it as with other human individuals, but more so. Such idealism was the natural mode of early man.

And the resonances between Human relations, and those with a similar but supernatural Being, did not distract Mankind from Reality, but gave social groups sharing common beliefs an increased confidence to deal with it. Religion was a remarkable (and indeed necessary) asset for Early Man. Clans with strong religious beliefs did much better than those without such a coherent and “explanatory” account of the World.

*

The first extractions from Reality could not be explanatory (as we think of it today), for the reasons for phenomena were not-at-all evident to mere observation. But what was regularly glimpsed, even by casual observation, though not in any way explaining the phenomena, did hint that they conformed to some sort of “determining rules”.

Now, in a world where literally all explanations were inaccessible, the causes of things were regularly put down to the whims of unseen, all-powerful Gods: they were directed to be as they were by some Divine Hand (like Man only writ super large).

So, these glimpses of shape or order, though often transient, did conform to these a priori assumptions of Godlike Power. And when, by perfection (or idealisation), those occasions wherein these Forms were glimpsed, Man found he could sometimes expose them more or less permanently. The very process of idealisation, into a perfect version, which revealed the essential formal rules, would also reveal The Intentions of the Gods.

So clearly today, you cannot criticize any of this, because in the World at that time, and by this remarkable animal at that stage in his development, even that conception was indeed a miraculous achievement.

In contrast to a modern 21st century and scientific view, it was the only way for Man to make any sort of sense out of a difficult World. And, consonant with that approach, the forms increasingly being revealed by what we now call Mathematics were endowed with determining their World, for they were the embodiment of the Directions from the Gods! The purposes of the Gods were to be found everywhere in concrete Reality via their evident Forms.

From all points of view it was an important break through, for it treated distorted and blurred aspects of Reality, now seen as having underlying solid reasons that made them behave as they did.

In spite of being idealist, it was, in a sense, the beginning of a causal standpoint too: it was just homocentrically-endowed to an all-powerful God, rather than being intrinsic to Reality as a self-moving, complex system.

Now, this interpretation of revealed Form as the intentions of the Gods, could not but transform the collection of those Forms as the means by which those intentions were inflicted upon an intrinsically inert matter by those infinitely powerful deities. The Forms became religious, and the Pythagoreans attempted to explain everything in terms of the perfect or ideal conceptions of the Gods.

But, whatever was considered as the primary causations of such things, the actual process of revelation, and the ever deeper study of the idealised forms was considered an end in itself by many investigators, who found increasing rewards in revealing links between these forms. And these links delivered a special sort of truth – that of the eternal relations between such idealised forms, which were irrespective of where in the world they had been extracted from. The forms and their inter-relationships gradually became a new discipline – Mathematics.

Now, the use of its laws led to such an integration for those forms involved in spatial arrangements, which in turn produced what we call Geometry. And the resultant set of the Theorems and Proofs of that section of Mathematics has for millennia termed Euclidian Geometry after the Greek, Euclid had write the whole set down in his book The Elements.

Having managed to find and relate a whole set of formal relations and their laws of manipulation and transformation, which were so evidently sound, it was certain that a related approach would be applied to the statements of fact and relation that people made about all sorts of things.

Could a system, as tight as that in Mathematics, be devised about the Truth and arguments? Indeed, it could be done, and Formal Logic was born.

And, for all situations, where the elements involved did not change, a similar set of rules were established, which straight forwardly revealed contradictions, and hence False Reasoning, as well as deriving sound developments from Banker Truths.

Formal Logic was, and still is, another brilliant discovery-plus-formulation by the Ancient Greeks.

Yet, once again, the restriction to unchanging elements or tenets could be the only bases for such a system, and consequently, it could not be used when things and statements changed into something different. When nothing was fixed, for then Truth quite naturally could change into Falsity, and falsity become Truth. It is a Logic of eternals only!

This brief muse on Mankind’s natural bias towards Idealism shows that it is pointless to criticize those in the past for not having reached the gains of our present time. To understand possible futures for Mankind, we must correctly interpret the trajectory of ideas of the past. It is not judging (or condemning) that is required, but an understanding of the processes of significant change in the developments, and they are never incremental nor linear. Indeed, the real and crucial changes actually reverse direction from one plausible assumption, to its equally plausible opposite. But, with each such significant reversal, the conceived of content is always transformed and taken forwards.

Issue 30 of Shape

Entitled Changing Tracks, this collection of short papers links Philosophy and Science under the banner originally erected in the 19th century by Hegel, and then, even more radically, by Marx and his followers.

But it is not a eulogy to Marxism. Indeed, it is highly critical of the stance of most modern professed Marxists, particularly in their failure to develop Philosophy, and significantly in their cowering attitude in the face of the most idealistic retreats by Modern Physics.

This series has been produced by a professional scientist, philosopher and Marxist, who is totally convinced that the crucial path forward into all these areas has been lost, and progress no longer occurs in any of them.

Such a small collection as this cannot possibly deliver chapter and verse to the standpoint taken, for this is merely a brief introduction. But such a comprehensive treatment does exist and is regularly being added to within the Issues of SHAPE Journal (now rapidly approaching its 50th Issue (including Specials).

