Audio Issue 3 - Understanding Change

 

Audio Issue 3 of the SHAPE Journal

This selection of tapes looks at how we try and understand the dynamics of change. Science fails to understand change in any meaningful way. It can analyse quantitative change well enough, but how things emerge and evolve is much less well understood. Jim Schofield’s latest philosophical research attempts to address qualitative change, and begins to devise new experimental approaches and methods for capturing and understanding these crucial changes as they happen.

Start by watching the video below, in which I interview Jim about his new research, and the change in direction and focus that it represents. Below that you will find three raw recordings of Jim's recent tapes, in which the new theory is being currently developed. 

Issue 77: The Systems Theory of Everything Part II

 

Issue 77 of SHAPE Journal

Issue 77 contains the second instalment of The Systems Theory of Everything.

This series of issues attempts to set out the first definitive account of Jim Schofield’s new Systems Approach to Science. The various papers collected here, and over the next few editions of this journal, explore the proposed theory and explain why it is such a radical departure from the current universally applied scientific method.

The series continues with a closer look at Buddha, Marx, Hegel and Zeno for clues on how to develop Systems Theory.

Contents:

Introducing Schofield’s Systems Theory

Real Messy Development
Top-Down or Bottom-Up?

Reality-as-becoming:
The Two-Way Street of Real Full Causality

Beyond Zeno and Hegel:
The Profound Significance of Contention

The Buddha and Quantum Theory

A Comprehensive Holist Approach:
How can we effectively deal with Levels?

Systems Contentions

Systems-based Marxism

Equations: Why they lead us to nothing...

Entering the Multi-Level Cosmos

Issue 73 of SHAPE Journal: Holist Science II

 

Issue 73

Understanding Reality

We attempt to understand our world in order to get the very best from it: but, it is certainly a breathtakingly difficult-to-understand world we find ourselves in. It is currently determinable only by two seemingly diametrically-opposite, yet generally-available overall systems of analysis, that directly appear to often effectively cancel each-other-out, and therefore consequently majorly undermine, both the possibility of understanding its underlying, driving trajectory - or even, alternatively, not being able to predict from any overall, perceived process, exactly what would happen next. So that, all attempts at revealing any particularly long-term set of objectives, at all regularly, appear to be always doomed to failure!

Yet, nevertheless, all short-term-and-local Realities do appear to follow some seemingly Fixed Natural Laws, but only if, along with such necessary time-and-locality constraints, so that we are constantly seeking out only Fixed Laws to enable such plans - until they, as is usually the case, finally fail.

Now, these two possible Stances were both established, at almost the very same time, some 2,500 years ago, but each of them, happening in very different areas of the World.

One of them, insisted that the Natural Laws were both Eternal and separable, but, as they were often acting simultaneously along with many others, one of the contributions was then usually largely Dominant, so that its outcomes would totally swamp all others, in their overall direct joint sum!

While, the alternative stance, instead, considered that the norm for all simultaneous contributions, was one of a constant variance of all acting Laws, so that outcomes were always changing, and all predictions just had to include an extended range of possible outcomes, with, in addition, a constant readiness to switch to an alternative, if a Key Indicator so suggested a sufficient change to merit the switch.

Certain extremes of these two, were undoubtedly delivered effectively: but, the bulk of cases were always very poorly served indeed!

The former case was later termed Plurality, and was attempted to be brought strictly to heel, by rigid and long-lasting controls upon idealised situations: but these still proved impossible, unless the number of active factors within a situation were significantly limited, which enabled a kind of Stability to be much more easily achieved-and-maintained.

Now, this was justified by the rapid and successful developments during the Greek Intellectual Revolution of that time, which ALSO kept the idea of all Natural Laws being Forever Fixed, but, as their contributions, to the overall sum, did vary in magnitude - that was the supposed to be the sole reason for the different outcomes, The Laws were still always Fixed, but their overall sum wasn’t.

That did not suit the alternative Stance, as its supporters insisted that the individual Laws themselves Varied Constantly to some degree. So that was seen as the reason for varying overall outcomes, as well as being the reason. for the Variety and Beauty of the Natural World, and, particularly, those involving all Living Things, which could never be seen as being due to Eternally Fixed Laws.

This view was later termed Holism.

But, of course, neither case delivered The Full Truth of Reality!

The problem was that simultaneously-acting Laws often affected one another, and changed their Effects. So, things were constantly in a moment-by-moment, consequent on-going, melee of multiple Changes in ALL contributions! This, initially, seemed to undermine all attempts to predict overall outcomes.

But that too could, and often was, also negated, by the fact of Temporary Stabilities, caused by the forms of the interactions going on within such multiple simultaneous sets of processes! For, though some of these, in turn, were caused by the Effects due to Diametric Opposites - but only ever within on-going, multiply-repeated processes.

For Cyclically-repeated processes involving such opposites, selectively eliminated all extraneous materials, so that ultimately, Pure, constantly repeating cycles were the main outcomes. And, these could balance with their equally Pure oppopsites to cancel-out. And, what also frequently “steadied-the-boat”, was the fact that in diverse bundles of such sets, including such Pure Processes, where stabilised sets simply repeated, whilever there were Correcting Processes for every change in an existing process, occurring within another of the same set.

So, constant repeating of effectively unchanging Cycles of the same contents, due to the above effects, necessarily delivered many Temporary Stabilities, as long as those conditions remained! For, in such constantly repeating Cycles of those processes, all Non-Opposite Processess would be effectively eliminated, leaving only the Balanced Opposite processes determining the consequent Stability.

