The first Audio Issue of the SHAPE Journal - The Nature of Reality

 

Audio Issue 1 - The Nature of Reality

This is the first Audio Issue of the SHAPE Journal. This new form of publishing will feature podcast-like content alongside lectures, videos and some written-word content, transcribed from audio recordings.

Philosopher Jim Schofield's eyesight has deteriorated rapidly in the last year, making traditional writing and editing impossible for him. This new format for the journal should allow him to continue working and communicating his ideas via this website. 

It is also an opportunity to investigate new ways of disseminating content and finding new audiences for the work. Some of our most successful outputs have been YouTube videos in the past, and this shift will place focus on that kind of content over traditional academic papers. 

In the first of these new editions Jim Schofield goes back to basics, looking at how previous work on the Substrate Theory of Subatomic Physics and the recent series on Systems Theory might affect how we see the nature of reality...

Use the link above to access the full issue. You can also listen to the main discussion on YouTube:

The Limits of Philosophy?

I have been a dedicated Marxist for most of my adult life, philosophically and politically, I think Karl Marx has come closer than anyone to Understanding something intrinisc and profound about Reality - and, though I still and justifiably celebrate the great achievements of Marx - they cannot yet but still also reflect the unavoidable weaknesses, always involved within the very first conception in any field. It would be a miracle if any such were ever initially and immediately wholly correct.

Though colossal in their scope, and sound in their premises, Marx’s contributions to Philosophy were then, and still are now, insufficient to be an all-embracing and wholly adequate Philosophy of Reality-as-is! For, they were based majorly upon the so far known and studied History of Mankind, and of course, it simply couldn’t have been based upon anything else, for only that History had sufficient extension to cover its many radical twists and turns!

And also, because only that History covered enough ground to reveal most of the necessary Actual Development, Changes and Anomalies, to alone be capable of highlighting both the usually slow tempos involved, while at particular irresolveable Crises, also clearly revealing the rapid Revolutionary Changes, unavoidable at such an incomparably faster rate - compared with the more pedestrian ones occurring the rest of the time.

It has taken 170 years since Marx’s initial revealing contribution, to totally reveal without any significant developments beyond those original bounds set by History itself alone.

And, these achievements have also NOT yet been extended, to any other important Disciplines in the same-and-necessary way as Marx has applied it to History and Economics.

My ongoing project in this journal, is to try and finish Marx’s work and apply his materialist philosophy to the Sciences. It is a big job.

Intellectual Disciplines in General, not only each have their own Independent Philosophies, but, in addition, ALL contain separate subsections each, in turn, with their own separately defined Philosophies. Mankind has regularly found it impossible to reveal a Single All-embracing Philosophy that might cover absolutely Everything! There are now literally thousands of Specialisms, each with their own defined Philosophy, to match the unavoidable splits in original single philosophies, demanded by failures in prior attempts at explaining the evident insurmountable anomalies!

What, of course, they always reflect, are the illegitimate Pluralist, and therefore necessarily artificially limited, supposed contexts! And, of course, despite Marxism’s extended range: its initial Form, too, would prove to be inadequate, as yet, in some important areas!

The whole means of explaining things needs a Comprehensive Review - starting with the more blatant and misleading assumptions of its supposed Logic! And, in Science, the whole basis, originally laid down in the Ancient Greek Intellectual Revolution - which lets face it was an extremely long time ago - needs upturning to the alternative Holistic Stance (though incomparably more developed and generally applicable than the original version of The Buddha!) For, the rejection of Plurality, must do a great deal more than only reject the Fixity of Natural Laws!

It must also reveal just how the changes happen naturally, primarily when distorted by the imposed simplifications of the assumed Context - to instead bring in Reality- as-is, achieved via multiple simultaneous and differing contributions - all having very different effects.

Now, stated just like that, merely seems to infer an impossible-to-solve constantly varying task. But that turns out to NOT be the case at all!