This set of papers address what are considered to be the crucial questions fundamental to this standpoint. They are:- 1. Is Form Essence? 2. Plan or Process? 3. Reductionism 4. What is Objective Content? 5. An Animation to Illustrate Objective Content 6. Holist Science: The Path Forward?

Read here

This video on Objective Content was created to accompany an article in this issue.

Pictures of May Day

The Parable of the Flood

Addendum to Explanation via Chaos (see below or click here to read it)

This paper on High Anxieties: The Mathematics of Chaos, most certainly took the reactionary position of the programme makers on the current crisis, and indeed crises in general, and revealed it as a one sided view on such major systemic overturns which are generally termed Emergences.

There is no doubt that all the revelations were of this one-way nature, and hung everything on the “unavoidable tendency of complex systems to descend into Chaos” in these sorts of circumstances. What was concentrated on as a basis was, as you might expect, the seemingly stable and predictable situations, which suddenly and inexplicably dissolved into totally inexplicable Chaos.

Surprisingly, it seems, the culprit was nature itself, which was insisted on as being subject to such calamities whatever anyone did to avoid them.

Now, the theme of my criticism was to contrast this lop-sided analysis with the correct explanation of such cataclysms in general. Such “Emergences” are never wholly negative, and indeed display a revolutionary and progressive side when the destruction and replacement of the Old Level has been completed.

You would never guess that our commentators were talking about the same sort of Event, so I countered this miserable and pessimistic journey into the inexplicable, by briefly mentioning real Emergences, but it has become clear that most people, and our mathematicians in particular, do not even know what they are. For, I suppose, you cannot expect those who think the World is driven by mathematics to consider anything so intrinsically contradictory.

My previous paper was perhaps too determined by the actual narrative and intentions of David Malone – the main designer, director and presenter of the programme. Because of this, my counter arguments did not do justice to the real story that was so evidently mis-told by this group of mathematicians and their associates.

This addendum should perhaps redress the balance, and at some stage be woven into the main paper, with a more co-ordinated attempt to deflect it from Malone’s whirlpool agenda, and instead redirect it in a much more positive direction, by revealing the general nature of real development, and its more revolutionary interludes which we call Emergences.

The basis of all the turning point Events in development has to be the maturing of an included, if hidden, instability in any evolving holistic system. In such processes many contending things are changing and growing or declining, but, in the main, the system tends to be self-correcting or self-maintaining, and stays within what we might call a Stable Interlude. Because of this various regularities are maintained and are even termed Laws because of their persistence.

BUT, these interludes do NOT last forever, and such systems, due entirely to their own inner processes can, and do, approach “turning points” in which the seemingly permanent dominances are successively undermined by fast-growing forces, until the complete breakdown occurs. Yet, such are NOT the end of the World, but are certainly the end of the Old Regime. The turnover is because what were normally suppressed forces of dissolution (The Second Law of Thermodynamics) begin to grow at an increasing rate, the old stabilities haltingly, and then more swiftly, dissolve, and via a very turbulent and creative following period, a new Higher Level finally emerges.

A new stability is established, with much greater potential than the Old Level, and things become stable once more at a much higher Level.

There are myriads of these Emergences, but almost everyone is unaware of them. The understandability of the World is always seen as residing in the currently Stable Level, and its relations and Laws are assumed to be eternal. With this view the peculiar characteristic of Malone and company is basically in opposition to the maturing Event. To them it is solely a great calamity, with NO way out, and he and his co-thinkers can only see it from their standpoint of the “working and dependable past”.

Ideally then, they judge the impending chaos as a wholly bad thing, which should not be allowed to succeed. The Stable Past should be strengthened and maintained at all costs, because the alternative cannot be predicted and seems worryingly like the End of Everything. They would want a continuation of the prior stable circumstances, and its predictable outcomes. When what replaces this is the inexplicable and destructive it must be opposed! They are hence a mixture of despairing doom mongers and reactionary defenders of the past “Golden Age”. They must be compared to the political reactionaries in a Social Revolution, who will do anything to save the economy, the Czar or even the country, by any means possible. They see nothing but bad in the completion of the Emergent Event, and ONLY think in terms of, if possible, restoring the old regime, by all measures aimed at countering the headlong rush to what they see as complete dissolution.

I hope that, in the above, I did bring up the correct arguments at all the appropriate places in the positions of our Defenders of the Faith, but what is really needed is one (or more) sound analogues of a real Emergence, in contrast to such a one-sided description of a catastrophe. And, it is important, because the forces attempting to retain the increasingly bankrupt past may indeed win. They have done so many times before, with disastrous consequences. The aftermath of the 1929 crash not only lasted for many years but also produced aberrant growths to maintain the status quo such as Fascism and World War. A failed Emergence always produces a major breakdown – a “Dark Age”. History is packed with examples of this.

Now, if I were to use a Social Revolution or the Origin of Life on Earth as my defining example, it would not be accepted by the general mass of the population. They cannot be explained by any other means, but they would rather be considered by most as Catastrophes or Miracles rather than the usual “transition mode” for turn-around development. So, though I am tempted, and these would definitely suffice technically, I am sure that they would not be the best vehicles for “selling” Emergences for what they really are.

