What to do with Stately Homes?

How can these 'country houses' be made to serve the People?

Currently, the media are overflowing with programmes on the buying and selling of antiques, which always seem to centre around the magnificent palaces of the very rich - either as venues for "Valuation Extravaganzas", or as valuable sources for Antique Dealers, turning unwanted heirlooms into cash, by returning them to those who can both appreciate and afford them!

"Because", we are informed, "these Stately Homes cost absolute fortunes to maintain", you know, "so the hard-pressed owners have grave difficulties in trying to keep their palaces in the state to which they have become accustomed!"

They even have to open their House and Estate to the paying public on special days to help to maintain their required standards.

And, the diverse sub plots, woven into these various celebrations of Grandeur, are purposely included to entrance and con the watchers and the visitors.

"This is what success can deliver for you!"

I lived for a decade within yards of a busy auctioneers, and quickly learned how they fitted in to an overall scheme. On the one hand, they were to extract unrealised treasures from their uninformed owners, at the lowest possible prices, while on the other, the object was to achieve the highest possible prices from those who could afford them, to further boost one "stately" home or another.

These programmes are among the commonest on TV, and even infer that you might be able to even do better than the emerging celebrities, who all seem to appear on a whole range of different offerings, but with the very same purposes.

It has become like the football pools of the past, when it is added to all the above, and to the increasing number of Betting Companies selling their wares over the Internet, the impression is projected that, "the next big winner could be you!"

I'm afraid not.

No.

Its all a necessary myth, so that you come to admire rather than loath the super rich.

But, what a colossal waste!

Such 20, 50 or even 100 room palaces sitting close to so many villages, could become The Property of The People, and be used as Schools, Hospitals, parts of a University, Clinics, Old Peoples' Retirement Homes, Social Centres, Research Centres, and all the rest.

And the Estate Grounds instead of serving a tiny already over-privileged family, could be Public or Country Parks and Sports Venues, or whatever the People need!

Brexit and the murder of Jo Cox

No one is saying it but it needs to be said!

The murder of Jo Cox has highlighted the crucial sides in the Brexit debate.

The murderer is a right-wing fanatic, who considered her to be the real enemy.

Yet, consider the reactions of the ones who really care, who came out strongly about the way she was and what she did for people.

In this increasingly nasty, nationwide argument between the right-wing of Toryism, who want to lead that party, and the rest of us who are trying to survive, the rantings of the Leave Leaders show a marked contrast.

The UKIP leader, Farage, thought putting out his racialist poster was ill-timed, because of Jo's murder. Contrast that with the genuine out-pourings of love from those who knew her.

Don't let the Right win by voting LEAVE!

If they do they will take over the Tory Party and the nation! And you will be faced with five years of these reactionaries, who will, most certainly, intensify their policy of making us all pay for their Slump.

Vote REMAIN to defeat the Reactionary Right!

Socialists against BREXIT

Who shouts loudest for BREXIT? It is the most right-wing Tories and UKIP!

WHY do they want it, exactly? They don't want alliance.

HOW do they put their case? They want to be rid of European "red tape" - by which they mean legislation that defends worker's rights. They want free rein to do as they like as they used to! They want to beat their international competitors by foul means if necessary.

What would an even more right-wing Tory Britain be like?

Two groups are arguing loud and long about the forthcoming Referendum. Both groups are essentially lead by Tories who are only really concerned with profit.

Neither side of this argument is remotely concerned about you. They don't care about the state of the Working Class after 8 long years of depression and cuts. If anything they want to turn the screw even harder. Something is holding them back. 

So why should we support either group of Tories? We shouldn't of course! Many voices on the left are calling for a boycott of the EU Referendum. A plague on both their houses!

Yet, we must defend our class.

WHY are the most right-wing, anti-worker, racist, nationalist groups for BREXIT? They want to Leave to end EU laws which protect the worker, which have slowly been won by left-leaning politicians in the European Union. They see the easiest way to exploit the working class is to leave Europe and set their own laws.

Such laws would almost certainly be PRO-employer, PRO-capitalist and ANTI-worker, ANTI-human rights, with a new far-right Tory-lead cabal in charge, post-referendum. Do you doubt it?

But staying in the EU won't make any difference either. It won't mean the end of capitalism! No indeed! But it will allow Europe-wide alliances of Workers to oppose austerity, to oppose ever-more attacks on their jobs and living standards.

Do you really believe that an newly independent Britain, run by unleashed right-wing politicians will be better for working people in this country? It will be considerably WORSE.

Workers must vote NO to leaving the EU. It shouldn't be seen as a vote for the capitalist EU and all of the things we agree are wrong with it, but a vote against the right, a vote against even worse situations for British workers, isolated from hundreds of millions of potential comrades, with the very same problems across the continent. 

Many socialists, including myself, were against the Common Market when joining it was first suggested - for all the right, pro-working class reasons. But that isn't what this vote is really about.

The worst elements of the Tory Party are manoeuvring to bring even more repressive laws against ordinary people. They reckon they could do whatever they wanted unshackled from EU regulation. And maybe they could.

That is the pressing issue we face at the ballot box.

