Trees of Life

The Role of Marxism in Science & Thought

Occasionally, realised links crop up in the most surprising of seemingly unrelated places. For example, though any Marxist would see a definite link between Hegel’s Dichotomous (Contradictory) Pairs in Thought and Darwin’s Evolution of Life on Earth, they would not expect the same descriptive diagram to throw light upon both, but that is certainly the case.

 

When considering Darwin’s famous scribble of the Tree of Life, with all its bifurcations and extinctions as a product of Natural Selection, who would have guessed that an almost identical figure could be as revealing a descriptor of Hegel’s studies in Thinking, and his recognition of Dichotomous Pairs as results of expiring sets of assumptions and principles?

Yet, we should have guessed that something like this was possible, for, such Pairs are both based upon the very same premises, yet cannot both be true, and hence, deliver an immediately, terminating possibility of staying pragmatically, with such opposites, and using each only when it fitted certain situations, OR, alternatively, and much more productively, go on to exposing the errors embedded in their common premises, correcting them, and thus allowing a transcending of the impasse to a better, and further developable set of ideas.

Yet, as even these simple diagrams show, the two descriptive diagrams are certainly very similar, AND, crucially, the extractions from one, informed by the fossil record and current studies of still living species, could surprisingly also throw light upon the problems encountered in Thought, and particularly in Formal Logic. While, in the opposite direction, extractions, from the developments and extinctions in Thought, could better inform our ideas in evolution.

Now, it is true, these comparisons could be seen as both trivial and man-devised, delivering only how clever the deviser had been. But, what has been described here and illustrated by these diagrams, are merely only the first step, in a thorough-going, and profoundly informing, investigation.

For, how is it that Marxists were able to study Social Development in human History and thereby be able to recognise the universality of revolutionary events, as true, not only in societies, but also in absolutely all developments in Reality?

It is the most profound contribution of Marxism to Human Thought! But, we can also put it in a very different way.

Is it not precisely because most scientists are not philosophical Marxists that Modern Physics has got into the unholy mess it now resides in – not to mention the many spin-offs from this, such as Modern Cosmology? Do you, for a second, believe in the Multiverse?

No, to ban such crossovers is counter-productive and guaranteed to lead into the mire!

Admittedly, clever, man-devised analogies, without any profound content, will regularly be put forward, but the proof of the pudding is always in the eating. Really profound cross-links will immediately begin to reveal new and important understandings, and lead to obvious progress.

For example, the epiphanies experienced by this Marxist were in very surprising areas of study. For I have been both an educator and a researcher all my adult life, and in my fifties and sixties I was involved in developing Multimedia aids for teachers of Dance Performance and Choreography, along with an expert in the field of Dance Education. Who would have thought that, philosophically, the only solutions to the many problems presented by effective Access and Control to exemplar video and film footage would demand a Marxist approach?

And, later, when my sight was failing, and I looked to the scientist Ramachandran, with his studies of Blind Seeing and Visual Neglect, to find ways for me to cope with my deteriorating condition, that I should begin to understand what the actual Eye-Brain system was doing in delivering effective vision.

Only in the last month (January 2015) I read about studies in the conception of Time by the human Brain, which gelled very well with my own work of 12 years ago upon Seeing.

Now, in case my readers will dismiss these gains as unimportant, I feel that I must bring in my “Big Guns”. After a lifetime as a physicist, and throughout that time an opponent of the famed Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, this scientist found that he was able to apply his now further developed Marxist philosophical approach (coming, of course, from the above mentioned researches), to Wave/Particle Duality in its prime citadel – The Double Slit Experiments, and managed to explain all the anomalies without any resort to the Copenhagen stance. And, following this, I am now involved in a detailed study of the real, concrete contents of what is usually supposed to be purely Empty Space.

Indeed, in retrospect, I think I can say with confidence that the failure of the self-proclaimed Marxists, to have tackled ANY of these questions, is a measure of just how far they have strayed from what Hegel, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky had put into our hands. The failure of Marxists is because they were no longer continuing to develop Marxism in the many areas that required such an approach. They were NOT Marxists.

The Trajectory of an Emergence

Re-draw of my Trajectory of an Emergence Diagram to feature in the next Special Issue, Marxism II: Emergence

The Origin of Us

George Gaylord Simpson made perhaps the most telling contribution to the Evolution of Life on Earth with his interpretation of his extended investigation into the development of the horse, with the work that he carried out in what is now the US State of Wyoming, and in which he unearthed in an amazing series of fossils covering many millions of years of the history of this unique animal.

