Revolution and Evolution

Real Evolution: The Dialectical Materialist Version

This is the latest in the long series of papers on The Systems Theory of Everything, currently being published in instalments on the SHAPE Journal. The most recent unpublished papers in this series have been, without any doubt, Revolutionary!

And it has taken some two thousand five hundred years of mistaken & Wholly Pluralist Misguidance, to finally announce the Ultimate Demise, and the Impossibility (at least at present), of both a Sound and Developable Truth-Revealing Approach, that will radically transform Human Understanding of all Development.

And, let us be clear, it is not a moment too soon! We need a new Dialectical Materialist Science to understand and deal with rapid changes happening today - both socially and in the natural environment.

The War in Ukraine, similar to many that, for example, the USA regularly indulges-in - without the Whole World System having to be purposely-and-consciously put in Existential Jeopardy - now threatens to be a repeat of the Second World War, when both sides were also Capitalist, and the Capitalist Dominance of the World turned out to be at stake then too.

Now, this will NOT be a primarily Political Paper, but these points are much too important to be ignored, and they will always be regularly addressed when appropriate. But, at this point, the Full and Crucial Replacement of the Millennia-long errors made by Mankind, were clearly, and will be, by far, the most important initial task: so, the arguments arising from abolishing the currently Universal-and-Incorrect Stance, have not yet been by any means sufficiently elaborated - so, let us, at this time, continue with that First & Foremost undertaking, and get what we will more generally require, initially, from the clearly emerging ideas in this set of papers.

For, upon a re-assessment of the currently major mistakes in Science, I am sure that we will reveal, in addition, answers to the more general questions too! And, the Key Area, is surely in correcting our conceptions of the Required Context for any Sound Analysis of Systems undergoing transformation.

Absolutely Nothing will take place, anywhere, unless the required features are available-and-beginning to come across what they will quite naturally combine-with! Indeed, what we now know are vital are the CHAINS of Processes - linked by the Output of one being the necessary Input of the next in the series! And, of course these will never all be happening at the very same time: they simply couldn't do so, as initially they would totally all be entirely separate - distributed singly throughout a relatively unstructured melee.

The trajectory of the subsequent-build, could only be a One-at-a-Time situation! And for the whole CHAIN to be successfully sequentially-acting, would not only take an inordinate length of time to complete the CHAIN, but would be regularly-interrupted and even sometimes prematurely terminated, by adding other links from different potential-partial-CHAINS that were available with the same link, but inappropriate.

Any Outside Observer would confidently only predict just a different kind of Random Chaos resulting for the whole population of Partial Chain potentially available by the same link. And such a conclusion would be correct, and remain so, until by chance after maybe Eons of Time, a favourably functioning Complete Chain was finally executed. But still entirely alone, what could it DO?

Indeed, the answer would surely be Absolutely Nothing, and would remain so, until a different and somehow Complementary Chain also arose, that could connect with the other one, and thereby produce something Absolutely New, with always reproducibly favourable functions!

Now, such seeming miracles have been, and still are, considered Totally Impossible to occur - within the established Thinking of Mankind!  For, within their known World, such situations would just have to be the result of a Supernatural and All-powerful, yet Man-like Director of Absolutely Everything - indeed A GOD!

Order could never actually Emerge out of Total Chaos! All the consonances of Everyday Reality simply must have been arranged-for: how else? Clearly, these remarkable and complex situations, just with Reality alone as the Sole organising Source, and if just left to itself, would perhaps Complicate, but surely never mutually Co-operate! Order couldn't happen purely by Chance!? Surely, the everywhere evident, Direct Contentions would always predominate?

Indeed, the trajectory of Human Development has long been attributed to particularly powerful Men! You have never been able to just sit back and observe Reality, bringing up all things everywhere exactly as is - & carrying you with it, has it? On the contrary, Early Mankind was always lucky-to-survive at all, in a mostly hostile World! And, it appeared to be the actions of particular individuals that changed the odds to every single greater extent that enabled the subsequent rise of Mankind to dominate their environment.

Nature was only very rarely conducive, perhaps initially only in the Eden-like tropical jungles, with their plentiful fruits and shelter from the elements. But the following Open Plains habitat was almost totally devoid of any natural succour for humans, who had to transform into fierce hunters of the Plains Animals, simply in order to survive.

Indeed, conceptions of natural mechanisms of Development, through all the Stages that must have been involved: and particularly the earliest ones - those entirely without Life - have never been really understood!

Yet, it is certainly those, existing at the Base of all subsequent processes, which have always been the Real Productive Drivers of Absolutely All Development!

Let's make it Crystal Clear.

We have to explain the earliest Pre Life Developments, that enabled everything that happened subsequently - including the Origin of Life itself!

From Idealism to Materialism

Holistic Dialectics

We cannot possibly deliver here, all that is needed in differentiating Idealist Dialectics from the Dialectical Materialism of Marx. And this is primarily because neither Marx, nor his followers within the Socialist and Communist Movements of the Working Class, have, as yet, really fully appreciated his methods, and attempted to complete the still unfnished areas he revealed - or even more crucially, extended the stance into vital areas NOT addressed in any comprehensive way by Marx.