Please don't misunderstand my position: the EU is no friend of the working class, I am fully aware of this. They have done terrible things recently in Greece. But its parliament does make laws which protect people. Occasional majorities of left-of-centre parties have allowed protective laws to get onto the statute book which the Tories cannot currently get around or overthrow. 

Have you noticed the increase in socialist parties in Europe recently, in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal? In a crisis of Capitalism (which this certainly is) we will need to be able to ally with fellow anti-capitalists all over Europe. Freedom of movement is vital. We need to unite the working class across Europe, not isolate ourselves under perpetual Tory rule! 

This capitalist European Union is not OUR Europe, granted. But a United Socialist States of Europe could be! And we need strength to fight capitalism, we need to be in the best position we can be. That isn't on our own.

Many bigger fights are on the horizon. We will need the freedom to unite to win those fights. 

VOTE NO TO LEAVING. 

VOTE REMAIN!

PS. I wrote this piece as a response to increasing socialist voices calling for Brexit. I think this is a mistake. I also think people on the left are confused about this question, and what it might mean for working people. I hope this elucidates on some of the issues. 

Interesting debates from the States

Dr Glenn Borchardt and Mike Gimbel talking about Dialectical Materialism and Physics

Tories!!

When watching discussions on the television, and being told that “both sides of the argument” have been adequately covered, I cannot help getting very angry indeed.

For that is absolutely never the case!

For the problem supposedly “being addressed” is always, yes absolutely always, diverted into some area of prejudice, or alternatively some dishonest, supposedly moral imperative, which means, and is intended to assure, that those who need to be adequately informed are being misled to a significant and deliberate extent. The real issues are never addressed!

Indeed, when some millionaire starts talking about charity, public spiritedness, and concern for the future of our country, he is clearly lying!

Why? It is because he is not one of us: he is a TORY.

Do you think he earned his millions? Of course he didn’t! You earned them for him!

All their wealth was created by ordinary people, going to work every day, but never getting the real value of their contributions. That almost always goes to the owners! And when the profits aren’t flowing as they would like, they will sack “unproductive workers” wholesale, and then denounce them for lazily living off the State!

And when some scapegoat is selected to hive off (via totally proved misdemeanours) the antagonism of the people. These denizens of the public-good denounce their erstwhile colleagues for ”overstepping the mark”, “mis-selling", or “not giving sufficient information”.

Now these sound more like hapless errors than what they really are, for not only were they doing what they did on purpose, but also the very denouncers do exactly the same sort of things all the time. They are just much better at hiding it all, AND, crucially, not getting caught!

You must have noticed how comfortably even these proved sinners “land upon their feet”, and not only get well-paid sinecures somewhere or other, but remain as part of the same milieu – the Owners Of The Country!

Even the description “for the benefit of the country” doesn’t mean for the majority of the population, it means for Capitalism, and for “WE” (meaning the Tories) that run this show, and make our fortunes.

They "believe" that without their own increasing wealth, there would be no crumbs from their tables to sustain the proletariat (or “Plebs” as they are sometimes called!)

Literally nowhere in the Mass Media is there a contrary view.

And, all newspapers, from Local to National, are pro-capitalist. The very best that you can expect is a liberal, or moralist criticism of behaviours, but never a tirade against the Economic System that rewards such dishonesty!

All TV stations are also pro-capitalist, and, of course, owned by millionaires.

Such an imbalance of literally many thousands to one, in delivering so-called News, means that the public is massively and purposefully misinformed.

And, newspapers like the SUN pander to racism and prejudice, while doing what they can to make even more money out of peddling both “naked ladies” and lies - all for he benefit of their men in politics, and behind them, the owners of this country. Have you not noticed the clone-like nature of all the UK's political leaders - Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and even Milliband? And they are all very similar concoctions, are they not? And, they are each and every one PRO-CAPITALIST!

Interestingly, it was a Labour Government, which helped to rescue Capitalism in 2008. Yet the Tories talk about that as typical of Labour’s waste of National Resources. Yet, if Brown and Co. had not persuaded world leaders to do likewise, then Capitalism would have been finished.

I feel that every News Programme should have another superimposed commentator (as they do for the deaf), but this one representing the rest of us – constantly pointing out, “But, he’s a TORY, He doesn’t give a damn for ordinary working people, He is lying, as usual", and other such valuable additions.

When the Bastille Finally Falls!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Failure of the Marxists!

 

How Those Who Profess to Carry the Banner of Marxism

Fail in the Clearly Evident Tasks of Today

In 2008 there was a meeting in Manchester University concerning the quite evident worldwide crisis in the Capitalist system, this time precipitated by the latest ruse of the Banks to inflate value out of nothing. Their motives were made crystal clear when one day after the cataclysmic collapse in Iceland a prominent British businessman was seen dashing around that country looking for dirt-cheap acquisitions. There can even be a profit in a major recession, if you know what to do and have the disposable wealth to exploit it!

A Marxist from America (as part of a World Tour) was there to explain who was to blame for the crisis. A very large audience (unknown in recent times for such a speaker) was present, primed and ready to hear what the Marxists had to say about this glaringly evident rip–off: it was just possible that they had been right all along, and the gathering were clearly willing to listen to what these people were saying NOW! Nobody else was giving them any sort of explanation, or delivering a meaningful political response to those who perpetrated this almighty catastrophe. For this time it was clearly Capital itself that had caused the Event, doing what it always does, but here clearly showing where it leads.