When these did change, entirely-locally, they were termed Emergences: and when they changed much more generally, over wider, extensive Systems, they were sometimes called Revolutions!

Clearly Pluralist Science and Holistic Science are very different views of the same world!

NOTE:

It is clear, to this researcher, that, though the above does correctly show the effects of constantly repeating Cycles of processes, and, in so doing, selectively-eliminating chance ingredients, and even processes, to ultimately arrive at a constantly-repeating, overwhelmingly dominant unity of the same sort of processes - the actual mechanisms involved do not, at this stage, entirely satisfy!

And, in watching one of Gareth Samuel’s “See the Pattern” videos, about the processes taking place in the Sun, it became clear that he too was arriving at seemingly dominant sets of processes, that had been similarly refined into constantly repeating systems, that must have emerged from initially complex sets, that only gradually arrived at what he concluded were the final regular forms: so, it seemed likely, that these could have been arrived at in the same way as the processes I was considering.

In addition, it was clear that, in spite of their seemingly constant arrived-at state, they also were never permanent: so the ultimate transformations to other steady states might also reflect such changes elsewhere too.

What is usually generally called Science is actually no such thing: we might more accurately term it Technology, for as a wholly pluralist undertaking, it is not even derived from any dependable form of Science, which would have to be, to some degree, Holistic in its philosophical Stance, to be able to deal with Reality-as-is!

But, because that cannot be distilled into a collection of Pluralist Fixed Laws, the practitioners involved, by taking the route of greatly modified and controlled situations, did manage to effectively enable a Pluralist version, always limited to only very highly constrained situations - but sufficient to also deliver a wholly achievable, and increasingly broad and useable Technology.
But, of course, the required extension into a generally applicable Science, within which it was intended to reside a comprehensive and Explanatory Means, was always impossible! Indeed, researches have proved conclusively that a Science, based upon Plurality, can’t help us understand the natural world, even though a functioning Technology certainly gives us vast control over our environments - and has effectively transformed the world to suit our means of understanding it.

The revelation of these crucial flaws, were revealed very soon after the Greek Intellectual Revolution, by Zeno of Elea, who was able to demonstrate the failures of Pluralist Science in his work called Paradoxes, in which he was able to reveal irresolvable Contradictions in Movement, using the Rationality discovered legitimately in Mathematics, but then wholly illegally applied in both General Reasoning and the Sciences, and from which, they had done it, in spite of Zeno’s valid revelations.

In fact it wasn’t until the early 19th century, that Hegel took Zeno’s work and applied it more broadly to logical Opposites, that the truth was finally generally revealed, by Hegel’s follower, historian and philosopher Karl Marx, who began the mammoth task of applying those dialectical ideas, first to History in General, and then to a major Critique of Capitalist Economics! But, nevertheless, since Marx’s death in the 1880s, no-one has attempted the task of applying Marx’s Comprehensive Method to any of the Sciences, so that in spite of Lenin’s warning, in his book Materialism and Emporio Criticism, the most important areas have still NOT received the necessary treatment, resulting in the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and a similarly disabled Cosmology!

 
And, in fact, Modern Holistic Theory, which has been wholly a product of the 21st Century, has not been applied to anything comprehensively, though many individual papers have already been published here in SHAPE Journal - and in the near future the writer of this paper is nearing the completion of an alternative to Copenhagen. While a short pamphlet upon Holistic Science is also completed, and will be published, in print, this Spring. There is still much to do.

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. 

Special Issue 69: Redefining Philosophy II

Read Special Issue 69 of SHAPE Journal here

Special Issue 69 of SHAPE Journal is a continuation of the series called Redefining Philosophy. This research attempts to complete the unfinished task of Karl Marx, and redefine philosophy as both Materialist and Holist - in other words, grounded in the ever-changing and interconnected real world that surrounds us.

Special Issue 68: Redefining Philosophy

Read the latest issue of the SHAPE Journal

Redefining Philosophy? 

You would think after two and a half millennia that a Universally-Agreed-Basis for Philosophy would by now be well established, but that is not only far from being the case, it is also inevitably so!

So, let us reveal the unavoidable trajectory of Mankind’s Intellectual Development into a real perspective. Rational Thinking of any developable kind is at most 2,500 years old, in an overall hominid historical Trajectory of several million years. Man began to try to think rationally in the last 0.0005% of that time, leaving 99.9995% when they didn’t, and indeed couldn’t think rationally at all.

And, of course, the actually-occurring tempos of that development have certainly not been embodied in a constant upwards climb: for sometimes progress was at zero for long periods. Sometimes things went backwards.

For 2,300 years after the Greek Intellectual Revolution it was fatally damaged by an assumption that few philosphers recognise - the hidden assumption of Plurality. This assumed that all relations, properties and Laws are fixed qualitatively and separable from one another.

Only in the early 19th century did Hegel, the German Idealist Philosopher, attempt for the first time to integrate Qualitative Change into General Reasoning.

But even that was not universally accepted.

Indeed, it couldn’t be, whilever Philosophy remained idealist: for the solution could not come from Thinking itself, but in the our understanding of Concrete Reality. Only with the extension and vast further development of those ideas, which Hegel termed as Dialectics, was the possibility of a breakthrough even possible.

And, when it was attempted by Marx in the limited area of Capitalist Economics, it took him the rest of his life to address that single discipline, And in doing so, he was developing the stance as much as applying it.

Qualitative development was in everything, and every significant area of study, such as Science, would have to not only receive the same sort of attention as Economics, but would also be as much another voyage of discovery, very much more complex and unknown than Economics had been for Marx.

And in the the 140 years since Marx’s death, this task wasn’r even attempted. It has taken this Theorist and Philosopher over 10 years to lay the most basic of foundations.