For, the contributions are all of different weights, thereby making the lesser ones swamped by the most dominant ones: and only becoming relevant as the balance of contributions changes significantly. Yet, the usual Mathematical Logic treatment of such switch-overs (with “if / then” type clauses, and consequent flips to a new state) were, and still are, never explanatory at all - merely signalling WHEN but never WHY, and delivering absolutely nothing beyond the purely Quantitative- triggered flip, and NO mecessary information about the current underlying and multiple changes to, in any way, reveal what happens next, and with what currently hidden consequences.

The causes for the current and following trajectories of changes are NEVER revealed!

But, in fact, there must be multiple simultaneous and affecting contrinutions constantly moving towards the next viewable change, but we have, at that point, no way of ever knowing anything about such events - before they accually occur!

Clearly, you either dramatically restrict, and then maintain Contexts, to allow them to be predictable, pluralistically, or alternatively you could “Give up Now, you’ll never do it!”

But, Reality-as-is, left to itself, can, and indeed will, in its own time, deliver the real result of everything acting together, though with no restrictions at all of the context, the actual variation of everything involved, though they will all happen, at the right time, but that will be unknown, outside of the experiencing context itself!

And, exactly when changes occur, would not be known before they do!

Yet experiencing such overall events will still give an approximate suggestion of what will happen the next time it is run naturally!

But, of course, such “suck-it-and-see” methods, would never suffice in Productions for Sale!

However, the very most basic, and most general, of effects, could perhaps be predicted, but only if the causing Systems Relations, themselves were known, and included!

And, as has been established in recent papers in this series, these Systems Effects can surprisingly turn out to be very important indeed!

One recent development, which might signal a way forward, is due to physicist Eric Lerner. Equations- deriving directly from experimentally obtained data in the usual ways, has been abandoned, for cruder, but much more reliable “inter-variable” relationships, obtained over a very wide variety of detailed circumstances, which can be far more effectively relied upon, compared to the usual substitutions between fitted-up general Formulae, taken direct from Mathematics itself, which had been established there solely as a means of relating Pure and Unchanging Forms.

This paper is part of a series called Down the Infinite Rabbit Hole of Holist Complexity  - you can read the rest in the latest issue of SHAPE Journal (74)

Issue 74: The Infinite Rabbit Hole!

Read the latest issue of SHAPE Journal

...

This edition continues philosopher Jim Schofield's recent attempts to define what a Holist approach to Science should be. This time around, the focus is on why it hasn't really been attempted before, and why, when we do try holistic methods in Science, we usually fall back on tried-and-tested Pluralist forms of research. 

The problem is complexity. The Natural World is incredibly dense, interconnected and with many hidden levels and systems processes. The straight-jacket of the Pluralist Scientific Method is the only way we have historically managed to control situations sufficiently to try and analyse and understand them. The problem is, that this gives us a very distorted, simplifed and ossified picture of what we're examining. We remove many hidden factors which might turn out to be be vital, and even more crucially, we remove the possibility for natural Qualitative Change to take place.

Art Director’s note: 

For this issue we have chosen the dark, dense paintings and sculptures of Anselm Kiefer for the illustration. We are always looking for abstract art which invokes change in some way, and the complexity of evolving reaity. With a keen interest in mathematics and science as well as mythology, Kiefer’s work deals with concepts such as the passage of time, cosmogney, chaos and death. His most recent exhibition Supertrings, Runes, the Norns, Gordian Knot, is influenced directly by studies such as String Theory - but not without a pleasing degree of skepticism. Of the work he says: 

“These advanced mathematicians are attempting to find a theory of everything, but each time they open a door, many other doors reveal themselves. It is all abstract mathematics, of course, so nothing is really yet proved. The more I read about it, the more I think they will never find the answer.” 