But what happened? Did the speaker answer the crucial Question posed, and fill his audience with a real purpose to oppose these parasites and kick them out?

NO! He didn’t!

It was in fact the same old story – the same old activist stuff, which saw NO epoch-making opportunity for political action, but only a bigger than usual protest reaction.

You would have expected unanswerable economic analysis. You didn’t get any!

You would have expected a deep and powerful philosophical standpoint, which better than all other positions could explain the causality of such crises and their guaranteed consequences, by the generated actions of the ruling class as they moved to make the Working Class foot this bill as they always do. But you didn’t get that either!

In spite of a clearly “Left position”, and quotes from Marx et al, the contribution of this imported Marxist expert was mere reportage. And the response of our homegrown versions was worse! What did they do? Have another demonstration? The speaker from America had NO Marxist economics to relate. All his stuff was merely different emphases upon the analyses of pro-capitalist economists. And there was certainly NO profundity of philosophical standpoint at all. What he had to say was what is usually said, but writ somewhat larger. It was pragmatic, idealist activism only: it was the politics of the demonstration ONLY - Protest politics, and NOT politics for action! It was certainly NOT the politics of Revolution, which was not arrived at by Marx and his followers in hope, but because they had realised that all real Qualitative Change only occurs in Revolutionary Events, without which the forces of reaction will always triumph and re-establish their status quo.

Implicit in the reformist position is the assumption that change can be brought about incrementally, and imperceptibly, until the new realm appears. Real Marxists have always known that such an assumption is total rubbish. And they have also always known that the majority will never subscribe to their position, unless it becomes increasingly clear in revolutionary situations. Even in Russia in 1917, Lenin returned to find his own party deeply mired in reformist, gradualist myths. In his April Theses he had to tear them away from their self-delusions and get them the face their ONLY task – to prepare for and then lead the coming revolution!

But any such opportunity at the Manchester meeting was missed completely.

The audience went away with no real understanding, no new conceptions, and certainly no fire in their bellies to strive for significant, revolutionary Change. It seems to me that the present day Marxists are ashamed of their revolutionary heritage. Consider how differently many of those at that meeting would have reacted subsequently to the current series of revolutions in the Middle East, if those delivering there had done their job.

These “Marxists” couldn’t raise any real enthusiasm, because they were NOT Marxists!

They were NOT developing their ideas day by day. They were peddling old stuff yet again. Marxism isn’t an eternal Faith. It is the ongoing and never-complete Science of Revolutionary Change. It may not always be evident in day-to-day politics, but it certainly is philosophically!

For it is about all Reality in the process of Change. It addresses both the longer periods of Stability AND the short and crucial Interludes of Qualitative Change. And it is applicable in ALL disciplines. It can deliver the answers not only to Social questions, but also even to such questions as the Origin of Life on Earth, and the impasses in modern sub Atomic Physics.

These so-called proponents of Marxism seem to know absolutely nothing of all this. They have cut Marxism down to a manageable size: it has become their Book of Truth, and this ceased to be their methodology of revealing ever new truths, and their guide to necessary action.

In this important meeting, where an audience was keen to hear something different to the usual stuff, did not have a single Marxist philosopher rising to his feet and revealing profound and new truths arising NOW out of this remarkable crisis. The old truths were considered sufficient!

It was, it must be said, a pathetic performance.

I watched the audience as they filed out. No signs of realisation were evident. Only one or two went up to give in their names. It was an anticlimax, and any follow-up meetings would inevitably decline as a real programme on ALL the necessary fronts was not conceived of, never mind put in place.

A few months earlier I had got my son who was a member of a “Marxist-left” party to get them to invite me to give them a short contribution at a branch meeting.

I have been a Marxist for 60 years, and was highly involved for 17 years in the sixties and seventies, but I finally dropped out because not only was no one developing Marxism, but my efforts to do so were considered to be somewhat reprehensible. I was always addressing questions, which I didn’t think had been adequately addressed, and this was universally considered to be a waste of valuable time, when I should be on the factory gate, selling papers door-to-door, and arguing with everyone I met to get them “to join”. No one seemed to notice that no matter how much activism was poured in, the state of the organisation was clearly in terminal decline and was getting nowhere. No one was developing Marxism and hence all was in clear retrenchment, but the question had to be “Why was this so?”

For the World was increasingly full of new evidence.

Science was delivering new truths, and even non-Marxists were attempting to develop conceptions of Emergence, which was the same as Becomings for Hegel, and Revolutions for Marx) but though they had realised that these did indeed occur, they were, without the necessary philosophical ground, doomed to failure due to their own inadequate standpoint, and in the end turned to studies which insisted on seeing such Events as mere Form, and attempted to solve it with mathematics alone via a “new” area on Mathematics termed Chaos. Real Marxists should have been romping away in such areas – surely their own areas of qualitative Change, but they weren’t! At this branch meeting, I gave a talk about Continuity and Descreteness as discussed by Zeno, and gave examples of how I had addressed similar problems in the complex Analysis and Teaching of Dance Movement. They could not have been more uninterested. No discussion ensued, and I was not asked to contribute again. Clearly they couldn’t believe that I was studying Dance and telling them about it. I realised that they were no Marxists. They were “left” activists only.