And this has been, primarily because, he never produced a full informing and instructing definition of his Stance and Method. But also, it was mainly because neither Marx nor anyone else tackled the major Elephant-in- the-Room - the omission of a comprehensive treatment of The Sciences.

That has been begun to be tackled elsewhere, by this theorist, but it is a colossal task, and as yet is far from being a completed undertaking!

So here, the differences with Hegel, as well as with the present day crop of Hegelian “Marxists” (such as Zizek) will be undertaken here!

As a study of both the Development of our Universe from a still debateable starting point, and, subsequently, from Mankind’s much more available History and Prehistory, they clearly demonstrate, that these two conceptions of Reality have simultaneously co-existed throughout that vast Development: and they have never ever fitted neatly together at all well, in any attempts to do so at any subsequent time either.

Indeed, they, in the emerging consciousness of Mankind, presented their implicit primary confounding contradictions, as presenting an ever more evident insurmountable barrier to any possible developments into something actually revealing of the causes for the emergence of significantly Wholly New!

And, in addition, the very late emergence of what later became known as Thinking, and, in particular, Rationality or Reasoning, were also strongly and damagingly coloured, and significantly limited by maintaintaining that contradictory pair of bases.

But we must NOT forge too-swiftly nor too-far ahead in attempting to understand this important trajectory, as it had also developed concretely, as contradictory physical processes, not only in the absence of Man, but even before the Emergence of Life itself. For, by starting exclusively with how it developed within Mankind, definitely prevents a more basic understanding of how these two interacted materialistically in the whole trajectory from the very beginings of underlying Reality itself, to which they must also have already been intrinsic.

Now, how can, and why must, this be insisted upon?

Well, it is, first, because the initial Emergence of Thinking in Mankind was never able to deal with this contradiction: and had to attempt to square-that- circle with some “exterior, non-material agency”, like a GOD, which somehow, also, had the crucial imputs, though often thwarted by Man! And, second, it turns out to be because these seemingly opposite approaches often appear to dominate, at different times, and indeed actually change each other, and into one another, thus, together, acting as the crucial engines of natural qualitative development.

Indeed, it is finally becoming clear only NOW, that the simple, initual conception of Reality, as a mere collection of forever-fixed components, obeying eternally-fixed Natural Laws - like some Lego Construction Game - is definitely just a simplifying myth that could NEVER explain the qualitatively new: and, therefore, wrongly substitutes mere Complexity for actual creative Emergence.

Now, interestingly, around the 5th century BC, two diametrically opposite conceptions of the “True Nature of Reality”, one occurring in Greece, and the other in India, began, in very different ways, to attempt to systematise Human Thinking, BUT each upon one of those two opposing concepts!

The Greek philosophers ultimately alighted upon Plurality (with only fixed relational concepts as their sole basis): while, at about the same time, The Buddha, in India, was contemplating primarily the natural Living World, and chose Holism, based upon universal interactions and constant change of literally Everything.

Now, choosing only one of either of these guaranteed that the true nature of Reality would not only NEVER be made fully available, but, in addition, each in very different ways, could only deliver moments or aspects of that Truth, YET, nevertheless, were still doomed, in the end, to lead only to ever increasing contradictions and even multiple terminal impasses - totally non negotiable within the confines of either of the two overall chosen conceptions.

The Greeks had devised formally a Pluralistic Basis, in order to generate a developable discipline, concerning only Pure Spatial Forms, and, via a legitimate new kind of New Abstration, really only applicable in that context, had succeeded in producing Mankind’s First-Ever Rationally-Developable Discipline - Mathematics!

But, they were so energised, by the undoubted efficacy of the new Discipline, that they extended its means to all Reasoning, and in particular to the Sciences. And that was wholly illegeitimate!

Now, very quickly indeed, Zeno of Elea had, in his Paradoxes that addressed various applications to Movement, proved that such a rationality frequently led to contradiction. Yet, he was generally ignored for over 2,300 years, until the idealist German Philosopher Hegel confirmed Zeno’s work and extended it to all Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, and in all such circumstasnces finding ways of correcting those errors and legitimately transcending those impasses.

He called his methods Dialectics. But, he was an idealist, so his means were to do with “Errors in Human Thinking” only, so, their assumed re-directing of things in general, including the material world, was neither addressed nor achieved, and hence never considered to be anything to do with the Nature of concrete Reality itself - but merely to do with our Thinking about it.

And, it was only when Hegel’s extension of Dialectical Ideas, was demonstably also identified as a feature of concrete Reality itself, by his follower, the historian, Karl Marx, that the real breakthrough finally happemed. And, even then, that was by no means immediate. Indeed even History was previously always explained in terms of the results of intentions from the thoughts of wise or influential Men, but Marx realised that such an assumption was torpedoed by the occurrence, trajectory and resolutions of Social Revolutions, so that once analyses begah to be made of such Events, the Thought- directed idea of development began to be abandoned.

Contradiction was not only found to be intrinsic to Reality itself, but in fact constituted the only driver of its actual creatuve developments too! And, Marx had the detailed History of the recent French Revolution compiled by Michelet, available to prove his cases!

Yet, it was in his sequence of subsequent writings including Theories of Surplus Value, Grundrisse and finally Das Kapital, that Marx’s version finally broke free of idealist notions of historical Reality.

