Process, Context and Recursion II

Pas de Deux (1968) Norman McLaren

BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND MOVEMENT AND CHANGE

Carrying on from the prior papers in this series, I will further establish the System Nature of a Holistic Science, as applied to the Study of Creative Dance Performance and Choreography. The last 30 years of Research in this area, has also, surprisingly, enabled me to make this contribution, both there, and for Holistic Science in General!

I, of course, did the majority of this work in tandem with another researcher, the excellent Dr. Jacqueline Smith-Autard (Jackie), perhaps the leading expert in such studies in the World. She was the dance education specialist in the relationship, so please forgive my total concentration upon the Philosophical, Scientific and Computing questions involved, based upon a long professional life in these areas, mostly in Higher Education. 

Crucially, this research into Dance, and the difficulties of analysing movement using video, led me to fully appreciate the philosophical importance of Zeno of Elea, beyond his paradoxes of movement (the dialectic of continuity and discreetness) and to the importance of the Whole and the Part - and a fundamental critique of all Reductionism. 

I terminated, the immediately prior paper undoubtedly somewhat prematurely, in the midst of beginning to establish a wholly new Holistic Approach to the Sciences, certainly only now made possible by the extensive work with Jackie in Dance Research. But also, very clearly, this was too important a contribution to be tacked on to the end of what was really only a Basic Introduction, to a turn to a major new topic, so it was clear that a dedicated separate paper would be necessary to initiate such a Major Undertaking!

But, I feel that I must also make clear, that I had spent many years aiding researchers with computer solutions, in a whole wide range of Disciplines, from Physics and Engineering to Biology, before I was enchanted by Jackie's unique requirements for Dance. My own original areas, from where I started these kinds of interdisciplinary studies, were in my original specialisms of Physics and Mathematics, terminating finally in Higher Education in a major change to both Developing Operating Systems, and ultimately Directing Computer Services in two Colleges - latterly one that was part of London University (Goldsmiths).

In an earlier Higher Education post, I had established a unique Supporting Service for Researchers across many different Disciplines in a Scottish University, and had soon been forced to go well beyond the Total Plurality of my core Subjects, in order to solve a whole new range of problems that they were encountering. The complete abandonment of actually Explaining Qualitative Changes, which dominated literally all Current Research, forced me to daily address the often terminating anomalies within most Disciplines, and attempt a consequent General Turn to Holism!

And, as I was finally realising, towards the end of that prior paper, the Determining Systemic Nature of Holism, would have to be comprehensively established as an essential prerequisite to any attempt at a Real Developable Analysis of Change, which undoubtedly require an Epoch-Making shift in literally all current research methods. The usually assumed Total Independence of Single Natural Laws, was clearly untrue, and the usual way of eliminating those effects - by severely restricting the Scope of Investigative Experiments, merely threw all these crucial effects away, which involved the assuming of greatly more complex situations, that could be achieved by the mere summation of Eternally Fixed Laws.

They never can!

And, in addition, the Pluralists believed that the Laws found by their methods were exactly the same when multiples of such Laws were acting simultaneously.

That also isn't true!

Simultaneously-acting Laws always adjust one another to greater or lesser degrees, in ways that wholly Pluralist Methods will never Reveal. So these Holistic mechanisms have to be clearly revealed: thereafter determining exactly HOW production should be both implemented and controlled.

Or, alternatively, were there any naturally-occurring Stabilities, very different to those that occur in manmade Pluralistic Experiments, that actually are part of literally all Holistic Situations, and could be effectively and soundly used, as part of a more complex on-going System? The answer turned out to be "Yes!".

But, it was discovered by the historian Karl Marx, in a very different area, well-hidden within the Key Explosive and Emergent Happenings within every successful Social Revolution. For, such cataclysmic Events were considered "un-analysable", until Marx revealed that they were perhaps the only periods of substantial change, anywhere in Reality-as-is, that took place at a tempo that Humans could possibly apprehend and understand - primarily because, there alone, the Processes of History were entirely brought about by the actions of Human Beings themselves! Marx was not able to explain the apparent Stability of those slower processes of History, which for very long periods appeared to be steadfastly Stable and Unchanging. But, within a Revolution, the Maintainers of Stability totally collapse, and concerted actions by motivated groups of ordinary people, COULD bring about Significant Systemic Change!

However, in passing, such Events also revealed the seemingly permanent Stabilities all around, which resolutely maintain the Status Quo, for often vast periods of time, but, in fact, though strongly maintained as such, were happening in a Holist World, and could therefore, in the end, certainly be terminated.

These long-existing, self-maintaining Interludes, were clearly what we are looking for, being wholly naturally established and then maintained, but, nevertheless, only as Temporary Stabilities, possibly delivering Real interludes of Stability, via which a means of Holistic Rationality could be temporarily established and used, and naturally demolished when no longer applicable.

Clearly, for this to be the case, the composition, and self-maintenance of these Temporary Stabilities must be explained! Indeed, something both flexible and persistent must, on the one hand, be capable of mostly re-establishing the prior Stability, in a wide variety of possible undermining disturbances: AND also eminently capable of re-establishing conformability, to a new stability of outcomes.

Now this is by no means easy: but the best clue to a solution seems to reside in Diametrically Opposite Processes, which Zeno (of old) certainly noticed, and the idealist philosopher Hegel, organised into a varying system, in which these could deliver one outcome, or its direct opposite, and could, it has more recently been revealed (in my Substrate Theory of Physics, for example), give absolutely NO OUTCOME at all, as they exactly cancel each other out!

And, it has become clear, that in the sequences of consequently-enabled processes, they could, indeed, be terminated prematurely by such exact and final cancellations.

Yet, we are still a very long way from explaining the long-persistence of many such Temporary Stabilities, routinely mistaken for permanent or eternal features! We must also reveal their unusual-but-necessary compositions.

And, a possible solution to this might be if the Total Contents of a Temporary Stability was perhaps composed of multiple Balanced Stable collections of paired opposing processes, which, with a relatively minor damage could recover any undermining, by eliciting opposing changes in one area, to effectively Cancel-Out any damages inflicted in another: though both of which were somehow initiated from the very same external incursion, but in bringing about thereby opposing, balancing effects.

Now, as far as I have been able to discover, literally NO theoretical or experimental work has been undertaken in this vital area.

Something must be first causing such balances, and then, at least most of the time, maintaining them. What Stabilities there are, cannot have been already, and permanently resolved by magic, but somehow form into a naturally-arrived-at balance, and the consequent maintenance of a situation, instead of a never-ending constant slide towards Chaos!

Now, what has emerged, which could throw some light upon this problem, is the "calming nature" of constantly-repeating Cycles of Processes - which seem to be abundant literally Everywhere - and at all levels of Reality. 

And another similarly acting process, seems to be a consequence of multiple, simultaneous and different active processes, which seem to selectively change the overall composition into a more permanent mix over time. Possible causes such as Selective Elimination seem to be possible, but have nowhere been experimentally established.

And perhaps the usual reasoning, discounting such possibilities, is based upon a belief in Forever Fixed Natural Law, on the one hand, BUT, contrastingly, Evolutionary Change on the other!