There is certainly abstraction and form in Kiefer’s work, but also a very messy materiality. He is interested in and influenced by science, but unlike many mathematicians and artists alike, he is not seduced by beauty, simplicity and perfection. He knows that this would be Idealism, and the Real world is much more labyrinthine and impenetrable than we like to think.

Special Issue 73: The Holistic Engines

Read Special Issue 73

This is the third edition in a new series on Holist Science, and how it must differ from Pluralist methodologies, if it is to truly revolutionise the discipline, and move it past its many current impasses. 

The Holistic Engines examines how change happens in natural situations - how Science fails to grasp dynamic causalities at multiple levels of Reality, and how it must now embrace a new augmented Dialectical Materialism, if it is going to begin to deal with Reality outside of its complete formalisation in Mathematics and Technology.

Art Director's note:

The importance of Abstraction to Holism and Dialectics, has been reflected visually, in the series thus far, through the use of Russian Constructivism as illustration, and the development of those ideas in proto graphic design and art from the Bauhaus.

However, what is missing from this influential Abstract art, is similar to what is missing from the Pluralist Abstraction that Schofield criticises in his Philosophy of Science. Both of these forms of Abstraction lack any real dynamic content, or the ability to represent change and evolution as we see it occuring in the Natural World. For this reason these Abstractions, while sometimes revealing, and formally very satifying, can sometimes seem lifeless and cold, or overly simplifying.

For this issue, which looks specifically at how Holistic Dialectics could address the real engines of change, we have looked to another, more dynamic form of Abstraction, and a key precursor to Constructivism, for many of the illustrations: Russian Futurism. Unlike Italian Futurism, which was closely related to Fascism at the time, the Russian version was primarily influeced by Cubism, and many of these Futurists went on to become part of the Bolshevik Revolutionary movement.

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.

Holistic Theory and Practice: Cosmology

 

The Real Tester for the Holist Approach in Science is surely Cosmology!

For, such is essentially only an "observation-only" sub-discipline, wholly without the absolutely necessary confirmatory contributions of Experimental Interventions, to verify-or-deny any Purely Speculatively-arrived at Theories, that investigators in the field are surely initially-restricted to. Unless, that is, there are confirmatory experiments, that would be possible in the Laboratory on Earth, and in the always-required controlled conditions, and hence could confirm relations revealed, which would also be applicable within Cosmology too.

Now, so-called Empty Space and Laboratory situations delivered, of course, the major differences in Ground, between those two very diverse environments involved. For, if Space really were totally empty, normal situations upon Earth, most certainly, were NOT! So, experimenters often established their experiments within totally evacuated environments, by both establishing and maintaining a vacuum, in which to carry out their experiments. And, for a while, that seemed to suffice.

Until, that is, James Clerk Maxwell embarked upon his major study of Electromagnetism, when he needed a defined Spatial Medium to help him adequately address his Subject: for without it he would be unable to complete his decided-upon task: it certainly wasn't a set of Properties of Nothing, and literally all useful prior contributions required such a Medium!

So, Maxwell decided to first model an invisible Substrate, entirely via what effects it definitely had upon all Events occurring within it. And then, he used his new definition of "The Aether" to attempt to solve his outstanding problems in Electromagnetism.

For many decades, this seemed to work, and much sound work was completed in this area. But, then the Michelson-Morely Experiment seemed to prove that no such Universal Substrate existed in Space - yet Maxwell's discoveries, predicated upon such a Medium, nevertheless carried on being used, BUT now in supposedly Totally Empty Space!

Needless-to-say, Physics then began to fall-apart as a solely Causally-Explicable Discipline, and fitted-up more and more Mathematical Formulae, which increasingly replaced Causal Theories as "supposed explanations"! Indeed, Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach, with their Positivist Approach, which they called Empirio Criticism, then suggested that only an amalgam of Explanations AND Mathematical Formulae could deliver, theoretically, the objective Real Physical World.

And, by the time of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, the wholly mathematical Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory replaced all Explanation at the Sub Atomic Level!