Nevertheless, in spite of the considerable hidden gains within those works, the whole necessary effort was NEVER applied to The Sciences, and they would, as recent work in that area has demonstrated, prove just how crucial Dialectics would be, as there was still a great deal yet to be revealed in that extension.

Indeed, Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, and diverse efforts upon The Origin of Life on Earth have begun to reveal that the true Content of Reality-as-is is endlessly and profoundly Holistic and Dialectical, with new aspects emerging all the time. BUT NOT, it must be emphasized, within the taught courses at the citadels of Current Knowledge - The Universities, though a very few individuals in such institutions are leading the current struggle for a major Change!

But, following a decade-long effort to apply a dialectical approach to a New Critique of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in Sub Atomic Physics, the writer of this paper has continued to formulate New Dialectical Methodologies in Physics, based upon exemplars in both Marx’s work, along with modern interpretations of it, by serious investigators like David Harvey in New York, but mostly with his own contributions in areas such as the Origin of Life, Motion Study and Systems Design, but primarily in the revelation of wholly new actual Dialectical Mechanisms possible for revealing the Dialectics of Qualitative Change in diverse areas of Developing Concrete Reality.

Perhaps the most important contributions deal with how the most general natural situations, that always involve a multiplicity of simultaneously acting Laws, and which, in direct contrast to the purposely Plurtalist prior methods usually employed in Science, wherein that Plurality is ensured and maintained by means of maximally restricted experimental situations, that are purposely designed to deliver NOT what occur naturally in Reality-as-is, but, unstead exclusively only single laws optimally restricted and therefore delivering only wholly pluralist situations - one at a time, and wholly separately. Thus, delivering only an approximation of real simultaneous, multi-factor and multi-law Reality, delivered instead as a sequence of different individually- restricted scenarios, each one demonstrating, in isolation only a single relation of a tiny number of Factors, and hence omitting ALL the cross-effects, and ultimately never the New Developments, happening in Real Natural Situations.

At the very best, those can only deliver a series of separated moments of Reality, which never happen as such in Reality-as-is. All cross-influences are excluded, and absolutely NO qualitative changes will ever be allowed to occur.

Is that Science?
NO, it is what we call Technology!
It is a mode of production, NOT one of revelation!

For, as this researcher was able to establish in his Truly Natural Selection Research, the actual processes occurring naturally, and delivering stages that ultimately would form steps in whole complex series of initially simultaneous processes, and thereafter, along with others gradually change the balance and dominances between them to form a phalanx of later cycles of simultaeous processes, that finally could deliver something entirely NEW!

Stanley Miller was on the right track, but wholly blind both visually and theoretically to what was happening in his Famous Experiment. But, nevertheless, it did deliver Amino Acids all by itself!

Clearly with the new dialectcally-theoretical and process- aware methods, whole series of Miller-type Experiments could be designed, but each one initially delivering tiny gains, while also suggesting Newmulti-Channelled- forms of following experiments, with both particular product gains, as well as new designs for the next version.

A whole series of Theoretical Developments immediately followed the Truly Natural Selections gains over 12 years ago, which then resulted in the General Theory of Emergences sometime later.

And, this very important diagram (Editor - next page), in a purely descriptive form, represented one of the results of that research. It is a complex, yet generally- applicable diagram! And, extended details of its original development, are fully available in this journal.

But, at that time, the necessary fuller set of Dialectical Methods were not yet sufficiently developed, to address a thourgh-going Explanation, as the demanding Critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory was consuming all my time! But, on completion of that task, and because of what has also been achieved in that work, this researcher has now been able to resume essential work upon this crucial trajectory, much better equipped!

Advanced Hegelian Dialectics

But, before such a set of developments could be tackled. there was a major and damaging Fork-in-the-Road laid down, that had been strongly and wrongly signposted by the originator of Dialectics himself, - the German Idealist Philosopher, GWF Hegel.

For, his basic area of study was NEVER Concrete Reality, but instead the Concepts and Ideas that were the both the results, and the content of Human Thinking: indeed, he considered that his all-embracing subject was Thinking about Thought. So, as an idealst, he considered that the only possible content of Wisdom came solely and exclusively from all Considered Thinking: which was, for him, an ever-growing collection of concepts, which were wholly cerebral and could not be anything else: so he considered that by revealing-and-using his extended Dialectical “Rules of Thinking, these Thoughts vould indeed be validated or corrected by formulating them, along with sufficient detailed, related and well- informed other considerations, to reveal the Truth via his Dialectics alone. So, the task of the Philosopher was primarily to discover and reveal such Laws, which when complete could “accurately both express and even solve, any rational problem!”

The Objective would be this guide to sound manipulation and Reasoning of achieved Concepts, which he termed Dialectical Logic! Now, he considered that his purposes were not just for high level discussion in Universities, but could, had and indeed would, determine Mankind’s future History itself, by the consequemces of such disciplined Thoughts and consequent Actions.

For example, he considered that he could put down the trajectory of History, and all its failures and successes, to the concepts and consequent programmes arrived at by leading thinkers throughout all Known History.