But they have been remarkable!

To even begin the process, a wholly new approach had to be researched which produced the wholly new. For all Qualitative Change must produce the wholly new.

In all reasoning previously established using Fixed Laws and Pluralist Logic, the rationality involved, when it could be used, produced actual results - and the same ones every time it was used, and whoever used it! But Qualitative Changes are Dialectical, produced in what used to be seen as impossible developments, for which they were termed Emergences.

To grasp what an Emergence actually is, we must compare it to one of the previous pluralistic Laws, all of which have predictable outcomes.

The outcome from an Emergence, on the other hand, is NEVER predictable prior to its commencement, Indeed, you have to be an exceptional Dialectician to even predict the next phase of such a transformation, and only when the final result is imminent, can the culmination of a completed Emergence be guessed at.

So clearly the revolution in Premises and Bases required here will be very different from the prior Pluralist Methods.

The classical Qualitative changes involved in an Emergence start with a Stability, the destruction of which originally appears to be totally impossible, but which is then threatened by a whole series of crises, which usually, but ultimately, would cascade down into a total dissolution of the Stability, towards what seemed to be impending doom, but could, and often did, begin via series of crises attempt to build towards a new, and finally achieved self-sustaining Stability!

The new philosophical approach would have to reflect all of that too, in order to deliver an understanding of Real Development.

Special Issue 67: Holistic Materialism Addendum

Holistic Materialism Addendum 

This Special Issue of SHAPE is an addendum to the original two part series entitled Holistic Materialism published last year.

The original series constituted a set of loosely related papers by Marxist theorist Jim Schofield concerning his philosophy of science, and his application of Holism and Dialectical Materialism to the sciences, especially particle physics. This has been a historical and epistemological project as much as it has been a philosophical and scientific one. In order to understand the mistakes and impasses we are presented with in science today, it is imperative to go back and have some understanding of how knowledge and philosophy have evolved over human history.

But what exactly is Holistic Materialism? Holism is a word that means different things to different people, a seemingly vague term that is often abused and misused - ‘holistic medicine’ for example covers all sorts of pseudoscientific nonsense no empricial researcher would care to be associated with. However Holism as a philosophical concept refers to something quite specific, and for Jim Schofield it is encapsualted in its opposition to the Pluralist position (not to be confused with pluralism), which sees all entities and laws as separable - capable of being isolated and studied in isolation - but more importantly, that this separability will somehow unlock the truth of how things in reality work. Essentially it is the philosophy of reductionism and this underpins almost all contemporary scientific research.

Jim Schofield’s work is a unique critique of the hidden assumptions which underpin all science.

This is not the first time the term Holistic Materialism has been used, however. We see it linked to biology and 19th century naturalists in the writing of Ernst Mayr.

“The discovery of the similarity between dialectical materialism and the thinking of the naturalists is not new. Several authors have called attention to it, particularly Allen... He starts quite rightly: “The process of natural selection is as dialectical a process one could find in nature.” Allen thought that the dialectic viewpoint of the naturalists had been lost between 1890 and 1950... Allen asserts that the “holistic materialism” of the naturalists had failed to incorporate two important dialectical views. First “the notion that the internal change within a system is the result specifically of the interaction of opposing forces or tendencies within the system itself.”
The Roots of Dialectical Materialism (Mayr, 1997)

In the work of Schofield we see this kind of holist view of natural systems but very much informed by the dialectics of Karl Marx. It is not enough to see the interconnected-ness of things but realise how natural dominances emerge, to the point of seeming universal, and also how these dominances can come crashing down as their internal contradictions finally play out. It is in these crucial events that we see the Emergence of the wholly new. In these papers we see how Pluralist science prohibits access to this fundamental feature of reality, and that while those 19th century naturalists may have hinted at the way forward, holist science is something new.

In this additional set of papers we address Mayr’s contribution directly, including his full paper The Roots of Dialectical Materialism as part of this publication.

Jim Schofield’s initial conspectus (also included here) is critical of Mayr’s positioning of early Naturalists as instrumental in the development of Marxist theory, but also acknowledges Mayr’s work as potentially very valuable to the further development of Marxism, philosophically, and in aiding the difficult progression towards a holistic scientific method.

The World Socialist Web Site, published by the International Committee of the Fourth International, certainly considered Mayr’s work important to Marxism, publishing a detailed obituary of this great thinker upon his death in 2005. In this piece Walter Gilberti writes:

“Mayr’s life-long interest in the fundamental questions that continue to animate the biological sciences, combined with his exceptional longevity as a working and thinking scientist, engendered in him a profound appreciation of its history. In particular, he stressed the importance of a study of the history of scientific concepts (natural selection, e.g.). He wrote: “Preoccupation with this sort of conceptual history of science is sometimes belittled as a hobby of retired scientists. Such an attitude ignores the manifold contributions which this branch of scholarship makes” (1982). He stated further: “One can take almost any advance, either in evolutionary biology or in systematics, and show that it did not depend as much on discoveries as on the introduction of new concepts.... Those are not far wrong who insist that the progress of science consists principally in the progress of scientific concepts” (1982).”

This is certainly similar to Schofield’s view and the approach taken by this retired scientist, also trying to better understand how science works, and how it fails to work, through theory. Scientific Concepts are vital here, as Mayr suggests. However objective one’s data may seem to be, it is only through the frame of key concepts that interpretation and understanding begin.

Holistic Materialism is just such a concept - a frame for understanding our scientific findings by adopting the much wider view that is necessary, in such a complex and interconnected world.