I determined to at least carry my discoveries over into a detailed study of Emergences as my contribution to the Marxism of today, and spent several years gradually taking forwards a study of the inner trajectory of such Events. I have Social Revolutions and biological Emergences such as the Origin of Life on Earth as my starting points, and I was finally able in 2010 to publish The Theory of Emergences on the Internet. And not only that! My son and myself set up a new internet-based Philosophical Journal entitled SHAPE, which had issues every 3 weeks containing new papers, a comprehensive Archive of all previous publications, and an increased number of Extended Special Issues on particular topics.

It is a Marxist Philosophical Journal, which ranges across Physics, Mathematics, and Biology, and also addresses a whole raft of philosophical areas such as Plurality, Holism, Freewill, Scientific Truth, Abstraction and Theory in general. And after two years the Journal has begun to make important contributions particularly in the Philosophy of Science, and has even delivered a Non Copenhagen explanation of the famed Double Slit Experiment and redesigned Miller’s Experiment on the circumstances prior to the Origin of Life on Earth. Now, all of this has been the work of a single isolated person making the best of his long education and participation in revolutionary politics. Yet, So far, the response has been another resounding silence.

Where are the Marxists who revolutionise Thinking?

They don’t even exist to criticise the ideas on SHAPE.

The reason must be obvious. They don’t do Philosophy!

Yet, who else can take Philosophy forwards?

Is it the University academics? My experience with what I have read of their work on Zeno and on Emergences would seem to indicate that they are simply not equipped to address these areas in anything but strictly Formal Logic ways. While in Science the extended 100-year retreat in Sub Atomic Physics, where are those to who can demolish the Idealism of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory? They certainly don’t seem to exist, and for the same reasons as in Philosophy.

No scientists seem to be sufficiently philosophically equipped to counter the Idealism brought in by Bohr and Heisenberg, which has now ruled entirely unassailed for almost 90 years

So, will such “activists” react to the changing World and indeed attempt to change it? The answer, at present, is a resounding, “NO!” Even the tumult in the Middle East has NO Marxists, or even socialists involved. The revolutionists talk only of removing their current dictators and replacing them with a common or garden variety of Democracy as they see in the West. They don’t seem to know that such a revolution will only finally complete the over ripe objectives of the long overdue Capitalist Revolution, which started with the English Revolution in the 17^th century, via the French Revolution in the 18^th century and culminated in their areas with the Nationalist overthrows of Kings and Imperialists in the 20^th century.

ONLY this type of revolution is currently happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria, which has its aim only to empower the Middle Class, but not to dispense with Capitalism.

Without a true Marxist leadership, NO Russian Revolution would have been possible, and NO similar overthrow will occur in the Middle East. For in spite of the energy and commitment, without an understanding of these Events and the leadership to re-direct it into what is required today, these remarkable Events could once more merely replace one kind of top down control with another.

Remember Marx with all his years in the Library of the British Museum, and Lenin settling down to write Materialism and Empirio Criticism during the Reaction after the failed 1905 Revolution. Marx was right! Dialectical Materialism in ALL fields is infinitely superior to the conceptions of the “conserving class”, but such things don’t happen automatically. Human Beings have to conquer ever-new areas as they become necessary, and thus increasingly “tool up” the Working Class for Revolution.

Who Agrees?

(A new series of special issues of the Shape Journal on Marxist philosophy are soon to be published on website to address some of the issues raised in this post - watch this space)

 

SHAPE needs YOU

 

...to comment on our work!

An urgent dialogue is required on important new philosophical ideas published on Shape Journal - all responses welcome.

To facilitate this vital task, each issue on the Journal now has links to where you can comment on what you have read.

Any other ideas on how we can make this dialogue easier are also welcome - comment below!

New Special Issue - The Jigsaw

Special Issue 11 - The Jigsaw: A Conspectus of Pete Mason's Quantum Mechanics and Dialectical Materialism.

This issue constitutes a conspectus/review of a paper by Pete Mason on the Socialist World website entitled: Quantum Mechanics and Dialectical Materialism (Marxism Materialism and Particle Physics), published on Boxing Day 2010.

It is advised that the reader should take time to study the original paper before reading this issue for a more complete understanding of what is being discussed.

Two approaches are taken to the task. The first paper entitled The Marxist Apologists for Copenhagen is a direct response to Mason’s paper from a contending Marxist position; namely that Marxism and the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory are diametrically opposed, philosophically.

The second paper, Notes on Marxism, Materialism and Particle Physics, goes in to more detail and is a point-by-point critique of Mason’s paper, undertaken to reveal the inherent weaknesses in the original argument. These are vitally important to elucidate as Marxism should, in fact, be the study of Qualitative Change, something modern physicists have long abandoned. To adopt their pragmatic and statistical approaches to understanding and to embrace the “discoveries” of quantum physics as gospel, is to abandon Dialectical Materialism entirely for Idealism.

An Irresolvable Argument?