Now, I am neither an Idealist, nor a Historian, so clearly if those are your main concerns, you will not find what you may be seeking in my writings! For, I am a resolutely Dialectical Materialist - a very different animal, who is attempting to understand the role of Dialectics, not only within Human Thought, but, at its best, also intrinsically reflecting something of the rationality of Concrete Nature itself, which was first realised by that one-time follower of Hegel, the historian and philosopher Karl Marx.

Marx was originally an energetic member of the Young Hegelians but could, initially at least, never compress the whole of the Ancient History that he uncovered into Hegel’s cerebral categories, in his Logical analyses.

And, the most disturbing areas were in understanding the almighty Upheavals that were certainly rare, but also absolutely essential, in the significant Qualitative Development of such Interludes: one of which - The French Revolution, had only recently occurred, and the following complex and multi-stranded developments and its final Resolution, which seem to be the Very Opposite of Hegel’s Rational Means of Explanation.

This paper has been published with other essays on this topic in the latest edition of SHAPE Journal (69) entitled Redefining Philosophy II. 

Issue 63: The Dialectics of Natural Selection

The Dialectics of Natural Selection

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This edition re-issues my work on Truly Natural Selection, on its 10 year anniversary, alongside some more recent contributions to this vital subject.

This series of papers extends Natural Selection beyond the Living World and into Reality in general.

It sees all “complication” not just as a summation of Parts, but as a necessary development of things, involving wholly new features, when it is usually, and correctly, renamed Evolution.

Where with Life we have the mechanisms of qualitative change as variation based on mutation, plus selection via competition, this more general form drives change via selection between competing chemical processes, and the significant transformation of context.

Fitness to survive, reproduce and prosper in the form which drives Evolution, is replaced in the more basic form by advantage to conducive, complementary processes and the successive transformation of the underlying situations entirely without Life being either present or necessary.

This view of Reality runs entirely counter to the famed Second Law of Thermodynamics, and therefore, requires physical explanation. We can do this in terms of context, whereas the Second Law is a product of interludes of maximally constrained stability, while competitive advances-in-order occur in quite different situations of unconstrained, maximum opportunity. And these alternating phases turn out to be the natural features of systems driven in cycles of any kind. The pattern of longer periods of relative stability, interspersed with short interludes of radical, qualitative change, is, in fact, the norm in the trajectories of such systems.

And the Key Events in these processes are the revolutionary episodes, which we call Emergences. Clearly, the most significant and undeniable of these has to be that which produced the very first Living Things. And this Event alone confirms that Selection in some form must have preceded Life! It was the source of Life on Earth.

Many important fallacies are addressed in these papers, including the usual mathematical definition of Probability, and its false use as a Cause of Life. And, most crucially, we address the concept of competition involving mutually conducive and mutually contending chemical processes, which are necessary for Selection in these circumstances.

The crux has to be the revolutionary Events called Emergences, which had clearly already occurred throughout the history of Reality, prior to the Emergence of Life, and which are generally ignored by most current Science.

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Truly Natural Selection extrapolates Darwin’s Natural Selection backwards into non-living systems, and the competition between simultaneously acting processes, involving both the consumption of resources, and the generation of consequent products.

Such active systems would invariably transform their own bases, and rampant positive feedback situations would always dwindle as necessary resources were used up, while other processes could accelerate due to the adequate production of their resources by other processes. Now, apart from such relatively independent processes, there will always be other relations between simultaneous processes, all the way from necessary sequences of dependant processes to either mutually- supporting, conducive processes, and at the opposite extreme mutually-contending and opposing processes.

So, even in such non-living mixes, the processes would directly effect one another and a kind of competition would most certainly ensue. And along with these, there would also invariably be the ever-present, one-way, Second Law of Thermodynamics type processes which would seemingly prosper on a wide range of products and effectively parasitically benefit from all available productive processes.

These ideas, in a totally holist way, were developed to extend concepts originally thought to be confined only to the Evolution of Life, first to its actual Origin, and thereafter to the whole spectrum of developments that have occurred ever since the start of the Universe.

And these ideas finally became a cornerstone of my Theory of Emergences, and a new dialectical view of selection and change in nature.

Read issue 63

DNA and the Social Development of the Brain?

In a CARTA video available on YouTube, by Leah Krubitzer, she delivers a remarkable alternative to the usual Genome-dominated idea of development in the brain. It clearly demonstrated that though the forms-of-development within the brain are solely determined by genetics, the actual contents of those developments are NOT so determined at all, but are primarily influenced by actual use, via behaviours in the real world - especially by behaviours caused by major crises inflicted upon the recipient.

This "seems" to return to the oldest problem of all in explaining development!

Is it wholly blue-printed within the DNA (Genome) of the living entity, which effectively determines everything that subsequently occurs, though occasionally changed by what are wholly accidental Random Damages to individual Genes, OR, can things learned during life be passed on to descendants as "Acquired Characteristics" (such as in current epigenetics and a return to Lamarckism)?

For, her contribution could also be seen in that way, but that certainly isn't, and indeed wasn't her case either. What Leah Kubitzer reveals is more a development of the former than a return to the latter as will I hope be revealed!

Indeed, various studies both of unusually sensually-equipped animals both occurring naturally, as well as in addition others having had their sensorial means artificially totally-restricted, and the effects on their brains compared over many individuals.