The Diverse Tasks for Revolutionaries

Revolution of the Mind

The essential modern extensions to a Marxist analysis of Capitalism are clearly underway with contributions like those of David Harvey. And, Richard Wolff correctly extols the virtues of Worker Co-ps as an alternative to Capitalist forms of production.

But these contributions are by no means sufficient to build an effective revolutionary organisation, capable, when a genuine revolutionary situation emerges, of leading the Working Class to finally overthrow Capitalism. Indeed, literally nowhere are such organisations being built!

I know because I spent a good part of my adult life in professedly Revolutionary organisations, yet none of them were anywhere close to being up to the competences required. And it was not just in their political organisation, or even their policies: they were, in retrospect, emasculated shadows of the real thing - embodied in such as the Russian Bolsheviks.

And, they were not only very top-down in their bureaucratic organisation, but also lamentably lacking in developing the essential and radically different Philosophy of Marxism - Dialectical Materialism!  Indeed, even their reasoning was dominated by the old Formal Reasoning, which had led to Hegel's attempt to correct its pluralist disabilities, via his instituting into it the directly contrary Dialectical Approach.

And as a professional physicist, I couldn't even raise any interest in the primary-philosophical-task still outstanding among self-professed Marxists - namely, both the philosophical, and the physical, defeat of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in Modern Sub Atomic Physics. Indeed, in bringing it up, I was admonished for using it to avoid the pressing day-to-day rasks of political Activism!

None of the parties I joined were general Dialectical Materialists: they were, in fact, well out-of-date, and inadequate purely economic Marxists, and political activists only, and they never discussed Marx's actual revolutionary philosophy at all. It most certainly did not guide their activities, or their publications.

Yet, it was undoubtedly Marx's creation of the wholly new philosophical standpoint of Dialectical Materialism, that enabled all his consequent contributions. But as a single individual, addressing the whole gigantic area of Capitalist Economics, he never had the time to address all the other crucial areas in the same way.

And, the most important of these, Science, has still not been addressed by any of the "Marxist" groups.

Marxism can only advance if it is diversified...

Dialectics: Fixed and Variable

The Profundity of Qualitative Changes

I have spent a considerable amount of time, over recent years, effectively condemning the Principle of Plurality outright, even though it was one of the most significant achievement of the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th Century BC, and I necessarily did that not only to criticise its inherent weaknesses, but to also in addition simultaneously applaud its major contribution to Human Thought and Reasoning.

Both certainly had to be done! For all developments can never be purely absolute and positive: Reality does not deliver absolute Truth ever, but only aspects or parts of it, which unavoidably alight upon the easiest simplifications, which always have damagingly negative effects too. It is also an admission of the inadequacies of Thinking in Mankind, who were, after all, fairly recent originators of such wholly new processes in relation to addressing Reality.

Yet, the obvious alternative, the Principle of Holism, defined at about the same time, by The Buddha in India, certainly delivered no easy one-for-one superior replacement to Plurality. Indeed, it too has subsequently defeated the Buddha's disciples ever since, in attempting to deliver a coherent, useable and developable alternative, in spite of its undoubted wondrous moments of real Wisdom.

And, that turns out to be both its strength and its weakness: for no holistic system has yet ever been easily extracted from it, as a basis for Explaining the World causally - not least because it so frequently could clearly turn many situations into something quite different, or even their direct opposites.

Most important of all, in putting Qualitative Change at the heasrt of all Develoopment, it made the explanation of the consequent Emerging-New wholly impossible to derive directly from its producing circumstances.

The seeming impossibility of there being a useable System of Reasoning, tended to relegate its profound use to creative artists of various kinds, who, in individual Works-of-Art, could deliver profound moments of revelation only.

Yet, in spite of their Plurality, which considered all entities and processes as fixed, the Greeks' intellectual achievements remarkably included the invention of Mathematics, which as exclusively the study of Pure Forms alone, could indeed legitimately make that assumption, and when they illegitimately also extended that supposition to both Reasoning and Science, though generally undoutedly incorrect, it did indeed reflect the apparent constancy of most things - most of the time - the everywhere evidently temporary, yet long-lasting Stabilities of Reality, not only allowed Plurality to be a reasonable approximation, but it could also be guaranteed artificially by both greatly simplifying situations, and also holding things still.

It enabled Technology, but inhibited explanatory Science and developmental Reasoning. And, therefore, it was wholly incapable of explaing significant Developments both in an Evolving World, and in Creative Thinking.

It took all of 2,300 years before Hegel systematically tackled Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, with his attempt to include Qualitative Change into Formal Reasoning, which he termed Dialectics, though it was a member of his Young Hegelians, Karl Marx, who first extended it to the study of Reality with a vastly recast Dialectical Materialism, which he successfully applied to the current Capitalist Economic System in his major work Das Kapital.

Now, embedded in that work implicitly were the required definitions and Methodology of the New Stance, but he was actually developing it, as he also attempted to use it, throughout that excellent achievement. But, it was never overtly spelled out formally, nor could it be, until Marx's untimely death prevented his doing precisely that.

David Harvey's Lectures on Marx's Capital

And, it is only now that this necessary contribution has been achieved by Professor David Harvey in his series of lectures and YouTube videos. The whole series is remarkable: but his fourth Lecture upon Volume II of Das Kapital is magnificent!

But be prepared for contention!

Nothing is ever fixed forever - things which will be taken as fixed, will always cease to be so, as a consequence of natural development. But the Holist approach, in full flower, explains far more than any Pluralistic accounts ever could.