From the dog-sized eohippus all the way to the modern Equus, he collected enough evidence, on the one hand, from fossilised skeletal parts, and, on the other, about changes of climate during very long simultaneous periods of time, to begin to throw important light on the mechanisms involved.

A varying climate put changing and very different demands upon this evolving animal, which varied in response in several important ways. These involved the feet, the teeth and the brain, as evolutionary pressures selected for major changes, with each significantly different imposed lifestyle dictated by how the horse survived, reproduced and even prospered.

Now, the initial animal in this sequence eohippus had five toes on its feet, and teeth for browsing on leaves. It also had the brain functionalities and size of that needed by most prey animals of that size and mode of living.

But as climate changed, the most successful selective response in our dog-like animal was for increased speed of escape and for wide ranging locomotion to find ever-rarer areas of appropriate food. And these pressures gradually selected for a decrease in the number of toes, down first to three, and finally down to one. (See image below)

At the same time its teeth became those for grazing rather than browsing, and, most significantly of all, the brain grew considerably in functions and in size.

Now most evidence from the very distant past is invariably very incomplete, and conclusions drawn about the actual trajectory of development, between these scarce and widely separated signposts were naturally very unreliable.

But Simpson’s chosen ground was remarkable for its truly large and relatively complete fossil record of these animals, that seemed to have lived in the same area for vast periods of time as both the ground beneath their feet, and the prevailing climate, changed dramatically.

Literally, the whole development was regularly delivered by enough fossils to make much sounder interpolations than were usual in most other circumstances.

And, of course, it was Simpson who was doing the investigating and the interpreting.

He was able to align his fossil evidence in a time-sequence, and could see developments in different parts of the animal’s anatomy as often parallel and connected changes. He was able to match these sequences both with a known sequence of climate changes and also, and significantly, with each other.

Crucially, he was able to see how changes in climate demanded changes in behaviour, which selected for important changes in the animal’s structure in various parts of its body. And, with such an almost sufficient record, his conclusions were much more reliable than usual.

Now, this section of my paper is only supposed to be a brief preface to a review of a TV programme, The Origin of Us, presented admirably by Dr. Alice Roberts as a BBC series (currently being repeated by The Eden TV Channel). So, clearly, I am not attempting a thoroughgoing description of Simpson’s work. [By to those who don’t know of this work, I recommend his great book, The Meaning of Evolution].

But his relating of a changing environment to the selection of modifications in the mode of life, and resultant changes in various functional parts of the animal as it evolved were exemplary.

For his crucial conclusion was how the single-toed foot for maximum speed on the plains, plus all those muscles that could facilitate the turns and changes of the chase, also and inevitably led to changes in the brain to control these new features effectively.

The various possible means of movement of the “horse”, which included co-ordinated use of both locomotive and balance muscles led to a rapid development of the brain to cope with such demands.

And, once the brain had significantly expanded in this way, the possibilities of other new functions could also arise to take advantage of the extra brain cells.

And it is this interpretation that I believe throws important light upon Alice Roberts similar interpretation of the development in human evolution over several million years. For in this series, Alice draws attention to the developments evident from the skeleton in finally producing homo sapiens as it was in its evolved state as a hunter/gatherer.

Homo sapiens possessed two remarkable things: first, it kept all five digits in its forelimbs, which also ceased to perform any part in locomotion, because the species became bipedal. It stood and moved on only two legs. This totally released the forelimbs as arms. And their digits became manipulative fingers. So, clearly this meant that a whole new set of possibilities, and consequent uses of their hands demanded, and got, by selection appropriate control developments in the brain.

But, this was a very unlikely predator. It certainly wasn’t strong, and had NO enormous claws or teeth. Indeed, the most important evolutionary development was (as with the horse) in its supreme ability to run and it could also sustain that for very long periods.

Many associated and necessary developments occurred, due to the emergence of a natural Running Man.

Balance, as well as locomotion, required appropriate changes in the brain, while the liberated hand became the most dextrous limb in the whole animal kingdom, and consequent brain changes ensued in that connection too. To see just how brilliant this limb became, merely watch a concert pianist playing a major concerto.

Now my reason for writing this review – apart from thoroughly recommending the viewing of this excellent series, is also to disagree with Alice Roberts allocation of the development of the large human brain to adequate sustenance and hence down to the use of fire in cooking food.