The results were remarkable!

Actual use, over time, had physically-changed the brains involved.

Particular areas of the brain appeared transformed in the animals artificially reduced in sensorial abilities, to enhance some of those that remained, to end up with a brain-structure similar to that of the duck-billed Platypus, whose brain-area dedicated to its super-sensory bill was relatively enormously enlarged. But, the changes noticed, in both, amounted to a great multiplicity of the connections from that part of the brain to other areas within it, and consequent increases in those particular areas too, the behaviours-possible were down to those vastly increased connections, and NOT to wholly new functional areas.

The brain was physically changed by enhanced behaviours, but then, via new connections, also enabling, in addition, wholly-new further development of such behaviours.

But, there is a great deal more in these findings than what immediately presents itself.

Notice that the duck-billed Platypus, as a species, hasn't changed much in vast periods of time, and yet the particular individual animal (a possum) deprived of its sight changed at a remarkable rate, and made all the necessary developments very early in its life - the initial period was absolutely crucial.

Nothing new was available to that animal, indeed it was a deprivation that precipitated the developments.

But, we already have a process in which the given Genome of an animal delivers all its "built-in" behaviours, with any changes being down to random chance mutations of genes. And, in addition, it is supposed to be only by such purely random damage to the genome that any changes can ever happen, and thereafter by Natural Selection, which chooses the best adaptations to predominate over succeeding generations.

Is not that single one-way causality also somewhat challenged by these findings?

For, the deprived individual animals developed not only new connections in their brains, but also enhanced, or even new, behaviours benefiting from those changes.

Yet, the developments in the brain must also be inherited! How else do modern animals including ourselves come to be as they are? And, at the same time, why do some organisms remain unchanged for millions of years?

Mankind has, in the past, clearly revealed important processes in this area, but, as usual, always conceptually simplified them in order to more easily develop them further - for simplifying Abstractions always enable such things (see all of Mathematics!).

And, there has to be more to the mostly wholly redundant and unused majority of any organism's Genome, where the genes seem to be in "rooms used as depositories of rubbish, and like those in many a Stately Home, full of no longer used cast offs".

I don't believe in 'junk' DNA! It is more likely that this represents The Past of that organism in some way, in its evolutionary development: occasionally transformed by mutations, but later bypassed either temporarily or permanently, as a repository of things that once worked but now bypassed. Could this be how prior evolutionary solutions return, in supposedly convergent evolution, such as the return of fish-like traits in sea mammals? 

Primarily, though, the dead weight of our pluralist history in Mathematics, Reasoning and even Science has imposed upon our thinking the myth of eternal Natural Laws and Reductionism, which fatally damages our ability to make sense of such Development at all, by falsely converting it into the mere Complexity of many summed-fixed-things and laws.

The consequent missing ingredient was therefore Real Qualitative Change, and hence the absolutely necessary means to ever understanding Creative Changes.

Darwin, Engels and Marx

Now, since Hegel and then Marx, the methodology of Dialectical Materialism had been devised to address such developments, culminating only in 2010 with the Theory of Emergences (by the writer of this paper), which finally tackled the trajectory of alternating Stabilities and Emergences that characterise Qualitative Development in literally all spheres.

And, echoes of it are clearly shown in the case of the deprivation of sight in a possum leading to a rush of developments in other senses - for in the Theory of Emergences the termination of seemingly permanent Stabilities can only be precipitated by crises that cannot be resolved from within them, and therefore necessarily results in both a collapse of the current Stability, and thereafter the consequent construction of a wholly new one, which is finally established via another and wholly different Stability and set of new capabilities!

Marxism and The Origin of Life

 How Philosophy Aids Science

“What?”, I hear you say, “What could possibly be a Marxist view of such an Event?”

Well, it is the only approach capable of solving that important question. And, the reason that such is the case is because Marxism, from the outset, was, and still is, a Philosophy. It is not only a political stance in the Modern World. It was first devised by Karl Marx, a philosopher, and a follower of the great German idealist philosopher, Frederick Hegel, and everything that he did consequently stemmed from what he and his tutor managed to find out about Reality, and Mankind’s place in attempting to understand it.

It is claimed by many (who do not understand it fully) to be “Scientific Socialism”, but such a description fails because, at present there is no comprehensive and consistent “Marxist Science”. And, such a description never tallys with what people see in the everyday actions of those claiming to be committed Marxists.

It is certainly more correct to call it “Philosophical Socialism”, because truly great gains in Philosophy were its real foundation stones.

And, the most significant step in that direction were taken beginning almost 200 years ago, by, first of all, Hegel, with his truly profound studies into Human Thinking, and , thereafter, by Marx who “Stood the idealist Hegel upon his head, or rather on his feet!”

By the time of Marx’s Communist Manifesto of 1848, the new philosophical stance had already been applied to History and Social Revolutions, and was later comprehensively applied to the overall development of Human Society and its latest phase, Capitalism, in his book, Das Kapital.

But, the most obvious and potentially fruitful alliance, benefiting both, would certainly be with the other strongly materialist discipline, Science.

But, that did not happen!