But, this Descent had been inevitable: for, ever since the Greek Intellectual Revolution in the 5th century BC, and the establishment of the very first Rationally-Consistent Intellectual Discipline of Mathematics, with such evident theoretical power, within that discipline, it was exactly what could possibly revolutionise both General Reasoning and the Sciences, so it was wholly illegitimately transferred-over to both of these areas too!

Why was it illegitimate?

It was totally Pluralistic: so all its Laws were Eternally FIXED (as they were legitimately in Mathematics)! But, they are NOT so Fixed in either Everyday Logic or in The Sciences, as they are not fixed in nature.

And such was a major restriction on the ability of all these Important Disciplines to cope with Reality and its evidently self-moving Actual Development.

Yet, at almost the same time as the Greek Intellectual Revolution, in India, The Buddha was formulating Mankind's initial effort at describing and using Holism, which also, and crucially, began to address Qualitative Changes, which were wholly inexplicable within the Pluralist Approach.

Indeed, though The Buddha, and his followers could never complete what was necessary to equip Holism to also address all the issues across all Disciplines, it did significantly position Qualitative Change as the engine for all Real Development of the wholly New, and, it is not surprising that the best of his followers were acclaimed for their evident Wisdom: the Loka Sutta is a case in point, of the alternative reasoning of the Buddhists!

NOTE:

Now. it is clear that Mankind did not come Ready-made into existence, but evolved out of its animal prehistory, finally into a Thinking Species: and, as such, we had to Change Qualitatively, but NEVER directly, to ever better conceptions of their World. But, the climb could not be cumulative! Conceptions were never wholly correct, but always a mixture of better-and-useable ideas, along with others that were wholly wrong. And, to make matters worse, the flaws in the mostly correct ideas, contradicted the as yet unrealised features, in the rest, and worked against a speedy extension.

And also, both the prestige and the power resided unavoidably with the Pluralists, because of their extensive successes in mastering the world with Technology, and its valuable products: it predictably, via western Empires eventually ruled the World, until Holism re-established itself in a surprisingly Political garb - initially in the writings and actions of the historian Karl Marx. who began to establish a profound analysis of Economics in his lifes work, Das Kapital!

But while he certainly pointed the way towards a modern and scientific Holism, the absolutely crucial comprehensive application to The Sciences was never undertaken.....

...until NOW!

Elsewhere, this philosopher has completed a major holistic critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, but the time has come to also address the mess that is present day Cosmology.

There is NO available Technology in Cosmology, especially as the whole of recent excursions into Space have been totally dominated by Pluralist "scientists" and technologists: absolutely no departures from the Fixed Laws of the Pluralist Approach have been allowed in their investigations of the cosmos.

So, when added to the above-described inabilities of Cosmology to even establish anything Explicable about our Universe, the clearly evident failures of present day version of it, cannot be hidden behind successful Technology: but they certainly try to do that!

From the Big Bang and constantly the Expanding Universe, to Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Black Holes, it is clear that Pluralist Speculation had nothing-of-value to contribute from that actually-existing Universe, to contradict the Pure Speculations, without any confirming-or-denying evidence from a properly investigated Reality, as they are unavailable to earthbound and pluralist-constrained thinking of the so-called "scientists" involved.

Until Modern Holist Thinking tackles these areas of study, as is becoming increasingly available on SHAPE Journal, Cosmology can never break out of its current manacles. And even Modern Physics as it is developed and taught currently, is incapable of having anything but an increasingly confusing and misleading approach to Reality-as-is!

The contradiction, on Earth, between Pluralist and Holist Approaches to Real Science, will be the initial battleground!

The fight has begun with the latest Special Issue of SHAPE Journal, dedicated (along with many other contributions in previous issues), to explaining the recent 21st century contributions to Modern Holist Science.

And a short introductory pamphlet, covering the same ground, will also be published in print, and available via SHAPE in coming weeks.