Now, in a recently recorded coversation with Gareth Samuel, Eric Lerner explained the natural processes of a regularly concentrating Plasma Stream, in terms of an analogy with Road Traffic. In his case, he was explaining the sudden appearance of heat, by comparing a prior self-organised, one-way traffic flow, within a multi-lane road, to an unorganised mix of traffic going in all different directions, on a single-lane road, causing multiple collisions, and hence changing KE into an increase in heat! And, of course, both modes were natural, but caused by changing concentrating circumstances.

So, I am inclined to believe, that the processes I am considering could be analogous, and could in a similar way self-organise into optimum flows dynamically, for most of the time, only to be transformed then, by a rare change in the prevalent conditions.

Great Evolutionary Transitions

How should we interpret the Geological Record?

This lecture by Neil Shubin, at Berkley California, is mainly concerned with the key transitions in Devonian Period rock depositions, and thereby gives a clear, if overall, trajectory for the evolutionary line, which ultimately led to land animals from lobe-finned fishes.

Although this is a remarkable piece of work - based mainly upon found fossils, it was also supported by examples of currently-living animals in similar transitional states - BUT, of course, it could never reflect either the multiple causal impulses, or the actual varying tempos involved. You can't ever make a totally-revealing movie of reality out of such separated stills!

Indeed, as with all fossil-based scenarios, they can only mark-out individual snapshots along the actually-travelled road from those overall, past trajectories of change, without in any way identifying which caused what, and how it did it. And, consequently, the actual causes and consequent dynamics of actual Evolution, with their necessary alternating interludes of Holistic Balanced Stabilities, and crisis-precipitated Revolutions of dramatic qualitative changes, can never be causally explained with the fossil record as the sole evidence.

The Great Transitions in Evolution by Neil Shubin

For, of course, there still had to be all the usual disadvantages of such evidence, which is reflected in most Science concerned with Development. Limited snapshots are all we have of what in actuality was a dynamic and tumultuous series of multiple qualitative transformations, NONE of which could ever be fully reflected in the data.

NOTE:

Now, elsewhere, this researcher had to design a motion analysis system based upon recorded footage of professional dance performance, which the experienced and expert teacher was attempting to communicate to advanced students. She found the task to be impossible due to the weaknesses of moving film [remember each new still is delivered every 1/25th of a second, and remains there, totally-unchanging for the that duration]. Using analogue video footage instead, she was also stymied by the way a butchered mini-movie was squashed into each individual frame of a video recording (via interlacing) of the very same dance sequence.

Clearly, as with the fossil record in the rocks, it is both a built-in track of the prior history of such a movement, along with, a similar track of its subsequent future developments would also be necessary. But because evidence from every moment within the frame-time, and from all positions within the frame's-extent were available, the video footage had much more of the movement's dynamic quality than the film. Yet every part of the frame was unavoidably blurred!

So, in order to effectively use both versions, they would have to be superimposed, in such a way as to very clearly deliver the best of both: and in achieving this for dance, with overlaid history and future both-building-and-fading animations of positions on top of the video, the correct interpretation of the studied movements was successfully achieved!

Andy Denzler's video glitch paintings

However a similar temporal solution is not possible in Geology, as no alternative dynamical record can possibly be available to correct the sequences of stills in the fossil record alone.

The crucial causes for such changes are never evident, and the easiest interpretations are always both distortingly simplifying and invariably erroneous.

What else could it possibly be, when unavoidably-interpreted by the actual still-sequemces of the always inadequate historical development of the Understanding by Mankind over several millennia? It is not only the nature of the evidence but, crucially, also the historical inadequacies of Human thinking throughout that period too.

And, that approach was consequentially determined by the unavoidable, natural inadequacies in the Philosophy of Mankind, which was never a given of their own evolution.

Man has had to slowly develop that Philosophy, via a series of more or less inadequate stages, as his wider and deeper experiences gradually delivered the wherewithal to achieve a series of improvements within it.

Now, of course, Science has been a primary contributor to that development, but it can still, at best, only reflect the limitations of its own revealed content.

And, most significant of all, the most hidden, yet vital, episodes in all development occur at such tempos that they are too slow to be physically experienced, yet too fast to be available in the fossil evidence, always reflecting truly vast intervals of time, via quite meagre depositions, while always being a very tiny proportion of what actually existed then, and which, by chance, is still available now.

There is always a parallel consideration to be made, along with the gathered evidence, which is the current state of Human Understanding generally - indeed the philosophical level of development of the human interpreters.

And, ever since the first significant intellectual stirrings, with the Ancient Greeks, the major-and-damning omissions have always been to do with the Dynamics of Qualitative Change. The universally-applied Principle of Plurality, derived from early Mathematics, was also wrongly-applied to both Formal Reasoning and then later to Science. But, Plurality sees Reality as-only-changing-incrementally - that is quantitatively, and sees this as being due to eternal and unchanging laws.

It wasn't until Hegel, only a mere 200 years ago, that Qualitative Change was considered to occur in Human Thinking, and led to his important developments within Reasoning, which he termed Dialectics. And, though Karl Marx realised that Hegel's discoveries were relevant in concrete Reality too, and saw their application to the Sciences as absolutely vital - that, in fact, did not happen, and has only begun to be applied in the last decade, by as yet only a meagre few investigators. 

And Shubin is not yet among them!

But, such a long delay was, indeed, unavoidable, as the pluralist inadequacies, of the then current thinking, turned those studies, first, into various "Supposedly Different Subjects", and, thereafter, even within those "Subjects" into descrete "Specialisms". So, the wherewithal to address those difficulties were generally once again unavailable to allow such necessary developments.

Interestingly, this professional physicist, looking for a way out of the current Crisis in Physics, was getting nowhere, until he was involved in the above research to wed Multimedia to the teaching of Dance Performance and Choreography.

Believe it or not, in solving this problem, I had to deviate, for some time, into an absolutely crucial detour into Philosophy (which, fortunately, solved my impasse in Physics too!)

The same problems will certainly also be true, for the very able Palaeontologists involved in the Evolutionary Transition studies referred to above.

For, what was finally revealed in all major Qualitative Changes, by the studies in creative Dance Movements, was a remarkably dramatic and tumultuous series of stages, always commencing with Crises within what had been a "Persisting Stability", which increased in intensity, until that Stability totally collapsed, and was followed by a new, this time wholly constructive interlude, which, via many temporary constructional crises, finally coalesced, into a new persisting Stability. And, as you might have guessed, reactive, expressive movement delivers the epitome of such changeovers, within its transitions, when they are effectively revealed!

The necessary context for the dynamism delivered by the analogue video frames, was supplied by the possibility of extracting precise positions from the digital stills. And then, by a subsequent superimposition of animated-sequence overlays of positions upon the moving video, which delivered precisely what was required, under immaculate Access-and-Control facilities. In effect, these additions extended every moment into a necessarily dynamic duration, providing both glimpses of its immediate history, and subsequent future, to provide what the two kinds of recordings alone could never do.

And, capturing different views, simultaneously, in the same way, and delivering them in synchrony with the front view, when directed by an expert teacher, seemed to deliver the best possible recorded solution.