The reasons were understandable, but also unforgivable. Science at that time (and still to this day) was in the hands of the privileged classes, and they could not stomach Marx’s conclusions about the need for revolutionary change. Occasional exceptions among scientists were too few and too amateurish, philosophically and/or scientifically to divert the enormous momentum of technology-inspired success in Science, and the necessary turn around of that important discipline never happened.

Yet, as with all such necessary revolutions, there always has to occur a major crisis and consequent collapse of the old stability, to initiate major changes, and that finally occurred – too late! For those who could have led such a Revolution were dead or removed from having any influence, within the organisations of the Working Classes internationally.

The turning point should have been in 1927, when Bohr and Heisenberg won the day in turning Physics into a thoroughly idealist discipline with their Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory. But crucially, there were absolutely NO scientists who could deliver the telling blows, and demolish the speculative ideas of these so-called scientists.

But, also, and crucially their were NO self-proclaimed Marxists who could do it either. Since the Russian Revolution the development of Marxism itself, more or less, came to a halt.

But, finally, at long last, the situation is beginning to turn around. There are an increasing number of scientists who are turning away from Copenhagen and towards a more holistic approach, which grows ever closer to a real Marxist standpoint philosophically.

They don’t necessarily term their new position Dialectical Materialism, but that is where things are heading.

And within the Working Class movement there are Marxists who know what has to be done, and are beginning to do it.

In the last few years the Theory of Emergences has been described, with the remit of a stance applicable to all disciplines, and the proof of the pudding has been in its eating. The famed Double Slit Experiments have finally been explained physically without any recourse to the Copenhagen position.

And, we are proud to present a collection of contributions to the number one question in Science: It is, of course, the Origin of Life on Earth.

And a series of papers starts with "Ideas on the Origin of Life" in the current SHAPE Journal:

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.

New Special Issue: The Evolution of Matter

This rather long and meandering paper, though originally intended merely as an argument for the existence of the Evolution of all Matter (as well as Living Things), rather rapidly had to address a wholly new, Holistic standpoint for scientific investigation and explanation, and thus was inevitably diverted into delivering at least some important contributions to that area. For the usual standpoint in Science is NOT holistic, but pluralistic, and though perfectly suitable in areas in equilibrium, is entirely unsuitable for dealing with systems in qualitative change. Now, as it very quickly became a rather extended piece, it could not be allowed to deal fully with all aspects so generated by this alternative stance. So, they have been somewhat truncated, with the suggestion, for those requiring a more comprehensive treatment, to address the much fuller accounts published in the 50 issues of SHAPE Journal on the Internet by this author.

Read it here

A Diagram from the issue:

Metamorphoses

Radically Transforming Interludes

We have many assumptions and indeed principles, which we truly believe accurately reflect Reality, and they, therefore, underlie absolutely all our explanations and theories.

But, do they address the really important phases in any actual qualitative changes – in the actual development of Reality, or do they merely deal with the local and immanent snapshots of that trajectory or longer exposures of forcibly maintained stable setups, and, therefore, only within one form or another of an unchanging stability?

My contention is that they most certainly do only the latter, and deal with any evident qualitative changes by merely switching between alternative stabilities, and totally ignoring any transformation interludes from one to the other entirely!

But, of course, if these crucial interludes are omitted, such a paradigm will never manage to explain why and how the measured phenomena come to be in place, both in our arranged Domains, and certainly never for totally unfettered Reality.

We may be able to construct analytic and synthesizing methods, within each stability, but they will only encapsulate pattern, and allow prediction thereby: they will be merely technological and certainly not explanatory, for the latter is essential for both true Science and real Philosophy!

And, of course, this is exactly what usually happens, and has done so for centuries.

But, what it means when unavoidable and major transformations occur is that we are then totally ill equipped to either understand them or, indeed, cope with them.

We, in such periods, are tossed about like corks in a stormy sea, and can do nothing to, in any way, intervene.

We are consigned to merely suffer these transformations, and dearly hope for the quick return of our interpretable Stability.

Clearly then, our basic conceptions and methodologies are inadequate to deal with such interludes of qualitative change!

Our achievements are predicated solely upon Stability, and the overall trajectory of any real Development is entirely out of our hands.

We are pragmatic users of stability, yet sufferers of Change!

But, are we congenitally restricted to such a stance?

Can we only do what we do, and no other?

The answer has to be a resounding, “No!

For, to start with, we do not deny these transforming interludes at all. We greet the births of our babies with great delight, and what are such events but interludes of almost miraculous changes?” And we see and recognise the metamorphoses of worm-like caterpillars into devastatingly beautiful butterflies without a qualm. And as a scientist, I recognise these revolutionary episodes throughout the history, not only of all Life, or the development of the Earth, and even of the Cosmos too, and the Life histories of its stars.

We know that these episodes do indeed occur!

Why do we not address such in generality as a natural consequence of the necessary evolution of Reality, and study them all scientifically?

The trouble was, and still is, the unavoidable occurrence of exactly those transformations in Society – the Social Revolutions! For, these can throw out all those who rule or dominate.

They frighten the establishment to death!

So, any serious scientific study of these transformations in general – usually termed Emergences, would also unavoidably have to include Revolutions in that very same remit, and that could be devastating!

Good God! It might equip agitators like Lenin to intervene in a Revolution to work to change its outcome!

Could the establishment ever risk such an occurrence?