Though this was undoubtedly very important, I cannot agree that merely sufficient cooked food caused the growth of the human brain. It helped, of course, but Simpson’s reasons for a similar development in the horse far outweigh sustenance in the rapid acceleration in brain size.







As Engels outlined in The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, it was the hand that did it. And his 19th century contribution, plus the revelations from George Gaylord Simpson, and even Alice’s comments on the Running Man, are surely the main generators of the developed human brain. For once it had been established it could do a great deal more.

Tory Science: The Study of Failure as Success

Horseshoe Crabs: celebrating an anachronism

I awaited the new BBC television programme on Evolution (Survivors: Nature's Indestructible Creatures) with great interest. The oft-repeated trailers for the show emphasized the recurrence of major cataclysms within that process, which had, on every occasion, wiped out most of the current lifeforms on Earth, yet had always left a few very resilient survivors, and everything that still exists today must have evolved from these remnants. The very fact that catastrophes had played a part was, I thought, extremely significant in what they had precipitated, and the fact that the presenter (Prof. Richard Fortey) was from one of the very best museums in London, led me to expect a great deal of valuable extra information that would be available to add more substance to my recently published Theory of Emergence.

But, to my surprise, the globe-trotting expert did not allocate any evolutionary credit whatsoever to the Emergent Events triggered by those destructive cataclysms, but instead concentrated upon the unchanging "living fossils" that, with great difficulty, he was able to physically present as still living relatively unchanged to this very day. 

At the end of a boring hour, looking at Horseshoe Crabs, Lampreys, Lancelets and Stromatolites, we got the bad news that this was to be a whole series of programmes. Good Grief!

So, instead of studying the crucial processes by which evolution had regularly rescued Life from wholesale mass destruction, our expert lauded the niche-surviving relics that hadn't had any revolutionary processes acting upon them for as many as 500 million years. What on earth was Fortey trying to prove?

Clearly, none of the freaks he presented to us were the reason for survival and development in general, or the vital accelerated adaptive changes involved - indeed, he was doing the exact opposite! His chosen "heroes" had survived by being extremely undemanding and resilient, and certainly not by being capable of rapid change in order to adapt and survive. Fortey even described with approval how a certain animal could go for an entire year without any food and still survive. How magnificent? I think not! Most organisms have survived by a mixture of maximal plastic variability and abundant reproduction coupled with certain individual deaths, not by living forever unchanged.

His examples were of where evolution failed to do its job and create new forms suited to radically changed environments, when faced with the most disadvantageous circumstances. 

Now, such errors are perhaps understandable, but also unforgiveable! For though the incrementalist, quantitative changes idea of development does still dominate science, that doesn't change the fact that such a standpoint is wholly wrong. The engine of general survival was always adaptive radiation - those interludes following major disasters in which, from a single species, a whole range of different species arise in a relatively short space of time. The pinheads changes that we can see do not become changes in qualities: the incrementalist thesis is a myth.

All developments, not only in Life, but also in all circumstances, display two dominant modes. The first, and of longest duration, is undoubtedly Stability, when an integrated system has become established, not only by its advantageous virtues, but also by its integrated defensive processes. Once established such systems can persist for very long periods, in which the only significant changes are not towards increased order, but to its opposite, via imperceptible and inevitable decay - The Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn't actually rule, but its dissociations do mount up until the system becomes totally undermined, and a wholesale collapse ensues. 

Now this is self-contained denouement, not that precipitated by externally caused catastrophe. But, either way, the immediate following period, which is the important part of the alternative mode, is always a short Event of major qualitative changes, which we term an Emergence.

For those who doubt that these Events actually occur, may I proffer a few important examples?

These are - The Origin of Life on Earth, the Advent of Consciousness and the Appearance of Directed Thinking. Complete overturns of what came before.

There can be no doubt, this alternation of long periods of incipient decline within a maintained Stability, and short, explosive interludes of revolutionary ferment and changes, is the pattern of all development. Now, if this is true, what must be the crucial area of study in order to explain innovation - true creative evolution? It can only be the detailed study of Emergences themselves.

But what does Professor Fortey do instead? He studies the failed remnants that have proved impervious to the creative processes of Evolution. He is lauding Conservativism. How can you talk about Evolution and not talk about progress and change?

By being a Tory?

Review of Survivors here

Issue 20 of SHAPE

Read it here

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

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

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

Issue 18 of Shape

Read it here

Issue 17 of Shape

Read it here

Adaptive Radiation Diagrams