The current research is still at an early stage, but will carry on for the foreseeable future, as this undertaking is only one of the many offerings regularly available on SHAPE - with of course, many political contributions, and topics such as the Covid 19 Pandemic, and the now substantial Economic Crisis worldwide too.

Special Issue 72: Holist Science

 

Read Special Issue 72 of SHAPE Journal

The problem we’re faced with in developing a holistic approach to Science involves the unavoidable complexities and interactions of multiple simultaneous aspects of Reality-as-is. Indeed, they initially seemed to be so insurmountable, that Mankind came to believe that underlying all the evident and confusing complexity, there had to be an integrating simplicity at its heart. Otherwise, how could all the clearly evident regularity and even the exquisite beauty of the Natural World have arisen? Our forebears concluded that it might well be revealable, with the appropriate processing. For, if this could be achieved, the revealed Simple Laws of Nature (applied within those same ideal conditions) would allow them to be purposely used to Mankind’s own conceived of benefits.

In fact, a great variety of things coexist within all Natural Environments! For, as we are already beginning to understand today -

First: Single laws do not usually exist as such: they are invariably acting simultaneously. with many
others.

Second: The contributions of given factors, in a natural collection of Laws, will never be fixed, they will
all perhaps vary!

Third: Individual Laws will never stay exactly the same: they will be influenced and changed by other simultaneously-acting Laws.

Fourth: All Laws inevitably Act upon two different Levels of condition:-

a) RANGE LIMIT: Outside of a given range the law vanishes, and other factors can change the Law’s Limits.

Outer LAW Limits pertain

b): RANGE: Inside its Range the Law acts, but is nonetheless affected by others

Inner Law pertains

And Mankind’s simplification of all these (and more) effects was to effectively, as far as is possible, “hold a situation-still”, in order to study it. And, of course, how they did that would depend upon circumstances, and what it was they were attempting to reveal. Indeed, they didn’t mind movement and quantitative changes: they could be achieved sufficiently easily.

BUT genuinely Qualitative Changes - when things became something else - were always prohibited! And, all the Laws that were sought, were assumed to exist as such naturally, independently of all others, when they did appear together, they were assumed to merely SUM.

Such a stance conformed exclusively to what we call the Principle of Plurality - the opposite of the Principle of Holism.

Issue 71 of SHAPE Journal: Cycles II

 Issue 71 of SHAPE Journal

Preface: The Beginnings of Holistic Dialectics in Science

With the latest Publication in SHAPE Journal, Jim Schofield is finally embarking, after 12 years of intensive theoretical and philosophical research, upon a now-possible, and clearly-transformational and definitely-essential Development in the Sciences. 

For, though the foundational bases were originally laid down by Karl Marx in the 19th century, Marx, as both a historian and a philosopher, was rightly-and-unavoidably pre-occupied, with the crucial elements of  a Qualitatively Developing History, along with the fact that the essential bases, for its understanding, were only present, in an observable-and-studiable way, via Rare Revolutionary Interludes, which alone clearly revealed the Actual Engines of all significant change, within their observable tempos of both Demolishing-and-Creating of Societies.

Indeed, it was only in a detailed study of such Revolutions that both the Maintenance of a persisting social system, and the Creation of a Wholly New society, could be revealed and addressed. And, hence an essential break from the previous universal domination of The Principle of Plurality in all of the Intellectual Disciplines of Mankind!

But, incredibly-slowly, the debilitating flaws in the Pluralist Stance, though successfully avoided within Technology, were beginning to be revealed in The Explanatory Disciplines, following the partial break through in Philosophy by Hegel.

But within that most basic Science, Physics, the problems caused by Plurality, led to a seemingly insoluble Crisis, between the Theorists, on the one hand, and their indispensible Technologists, on the other, who both erected all their Experimental set-ups, AND then delivered the necessary means to actually use their findings in Production too. The never-questioned links between all of these was undoubtedly Plurality - because of its technical embodiment, the universally lauded Mathematics!