The basic dichotomy in the Philosophy of Science

How many dimensions are they in Reality?
	The answer is three!
Ah yes, you mean the three dimensions of Space, but you must not forget Time!
	Why?
Because clearly, the World is not static, it changes over Time, so to include that you have to raise the number of dimensions to four.
	Why?
Well, how else can we include it: you do agree that time does pass and must be included, don’t you?
	Yes, but why include it as a 4th dimension? You could consider a set of three-e-dimensional Spaces with one for every moment of Time!
But, Time doesn’t come in gobbets: it is continuous, just like Space. So your set will be like a sequence of stills, attempting to represent a wholly continuous Space & Time and will therefore be completely inadequate. Do you see?
	Ah! I see you are really talking about representing Reality as we do in Graphs, and NOT the nature of Reality itself!
No, you are mistaken. I am only insisting upon a wholly continuous union of Space & Time!
	And why is that so important?
Well clearly, it is within such a context that we can solve the relations between things and arrive at equations.
	But, isn’t that just Graphs again? Are you not making the Representation tail wag the Reality dog, because all your relations and equations are predicated upon such an abstract space-time continuity as the Stage upon which all Reality plays out?
Of course I am not! When we talk about particles, atoms, waves and even planets and stars we are going well beyond Graphs.
	Oh, I see! Are your equations then independent of the ways you investigate them?
What do you mean?
	Well, whenever you do Physics nowadays, everything is predicated entirely upon Equations, and everything else is termed unprovable Metaphysics, is that not true?
Well no! They are the essential Forms of Reality, but we do a great deal more than just refer to them.
	So, you are not a Copenhagenist along with the rest of the scientific World? Where do you stand instead? Do you have an alternative explanation of the Double Slit Experiment, for example?
I think you are hog-tied by “classical” and mistaken assumptions that everything is like our everyday macro World. It isn’t! When we investigate the Sub Atomic World we find things that we are incapable of explaining using our usual metaphors. For example new forms exist, which can sometimes act like a particle and sometimes act like a wave.
	So, you are a Copenhagenist! Do you also search for answers ONLY within your essential equations and considered within your 4-dimensional continuous ground?
Can you think of a better way to conduct Modern Science?
	Well, yes, and for a whole series of good reasons. For example you, along with the rest of your colleagues, ignore my Paradoxes, which demonstated that the assumptions of both Infinite Continuity and Analysis into the wholly descrete, were both profoundly misconceived, and merely a pragmatic way of dealing with aspects of Reality.
All that has long ago been dealt with!
	Only Formally (mathematically) I think you will find – never concretely!
But, it is only within such formal relations that we can uncover the essences of the Real World. How can you disagree with that?
	Well, I do disagree, and most vigorously, for equations are both only a starting point for the very different process of Explanation, and, at the same time, are only purely and totally Formal – abstractions! How can they drive concrete Reality?
But, we use these equations every day and they deliver! How can you say that such use is to be ignored?
	Well, of course, I don’t. They are very useful! BUT, only when the users remake a piece of the World to fit the equation. Without an appropriate Domain of Applicability, all equations fail abysmally.
It seems to me that you reject the unassailable nature of formal equations, without presenting a better alternative. Surely, the crises at the end of the 19th century of your classical approach consigned all that to the rubbish bin forever?
	I’m afraid you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Believe it or not, the damaging assumptions of the pre quantum era, are still around today, AND within your Copenhagen stance too. To saddle the holist position with that old standpoint is not correct. The most important error of Copenhagen is that they (and you) place formal abstractions as driving Reality, and that is Idealism.

The problem revealed in this disagreement will not be resolved by formal logical argument alone. As can be seen from the above, within those forms NO resolution is possible. The methods that Mankind has developed over many millennia could not be other than constructs: NO assured paths to Truth were, nor are they yet, available So, each and every gain had to be an invention, which each time included a little more Objective Content (parts or aspects of the Truth) than the things they replaced.

The Crisis in Physics represents the denouement of a whole set of long-held assumptions and even principles, which though they enabled developments of a remarkable nature in the past, have finally become unpassible barriers to the current difficulties. For almost 100 years physicists have been repeatedly avoiding recognition of this wall, but in spite of a desperate retreat into Idealism, they have failed to solve a single outstanding contradiction.

Whatever these mathematicians believe, they can never solve these problem.

That is our job, and we will do it!

But, of course, such a promise cannot be left there.

The ground for such assurances must be, at least, broadly outlined.

A New Path to Truth?

Are we addressing our World correctly?

When we use the principles of Plurality (The Whole and its separable Parts) and Reductionism (the continuous causal chain) along with absolute and unchanging essential relations, are we treating it as it actually is, or are we imposing upon it a “universal”, which is actually only a “selection of moments” within a temporary stable phase?

Now, if every extracted relation from Reality is not singular, but indeed always a particular and temporary result of multiple, mutually interacting and transforming sub processes – each of which, in turn, will have the same creative nature, then we can consider variabilities significantly moving the “centre of gravity” of any particular nexus beyond its final threshold, and causing the emergence from one temporary relation to another.

In such a holist conception of Reality, no relation is absolute or eternal, but we have, nevertheless, to explain the apparent constancy of the evident periods of reliable predictability.