So the problem for our geologists, is to fit their exemplars into such a trajectory, OR, much more likely into a series of such trajectories. While, of course, remembering that all the many failures in such processes are unlikely to have left the slightest trace.

Now, with my essential detour into analysis of dance movement, before being able to return to the problems in Physics, and Hegel's similar researches in Thinking, to unearth the need to also abandon Plurality in Formal Reasoning - it similarly involved a major investigation into revolutionary changes in History, for Marx to be in a position to analyse the current Capitalist Economics to envisage revolutionary changes there too.

So, for the Palaeontologists to correctly interpret the fossil record, they too will have to, in addition, study Qualitative Changes elsewhere, which occur at a tempo that will allow general valid conclusions to be drawn! For example, it will require a study of current living animals, to import a dialectical understanding to the series of stills that constitutes the fossil record.

An earlier version of this article was published in Special Issue 66 of the SHAPE Journal.

What Sort Of Organisation Can End Capitalism? I

Unfortunately most socialist organisations are not up to the job currently...

Building the Effective Force of Real Change

Part I: Underlying Theory is Paramount 


Having been a politically-active and committed-Socialist all my adult life, and been the driver of several worthwhile, if meagre, local victories, I have naturally wondered, long and hard, why the organisations I was involved with had so little effect upon the possibility of building the forces to actually achieve Socialism.

And also, thereafter, having finally become fully aware of the real paucity of Theory in such organisations, I have, for, the last decade, dedicated myself entirely to attempting to remedy this totally debilitating lack of the essential means to succeed!

As a 19 year old student I found the only sound criticism of the current theoretical stance in my chosen discipline (Physics) in an old book by V.I. Lenin, entitled Materialism and Empirio Criticism, I could, finally, clearly see where the appropriate stance in Modern Sub Atomic Physics should be, and naturally turned next to the Father of that stance, Karl Marx, to learn more: and that I did!

My introduction to Marxism was through theory rather than politics, but I was soon committed to Marx's objectives. I became preoccupied with day-to-day political activism, within one or another of then-existing Marxist tendencies, which I successively joined. And, each time, I naturally trusted their general theoretical stances, in the policies they, and therefore I, pursued.

So, preoccupied totally with such activism, I did not pursue what had originally brought me to that position. I did no theoretical work in Physics at all! Indeed, I was actually dissuaded from doing so, by my comrades, as there was always a great deal of immediate and urgent activity to be undertaken.

But, I was wrong to be so dissuaded, as the current theoretical developments within all of those organisations was literally zero. Marxism was not being developed by the real Marxists, and by this I do NOT mean being applied to new situations, as they occurred. They were certainly doing that.

It was perhaps 'up-to-date', but certainly not up-to-the-job!

Now, Marxism has truly enormous untapped potential, particularly in the Sciences.

But, in order to conquer this enormous and important area, there was still a great deal to be addressed philosophically: and that was certainly not being done. And, in addition, even the political work of committed socialists was majorly undermined too. For, the vital, creative heart of this Dialectics has to be its Holist stance. But, the reasoning of my comrades was almost never holistic: it depended upon the Pluralist stance of both everyday and academic reasoning - it simply was not fit for purpose.

Marxism was not, and should never be allowed to become, a set of recipes uncovered by Marx to address all conceivable problems. It was still to this day, gravely inadequate in a vast area of serious intellectual disciplines, without which it was doomed to merely being various kinds of fixed analyses, and a consequent set of programmes. Marxism needed to continually address these diverse areas to keep on developing! I had been wrong to abandon applying it seriously to other fields, and at a high level of research to my professionally qualified area.

I didn't even realise this until I changed my discipline, after a move to a new post.

I became a lecturer in a college, and did mathematical research in my own time. And, this soon began to make increasing demands, that required my learning to program a mainframe computer (this was the 1970s!), as the calculations were becoming increasingly onerous. Surprisingly, I discovered that I was very good at both Systems Design and Investigational Programming. And, I fairly quickly climbed the appropriate academic ladder to become an essential colleague to researchers across the whole range of disciplines, in Higher Education, from Engineering to Biology, Optics to Mathematics, and Taxonomy to Dance!

I finally achieved a professorial-level post as Director of Information Technology in a College of London University, and, thereafter, working with a researcher in Dance Performance and Choreography, with whom I had previously managed to win an award from the British Interactive Video Awards (BIVA) organisation. But, continuing this work still futher, required significant developments in philosophy, to enable both the philosophic discoveries and the technical inventions required, in wedding filmed or videoed footage of Dance to an effective means of Access and Control, for teaching purposes. And the solution to these problems was found to involve a significant extension of my current "Marxist" philosophy required.

Finally, the dice had been cast for a long overdue return to Marxism and Physics, as the solution achieved in handling the dynamics of movement actually pointed to what was necessary in many of those areas too.

The problems encoutered in revealing the many dynamic complexities of Dance Movements in understandable and instructive ways, were relevant in Sub Atomic Physics too, and I could finally address a trenchant criticism of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and begin to construct its replacement by an increasingly Holist approach, involving real qualitative changes, which the Pluralist approach of current Physics was totally incapable of supplying.

It has taken some time!

By 2011 the Anomalies of the Double Slit Experiments were beginning to be explained purely physically, and an important paper upon The Processes and Productions of Abstraction was produced, followed by the Theory of Emergences.

But, these were only the beginning!

All the research was being published in a monthly online magazine called SHAPE Journal, which was supported by this blog, and SHAPE Youtube Channel. We are now approaching the 9th Anniversary of the birth of these publications, which has involved well over 110 Issues involving around 900 papers. 

And with the last Special Issue on Death to Copenhagen, we have now completed our primary objective theoretically!

But, of course, that was a means to another end, namely the re-grounding of Marxist Theory. And, the next objective has to be the rejuvenation of that Theory in radically changing current Marxist Practice in building the effective means to end Capitalism forever!

Part II: New Marxist Theory and Practice will follow soon...

The Head-Up, Non-Specialist, Theoretical approach?

The Necessary Role of Philosophy in Science

On reading a collection of short articles under the general title of The Unknown Genome in New Scientist (2765), I realised that I had perhaps hit pay-dirt with regard to my own ideas on the possible policing of genetic materials within all organisms.

I found, in this series, substantial evidential support for some of the hypotheses I have been formulating about this area, particularly in the maintenance and policing of the genetic material (though, of course, my considerations were, perhaps surprisingly, almost wholly philosophical).

NOTE: A fuller discussion of the content of the above mentioned series in New Scientist will be addressed in a separate paper on completion of this one.

I am no professional biologist, and I must depend wholly on those who are, for the content that I must attempt to make sense of. So, I hadn’t arrived at my suggestions via personally-newly discovered concrete evidence, but, on the contrary, solely in response to my dissatisfaction with the usual consensus explanations of Mutation and Species Change, and involving possible alternative accounts of my own.

The usual explanations were much too hit and miss, and as is usually the case, often latched onto the ubiquitous use of Randomness to “explain” everything!

No, I was convinced that Life would immediately and vigorously react to mutation damage to its absolutely vital genetic materials, and hence, apart from Natural Selection of the adult phenotype, other processes would occur within the genotype to remove, alleviate, or “wrap-up” and store any genetic damage, which, by some set of criteria was labelled as wholly deleterious.