I therefore looked around for a parable of an Emergence: a story of development and change, which made abundantly clear sense and could be easily taken on. This meant that I could not position the story in the present, with all its political overtones and allegiances.

I decided to position my tale in Ancient Egypt.

The Flood

Towards the end of the Stone Age the once lush plains of North Africa were being consumed by the ever-encroaching sand of the hostile desert. The thinly-spread, hunter-gatherer family groups had to find a better place in which to survive, and throughout the whole once-fertile area the hopeful treks began. They had to find sufficient game and edible wild plants to feed their small family groups, so they travelled ever eastwards, towards the rising of the sun.

Yet everything continued to remain the same, or got even worse.

There seemed not a hint of improvement, so they had no choice but to carry on. Every day they moved on and east, surely the desert could not continue forever.

Then, one morning through a surprising and obscuring mist, they saw a distant line of green tall shapes.

They looked like trees, but how could that be, they were still in the midst of the unremitting desert. They hurried forwards with gathering speed. They really were trees – big, green healthy trees, packed with many fruit.

But there were thousands of them, as far as the eyes could see, in both directions. Then beyond the trees was another miracle. An enormous slow-flowing river lay across their path, welcoming them in.

As they got closer the desert beneath their dry and cracked feet began to vanish. The ground became covered in soft, green plants of all kinds, and at the river’s edge were tall swaying reeds, and hundreds of wild-fowl swam about, or fluttered into the trees. This indeed was a land of milk and honey. They were saved!

As the months passed, more and more small groups arrived at the river. They spread out along its banks. Built their homes from the trees and reeds, gathered the fruit, hunted the abundant game and wildfowl, made boats out of the reeds, caught fish and as much as hunter-gatherers could, they prospered!

But, the same climatic changes that were still continuing to enlarge the pitiless desert were also changing things on a global scale. The rains, that thousands of kilometres to the south produced this magnificent river, were changing their patterns too. The massive continents were heating-up and were causing the rains to be concentrated into a much shorter period, which came to be called the monsoon. Vast amounts of rain fell in a short period in the mountains of Ethiopia, and poured down every slope in myriads of growing streams. These quickly merged into raging torrents, carving their way through the soft earth, until they finally came together into a single flow, expanding the now mighty river to a prodigious size.

In the lush and peaceful valley of the Nile the new inhabitants of the land went about their daily tasks.

They were used to the river changing as the seasons passed, but whatever the time of year the generous river always remained.

But things had now changed dramatically, the seasonal rise in level was markedly different. The flow continued to increase beyond its usual limits, and the water began to spread outwards, threatening the new communities. The people sensed that their River might become dangerous. They gathered what they could and moved towards the nearby hills.

The river not only continued to increase in rate of flow, but also everywhere began to overflow its banks and consumed the each and every small settlement. The land of milk and honey had been drowned. 

It vanished beneath the waters.

The people watched from the high ground, and prayed that the waters would subside and return their paradise to them once again.

And then, it began to happen. The levels began to subside. The waters receded and a whole new land was revealed. For some distance on either side of the now quietening river, the flooding had severely soaked the land, AND covered it with a fine, rich mud – a mud that had been carried all the way from the mountains of Ethiopia.

As the people picked their way back towards their River, they noticed that already thousands of new plants were peaking through the mud. The returning people had not lost their paradise, but delivered of yet another miracle. The land was clearly even more fertile than before. The calamitous events, had turned out to be a blessing - a present from the Gods.

It did not take long for the people to intervene by planting their meagre collections of seeds into the ready earth. Instead of hard won handfuls of edible seeds, they could now produce sacks full of such bounty. Their yields were increased twenty-fold. And their lives were changed forever.

On these banks flowered one of the first and best civilisations of Antiquity. The populations soared and the assured plenty gave time for many new activities. Along this blessed River Mankind reached new heights, as had never before existed anywhere on the Earth.

BUT, let us consider a quite different story in exactly the same circumstances.

Let us rewind back to before the flood and consider a different course of events.

After the establishments of the first settlements, groups still coming in from the desert found the narrow fertile strips on either side of the river were already occupied.

There was no room for them. The people already there not only had fertile, well watered land, but had an abundance of fish and waterfowl in the fiver. Such unavailable plenty seemed unfair. Some decided that they had as much right to this wonderful place as anybody else and they would fight for it if necessary.

So that is what began to happen. Now, as new incomers found that they could defeat the incumbents, they also discovered that they couldn’t get as much out of the new opportunities as those they had defeated. It became obvious that a better way would be to reign over the established populations without “dirtying their hands” so to speak. The thing was not to supplant the existing population but to rule them and extract tribute. They could even set up a sort of protection racket, ensuring the “safety” of settlements for a reasonable fee. Of course, such “protection” would involve bodies of armed men, and would very soon become “those in charge”! As things developed these new rulers realised that they could maximise their cut by being masters of the river. So by war and boats they extended their control. Their mobility enabled them to travel up and down the river landing where necessary and quickly establishing their threat/protection relationship.