For though the World may well be holistic, it isn’t chaotic!

It displays “fairly” consistent forms everywhere within a current stability.

We have to conceive of a holist world that drives towards, and self-maintains, such stabilities, but, at the same time, will be subject to underlying variabilities, which can, and always will at some point, precipitate a complete transformation.

When we attempt to build our World out of stable equations, we are conceptually limiting our whole approach to Stability as its only and permanent state. And we conceive of catastrophes of dissolution as wholly destructive end-points! We attempt to explain an evolving World in terms only of pinheads movements, within its periods of Stability, and which we further endow with a seamless transformation into the new without crises of any kind (often mistakenly labelled as evolution not revolution)!

Whereas, the much more revealing and important task is to explain both the apparent stability, and its dissolution, in terms of its underlying variabilities and their developments too.

Of course, our choice, historically, was always both unavoidable and indeed valuable. To embrace a fully Holist World from the outset, would have allowed NO step-by-step advances whatsoever - better to limit our attentions to the most stable and persisting aspects of Reality and tackle them. Or when seemingly all such easy targets had been dealt with, to impose a controllable constancy upon a given, limited situation, and investigate that in the same way as before.

For though the World is undoubtedly holistic, to embrace that meant, for Early Mankind, that they had to subordinate themselves to it, and pursue what can only be called religious routes to Truth.

The pluralistic/scientific alternative may have been a construct, but it did allow maximal use of what could be extracted as long as Mankind could control quite limited areas. The World was divided (or even constrained) into separate investigatable Domains, wherein consequent discoveries could be turned to useful ends.

Now, the new modern holistic approach will have to prove itself by beginning to address the number one problem, which Science has, so far, proved entirely incapable of solving.

It is, of course, the Origin of Life on Earth, and this work has already begun.

Class and Consciousness

I have contributed an article on class to my son's blog, The Red Eye Portal.
Click here if you are interested in reading it.

The Holism Debate

Four philosophers Tom, Dick, Harry & Bill are in their cups, but instead of going out and painting the town red, they gather closer together in the quietest corner of the pub, and argue about their shared conundrum – What is Holism?

How do they deal coherently with such a self-modifying Reality?

These four contributions are in the order in which they were delivered, each correcting or extending its predecessor, or drawing in evidence or metaphors from their own experiences of Reality. What do YOU think of their conclusions?

1. TOM: The Ascent of Predictive Processes

Our highly commendable efforts to understand Reality nevertheless bear the stamp of our own current stage of development. To jump straight to a full and coherent conception of Everything was, and still is, totally impossible, and, in addition, each stage in the process will be unavoidably limited by our own current capabilities, knowledge and understanding. Indeed, whatever we extract will never be incremental steps in a direct upwards ascent.

All gains will be conditional, simplified, and even rationalised, in our attempt to reveal what we see as the essential driving elements our “conceived of” clearly meaningful World.

And this conditional process is always more of a large-swing zigzag than a ladder, and our greatest difficulties are often involved in shedding our most dearly-held assumptions and principles, which have indubitably been the foundations of our previous gains, rather than the inherent problems of the actual nature of Reality itself.

Nevertheless, progress is definitely made – NOT by descrete morsels of Absolute Truth, but on the contrary, by a series of constructs (didactic models), which contain objective content.

Now the meaning of this described process of development becomes crucial!

Objective Content is NOT the Truth, but it embodies aspects or views of parts of the Truth, in given circumstances, and it is useable! That made each of these, and still does, a considerable gain. But it doesn’t, of itself and necessarily, take us directly forwards towards a fuller understanding. And this is because its main purpose is often and primarily for Prediction.

To be in a position to accurately predict what will happen next, endows the successful predictor with considerable power. With such dependable predictions, plans can be made and instituted. Mankind can begin to control aspects of his World to his evident benefit!

But accurate prediction is not necessarily predicated on real understanding, but on the extraction of dependable Form or Patterns.

For, if such patterns could be reliably revealed, the future could be predicted by a simple forwards extension of the pattern.

The trouble was, and still is, that the World is not wholly or even separable deterministic – always following rigidly pre-ordained patterns to completely predictable outcomes.

Occasionally, such conditions can exist, but they are rarely dependable, and a good dollop of hope, ritual and “added magic” was always considered an essential ingredient in any attempts to predict such outcomes.

Yet such rituals and “added substances” could (though rarely) actually help, and well-defined processes, with “important” substances present were established and retained in that using group’s culture. It was still hocus-pocus, but it could, and sometimes did, contain a sliver of Objective Content, and, the process could be more successful than most such “magic”

The outcome of such methods was that Mankind began to identify necessary substances and even began to add features such as Fire or Water, and occasionally a well-defined, controlled and maintained process would actually begin to deliver the predicted results quite reliably.

The crucial feature in such processes was that a Part of Reality was isolated and maintained as such, and subjected to controlled processes within those steadfastly maintained conditions.

Mankind achieved a measure of predictive success by imposing Plurality upon a given situation.