In this lecture he analyses what he terms as Fixed and Varying Capital, via Marx's Explanation of Capital as Value-in-Motion, a process totally impossible to address pluralistically, but only with Qualitative Changes throughout, with categories actually changing into their once totally-excluded opposites with such happening repeatedly, and therefore being incapable of either Description or Explanation by the still dominant Pluralist Stance in both Reasoning and Science.

Indeed, many of the changes occurring within Capitalism's trajectory, as it regularly morphs to climb out of its very regular Downturns, Recessions and even Slumps, by converting literally everything into monetary values, as the only measure, then inflating that value by competition on the Stock Exchange, by which they then corral it into their hands as the only ones who can afford it.

In the current period, late capitalism gets ever more desperate, and the cause of the last Recession in 2008 is simply repeated, once again, just as before, but with new ever more rightward directions, that they hope will mitigate the next inevitable crisis.

But, both the World and Capitalism itself, is running out of possibilities. Both Climate Change and ever increasing Pollution, are heading things towards an existential Crisis for Mankind, and Capitalism is running out of alternatives to perpetuate itself, as it is fast becoming a deteriorating situation.

Practice without Theory: The Retreats in both Science and Marxism

For nearly 60 years I have been a committed Marxist and activist, while also being a professional Physicist. I am therefore equipped better than most to be critical of the evident and damaging declines in both of these absolutely fundamental disciplines. 

These failures have been generated within the hearts of the very organisations which should have been their veritable fountains-of-further-development, which should have fought for each of these crucial intellectual focii to generate the required research, analyses and consequent programmes of action, for the necessary (indeed essential) innovations within these areas, to enable them to equip their adherents to confidently achieve ever greater objectives!

However, such could have ONLY occurred, if, and only if, they continued to develop up to, through and even beyond, their own unavoidable crises and Revolutions - to ascend to wholly New and necessary Levels, capable of transforming Humanity upon this planet, beyond current limitations.

"But, what were you doing?" is likely to be the immediate response from Physicists and Marxists alike, "Why weren't you doing all that?" The right questions, for sure!

Well, I was only 19 years old and in my first term at University when I found myself disagreeing fundamentally with my professors, in my Physics degree studies. Here I met Marxists for the first time too and joined one of the Marxist Parties present in that University, and looked for answers, both within it, and in the University's excellent library, for alternatives to the evident prevailing decline in my studied subject.

I was a continuing student of Physics throughout my life, and in politics read a great deal, including Marx's masterpiece Das Kapital: but, nevertheless, as to The Marxist Analytic Method in politics, and my sought-for alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory in Physics, I was regularly coming-up empty on both fronts!

Very slowly, I began to realise where the problems lay.

It was in the inadequate Philosophies of the Theorists of the consensus groups in both of these fields!

They weren't the same problems, of course, but they were both, in different ways, embarked upon the wrong tracks. There was no real Theory going on in either discipline.

Sadly, I wasn't initially up to undertaking the tasks in either area, but I persevered in political activism, without myself developing very far, even though I continued to read extensively.

In Physics, I eventually gave it up as a bad job, and in spite of all my qualifications being in the area, I never professionally did Physics again. Instead, I taught Modern Mathematics and even Biology in Schools and Colleges, and latterly, in my afternoons off, did Mathematical Research using the local University's Mainframe Computer, which I taught myself to both program and use. And, in no time, I was also teaching these new-found skills to interested students from my College, ultimately developing one of the first such Computer Sections in the country. Later I was approached to write a Machine-independent Fortran Compiler, which I finally achieved...

It is a long story, but I finally got back into Higher Education, lecturing in Information Technology, and in that role was soon involved in assisting researchers across a wide range of disciplines. And, in that very varied and interdisciplinary work I finally began to see what was wrong with Physics!

I returned to tackling Copenhagen, but now increasingly equipped with ideas directly abstracted from Marx, which I slowly extracted from Das Kapital (by also reading David Harvey's superb analyses of Kapital's volumes I, II and III). The gains made in this work were purely philosophical, and centred upon the inadequacies of the Principle of Plurality which had actually underpinned all the major Intellectual Disciplines, ever since the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC. 

For, both Logic and Science had been wrongly assumed to be "just-like Mathematics", as wholly pluralistic- that is composed only of qualitatively-fixed concepts or Natural Laws, which naturally limited both these crucial Disciplines significantly to only maintained Stable Situations.

All real Development was wholly excluded!

A key epiphany came through my research in Motion Studies in the 2000s (the analysis and computerised delivery of accurate Dance Performance - complex creative movements captured dynamically via interactive video recordings and animation) remembering Zeno's crucial, dialectical Paradoxes. Without revolutionary means, neither Continuity nor Descreteness were ever capable of delivering real Movement.

Now 200 years ago, the idealist philosopher Hegel had realised such flaws in Formal Logic. It did not allow qualitative changes of any kind due to the assumed stance of Plurality. Hegel began to address this inadequacy with regard to Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts (such as Continuity and Descreteness) - leading to his Dialectics!

Science and Logic cannot deal with contradiction and its role in change, and consequently considers only Fixed Natural Laws as capable of explaining absolutely Everything - and hence had no solutions to the many anomalies of the perplexing set of Double Slit Experiments, contradictions they "solved" by inventing Wave/Particle Duality, and the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.

Unfortunately Hegel had been an idealist philosopher and had never seriously investigated anything beyond Human Thinking. So, his follower, the historian and philosopher, Karl Marx, immediately realised that an extended version of Dialectics also applied to all Development in Concrete Reality too - and revealingly also to the Developments in Human History!

For the first time, it would clearly be possible to address Historical Development, especially in those seemingly-unanalyse-able convulsions of Change termed Revolutions!