The answer is clearly, “No!”

And it has always been so, whatever the establishment consists of. Instead, such researches and methods of investigation, and its resultant theories must be roundly condemned, and even ridiculed, and such people get away with it (most of the time) because they have the old “pluralist science” safely on-their-side.

For that methodology never addresses such transformations – indeed, they are avoided at all costs, and where stability doesn’t naturally exist, it is skilfully imposed to enable successful experiments to be carried out and appropriate laws extracted.

And this can quite adequately produce a galaxy of products, without any recourse to these emergent considerations.

For, their kind of investigation is strictly limited to Stability. And given constrained and maintained Domains, they can find laws that can be used to reliably predict, and hence produce!

The counter to truly explanatory, and, therefore, real Science, is, as always, technology.

For it will work while-ever any system of transforming Revolution does not take over!

For such plurality-determined “science” delivers without addressing any emergent events, except perhaps as “midwives” to the inevitable, or “surgeons” to the catastrophes.

Indeed, this medical-type metaphor is doubly appropriate because more generally, you have to ask -

“How can a profession such as Medicine cope with living people, and all their inevitable health crises that they are bound to undergo, without a standpoint that addresses emergent events?

Surely, they must extend their methods to unavoidably include these events?

For, if not, what you learn and apply must be mere recipes.

If your diagnostic methods, named complaints, and systems of treatment for all possible illnesses are of this nature, then the doctor becomes a database for such a body of knowledge, rather than any kind of investigating scientist

And in a much wider general field, can we call most of what is usually termed “research” (in our society today), Science?

For, it is entirely dependant upon the discoveries, formulations and explanations of other people – scientists who attempt to find laws in given Domains (artificially maintained stabilities).

Those that form the majority of those involved in such “research”, are merely finding the best, quickest, cheapest, most alluring, or most profitable products of already known laws.

They can keep it up almost indefinitely, but it is not Science, but only Technology!

Now, anyone following the current narrative in the media about “Science” will doubtless feel that they have to disagree with this analysis. For, they constantly hear from populists like Professor Brian Cox, Jim Al’Khalili and Marcus du Sautoy of all sorts of phenomena, many of which purport to address qualitative change, but actually do no such thing!

Most of Cox’s qualitative excursions are about things, which cannot be interfered with, far away in the Cosmos, while those from du Sautoy are diversions into Chaos and Fractals (with a substantial addition of the condiment of Pure Chance) to “explain” various Emergences in Mathematics.

But his narratives are a fraud, they are never about Reality, but about the mathematical World of Pure Form alone – what I insist should be called Ideality.

NOTE: In fact his position was put very succinctly by Stanislav Lem when he said:- 

“Let us imagine a mad tailor, who makes all sorts of clothes. He does not know anything about people, birds or plants. He is not interested in the World; he does not examine it. He makes clothes but does not know for whom. He does not think about it. The tailor is only concerned about one thing: he wants to be consistent. [….] He takes the finished clothes to a massive warehouse. If we enter it we would discover that some of the clothes fit an octopus, others fit trees, butterflies, or people. We would find clothes for a centaur and for a unicorn, as well as for creatures they have not even been imagined yet. The majority of his clothes would not find any applications.

Mathematics works in the same way. It builds structures but it is not clear of what. These are perfect models (i.e. perfectly accurate), but a mathematician does not know what they are models of. He is not interested. He does what he does because such an action has turned out to be possible."

Summa Technologiae – Stanislav Lem



Indeed, no one actually addresses such questions.

Finally, we must come to the science that first did actually address Emergences – namely by Charles Darwin with his Origin of Species. With such an epoch-making contribution, surely of all the sciences, Biology must be the one to pursue what Darwin began and go ever deeper into Emergent Events?

But, I’m afraid you will, sadly, be disappointed.

The touchstone was the second brilliant piece of holist science carried out by Stanley Miller in his famous Experiment, in which in a totally isolated experimental set-up, containing what were then considered to be the substances dominating the atmosphere of the early, pre-Life Earth. He designed and constructed his apparatus to emulate what was likely to have happened in what might reasonably be called the “Weather Cycles” from that period, and set the system into action by the addition of just heat and lightning (via electric sparks).

In only a week, the water in his closed system had turned reddy-brown and later analysis was found to contain amino acids – the crucial building blocks in all known living things on Earth today.

It was as revolutionary as Darwin’s contribution, but the majority of scientists were not satisfied, and asked, “Well, what exactly was going on within this set-up. What were the various processes going on and in what order?” And they universally concluded that, “Without knowing these things, the experiment had no consequences. It was a dead end!”

And, in spite of some improvements by Miller, the technology of that time did not allow him to answer their crucial questions, without, in the usual pluralist way, intervening to analyse, and so destroy each and every sub-process of the self-moving, holistic system.

The line of research was dropped.

And that is symptomatic of all modern biological research. They too do not address Emergences!

Now, though these wholesale criticisms are correct, there would naturally still be some scientists, who would indeed address crucial transformational episodes in new and imaginative ways. For example Hunt in studies into how, why and when the cells of fertilised eggs divided, for he developed a technique, which neither stopped nor interfered with the natural process of cell divisions, but also enabled him to separately analyse the chemicals present during successive phases of the process. He cracked what was initiating cell division, and for this brilliant work was awarded the Nobel Prize for Biology.