These masters of the Nile soon “owned” the whole New Land.

Now we must remember that we are still in the early quiescent stage of the settlement of the Nile.

We have to consider what effects the Flood would bring to these arrangements.

As the waters rose, the people would, as they did in our simpler version, move away from the river’s edge to higher ground. They had done this in the past whenever the river rose. But the rulers depended on their mastery of the river to maintain their realm. They did NOT abandon their means. They stayed on the river. The rising waters soon became a swift flowing torrent and the boat masters were swept out to sea and perished. The ordinary people however were unscathed, and in time came back to Their River, now restored to them as before, but greatly enhanced. The flood had not only removed their oppressors, but also delivered to them the miracle of vastly increased fertility and plenty. They now had in their hands a situation, which ensured their growth and progress as a people. In this land civilisation would flourish.

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Now, how can such a story help us with the calamities of High Anxieties: the Mathematics of Chaos?

It can do it in the following way.

The Flood was an Emergence but was seen very differently by the two groups involved. The boat masters saw it ONLY as a mounting threat to their means of rule and tribute. They knew their power lay in their boats and weapons and stuck to them both like glue. They did not understand the mounting flood, and dearly hoped that they could survive if it subsided soon. But their clinging to such things led to their demise in the sea. Their view would have been throughout that the Event had released Chaos on their well-ordered World. They knew nothing of farming, they were a ruling class. Everything they saw could only be seen from that point of view.

NO positives were in evidence at all to them. If any survived, they would remember how it had destroyed their lives. They would be aware that Reality could inexplicably release uncontrollable Chaos upon them at any time.

But, in contrast, how would the farmers see the Flood?

They would remember it as the beginning of plenty. It was the reward from a generous deity for their hard work and invention. It had delivered the possibility of living much better and even having enough produce to trade with others. A civilisation was brought to them via the fabled Flood of Plenty. And it happened every year without fail.

Yet this was the exact same Flood that had brought Chaos and death.

Yes, it WAS an Emergence, wherein some balance of forces, which had shown itself in a form of stability, grew quickly towards an overturn beyond all its previous states. It had destroyed the Old, and created the New, at a higher, richer and better Level.

A Revolution is a Special Kind of Emergence

The Effect of Thinking Participants

The paper entitled The Parable of the Flood did give an excellent analogue for a Natural Emergence, but when such Events happen to a human society, it develops further and becomes very different indeed. For some of its participants can fight for it, while others will strive to suppress it. It depends on what you hope to gain, or are likely to lose!

So, though even with a Social Revolution we must commence by applying to it what we have learned from the wealth of prior and current Natural Emergences, we must also see it as the clearest and most striking example of a Holistic Event of Change. For its participants not only are subject to its natural trajectory, but can, and always do, attempt to change what occurs profoundly. A crisis in Society makes an Emergence happen, but then the people involved change it into a Revolution-with-two-sides.

So, with thinking, communicating and opposing groups of people, with towering social structures of Class, mostly with the wherewithall definitely and powerfully in the hands of the prior Ruling classes. These forces of the status quo can, and do, drastically change their usual forms of action, to attempt to physically defeat the Tide of Revolution, which they see as a veritable destroying tidal wave of the downtrodden Masses, and which could certainly not only sweep away their privileges, but even destroy them as well. And, in past history, these forces have generally succeeded. The ill-equipped masses, both conceptually and in force-of-arms, were always defeated by the forces of the prior prevailing Order.

Yet, even, following such a defeat, the inherent contradictions of the Old Order, would nevertheless, continue to undermine it, and further weaken it, so via a series of such cataclysms, they would give rise to a prolonged period of decline, which in history have been termed “Dark Ages” – showing a clear retrenchment to something very similar to a prior and lower Level.

The Social Revolution cannot be left to itself, to automatically deliver a new and higher Level of Society.

To counteract the strength and power of the incumbent Ruling Classes and their Forces of Order, the revolutionary masses need more than Right upon their side: they need a superior strength! And, this will have to be in understanding what is happening, and building the organisations that will allow them to intervene.

Now, within Capitalism, the natural forms of organisation of the Working Class are Trades Unions. But, these will always prove to only be able to fight for better conditions within capitalism. To actually remove it when a revolution comes will require a dedicated revolutionary leadership that have purposely equipped themselves to understand the trajectory of all Emergences, and particularly a Social Revolution, so that they know what to do with every twist and turn of the enemy classes, and the mistake of the revolutionary Class itself.

Now, try as they might (and I have spent a lifetime attempting to do it), you cannot suck such knowledge out of your thumb. Nevertheless, such crucial achieved wisdom does exist in the most unlikely places. For it requires a primarily philosophical standpoint, based upon Materialism, and on the profound contributions of Hegel. Marx and Engels, which have become known as Marxism. But, this Marxism has NO set recipes detailing what to do in every conceivable situation.

It is, instead, a Philosophical Method for dealing with Reality, and especially with Reality-in-Change! It is called Dialectical Materialism! And, when studied and developed constantly, it can, and indeed HAS, delivered a successful Socialist Revolution: it was, of course, in Russia in 1917.