I must admit that while I am not a biologist, I have always been very interested in all aspects of the subject, and have followed developments closely. I have never been taught the subject at any level, and my experimental experience was, and still is, is precisely NIL.

But I am by no means un-informed. I have been reading extensively on this subject for over 40 years, not to mention on many other very wide-ranging areas, and was indeed extensively educated as a scientist and mathematician, prior to changing my specialisms several times, and even achieving a professorial appointment in one of these latter areas.

So, what is it that I must have been doing to now attempt to integrate such state of the art discoveries into my own propositions?

The resonance between what these real biologists were finding and my suggestions as to what I considered were necessary processes have been surprisingly close. The usual response to such a person as myself making any worthwhile contribution at all on such a specialist subject is universally agreed to be of minimal value.

But such a reaction is not always justified.

And this same situation has occurred several times for me in widely different disciplines. It has even occurred within my legitimate disciplines of Physics and Mathematics, because I was “making judgements well outside my specialist areas”. More expected similar responses have been coming my way in many other areas from Painting and Sculpture to even Dance at one extreme to Geology, Politics and Pedagogy on another. Yet, though such condemnations would usually be correct, they will not always be so. It will depend on how such a wide range of subjects are considered by the outside interloper.

It will most certainly depend on his ground! In other words it will be basically determined by how that person deals with knowledge and understanding from disparate areas: it will depend on his worldview.

Specialisation does indeed allow a remarkable focus to be achieved and discoveries to be made. It is, of course, essential for each and every serious area of study. But it is also invariably what I term a Head-Down approach. It limits the considerations of the expert to his/her own narrow area. And it must be contrasted with a Head-Up approach, which builds its worldview out of the widest possible Knowledge and Understanding.

It should really be the approach of the philosopher, but even there it is rarely the normal mode.

All problems, no matter what the specialism, will not be solved by concentrating only within that specialism. Indeed, along with the accumulated wisdom of that specialism, such a limitation will also justify and firmly embed in addition its current assumptions and errors. Many practitioners will never see the wood for the trees. And a generalist approach can, and sometimes does, reveal things invisible to the Head-Down expert.

A real philosopher MUST be multi-discipline, if he/she is to benefit from human gains across the board in understanding the World. All understanding is, of course, social, but it is also multi-discipline. Even the greatest specialist experts show almost unbelievable errors in their generalist thinking.

It is almost universally true that all specialists make rubbish philosophers. And they also cannot switch disciplines and produce as good work thereafter as they did in their own prior area.

To give an exemplar of this which may establish my own approach, I will relate the experience of my major diversion into Dance!

I have become the leading author of Multimedia Resources for the Teaching of Dance (along with an excellent Dance specialist colleague). And this situation was established some 21 years ago, and has remained the case ever since. In addition I also designed a teaching aid for Dance Teachers employing Rudolf Laban’s ideas in their area, and related to his famous Labanotation – the world-wide employed method for recording Dance. 

In that very different world, I became an expert in Computer Systems and Programming, not only producing that high point of systems design – a machine independent compiler, but finally achieved a post as Director of Information Technology in one of the colleges of the University of London. I had received zero instruction in computing also.

But, I was always a Head-Up philosopher, and every discipline was relevant to that! Recently I have been making significant contributions in the Theory of Emergences, as applied to the Origin of Life on Earth and to its subsequent Evolution.

Have I any right to tackle such problems? Many would tender an emphatic, “No!”, but they would also be mistaken.

In the last five years I have again changed course and spent all my time writing about Philosophy and now run an online Journal (SHAPE) concerned with Philosophy and it is full of new and legitimate ideas.

Now, at this point, the reader may well be yawning at “my efforts to show how clever I am”, but they would be mistaken if they are. I am, and purport to be no genius.

I got a lower second in Physics from Leeds University, and was throughout my education damned with the faint praise of “promising”. No, my descriptions of what I do are not to establish any sort of superiority, but, on the contrary, to reveal an approach that enables me to address such a very wide area of disciplines and to do something worthwhile in every one. It is because I am, and always have been, multi-discipline in my interests. NO! “Interests” is much too weak a word. I should have said “concerns”.

And though much of conventional education is to tell us HOW things happen, I always wanted to know WHY they happened the way that they did. 

AND I demanded (of myself) a philosophy that could face all ways, and cope with all expectations. After all, what is the use of a philosophy that is strictly limited to a specific discipline – as, for example, the current consensus in Sub-Atomic Physics – the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory and its various developments.

Not only should my philosophy be entirely general, but it should never be only an academic subject. 

As Robert Pirsig tried to insist in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Philosophy is for every day! It should illuminate your life and purposes, and it should never be second hand!

Though you may, and indeed frequently have to, take on what you learn from others, you must never be converted “hook, line and sinker” for most of what you “take on” as your position, you will not fully understand if you do.

But, if, on the other hand, what you learn from others must be integrate-able with what you already understand, it will be very different. It may be difficult to achieve such integration, but without it, you really have nothing new to take on.

What you have learnt cannot actually mean anything!

Of course, if your “core” is constant and immutable, you will also be in deep trouble! Integration is a two-way process, and its successful achievement changes the receiving “core”, and frequently the new material too. Indeed, the greatest understanding comes only from transcending what appears to be unbridgeable contradictions between what you already understand and what you are trying to integrate.

The reason for such an impasse is always that your usually-inviolate assumptions are incorrect, and the only way to traverse the seeming full-stop is by a radical change in those assumptions.

I have recently been fascinated by Evolution and have even written a paper entitled Truly Natural Selection, which generalised Darwin and Wallace’s Natural Selection to apply also to non-living, purely-chemical processes by means of a very different selection process.

My Theory of Emergences tackles the trajectory of Emergence Events such as the Origin of Life on Earth, NOT particularly, of course, but generally as a revolutionary interlude in the on-going Evolution of Reality. It concerns itself with the form or shape of the episode – its turnovers and consequent phases until there is some sort of resolution in the establishment of a wholly New Level.

What has therefore emerged is extremely surprising!

The assumption that minor constructive processes prior to such an Event actually precipitate a whole new Level determined by the direction of those prior processes is shown to be totally INCORRECT! The nature of the new Level does NOT emanate from changes in the prior Level at all. The only thing that within-Level processes can produce is a catastrophic collapse of the prior system, and that is very different indeed from the usual assumption. 

Indeed, it is ONLY the Second Law of Thermodynamics type sub-processes that bring about the demise of every Stable Level.

The first phase in an Emergence is the opposite of anything emerging: it is composed of a catastrophic collapse of the prior stability, which then seems to be hurling headlong down to total chaos.

But it doesn’t!

The dismantling of the stability-ensuring processes within the previous Level, plus its history and still-remaining, productive-process content, allows new things to occur, which within the stable Level were prohibited, and a brief period of remarkably diverse and numerous processes leads, by a selective process to the creation of entirely-new proto-systems. Nevertheless, these quickly generate their own Second Law curtailing, and this leads into a period of oscillations between creation and dissolution, which nevertheless gradually ascends to a point where a completely new and self-maintaining Level is established and PERSISTS!