While in a very different and surprising area, Pagel studying large numbers of fossils, was able to show statistically that Species Origin had to involve a single event, and not the usually assumed set of small incremental changes over an extended period. Species Origination was an Emergent Event, and definitely then needed an explanation for what actually happened during this remarkable multi-phase Event.

Finally Ryan with his work on viruses and their penetration into other organisms, not only on the well known symbiotic type of relationships, but also in unifying single but unrelated organisms - a virus and a much higher living thing into a single amalgam, the results of which could be crucial in explaining alternative forms of genetic mutation other than the usual “random damage “ version.

The title of this paper was chosen as Metamorphoses for very good reasons. Can we just study the caterpillar and the butterfly totally separately, and in great detail, and ignore the amazing metamorphosis in between?

The answer has to be a resounding, “No!” What on earth is going on within the chrysalis and why? It is almost as if two species have been merged – one with the idea of eating its way to nirvana via leaves, and the other perfect for the reproduction of the species with the added and miraculous facility for flight.

Think what actually occurs!

A soft bodied, worm-like creature gets fat enough and then retires into a chrysalis, wherein the most radical transformations occur.

It is like a re-invention of the organism.

Instead of being soft-bodied, it transforms into a hard exoskeleton-encasing insect, with elaborate wings. Instead of eating leaves, it now switches to sucking up nectar from flowers, and, instead of being camouflaged, it erupts into a galaxy of colour to signal its presence to potential mates.

It usually only lives long enough to copulate and lay eggs before dying. (The mayfly (another relative) actually emerges in the adult stage without mouthparts, for it doesn’t even need to eat during its very short life).

So, what on earth happens inside that chrysalis?

Why was there such a revolutionary transformation?

Where did the imperatives for resorting to such a two-phase life and its absolutely essential transformation event come from?

All these questions are valid and definitely need answers.

In other areas, there are organisms (some incredibly simple – even single celled), which, in very hard times, transform themselves into a dormant and maximally protected state to “see-out” the bad-times (the seed being the simplest example), but it also happens to multi-celled animals too, and they can survive for truly remarkable periods of time in these defensive, totally-inactive states.

But even there the process from original organism – to dormant version – to fully-functioning organism again, is never merely “shutting-down”. It is always a major and profound re-organisation into “something else”. Clearly, there must be resonances between those defensive transformations and the much more short-term and functional metamorphosis of the caterpillar/butterfly.

One area that may be revealing can be seen in the study of developing embryos. For, it is evident that to some significant extent, these tend to pass through similar stages to what happened to prior species in the evolution of the present–day organism to arrive at its current state. It seems to indicate that prior phases in evolution are not lost, but are still present within the genetic material of the current organism, and in fact function as before, but only in the embryonic development stage

Could it be that reversions under extremely damaging conditions can take place, to put the organism in a more survivable prior state, and that when conditions improve, the organism can re-instate its current development path (within the safety of the chrysalis) until it can emerge as the final version of the current organism.

When we talk of a blueprint in the DNA of an organism, it is usually interpreted as a single trajectory through the various necessary phases of development. But several things would be essential even for such a seemingly” simple” plan.

For, the necessary “instructions” are not available in that DNA as a linear, physical sequence – starting at the beginning and going through each successive phase in turn.

It just isn’t like that!

The instructions are arranged in no particular physical order: they are dispersed throughout the DNA.

So what determines the actual sequence to be followed?

Each phase produces along with its primary functions the necessary chemical trigger for the immediately following phase, by producing a unique “key” that alone can “turn-on” the next phase, wherever it turns out to be. And these can be anywhere in the DNA, for the necessary key, being a chemical molecule, can bathe all parts of the complex molecule, but only act upon its target area(s) that initiate the required next phase. So, the whole sequence is elicited one at a time by the products of each immediately prior phase.

Indeed, the assumption that the overall sequence is the only one coded for, would, therefore, also be inaccurate.

In fact there could be alternative sequences that are almost never switched into action, including many redundant vestiges from past incarnations of the organism. And some of these might be triggered by adverse circumstances, which push the organism to the limits (and maybe beyond) of its normal envelope of survivable conditions, which would act as emergency solutions. A fairly common example in plants might be that which produces seeds – still the living organisms, but nothing like the fully-functioning adult plant. And in the same way a whole variety of similar “dormant” defensive forms might be triggered as the only way to maintain the spark of life.

Once such a set of alternative possibilities is considered, we can then consider that old (not usually still used) plans can be triggered, which could help a species in difficulties with impossible conditions to return to such a sequence as a survival alternative. Indeed, they might have been common in the very earliest scraps of life in the most demanding of circumstances of the early Earth.

And once we see that, much of the usually considered to be “junk DNA” is in fact still functional, but never triggered in normal sequences of a given organism, then we can view mutation very differently indeed. For whatever the cause of the mutation, it will respond initially to this unused storehouse of sequences, which might make the difference between success and failure for that change.

Also, situations such as metamorphosis may be a special case wherein two phases not originally run as a one-after-the-other sequence, might well be not only triggered in hostile circumstances, but regularly, as a superior alternative.