Now, all of this was certainly not yet available: no such explanations had yet been revealed! But, Marx knew that the alternative holist stance, concentrating-primarily upon qualitative change, could indeed deliver what the current wholly pluralist Disciplines never could. And, as a professional Historian, Marx knew precisely where to start - with the recently ended French Revolution, which had overthrown the Feudal State, and replaced it with a Capitalist alternative, but one which was definitely NOT delivering the Liberté Egalité et Fraternité that it had promised to those workers who had carried in out.

So, Marx embarked upon the obvious research to reveal the Nature of Capitalist Economics, but only within the very process of establishing the required Holist means to do it! Das Kapital was never merely applying a ready-made method of doing this, as none yet existed at that time, but no one was better equipped to do it: for Marx had already devised Dialectical Materialism as his New Philosophy, but being Holistic, and hence including all Qualitative Change, it meant that a wholly new, as yet undefined Methodology had to be developed, and it would inevitably be far more complex and even more constantly-developing than anything employed previously.

These difficulties are clearly reflected in Marx's work, as in order to deal with these crucial changes, he had to first always establish a "basic" unchanging initial model (a Generality), and then as each dealt-with Phase led to another, he then had to retrace back to see how the new (Particular) Phase affected the initial one.

David Harvey deals with this aspect of Das Capital very well

NOTE: He was effectively involving the cyclical approach defined by The Buddha in his famed Loka Sutta, wherein each Phase, on completion, had to be repeated-from-scratch in the light of what it had produced.

It was a recursive, and indeed truly Holist, method!

So, Marx greatly simplified a Phase, in order to get an initial (General) handle upon it, but then, doing the same thing in the next Phase, he had to repeat, not only that current-Phase-reviewing process, but also to even adjust a prior Phase, due to changes due to a following (Particular) one!

[This is described elsewhere in a paper on Generalities, Particularities and Singularites, by this theorist]

And, many of the overall systems involved were cyclic, so, with all these recursive effects, would all take several circuits to into become settled repeating cycles! Many of the features described in Volume I of Das Kapital, were shown to be modified by subsequent processes, only reveealed in Volume II.

NOTE: Now, if this seems to infer an unavoidably infinite, never-ending sequence of necessary modifications, that would also not be true! For, though at some later and different stage the sequence of recursions would be necessary once again: for each and every set these would always terminate in some sort of "Balanced Result", which could be used effectively, at least for a while.

But, clearly, constant vigilance would still be required, just in case that balance was about to be challenged, precipitating a necessary whole re-assessment.

And, many such effects were never understood by readers brought up throughout their Education by systems which assumed total Plurality throughout. Most Marxists haven't grasped this aspect of Marxism, and Physicists don't even know the problem exists!

Ten Days That Shook the World, by John Reed

Reading "Ten Days that Shook the World" by John Reed, or the "History of the Russian Revolution" by Leon Trotsky, as well as accounts of Lenin's necessary switches at key moments in 1917 - all demonstrate what Real Marxian Dialectics was, in the hands of those who had understood what Marx finally arrived at.

But, it wasn't what I came into contact with during a whole lifetime in professedly Marxist parties!

And certainly, without any application of his method to the Sciences, what was then understood, though vital, would still necessarily be inadequate in many other very important areas.

Now, to finally return to my title for this key paper, namely Practice Without Theory!

These words have great relevance to both Politics and Physics - the current chaos in Sub Atomic Physics is clearly due to that Science's continuous and unspoken subscription to both Plurality and pragmatism - why question the method if it just seems to work?

The Real Philosophy of Science attempts to challenge the clueless scientific consensus and the somnambulant Marxists, by using one to explode the other!

The Real Philosophy of Science by Jim Schofield
A Marxist refutation of Science, which is also a scientific approach to Marxism

The more difficult role is actually presented by the "Marxists", who are still totally unaware of the true nature of Dialectical Materialism when applied to their own area of political practice (let alone Science), and hence are totally ill-equipped to do anything significant politically! 

Activism and political practice without the directing guidance of real theory can never succeed in preparing for a coming Revolution!

Dominances and Opposites

Natural laws are perhaps better thought of as natural dominances

How Holistic nature of reality both maintains Stabilities 

yet also enables Real Qualitative Change, via Emergences

The initial choice, historically, by a Mankind finally beginning to emerge as an intellectual interpreter of both its World, and of its own existence, was naturally to assume the absolute generality of the Principle of Plurality, rather than the seemingly totally opposite, and much more difficult to implement Principle of Holism. It was, at that crucially emergent moment, a completely unavoidable step, if any sort of progress was then to be made.

But Plurality also simplifyingly insisted upon the fixed, or qualitatively-unchanging-nature of all elemental things and laws, whilst Holism instead rested upon the inevitability of precisely such Qualitative Changes in absolutely everything!

NOTE: Of course, Mankind's initial, primitive Reasoning had also, long before that emergent moment, subscribed to the very same premise, as a basis for beginning to cope with Reality.

And, of course, most things certainly didn't seem to change in their apparently-evident, essential-natures, "all-the-time", but, on the contrary, only in their contributing amounts (their quantities): so the assumption of qualitative constancy was the only place for an initial intellectual study to even begin. Even these could account for some "qualitative changes" in certain circumstances, assumed to be caused by many different contributory things (that were themselves merely changing purely-quantitaively), yet still enoughfor a balance of simultaneous contributions to be changed sufficiently, so that a different involved component, could move into so-called Dominance and flip a situation over into a different mode.

But, it now finally seems likely that the assumption of a Pluralist World may need to be wholly dispensed with, and the alternative assumption of a Holist World, be imported into Science to replace it, in order to tackle its increasingly numerous anomalies and contradictions, generated by that initial premise.