Now, because of the prestige of that glorious victory, many claim to be Marxists, but very few of them are really Dialectical Materialists, or have any idea as to what a Natural Emergence is, never mind, a Social Revolution. Nor are they philosophically and methodologically equipped to do what is now, and most certainly will be in the midst of a Revolution absolutely essential.

Such “avowed Marxists” have read Marx, without any real understanding, for their politics is determined by the application of moral Rights and Wrongs, rather than understanding the trajectories of History, and its inevitable crises – Emergences. For, when Marxism is profoundly understood as a methodology, it enables the theorists to deal with almost every turn in the torrent of changes within a Revolution, so if suitably equipped with a serious leadership, the masses, arms-in-hand, can win!

Clearly, unlike the anarchists, who believe that the Revolution will look after itself, and naturally deliver a better World, the true students of Emergence know that Social Revolution, being an Event in human society, requires the human ability to think to be employed, in a well informed and holistic way, for it to ever cope with Reality-in-Change! It needs a Revolutionary Party with the development of that Theory as its most vial task.

But, even in such parties, they cannot be set up in the midst of a happening Revolution: they have to be started long before such an Event occurs of its own accord. It must be constructed in a non-revolutionary, or pre-revolutionary situation, and though this is essential, to give it time to understand what it will have to do, such a time also severely handicaps its objective due to the nature of Society in such periods.

Indeed, in 1917, even the defeat of the Czar, and the setting up of a republic with a Provisional government, did not change the methodology of the Bolshevik Party. It was still stuck in the pre-revolutionary period, with that era’s demands and policies.

It took Lenin’s return, his speech at the Finland Station, and his April Theses, to, in six months; redirect the Party into its necessary Revolutionary approach.

The task was to take power!

Bank Crash: Explanation via Chaos

From 2008:

"Within a very short time of the massive Stock Exchange and Bank slump of October 2008, the BBC had presented an hour long mathematical explanation entitled High Anxieties: The Mathematics of Chaos. Now though this was supposedly mostly about Anxiety, it turned out to also be an urgent contribution to the widespread questions generated among vast sections of the population as to why the Crash and Fallout all happened and who was to blame. The remit had to deal with the obvious anger of one section of society, while at the same time consoling the Anxiety of another quite different section. It was obviously NOT going to be achievable by any Economic-type explanations. Indeed, concentration on such an approach could merely increase the anger side and consequently also the anxiety side, so some more natural, and unavoidable causation would be ideal. Something independent of the actions of men and a feature of Nature itself would be perfect. The area chosen seems to fit the bill! It was mathematics – that cornerstone of our usual “understanding” of Nature, and weapon to control and transform the World. Could it also demolish and destroy?"

Read the rest

Cosmic Dust Clouds

Just how do the truly vast cosmic dust clouds form?

You would think that with a Big Bang initial stating point, followed by a series of supernovae a little later, that everything would be flying apart, and along roughly radial paths from their “explosion points”. And it is not at all clear how such a “dispersive” set of circumstances could erect such clouds of something or other, light years wide, so that they should end up as relatively stable, and long lasting structures.

There is, of course, the usually proffered “explanation”, which has “quantum fluctuations” present from the very first instant, which therefore, would “build-in” an unavoidable unevenness, and hence lead to many local concentrations. But, lets face it, such is a groundless dream, totally lacking in any concrete evidence – some sort of backwards extrapolation to explain the inexplicable in terms of the current, established Copenhagen prejudices. But that certainly isn’t it!



Now, the very fact that the clouds are opaque to light indicates that they must include particles of Matter (i.e. dust of solid elements) that are much larger than Hydrogen or Helium atoms, and hence could only have been produced from matter building stars in supernovae. For, current theories have all elements above H and He, produced by fusion in a series of sequential star forms, and finally dispersed, far and wide, by Supernovae.

Yet though that may explain our clouds’ contents, it really doesn’t explain their seemingly static state, which can be confirmed by that other consensus theory, that put down the demise of such stability to the shockwaves of subsequent supernovae, that break the “balancing stability”, and start a gravity-based concentration around local centres. For, with that theory, it is admitted that Gravity-caused aggregation alone is insufficient to end that state.

So, how did these clouds come to be in such a state originally?

Let us initially take some of the usual ideas and where it seems appropriate, add a few more.

The concept of a Big Bang of Pure Energy alone surely has to bite the dust? It is an internally contradictory idea that has been patched up with various speculative add-ons – the most significant one being that it didn’t expand into a pre-existing and totally Empty Space, but actually created Space itself as part of the same Big Bang process.

So, from a vanishingly tiny dot (the Physical Singularity) we have Energy, sufficient to construct a whole Universe, which, nevertheless, was full(?) of “quantum fluctuations”, and created Matter as it also created its own, required Space.

NOTE: In a nutshell this has Energy from Nothing making all Space also out of Nothing, and producing Matter as it went: an interesting Origin, don’t you think?