It is no empty myth, when legend talks of the Phoenix arising from the flames of destruction.

That is the ONLY way that the wholly NEW can ever emerge!

The real myth is that which asserts that innovation can be achieved by small quantitative and incremental steps - it cannot.

Now, interestingly, my work on Emergences naturally progressed to seeing what their role must be in the actual Evolution of Life, and many questions immediately arose about our universally agreed assumptions of how new species emerged, and also how matter ascended from inert particles to produce Life, Humankind and indeed Consciousness. The incrementalist myth would just NOT suffice, for such a remarkable trajectory, and all our basic assumptions had to be thoroughly investigated.

My work in this area (remember I am NOT a biologist) has recently been confirmed by a whole series of unconnected discoveries by real experimental research biologists in the various academic Journals and Magazines.

The point of this paper is NOT self-congratulation, but instead to try to reveal why an ordinary man from a poor working-class background (my grandmother could neither read nor write) could be in a position to make such significant contributions.

It HAS to be important, and though it may dismay the elitists and the privileged, it should encourage all who really want to understand the World, rather than merely join-the-club, accept the consensus, and live comfortably.

But, the barriers to doing it are indeed considerable, I must admit! Such researches are MORE than a full time job and you have to earn your living.

I chose, and luckily it was the correct choice, to be a teacher, and have taught at every level of Education from lower schools to Universities. But to get anywhere I had to move fairly frequently. I had eight posts culminating in my Directorship at Goldsmiths’ College, and always tackling new things. 

At Goldsmiths’ I devised and commissioned the first Campus-wide Fibre-Optic Network in any of the Colleges of London University, while in Glasgow I had to turn myself into a systems expert to set up an appropriate teaching-orientated computer network and system for an educational institution at the highest level, and also to become an expert in Computers-in-Control to help many researchers with their chosen questions.

The thing is to tackle what needs doing, and learn as you go. Nevertheless, you do not have to have a goal from the start. It expands with each new job and the challenges they deliver. I seemed to arrive at a professorial level final post by a totally unplanned route. (Though I often spent very long periods in a given post, because the job demanded it).

But, what does happen is that as your achievements are your own, and never facilitated by contacts and influence, you gain in both reputation and confidence.

From an initially shy working class boy from West Gorton, Manchester, I am now a confident philosopher! How about YOU?

Marxist Theory Today III

Eadweard Muybridge: Dancing girl. A pirouette (2)

The Long-awaited Breakthrough

A major breakthrough in my Marxist philosophy just had to come, and it happened in a very surprising area - the application of multimedia techniques in aids for the Teaching of Dance Performance and Choreography!

The unique cooperation between a world class researcher in dance teaching, and this physicist/computer-expert, led to a product which won a British Interactive Video Award (BIVA) for excellence. And, as the research proceeded, with ever-new objectives, and unavoidable constant changes in both equipment and software, major questions became totally unavoidable.

Yet, before that position was reached, another change of job, was necessary. Apart from this work with my Dance colleague (which later got her a PhD), little else was going on in that institution. I applied for and got a professorial level post in London University as a Director of Information Technology. But, as usual, the emphasis changed: in London I had to undertake the design and commissioning of a Campus-wide Fibre-Optic Network, which I successfully achieved within the next 18 months, while keeping contact with my Dance Research colleague back in my old institution.

But, ill-health due to a chronic illness over the last decade, finally caused early retirement, and a cessation of all undertakings, to at least recover to some extent, though it was clear that I would never be able to return to full-time work. As I slowly improved, I took to making toys for my youngest two children, mostly in wood, which both I and they enjoyed enormously. After a Drakar, a Brigantine and a Tug for my lad, I constructed a Noah's Ark, a historic Mail Coach and a Gypsy Caravan for my girl.

NOTE: I haven't mentioned it here, but I have married twice and have five marvellous children, all of whom, at this time of writing, had obtained degrees in a wide variety of subjects, and some had gone on to Postgraduate qualifications too. They have also given me 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild!

A remarkable post-retirement interlude then ensued, involving irregular work with my Dance colleague, ostensibly on a series of new multimedia aids building upon the gains made in our award winning Dance Disc, but also, for me, posing new philosophical questions involving the unstated premises underlying what we were trying to achieve, and a realisation of how both the idealist philosopher, Friedrich Hegel, and his leading student Karl Marx had addressed such problems.

Finally away from the constraints and requirements of employers, I was addressing what I knew were the central questions in literally ALL serious research. And, the fact that this particular undertaking was about problems in Movement and Dynamics, made it ideal for addressing fundamental questions head-on!

Gjon Mili - 1947 strobe shot of Nora Kaye dancing on pointe

The problem had been noticed 2,500 years ago by the Greek, Zeno of Elea, who had accurately revealed problems with his famous Paradoxes.

Each case addressed the incompatibility between the two concepts of Continuity and Descreteness, which Mankind always switched between pragmatically in attempts to address problems associated with movement. Zeno's Paradoxes such as Achilles and the Tortoise and The Arrow made our lack of rational reasons for our switching very clear.

Hegel, some 2,300 years later, had finally addressed the problem philosophically, and had found a solution.

He realised that the regular occurrence of such Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, always arose from the very same premises, if they were significantly flawed. Such Pairs always delivered a rational impasse, and without significant changes in those premises, we would NEVER transcend that rational HALT. Instead, we would leave it unresolved, and merely cause investigators to pragmatically choose whichever of the pair allowed a successful continuation. But Hegel found a solution!

By successfully revealing all the often unstated premises in a situation, he was able to attempt changes in those premises, which, if appropriate, transformed the Impasse into a fork in reasoning, in which sound reasons could decide which way was correct.

He called his method Dialectical Reasoning, and though he considered it only as applicable to Human Thinking, his best student, Karl Marx, realised that it was applicable to conceptions about Developments of any kind, whatsoever. So, he transferred Hegel's achievements, wholesale, into a Materialist Philosophical Stance: so, for the first time, it could be applied across the board, and crucially to both Social Development in History and to Science itself!

The problem with capturing dance, could not have been closer to what was, clearly, the crux, all the way from Zeno to Marx!

Movement, when analysed, can never be delivered only by descrete positions (Stills): for, in addition, where it came from, and what was to follow, must also, somehow, be delivered too.

And, that requires a time-based context (a Movie).

Yet, without precise positioning-information (only accurately-available from high-resolution Stills) NO precise dynamics could be captured and delivered. And, this was the case both in correct performance within a Dance Piece, and, crucially, also in the choreography involved when creating such movements.

Millennia had passed with such instruction being by "do it like this" - purely by demonstration, by the choreographer or someone he or she had very fully instructed, by those very same means.

You could (and did) get away with it in performance instruction, but only with dancers present who had correctly done it before.

But, teaching choreographic creation of entirely new movements and pieces was never conquered.

My colleague's purpose was to attempt to solve the problem using Video and Film, but she soon found it impossible due to acute problems in accurate Access, and major difficulties in precise and revealing Control, using the available technology of the time.