Now, both of these Basic Principles are clearly enabling simplifications, so a mere switch between them cannot alone solve the many epistemological difficulties that have accrued over many millennia.

Some sort of detailed review of what we mean by these apparent alternatives, must be instituted to reveal just in what ways, and how profound, the real differences are.

Plurality, the philosophical assumption underpinning Science, deals solely with qualitatively-fixed relations only, which are usually achieved by extensive and detailed farming of given situations, to remove as many simultaneously acting factors as possible, so as to ideally leave only one, and, thereafter, to continue to hold things "still" - so rigorously, in fact, that only a single relational Law would ideally remain, making its extraction, and subsequent effective use possible.

Holism rejects this conception for its unavoidable distorting of any athus-found Law, always artificially made into an eternally fixed abstraction, which never, as such, occurs naturally in Reality-as-is! The Holist alternative considers that, in every natural situation, there will always be a reasonably extensive set of different contributory factors, all acting together, and, in spite of this, seemingly indefinable complexity, does end up delivering something as an overall end-result, due to all of them doing what they do, BUT together producing a single outcome. And such results can turn out to be very different in totally unconstrained conditions.

The commonest case, in all school science experiments, was always an "overall law", which normally varied along with its multiple component factors. 

Another, and different case, could be a kind of naturally self-maintaining Stability, within which any variation tending to distiurb that Stability, would be immediately countered by an opposing reaction of another, having the very same cause - but always returning the situation back to Stability.

And, in any overall resultant Law, considered holistically, factor changes could flip it from its previous Dominant result to the opposite Sub Dominant outcome - now become the New Dominant.

NOTE: this last point is referred to somewhat early... A long and necessary diversion in establishuing a wholly New Stance, will later in this paper, reveal in full how and why this occurs!

So, the usual result by Mankind was that conditions would be increasingly controlled, enabling a reasonable approximation to an artificial wholesale Stability to be implemented, to purposely facilitate a given required use: so such careful farming of conditions, rapidly became the norm, when both revealing and then applying, assumed-to-be-eternal Laws: but NOT, it must be emphasized, to stop it varying, but, on the contrary, and mistakenly, to supposedly eliminate the effects of other simultaneously-acting laws cumulatively affecting the result by mere quantitative changes in their various contributions.

And, of course the age-old pragmatic tenet still ruled the roost ultimately, with, "If it works, it is right!"

Enabling Technological Use rather than Increased Understanding totally dominated Science.

So, Science developed with that always-distorting premise - that of Plurality, and, therefore, a necessary Use-Methodology, had to be involved to initially rigidly farm the conditions "to ensure that the targeted Law would be-artificially-fixed, and couldn't be "variously-affected", as it would be when occurring in Reality-as-is.

[In addition, it was also wrongly assumed that this fixed version also behaved in exactly the same way in Reality-as-is, and that the differences there were simply due to the summation of all the other, also present and similarly fixed, Laws! Whereas, holistically, all simultaneously present Laws actually modified one another: it wasn't just a simple summed Complication!]

It meant, of course, that the Pragmatic Objectives could always be the sole, aimed-for intension, so the consequent Explanatory Theory, derived from the farmed data so-obtained, was therefore wrong- and not just because of the farmed conditions (as explained above), but also, and crucially, because a Pure Form, from strictly Pluralist Mathematics, was then carefully tailored-to-fit that same already distorted data, so that the achieved formal law, as an Equation, was doubly modified: for it was, in addition, idealist, rather than truly materialist!

And whilever it was only pragmatic results that were required, the Technology involved could indeed deliver the required results, and so the ubiquitous method largely went unquestioned.

Nevertheless, any consequent Theory associated with that equation, would be incorrectly taken as being the required general, natural relation: the Theory, and hence the Explanatory Science so derived would necessarily be incorrect!

And, of course, as physicists delved ever deeper into Reality, the consequent inaccuracies became ever more unavoidable, and increasingly delivered debilitating anomalies in Theory via the assumed premises of Science, which inevitably began to deliver ever more contradictory results.

In addition, the devised solutions, all of which are unavoidably constrained by their basic assumptions, were forced ever deeper into the idealistic hinterlands of Pure Mathematics, in order to seek for the Perfect Forms that could be persuaded to fit!

[Isn't that exactly what Einstein did with Relativity?]

And, that could only lead away from Reality and ever deeper into Ideality, a domain of Pure Form alone, and hence the only true realm of Mathematics, and NOT in the domain of Concrete Reality- which should be the realm of Science!

NOTE: The problem was also that Mathematics had soundly started by merely being a direct Reflection of Reality: so it did contain something of that source. But, it was a distorting mirror because of its in-built and generally-and-intrinsically assumed Plurality.

NOTE: Reality has only three dimensions we can legitimately abstract, while Mathematics can have as many as you like, as long as you maintain the exact "geometric relations" between them all, that had previously been the case for the original three Spatial Dimensions alone, but could even be "philosophically" adjusted to even allow-in the admixture of Probabilities and Wave Theory - as in Copenhagen.....it appears!

And, that infers that the extra Dimensions must concretely exist, for the relations carried over from the Spatial Dimensions have to still hold in exactly the same way: and paradoxically to also NOT exist in our real space, but unseeably elsewhere, yet maintaining the very same inter-Dimensional geometrical relations both with the usual real three, and each other!