It was certainly NOT, we are assured, any sort of explosion, for that would require both pre-existing Matter and Space. Instead, we are told, it was a kind of emanation(?) of Pure Energy, creating Space and Matter as it went: a whole Universe, its actual Space and absolutely all of its contents, had spewed out of Nothing! But, surely creating-Matter is NOT merely the reverse of creating-Energy-from-Matter as in Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs? The pre-requisites for both of these are both Matter and Space.

So, just how does disembodied, Pure Energy condense(?) into Matter? And what is the Form of that Matter when it is first produced?

The problem is that Fusion needs Matter to work!

Indeed, it fuses smaller units together to make larger units, but with a necessary loss of some of the matter involved into Energy. You cannot reverse that to get Matter out of Energy alone! And what do they mean by “concentrate” or “condense”? How do you squeeze Energy until it produces Matter? Or is it somehow self-squeezing? Do they mean that after a certain, threshold density of Energy it becomes stable Matter?

But surely as all this energy was originally in “zero” Space, and then continuously had more and more Space as the process progressed, doesn’t that mean that the energy-density MUST be getting less and less, and will never again reach those earliest levels?

The received wisdom (if we allow a temporary slipping into “explosive” ideas) is that Hydrogen and Maybe Helium were produced by the Big Bang, though clearly some even smaller “bits” would have had to have been produced first, as both Hydrogen and Helium are combined entities.

So, in spite of these clear anomalies, let us initially stick with the consensus scenario, and have unevenness from the start, and as soon as Matter was created, it started to pull together in the more dense parts of the density spread. The idea is that these would very rapidly grow into stars of truly immense size, and as that volume increased, accelerate through the stars history, so that they would very quickly (in cosmological terms) exhaust all the matter-growing phases producing Helium, Carbon, Oxygen, and so on all the way to Iron, before really exploding in a truly giant Supernova.

Of course several of these would go through these stages more or less simultaneously, so even the explosion-less Big Bang soon produces massive actual explosions, which according to current theory are the ONLY situations in which all the higher elements are produced (remember, our Cosmic Clouds are of dust).

We now have, therefore a cataclysm of Supernovae – all exploding outwards, but as yet still in a relatively tiny Universe (compared to now). Clearly, these explosions would “bump into” one another, and in certain areas “cancel out”. Perhaps this was the actual source of our vast, light-years-across, dust clouds, which, in consequence become relatively stable: They might, as whole “clouds”, still be moving, but internally the individual movements of the components from both involved Supernovae may approach a “random mix”, and thus produce a stable overall state within the cloud [Both gravity pulls and collisions could in time achieve such a state].

This, I’m afraid, is the best that I can do with current theories, though I must admit that I cannot really agree with the majority of their “standing-ground” – their founding assumptions. For, they are clearly purely formal and abstract, indeed mathematical bases.

By abandoning “old-fashioned” “Physical Explanations”, and instead relying exclusively upon Equations, as the true essences driving Reality, they have abandoned a materialist standpoint for a completely idealist one.

All their bases are purely formal abstractions, which they develop in solely mathematical ways.

The trick of turning multi-dimensions as used to cope with multi-variable relations, into a many dimensional Universe, and thereafter develop from their Equations and formal extensions, purely formal “explanations” for everything, places them squarely in Ideality – where mathematicians dwell, turning their backs upon Reality, which is the only land for real physicists.

The turning point was, without any doubt, the victory of the Copenhagen standpoint of Bohr and Heisenberg at Solvay in 1927, as an almost inevitable development of the mathematical achievements of Planck with his Quantum, and Einstein with his purely formal Relativity.

The slope became so steep it was impossible to stop the slide, without directly questioning the enormous formal (mathematical) inroads into Physics, which the vast majority depended so vitally upon, and the whole Sub Atomic Community began the slide, headlong down to Idealism.

To those who disagree with this standpoint, may I mention String Theory, the Higgs’ Boson, Theories of Everything, involving 11 (or more) dimensions, Branes, Parallel Universes to name only a few...

Are these not purely formal speculations without any real Physics whatsoever? Of course, they are! 

Mathematics, as a discipline itself, deals in the purest of Forms, which they get from glimpses in Reality, and which are increasingly “nailed down” by the most careful construction and maintenance of Domains to eliminate almost everything but a final, formal relation. What crucifies such methods is that these “farmed” results are then believed to be the eternal, underlying truths of Reality.

They aren’t!

So, the current theoretical position is an amalgam of constantly new facts, due entirely to mammothly developed technology, and the farming of the Domains studied, and the purely formal relations thus extracted, though, of course, always related to those supplied by the mathematicians, who have been studying such Forms, in their own pure terms alone, for millennia.

Indeed, the new legitimacy inverts the established Scientific Method, by expecting to find essences and even new entities, hidden in their beloved Equations, rather than in Reality. While, at the same time, constraining experimental work into the ever narrower, and higher energy area of forced collisions as THE only experiments worth pursuing. And all that is founded upon the assumption (which has become a Principle) of Plurality – where found relations are presumed to be independent of their contexts, and hence actually eternal, additive components, capable of producing any complex situation.

Dialectical Reasoning

The revolutionary methodology of reasoning, handed on from Hegel to Marx, was of a very unusual type compared with what had been universally employed previously.