What is meant here by Plurality is the conception that each and every Whole is composed of separable constituent Parts, and although this was only rarely true in unfettered Reality, it could be made to be the case in limited and controllable localities. Yet the requirements for such impositions upon sections of Reality were initially prodigious in the light of Man’s own current powers and knowledge.

To even start, such methods required a great deal of reliable knowledge, which itself was difficult to come by.

A chicken-and-Egg situation meant that early real gains were dead slow!

But, Mankind did, by partial truth upon partial truth, begin to gather more and more objective content, which in turn empowered him to successfully control situations to he required degree.

Ultimately, there was an ever widening area of situations in which he could impose a strict Plurality upon them, and hence, by holding most things constant and varying only a handful of factors were indeed in a position to both extract and predict!

This was successively refined into what came to be called scientific methodology, and fostered the great developments in the production of required implements, tools and weapons which became Technology.

But it was deterministic and mechanistic in the main, and was therefore NOT applicable in the bulk of questions which Mankind had to constantly address.

It became an aberrant (though very useful) growth in a particular direction, and engendered a general attitude to all endeavours, which was, all too often, entirely inappropriate!

But you can direct your own paths of development.

They may be inadequate, but if they do contain that vital objective content, then you must pursue them, though the more general outcomes will only be “as predicted” in very limited, mechanistic areas, and everywhere else they could produce, and often were, dire results.

2. DICK: How a Holistic World Suggested Plurality

Now in the previous contribution (The Ascent of Prediction), the development of Technology has been outlined, but such an approach to Reality is by no means the only one, or even the most important one, and the reason is that it is wholly predicated upon Plurality, and the World is simply NOT pluralistic.

Yet as with all such characterisations by Mankind, BOTH of our versions of the two categories Plurality and Holism are clearly mistaken oversimplifications, and in spite of their many strengths and successes, can, and in the end always do, mislead us to a remarkable extent.

For example Holism, in its crudest form, insists that absolutely everything affects everything else. All is subject to constant change – absolutely nothing is constant!

Now, if that were “all that there is to it” concerning Reality, we would not get very far it attempting to understand it.

Nothing would be extractable as separable and independent entities or relations, and every attempt at prediction based on some isolated segment of Reality would inevitably fail.

So, such a basic holistic approach inevitably disables our chances of getting to grips with Reality, and ever actually controlling it to direct it to required ends.

It that simplified form Holism becomes a merely passive philosophy, which observes Reality-as-is as it remorselessly pursues its own paths of interaction and change. We cannot intervene! We merely notice its cycles which are regularly repeated, and the trajectories of Life and Death, but we can only sit and contemplate. [Some wags actually say that such a position accurately defines all Philosophy, but that isn’t true!]

And, of course, that version of Holism doesn’t pertain anywhere: it is our own simplification of what does exist in unfettered Reality, but it is a fiction.

That basic view delivers such a complex, multiply-interacting mix, that the result is close to chaos, and totally random and unpredictable in particulars.

Evidently, such a definition is not only useless; it is significantly false as well.

For, in the midst of chaos, we do indeed have Order. Things may well be in constant change, but most such changes are NOT immediately significant, and the entire multiple and contrasting processes are not necessarily either equal in weight or entirely contending. For, if they were we would indeed have ONLY a totally random and chaotic World.

No forms would be evident, and everything would be the same everywhere.

Now, that is clearly NOT the case.

And the ground for the many subscribers to Plurality was that many, many things did indeed persist as the same Form for sometimes considerable periods. Indeed, the belief that all species were permanently constant and unchanging, and had been so ever since God had created them was almost universally believed. And even individual living things, once they had matured into adulthood, tended to remain in that state for long periods of time.

Without any doubt, our real, holistic World could, and did, beget episodes of Stability, wherein certain things persisted as constant – at least for a time.

Now, in all this there is an inherent contradiction!

Either there are NO purposive processes maintaining constant things, or there are ONLY such processes!

Stability implies the presence of such processes and seems to confirm Plurality, whereas constant change and quite evident dissolution and indeed Death, implies contending processes as in a holistic World.

The pluralists among us concentrate upon the essential laws, which “produce” everything in Reality and never themselves change.

While the holists concentrate upon an “infinite” number of contending processes, making nothing eternal and all involved in a constant process of change.

As inferred earlier, BOTH these are incorrect!

But just denouncing the contending alternatives has to be insufficient! We must characterise Reality as it actually is, and that must include both periods of Stability, and periods of dissolution and significant change. And, once again, these are not merely present together,

Indeed, they are interludes in an overall process of change.

There are dissolutory factors constantly attacking any stability, while there are also other factors which tend to erect stable situations, and the remarkable thing is that they “alternate” in dominance, and neither permanently dominate the world.

To make matters even more difficult for Mankind’s purpose of understanding these things, the situations do not just alternate like a permanent oscillation. Indeed, the overall process is one of discernable development – indeed, of Evolution.

Reality is NOT a fixed entity. It is regularly producing the entirely NEW, and creating new and higher stabilities, which themselves never permanently persist. But neither do they merely dissociate into “lesser” noise and chaos (as, it must be pointed out, it is inferred in the Second Law of Thermodynamics - a pluralist belief!), but resolves each cataclysm of dissociation into a new and higher stability.