Now, as is well known in some areas of academia, ever since Zeno of Elea, certain Dichotomous Pairs of contradictory concepts, namely those of Continuity and Descreteness, could lead to nonsense when applied to certain Real World Movements, but his revelations were largely ignored, by using the pragmatic excuse of "If it works, it is right!", and it wasn't until Hegel found a solution, 2,300 years later, in the necessary modifications of their defining premises that many of these were removed.

But, of course, the ongoing problem was Plurality! For, it prohibited qualitative changes from ever occurring in such concepts. Hegel realised that such change had to be included in Reasoning, involving Dialectics as a new Science of Logic.

Now that, of course, is much easier said than done. And also this was being attempted by an idealist, who was exclusively concerned with philosophy as Human Thinking, and arguing! Whereas the required changes were even more important, essential in rescuing all the sciences, from the very same affliction.

Indeed, how would multi-factor situations actually behave, when affected by all their simultaneous and varying contributions, and even more confusingly, mutually modifying one another, as is the main premise of Holism? Just how far would the actual modifications precipitate one another, into ever more changes? Would it not be an infinite process? NO, it would not!

In Plurality, though properties would be fixed, quantitative changes would indeed be potentially infinite! But, changes, in a Holist World, would NOT be merely quantitative, but also qualitative, and such could be in any direction, so they could be either conducive or contending with respect to others - and in a multi-factor system, delivering both kinds of variation - balances at some points would become inevitable... And, never as a fixed and final result, either!

Indeed, the contending and conducive factors would be delivering a Dynamic Balance, wherein constant changes would still be involved, but changes in one could, in such a balance, be countered by opposing changes in other factors! The same disturbing factor could affect different internal factors in opposite ways.

In other words self-maintaining Stabilities, would be the most likely outcomes, some persisting so long as to appear eternal to our timescale. Stabilities which would require very significant disturbances to be fatally undermined, and which would, in such rare circumstances, ultimately totally dissociate the Stability completely.

NOTICE how far we have been transported in this endeavour, away from Pluralist Formal Logic into the dynamism of Holist Reality!

And, even at this most basic level the importance of "opposites" begins to become ever clearer.

AN IMPORTANT ASIDE:

The significance of the above ideas was demonstrated to this researcher, when theoretically investigating Pre-Life simultaneous Chemical Reactions, in particularly conducive circumstances on the early Earth.

Interestingly, I did not initally identify any individual chemical processes, with a view to defining-in-detail the ascent to the Origin of Life, via what qualities were involved at each and every step. For, I knew that such a journey would be strewn with unpredictable Emergences, and hence well beyond any theoretical means I could muster to re-construct that long trajectory.

So, I was much more interested in the dynamics involved in a proliferation of different processes, affecting one another, either conducively or contendingly, to produce ever higher levels of sub-systems, systems and super-systems via such creative events always delivering the entirely New, which would never be delivered by the usual pluralist Chemistry, as no chemical process is ever conceived-of in that way: they are all straight-forward processes with logical outcomes confined within Pluralist Science.

So, to consider such situations, holistically, would therefore involve dumping the usual pluralist methods, along with their severely constrained circumstances, producing only the revelation of single pluralist laws as the required outcomes - so, instead, considering whole collections of many simultaneous processes, all acting together, and producing a variety of products, which then, in turn, immediately became actively inolved in the overall system of processes, as a consequently constantly changimg mix, and also changing all the contributing processes, and so, importantly, changing the Contextin which all the involved processes are performing, and all of them changing somewhat along with such a varying Context.

Now, you can see why the outcomes of individual processes - all previously carried out separately in individual farmed pluralistic experiments, would certainly never suffice in determining what happens in these holist and multi-factor circumstances! So, the required focus must consider things very differently, primarily as delivering a Classical Dynamic Holistic Interlude (see The Theory of Emergences (2010) by this author), which will usually end up in a temporary, if long-lasting, Balanced Stability, with measureable overall characteristics, which can all be determined experimentally, (in the old-fashioned "Equilibrium" type experiments of the School Lab), and which will involve ongoing inter-process effects, in process-chains or even process-cycles, and with self-selected and evident Dominances, usually caused by the presence of certain resource abundances, due to current local conditions.

But, the most likely change, thereafter, without too much of a variation in the overall Stability, is usually a seemingly dramatic Switch to deliver an Opposite to the prevailing Dominance. And, believe it or not, such a switch can be explained, and with it the significance of Opposites in Holistic Dialectical situations generally.

Very different this Holist Science malarkey, isn't it!?

Now, the consideration of such a situation and its development will be qualitative rather than quantitative, and systemic rather than productive. For, in such a set of simultaneous processes, they will be not only changing each other's contexts, but also using-up or supplying each other's Resources too.

Connected Worlds - interactive ecosystem installation, New York

So, processes related by the product of one, being the resource for another, will form Chains, amd even occasionally Cycles, the preponderances of available resources due to the current location will also determine which Systems are most successful, or Dominant!

Indeed, there will actually be two sets of processes benefiting from the same abundence.

The first will be those going generally in one particular direction >>

The second will be those generally going in the opposite direction <<

And, with universal competition for the very-same resource, most of both sets will lose out - all except the Dominant one in its direction, and its Opposite (sub dominant) in its contrary direction! 

(Notice there is a seemingly contradictory hierarchy of opposites)


POSTSCRIPT:

The consequences for current research into the Origin of Life, of ths Holistic Approach, culminated in the Theory of Emergences (2010), which demonstrated once-and-for-all that research to re-create Life from scratch is impossible: and even much worse, that absolutely NONE of the essential interludes in that development will never be reproducable either - as they will all be the results of natural Emergences, the outcomes of which will always be impossible to predict!

A bit of a problem for science, where falsifiable predictions are so vital for proofs!