For, being holistic, rather than pluralistic (as literally all prior reasoning had been, and, of course, all of Science certainly had become) the new approach started from the total inter-relatedness of all things, and hence fulfilled the credo, “Everything affects everything else!”.

But, such a stance does seem to totally exclude the possibility of Analysis, which is surely the central plank of the scientific method, and has to look beyond individual (and separable) contributions to integrated and mutually transforming effects at a higher level, to get any sort of handle upon how Reality actually behaves.

But, in spite of these major difficulties, it alone can cope with both Change and Transition as caused processes, and that has to be its critical contribution to human reasoning.

One vital feature was that the multiplicity of contributing factors meant that in any situation both complementary, and even totally contradictory, factors would certainly be present and making a contribution. And, any observed overall effect, would be the result of the increasing dominance of certain mutually conducive factors over other less effective sets. And, even that situation would never be permanent, but would have the ever-present possibility of such a “current “solution” being overturned as the general situation changed, and even a directly contrary dominance could come into overall hegemony.

To address qualitative change is very different from purely quantitative changes within a stable situation.

The conceptual model adopted, therefore, became one of contradictory pairs of overall outcomes, and as the most important aspect of the studied situation, its development into something entirely different. It could be dealt with (to an extent) by the activities of these Opposites – the Dialectic of the situation!

Now the validity of this rather surprising approach has been confirmed innumerable times, but only in developments: it is not about stable, quantitative and slowly-changing situations, but about transforming and qualitative changes.

Perhaps before this discussion gets out of hand, the crucial evidence of The Impasse should be brought in?

Most conceptions of situations are far from being the “absolute truth” of it, but are usually an acceptable and useable approximation: the assumptions, processes and even entities involved do get reasonably close to what is going on, and in most stable circumstances “do the job”: conclusions and even predictions can be relied upon. But, such is never the case forever. No matter how clever (or even wise) were our suppositions, there will always be situations where the conceptions and assumption fail. Now, our fallback practice is to have a second-string theory, which also works in some very closely related cases, and we switch to this to see if it does the job here too. And sometimes it does!

We then have two mostly workable alternatives, and we pragmatically switch between them to be in the position to carry on with our objective.

NOTE: But, we must not confuse this with pure unprincipled Pragmatism, as displayed in the current models of the Nuclei of atoms. For there is, at the present count, an unrelated set of some twelve alternatives to juggle between, This two model alternative is not only much more tightly constrained, but, as it will turn out much sounder philosophically.

But, there are cases when even these dichotomous pairs fail to deliver anything at all. And this indicates a true impasse, where the possibilities of the current situation have been left behind completely. No matter what we do using these alternatives, they still always lead to a contradiction: they are both wrong! The situation seems to defeat our usually applicable pair of alternatives, and we seem to be able to go no further.

But, as you may already have guessed, our two alternatives can never be wholly arbitrary, or unrelated to one another, they both will have a measure of the Objective Content of the situation within them, and it was that, which caused them to becomes our pair of alternatives.

But the occurrence of The Impasse, instead of being a dead-end, is perhaps the much more productive situation - for it is only here that the necessary transcending solution can actually be addressed.

NOTE: In his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Robert Pirsig called such situations the vital periods of “Stuckness”: situations to be sought out and welcomed as the places to make real progress in our understanding.

Dialectics takes the naturally emerging pairs of such dichotomies as temporary truths in the short term, but also as anvils on which to beat out a transcending alternative.

One obvious area, totally unintelligible to today’s physicists, involves the alternatives of Wave and Particle in Sub Atomic Physics. And, perhaps, the most famous is the perennial Descreteness and Continuity dichotomy, as Zeno was clever enough to demonstrate so superbly in his Paradoxes.

But surely, such a method, is not, repeat NOT, predictive, as are most quantitative equations in Science, though, on the other hand, it does give the person a changing situation - to think about what factors are involved, and which way a transition is likely to occur. In contrast to the usual method in Science, which can ONLY predict within its appropriate and defining Domain (set of producing conditions), the holistic approach is much more general and unconstrained.

The holist alternative does attempt to juggle all the involved factors as changes occur and by defining them into pairs of opposite-yet-possible outcomes, points strongly to a particularly limited pair of possibilities.

It is by no means as crude as it at first sounds, for whatever “wins” in a competition of many contributing and distortable factors, will always get there due to its cooperating, and even integrated and mutually modified, set of conducive factors to ensure dominance. While, when a transition does occur, it will again be to one with a similar set of conducive factors, which are likely to be the opposite of what pertained before.

The natural marshalling of simultaneous factors will always take such a form, for such groupings ensure proliferation best. It is about multiple factors with different directions interacting to lead to a particular overall dominance.

A pluralist equation doesn’t even include what factors are present. It is merely a quantitative relation within a static, non-changing situation: it is incapable of saying why it behaves as it does, and the nearest it can get to suggesting what might replace it, is for it to “blow up” into one of its terminating singularities.