I was able to proffer a possible solution via precise and flexible computer control of such footage, delivered from a Laser Disc, as well as delivering synchronised simultaneously presented views from different angles, and even detailed close ups. Both Access and Control were sufficiently delivered for most of my colleagues requirements to be provided.

It enabled a major step-change in what my colleague was attempting, but alone it wasn't sufficient, and the universal switch to Digital footage from Analogue footage made it impossible to deliver, as we had successfully achieved all our objectives with the prior format.

The philosophical problems were clearly unavoidable, and the Marxist research as well as that required within Dance Instruction came together, and I was able to finally crack both!

Well, "crack" is, of course an over-statement: for to become a real, producing Marxist theorist would take a great deal of time: but I was finally on my way!    

This post is part of a blog series entitled Marxist Theory Today, which is turn, forms part of our grand Shape Journal series on Marxism & Physics.

Interdisciplinary Research – Dance

What is to be Done: IV

The essential tasks for the Marxists of today

Many years later, I was developing Multimedia Resources for the Teaching of Dance (mostly Ballet and Modern Contemporary Dance). The main reason for this methodology was that we considered that the very best exemplars should be used at every level, and these could only be available in recordings. We also needed to intervene in any recording with perfect control plus easy and accurate access. A teacher HAD to be able to go directly to the movement she was teaching, and once at that moment to sensitively control its playing, with repeats and loops and slow motion. The DYNAMICS of each and every movement had to be precisely delivered, whatever way we were allowing its manipulation.

We therefore could NOT use Video Tape as the necessary access and control was too tedious and frankly impossible to effectively use. So we used Laser Disk technology. These contained a series of concentric tracks, each one containing a single 1/25th of a second frame. BUT, vitally these frames had been captured in an Analogue way. Moments from EVERY part of that 1/25th of a second were present within each and every frame. We had chosen Laser Disk for its controllability, but we had also chosen the ideal medium for delivering perfect movement dynamics.

We devised sophisticated and powerful Access & Control methods, which our users picked up in seconds and used with great power and subtlety to reveal the very essence of the movements.

The system worked like a dream and we won a British Interactive Video Award (BIVA) in Brighton in the Autumn of 1989.

The system worked extremely well, but we didn’t know why until we were required to do the same sort of processes using the “latest thing” – Digital Video. It turned out to be impossible!

I had to STOP the authoring of the new Multimedia Pack and find out why it didn’t work. I wonder if you can guess the reason for its inadequacy? It was Digital, hence though it still built movement out of 1/25th of a second frames, these were very different. They were each frozen STILLS. There were a series of such stills, each of which were held for 1/25th of a second and then replaced by the next still. All dynamics had been lost. Such a technology was fine for animation and fantasy, but Reality in movement was IMPOSSIBLE. After a long diversion researching the problem I was able to reveal the reasons for failure resided precisely in the “new” technology. It just could not cope with detailed analysis of movement. Indeed the movement NOT covered by the separate individual frames – indeed totally absent from the recording amounted to over 97%, and a fast moving hand could move (totally unrecorded) almost a yard between frames. I checked on sports events using digital cameras, and was amazed at the record of Paula Ratcliffe winning the New York marathon – there were only THREE positions of her arm in the record of a single swing, and, of course, such a movement was particularly slow. Imagine trying to study the dynamic detail in a delivery by a fast bowler with such an inadequate technology! Slow motion was a farce, and the dynamics of subtle movement always totally absent. No wonder it didn’t work!

You will have noticed, of course, the occurrence of the very same problem as I have mentioned several times already. Once again, we have a pragmatic solution to representing movement in terms of descrete moments – Descreteness was being used where Continuity turns out to be essential!

The information delivered by Digital Video for human vision and interpretation, which was to be used to recreate actual movement was clearly totally inadequate to the task. The only interpretations possible were crude and simplified extrapolations between inert stills.

But Dance, like Music is packed with subtle accelerations and decelerations, which deliver the Art involved, and these were crucially entirely absent!

So, why did the old alternative, Analogue Video, work so well, while Digital Video was useless?

Without going into the fairly complex detail of the results of my work, what I discovered was that elements from the whole of the 1/25th of a second duration of a frame were indeed present in the analogue version as a sort of “smeared still”. But, when you looked at such a frame in isolation, it appeared confusingly blurred and seemingly entirely useless. The Digital Frame in comparison was completely crisp and clear.

The universal consensus was (and still is) that ONLY the clear, focussed images available via Digital stills could facilitate the serious study of movement. And of course, in one respect they were correct. For while accurate, positional information could be extracted from a Digital Still, no such useable positions were possible from the smeared, Analogue alternative. But the myth was that widely spaced crisp positional information was sufficient to deliver the actual dynamics of the movement involved.

It wasn’t and never can be.

It was the age-old myth that precise numeric information is everything. In movement, that is never the case. The subtle variations in functional movement – the DYNAMICS – is what delivers the real content, and Analogue “smeared stills”, when delivered as a MOVIE, was the only way to deliver that. The very fact that each and every smeared still contained something from every moment of the frame period made it possible for the human Eye/Brain system to correctly interpret the movement. There can be no doubt that the analogue version was ideal for delivery in sequence, and also that our human facilities were ideally equipped to extract the maximum from that seemingly blurred and useless record.

I could go on and explain what could be delivered by slow motion, by looping and by many other techniques, but suffice it to say that on ALL these counts Digital was useless and Analogue was supreme.

Though, I have to admit, that I am in a minority of ONE in taking this position. The voluminous data from digital frames stills seduce the majority of “experts” in this field.

Do you recognise the SAME problem as we saw earlier in the Calculus and in Zeno’s Paradoxes?

It was, and is, the problem of Continuity and Descreteness once more!

Believe it or not, we solved the problem.

I will NOT burden you here with all the details, but suffice it to say that we, that the work led to the appropriate delivery of dynamics and even to the design of an entirely NEW camera for recording and studying movement, which I have called the Twin Movement Camera.

This may seem a long way from Marxism, but it is at the philosophical heart of it!

No-one else had even noticed what was being lost, and still the Digital avalanche continues unabated, and experts use Digital cameras to analyse movement in Sport and many other areas without discovering the inadequacy of their chosen means.

In contrast, a Marxist working alone, without either funds or facilities, cracked the problem, while literally thousands of scientists working in this field world-wide have failed to do so.

The legacy of this research continues in the current work by Bedford Interactive, and their pioneering software FORMotion.

If you think that the correct interpretation of movement in Ballet is resoundingly unimportant, may I change tack completely and go on to questions concerning the Nature of Reality and the universally accepted methods of Science to further my case?

This post is the fourth in a new blog series entitled "What is to be done?" on the crises in both Marxism and Science, and how a revolution is necessary in both. This body of work will eventually be published in Shape Journal as a Special Issue. Watch this space!

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

Socialism

Let us consider a few important questions in Economics.

In Capitalism, the establishment of a company not only needs ideas for a required and viable product, but also, and primarily, the money (or Capital) to establish the organisation, its necessary equipment, accommodation and staff to carry out the whole scheme. For, only with sufficient start-up Capital can all this be assembled and organised. And, there is, thereafter, an ongoing need for extra Capital to make changes and keep the company competitive.