For Mankind to cope with Reality-as-is, he must make the study of Emergent Change his most important task, for without it, he too will ricochet from one illusion to the next without really understanding what is happening.

3. HARRY: An Evolutionary Conception of Reality

Now, from the two contributions so far, it must be clear that, as usual, it is our conceptions of the inherent Nature of Reality which most often leads us astray. In addition, we have a very mistaken idea of what Truth is, and this has similar deleterious effects.

Reality is neither wholly determined by eternal laws, nor is it constantly deteriorating into ever more total chaos.

On the contrary, it regularly produces Stable Situations, which persist, but which also, in time, will just as inevitably destroy. Reality has a definite propensity for stability, but only produces stable situations which are inevitably undermined and superceded. And that process of Major Qualitative Change has dissolution at its very heart.

The myth of the Phoenix arising from the flames has a real basis in developing Reality!

The Possibility Space of Reality is regularly extended, yet none of these extensions are final and perfect. They can, and always will be, overturned by degeneration and replaced by the wholly new.

Those who support such a conception of Reality consider that the main study must be the trajectory of such changes, including the erection of the new stabilities, their undermining and dissolution, and the subsequent creation of an entirely new Level of stability ON TOP.

Now, this area is complicated not only by the richness of each new Level, but by the (perhaps) surprising continuance of the older Levels too.

The New Levels only replace the Old locally, and indeed, depend upon selected subsets of the older processes internally. So though locally the process is one of dissolution, replacement and selection, that is not the case outwith the aegis of the new Level – i.e. over the rest of Reality.

The various Levels co-exist, but are mutually affected to some degree!

Perhaps my favourite analogy of such a Universe-wide process is delivered by the atmosphere of the planet Jupiter.

The visible (top) of that atmosphere appears to be split into bands (by latitude). There are clear divisions and different movements, speeds, and even directions of cloud movements.

Yet at persisting points, great, stable “storms” occur, and indeed persist for centuries. Clearly the Form of the Great Red Spot is not unlike a hurricane on Earth in the spiralling rotation of the gases involved. But whereas the earthbound storms are always very temporary, the Spot on Jupiter appears semi-permanent – stable?

Around it the other layers continue their dominant movements, but with the regular generation of “eddies” as in an earth-bound stream. Similar things appear within the boundaries of the many layers, and particularly around the boundary of the Great Red Spot.

Clearly, there are important resonances between the general idea of Qualitative Change with Stabilities, and the phenomena on Jupiter.

4. BILL: The Jovian Exemplar

Now, though extremely valuable, it is clear that the inclusion of the image of the atmosphere of Jupiter in the last contribution needs a further explanation, if it is to really deepen our idea of a holistic Universe and its inevitable trajectory of interludes of Stability and Change.

Look closely at this photograph of a section of the atmosphere of Jupiter.

To really grasp the significance, you would ideally have to see it as a long, time-lapse sequence of images over quite long individual intervals of time. For such a sequence, speeded-up to reveal the vast and complex movements involved would greatly amplify what is contained in this breath-taking exemplar of Constant Change.

For though some features persist (indeed the Great Red Spot has been around for hundreds of years), everything else displays a veritable cauldron of constant and unpredictable motions.

The various lateral bands move at quite different speeds and even in opposite directions, and we are constantly presented with stable processes, limited in extent, and everywhere we have active curlicued boundaries between them.

Sub spots peel off the boundary of the Great Red Spot, and persist for a while, and elaborate and turbulent eddies are created everywhere,

Now, we can be, and usually are, transfixed by these phenomena, and imagine that, like the atmosphere of Earth, we could with sufficient data, construct a simulation of the overall process with multiple laws (each (of course) accompanied by its failure thresholds – where it must be replaced by another more appropriate one. And because of recent mathematical researches into “Chaos”, we would undoubtedly bring in that determinism too. Indeed, the very fact that a deterministic equation could produce such seemingly unpredictable stuff would convince us that our earth-bound methods would indeed cope even there, and we would again MISS what Jupiter really has to teach us. For though over our life-length imposed periods, we see Jupiter as in turmoil, but basically the “same”, there can be NO DOUBT that over vast periods of time it has changed to a colossal extent, AND passed through many different “temporary” stable states.

So the suggested movie of the Jovian atmosphere is only an analogy or exemplar for Change in all things, it does not deliver a complete metaphor. The crucial lesson must be about Stability and its overthrow even in limited systems such as this.

In what appears as a prime situation for total chaos, we also have stability and BOTH occur within an overall and continuing process. The activities at the boundaries are vitally important because, though within a stable structure like the Great Red Spot, we have persisting Patterns and Cycles, at the margins we have almost infinite variety AND access to substances from other stable structures elsewhere.

[I am also moved to suggest the paintings of Mark Rothko as delivering similar activities at the boundaries of his wonderful “areas”, though he is concerned with US (Mankind) directly, and not the Universe in general]

It is in those boundary regions where any transport and juxtaposition of materials occurs and guarantees maximum possibilities. Within the major stabilities the opposite is surely true.

So, look again, and imagine the described movies.

You are looking at really existing Holism!

You have Stability within chaos and constant changes. Does not the confidence of our programmed simulations seem more than a little blinkered?