But, though this contribution is only a beginning, Dialectics did reflect the true dynamics of multiple interacting factors in real systems. The seemingly arbitrary concentration upon opposites is NOT what was being inflicted upon the situation by Mankind: it was NOT simply another imposition. For the division into conducive and antagonistic contributions to combined effects did cause related groups of factors to form conducive, mutually-supporting sets or systems. And in any complex situation, the direction of these proto-systems would be defined.

It is also important to understand just how dominance occurs: it is basically a version of Selection, which I have elsewhere termed Truly Natural Selection, and it occurs not only in Living Things, but at all levels, even between chemical reactions, which might compete for the same resources

And, a working through at this basic level turned out to deliver a viable model. Mutually conducive or supporting processes, where the product of one was the necessary resource for another, would certainly mutually affect one another. And such could even develop into quite long sequences or even cycles.

Clearly, as such systems came together they would really be greatly more successful than lone processes or mutually contending pairs of processes. The conducive systems would soon collar the majority of the available resources and begin to dominate.

Yet, such sets would not all require the same conditions and resources, so many such systems would occur. 

The rivalry between them would be of a different character. It would not be direct competition – for they required different things, but efficiency and rate of production would tend to some systems growing bigger then others.

NOTE: though too early to deal with it here, these ideas have led to the Theory of Emergences, which addresses how the “wholly new” comes into existence – clearly crucial in any complete theory of Evolution.

When the Bastille Finally Falls!

How can we identify the current cul de sac into which Modern Physics has purposely and noisily marched, and not merely criticise as Prophets of Doom, but also be able to present a ready alternative and much better show already waiting in the wings? Now, if such an alternative were both fully assembled and available, as a coherent, consistent and comprehensive standpoint, along with a clearly useable methodology, then there would be no real problem. But, that ideal situation is far from being the case at the present time.

There are, of course, many very good examples that could be brought into any ongoing argument, but altogether too few, and at this time, too little developed, to stand against a united chorus of “Yes, but” type responses from the sizeable majority representing the currently “universally-agreed” side.

For, in spite of the grave weaknesses of that currently accepted position, it has now been “in charge” for a very long time, and in any ping-pong battle, hurling examples from each side, there can be absolutely no doubt, who will have the deciding weight of projectiles.

It is certain, however, that if the philosophical case were allowed to be put, the new alternative would win hands down. But, who has such arguments about Philosophy these days? You know the answer, it is, “Nobody!”

And, the vast expansion in media of all kinds only reinforces that situation. Twitter one-liners dominate these days, so wit will trump argument, and humour will always trounce commitment. So, there is certainly a major problem in getting anything at all complicated out there, and then discussed.

Now, such episodes, when reaction rules, have happened before. There were times after the failures of revolutions across Europe in 1848, when reaction ruled, and even a new Bonaparte was installed as Emperor in Paris. And, similarly, after the demise of the 1905 revolution in Russia, the leadership of the Bolshevik Party was down, as Lenin said, to “You, me and him!”. Yet in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War the sans culottes of Paris rose again and instituted the Paris Commune, while in Russia in 1917 the very same Bolsheviks actually took power, and established the World’s First Socialist State.

So, though the task at present seems impossible to carry out, it will NOT remain so!

The swoop downwards from all-powerful repression to powerless impotence does indeed occur, and it will occur in this task too - and for similar political reasons. As the Crisis of Capitalism again dominates across the World, and the Ruling Class as usual insists upon the Working Class footing the bill, the latter will finally SNAP! And all hell will break loose!

In such turmoil all prior short-odds predictive bets will be OFF, and everything will be up for debate!

Issue 29 of Shape

This small set of papers was a response to a significant change in the position of an establishment group of physicists, as their latest adjustment in coping with the continuing and unresolved Crisis in Physics.

For, though for many years (and even decades) mathematical-physicists have been rummaging through the seemingly endless depths of the World of Pure Form alone (Mathematics) for a solution to their evidently pressing need for a Theory of Everything, their many and varied, speculative journeys have become ever more unbelievable.

Yet, without in any way dramatically changing their avowed stance, these theorists have switched their attention to a very different area in the search for this required “end of the Rainbow”, and it is interesting what their new turn has involved!

For it does seem to acknowledge the real cause of their continuing dilemma – the lack of an appropriate philosophy as a basis for their driving laws!

So, from a purely descriptive/predictive pre-occupation with quantitative Form (equations) they have finally turned to the most “philosophical” of the Laws in their collection, with the purpose of finding there the hoped-for salvation.

They have turned away from trusting only Pure Form to instead address Pure Chaos!

Of course, though Mathematics has been, and still is, used even in this area, it is the Second Law of Thermodynamics that seems to fit their requirements most accurately. For it is not a relational law!

If anything, it is a philosophical Principle: that everything is perpetually running down: all Order is dissociating into all Chaos!

It is certainly appropriate in very many areas (and the engineers, who first thought of it, would insist that it pertains absolutely everywhere).

Two major contributions to this standpoint have recently appeared. One in the pages of New Scientist (2886) by Vlatko Vedral, and the other in a two-part TV series by Jim Al’khalili on BBC entitled Order and Disorder.

Here are my responses to these positions.

Read them here

Figure and Ground

The Dangers of Simplification

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, let us assume the very worst!

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

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

How might we do it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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