Capitalism, as its name implies, requires constant access to more Capital. Indeed, there must be a regular supply of the resources necessary to make the intended products, long before payments for those, as sales, will be arriving.

The whole process depends upon the availability of such Capital, and the increasing march of Technology, also means that the costs involved soon far outreach the resources of craft manufacture and demand the most sophisticated and expensive machines to stay competitive.

The prior system to Capitalism could not deliver such things, so Capitalism was indeed an advance. But, of course, still the resources of Capital have to come from somewhere. Where would that normally be?

Now, in spite of being a life-long socialist, I am also an educator of long experience at every level of Education, but also a research scientist and computer expert. So, at a particular point in our careers, a colleague and I struggled to establish a company producing the most advanced multimedia aids in the world – designed to be used in certain very difficult areas of education. We knew we could do it, for in funded research, we had made exceptional products, that even won a National award in the United Kingdom “for excellence” from the British Interactive Video Awards organisation (BIVA), and, later, the award of degrees, based on our achievements, in addition to winning the most prestigious award in our field in the USA, we got only meagre financial resources, and often no grants at all, to fund new products, and market them worldwide. Now, there we were in a Capitalist System, why didn’t we apply to the usual sources of such Capital – for example the Entrepreneurs and the Banks?

Well, there were very good reasons for this.

We were primarily educators, working at this stage in Universities, so our primary job was that, and that came first. And secondly, our experience with several “interested parties” revealed that their interest and main criteria were about how much they could make out of the venture. NOTE: The Dragons’ Den TV programme reveals investors' concerns very clearly.

Our objectives were very different, indeed, from all of theirs. Frankly, the means to access this Capital meant that you had to subscribe to the motivations of that system or you would get NOTHING. We refused such offers, and decided to do two things.

• First continue to apply for grants, and

• Second, to work for NO pay and use what we would have earned from sales as our future Capital.

It was for very good reasons that we had a long uphill struggle amounting to 10 years, before a major breakthrough with our product Wild Child became a worldwide hit.

Now did we do the right thing? Of course we did! All the imperatives were determined by the discipline involved, which was teaching Dance Performance and Choreography, and our approach led in just 6 more years to having products distributed in over 100 countries. We even managed to outflank the establishments in our field by using the web.

So, there are important lessons here, as to what will be necessary in a Socialist Society, where there is no super wealthy class, and the Banks are all publicly owned, with an entirely different remit from what caused the 2008 crash world wide.

So, Capitalism concentrates available Capital into the hands of the class who see it as THE generator of more of the same. Indeed, the practical properties of what is produced are definitely secondary to company-involved’s power to make Money. And it has become a self-defining and self-perpetuating system with Capital as both its means and its purpose.

Interestingly, the efficacy of the products produced is not primary. So, a perfect product will still not persist perpetually for it cannot generate constant replacements, and, therefore, the requisite flows of Capital. Only new products can do this, so the whole system is constantly renewing itself, in order to regularly increase profits (Capital).

Now, it isn’t actually sustainable, because it is regularly disposing of past solutions to replace them with new ones, involving some new feature, so everyone is pressed to update to be at the very forefront of what is currently available. Clearly, such an imperative definitely will maximise profits.

Yet, such a system cannot be said to be reliable: it is always under pressure to renew, and this cannot be said to have been to improve products efficacy, so it pours Capital through the system via credit, which it must then pay back with sufficient interest – all the time! Short-term returns are the accepted measure of success, and NOT how much is owned and owing by the company involved.

Any loss of confidence among the investors, and a recession or even a Slump will ensue!

In fact, no one can actually repay what is owed. Many loans are taken on to repay previous loans, so the system is never-ending.

Also, no bank can return all deposited money back to account holders, and a run on a bank, if it isn’t rescued by getting a loan itself, will very quickly ruin it.

So, to replace Capitalism, you have to change the whole system from bottom-to-top.

At present it is the holders of most wealth who determine what happens. After all, they hold the real purse strings! And, of course, they have their own purposes (usually to get even richer, or at least protect their wealth and status).

Clearly, such a set up cannot continue forever: it is increasingly unstable, and its crises get more and more difficult to address.

Now, it is clear that Capital is necessary, but that doesn’t mean that Capitalism is inevitable. We have to make a clear decision after a revolution, “Who should hold and invest the wealth?”

Let us learn from what happened in the Russian Revolution!

The major institutions were all nationalised, and without a penny compensation to the ex-owners. They started as thieves, and continued as parasites, so they will get absolutely Nothing!

Now, this aspect was crucial. For what they considered to be their Capital was never really theirs in the first place. It had always been generated by subsequent production, but always ends up (primarily) in someone else’s capacious pockets. When addressing this mess, these thieves shouldn’t get a single penny.

They will have to work for a living, like everybody else.

Capital will not be allowed to go to any private individual. So, who, or more accurately, what should hold and allocate all Capital?

There is only one answer! It has to be the democratic organisations of those involved in its creation – the Working People! At first, it will be in their now-worker-owned Production Companies, but then, later, in their Democratic Organisations, such as the Soviets (or elected Councils) at every single level.

And, no individuals should wield total control of such wealth, even with such people’s organisations. For, they would inevitably use that power to their own personal advantage.

Clearly, though the State will play a role, the real question has to be about the actual form of Democracy that will be involved. And to totally prevent the building of organisations against these principles, there will be NO Stock Markets, and NO private Banks! No singularly powerful groups of cliques will be allowed – only democratic organisations, responsible below to their electorate, and above to their next democratic level organisation. Clearly no such easy solutions can, this time, be allowed.

What will be involved here is a real Revolution, and by its very nature, exactly what will be created in such an Event, cannot be prescribed completely beforehand. We don’t and can’t know what will emerge, except that such an event is the most powerful creative force that can exist!!

But, we must constantly guard against the rising of individuals and/or groups, who will undermine what is being constructed, to their own advantage. This is the risk.

No to a Cromwell! No to a Napoleon! No to a Stalin, or to a Mao!

This time the Revolution must be for The People!

Real Marxism? It is a Philosophy.

There are today many people in left-wing politics, who say that they are Marxists. But, what do they mean by it?

For decades after the Russian Revolution, it was that Event, which guaranteed their stance. It was, after all, the ONLY successful socialist revolution, and had most certainly been led by followers of Karl Marx, after his central theoretical role in the establishment of both the First and the Second Internationals.

But, what was it that made Marx’s position both entirely appropriate and unique?

Activists had been calling themselves Socialists for many decades before Marx, but he started from a very different place to almost all of them. He started as a philosopher; a follower of the Idealist, Frederick Hegel, and his conversion to that standpoint was achieved by the truly tremendous contributions of that academic philosopher in his chosen area of Thinking about Thought. It couldn’t have been more different than that of the majority of avowed “socialists”. And, after his conversion to Materialism, Marx spent a great deal of time criticising what he called the Utopian Socialists.

For him, the KEY was Philosophy!

And by this he did not mean Academic Philosophy – knowing and describing all the possible varieties, but, on the contrary, and with the same imperatives as the fast growing discipline of Science, his objective was to base all political activities upon establishing the closest understanding of the real nature of Society that he could achieve.

And, he was certain that to be able to do that, you had to follow Hegel’s analysis of Human Thinking – Dialectics, but applied to absolutely all developments, and particularly to that of Society itself.

Now, having myself been in one or another self-professed revolutionary party for over 50 years, I can insist that the people I worked with were NOT like that. From being 19 years old, studying Physics at University, I had come across Lenin’s critique of the philosophy, then in the ascendency in Science – Empirio Criticism, and as a real Marxist, he immediately had known that here was a philosophy that was going badly wrong. On reading his Materialism and Empirio Criticism, I knew it too. And from that moment on I became a very unusual person indeed: for I was both a Physicist and a Marxist.

I soon found that, in my academic studies, these two commitments were said to be on opposite sides. Not a lecturer or a fellow student in my course agreed with me. Physics as a discipline was marching steadily in a very different direction from the Philosophy of Marxism. Yet, it was clear to me that the exact opposite should be the case!

Now, experiencing such a revelation was, I’m afraid, insufficient to either bring about this necessary union, or even develop myself as a Marxist. So, I joined an overt Marxist Party to remedy my evident inadequacies. I hoped that I could be an affective political activist AND a better physicist from what I could learn about Marxism.

But, that wasn’t what I was able to get from a very long history in the Communist Party, the Labour Party the SLL and the WRP, nor did I find anything better in the many other varieties of Trotskyism in UK politics.

In fact, philosophically, they were nowhere, and the reason was that they didn’t DO Marxism as professional, full-time method. Indeed, the only reason I had got so much from Lenin’s book was that I was a physicist, and he was dealing with the then standpoint in Physics, but better than the agreed leaders in the field.

You could never become a Marxist by merely reading the Marxism of the past: you HAD to be doing it NOW! And, in an area you were intimately knowledgible about.

I finally became a Marxist by constantly applying what I knew of that stance in my own specialisms. And, these ranged over Politics, Physics, Biology, Archaeology, Evolution, Sculpture, Mathematics and Computing. Indeed, my stance took me on an unusual journey, and by the time I had posts in various Universities, I was the first port of call for researchers in literally all disciplines, who required tailor-made software to aid them in their studies.

Though I didn’t plan it, my specialism became Computers in Control in a surprisingly wide range of disciplines. I even won a BIVA award with a colleague for our Dance Disc – a Multimedia Aid for the Teaching of Dance Performance and Choreography.

With an increasingly Marxist stance and method I became the leader in this field, and finally got a professorial Post in London University, on the basis of this work.

There could be no doubt about the importance of Marxism as a philosophy, but, the understanding of exactly what that meant in particular areas of application, was something that had to be discovered, involving both successes and failures.

It wasn’t an infallible formula, but a philosophical method that had to be constantly re-applied to an ever-changing context. Book-Marxism was a waste of time, and speculative-Marxism also regularly proved inadequate. Marxists had to be professionals in the best possible sense.

Now, problem number one was that many “Marxists” would agree with all of this, but only apply what they had learned to tackle, which was solely concerned with political problems. But, that could be a dead end! The real power of this philosophy was its universality and its recursivity, for that meant that it could, and indeed, should, be applied to all other disciplines, especially those that were your professional area of expertise.

So, how does it differ from the usual approaches?

First, there are no eternal Natural Laws in Marxism!

The task is always to increase the amount of Objective Content in your theories.

Let us take the example I know particularly well – Physics!

This supposed-to-be Basic Discipline – on which all others are causally based, is incorrect.

It is the simplest basis, but can tell us nothing about the real dynamics and development of all other higher levels of organisation. Most particularly, it can say nothing about Life, about Mankind, or about Human Societies. Indeed, the modern Marxist stance on Physics has been greatly advanced by discoveries at higher levels – not least in the revelation of Emergences (or Revolutions) in the real Qualitative Development of these levels. For now, these same features have been revealed as absolutely imperative in Physics itself – especially in the Major Crisis now unresolved for almost a century!

Indeed, more generally, the usual methods were constantly coming up against both contradictions and dichotomous Concepts, and “solved” them by setting up new categories of study, to ignore these impasses, and carry on with the same methodology, but now in a new, isolated subject. The old methods proliferated the number of these categories, and forever shelved the contradictions that separated one realm from another, as something for “resolving later”.

Now, how did this affect my attempt to become a real Marxist, via my own specialism – Physics? I finally realised that it was up to me. No one else could do it for me.

Initially, literally all my work as a teacher in schools was determined by what I had been taught in my own education. And, there was much there to be communicated and explained to my students. Indeed, it was this imperative of Explanation, that had taken me upon a different route from the now-in-charge physics community. Explanation, which I considered to be Science’s main virtue, was steadily being replaced by Formal Equations as the real, driving causes. So, as a teacher, I from the outset considered it to be my job to “Explain Why” things happened as they did.

The effect on my career was significant. I switched first to solely teaching Mathematics, then Biology, and finally, Computing.

But, in spite of a better approach, I still had to develop philosophically, when I finally scaled the heights via Further Education, finally getting posts in Universities in Hong Kong, Glasgow, Bedford and London. The clincher was when I switched from a Teaching Department to Computer Services, and made my job one of helping researchers in ALL disciplines by writing tailor-made computer programs demanded by the full range of discipline experts. Success in a variety of unusual disciplines caused me to be approached to write a chapter in IBM’s Research and Academic User’s Guide.

Only then, did my philosophical development become consciously Marxist.

The epitome of this work was to be awarded a British Interactive Video Award for the Dance Disc – a multimedia Aid for the Teaching of Dance Performance and Choreography. A following series of projects took us to a leading position in the field, where we have been for 15 years. You would think that more experienced practitioners in the Dance World would catch up and pass us, but it hasn’t happened. There are NO Marxists working in Dance Education!

Now, the above is, of course, a very truncated account.

Indeed, I continued to do research of my own in Mathematics and in Philosophy, and by 2010 I had produced a non-Copenhagen Theory of the Double Slit Experiments and a New Theory of Emergences. My colleague in Dance and I produced another dozen titles, and she was awarded a Ph. D. for her brilliant adaptions of her extensive teaching knowledge to our products.

When my sight began to fail, I retired from that work, and became a full-time Marxist writer on Science and Philosophy

And, in politics, it wasn’t just activism, or knowing what Marx said in innumerable situations. It was definitely his philosophy and dialectical method that was crucial. And, I had to apply it (once I grasped it) to the biggest ever Crisis in Physics – the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and begin to solve its many anomalies to confirm that I was finally a Real Marxist.




Postscript:

Of course, this very short paper has said very little about The Marxist Method, because stating in it generally is neither easy nor informative. The core of the Method is constructed upon Hegel’s discoveries into how we actually think, and, most importantly, how we are regularly brought to a halt by impasses, occurring as consequences of our assumptions and principles. What he then delivered was not just a view of this trajectory, but also a means of transcending its impasses.

And, of course, the detailed nature of these will look very different in widely separated disciplines. Finally, this method cannot be a final and fixed set of procedures, but will be at any juncture limited by the width of our applications and consequent understanding. So, to continually develop it, it has to be re-discovered in discipline after discipline, and literally all the time, not only solving the particular problems involved, but also in developing the philosophical method too.