And this had to be addressed FIRST to get all sides OFF the cause and apparent "only-solution" of their problems!

So, this was the first major task undertaken by philosopher Jim Schofield, in his damning Critique not only of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, but also of all of the various mistaken contributing Parties in the Crisis.

They were all indissolubly wedded to Plurality.

This Critique was Finally completed and published (as such) in 2020!

But, the more significant, and absolutely essential Dialectical Corrections within the Assumptions and Methods of  The Sciences, following Marx's treatment of Capitalist Economics had to be the same Transforming Revolution applied to the Sciences, and, of course, primarily in Physics first-of-all. It, most certainly, will be a Major Undertaking, affecting the whole of Physics, and, thereafter, all of the other Sciences, which defer to Physics as supplying their most basic Content.

The Problem, as was made clear in the criticisms of Plurality, was in its assumption of all Causality being entirely without Qualitative Changes, for they can mever emerge from any strictly pluralist Laws.

Indeed, the only real way, to import such changes, is via the alternative to Plurality, namely Holism, and in the Dialectical Version of it established by Karl Marx.

So, at this very early stage, the task, had to be, to deal with both Stability and Qualitative Changes in Reality, and consequently, and correctly,  in Causality too! The Key area turns out to be in Constantly Repeated Processes!

For, instead of constantly recurring "random processes" delivering a thermodynamic, maintained, minimum energy Stability, that state is usually a Balanced, Active Stability - achieved solely within that system, by the effects of constantly repeated, though totally-contained selective elimination processes - changing the set of contained process's relative abundences, and hence the overall effects of multiple, simultaneous processes involved.

For Such Systems can exist as Seemingly Permanently Self-maintaining Stable Systems, with greatly extended periods of Stability. While these actually, via a rare-but-inevitable avalanche of externally-initiated minor changes that though they are normally offset by others, acting in the opposite direction, as such maintain the Balance, Though sometimes, much more rarely they precipitate unstoppable changes throughout the Whole System, and cause a total collapse!

Thus the whole belief System, based upon Plurality, has to be replaced by something better: and just as it took Marx many decades to dismantle and replace Plurality in Economics with a newly constructed Dialectically Holist alternative, the same sort of comprehensive task is necessary in the Sciences too.

Circles into Helices into Spirals begins this process by looking at these repeating structures and the roles they might play in both the maintenance of periods of stability and those of profound change. 

Random Noise and Holism

...

PREFACE - for Mick

I started this paper before I had sufficiently realised the significance of your excellent essay. So, I am inserting this short explanatory introduction as you and I (as far as I understand it) represent two different and valid approaches to supposed "Random Noise" holistic interpretations. I find your essay to be profound and significant, and describing why Photography has the qualities that it does because its images always endow ambiguity, because they only deliver frozen stills of what is still in the process of change. It explains your necessary preoccupations in both your ideas, and your produced photographs, and is crucially important.

Interestingly, I am NOT a photographer, but nevertheless I too am struggling to extract the invisible components of change in seemingly static, stable situations, BECAUSE at some point, they will reveal themselves in an Emergence - an interlude of relatively sudden Qualitative Changes. I too start with multiple, simultaneous material processes that are very quickly hidden within a "Balanced Stability" of seemingly static Forms or Patterns. But, of course, it is actually a still-active state and certainly not an unchanging one.

So, in BOTH our cases, your condemnation of removing the seemingly Random Noise is absolutely correct (and for the reasons you say), Noise is NOT what it seems, but the only route to revealing what is hidden beneath our extractions and our interpretations. Destroying Noise is typical of all Pluralist study, which only sees essence in the overt relations which can easily be extracted.

Needless to say, I too want to "analyse-the-fog", but I am not dealing with a Static Photograph, but instead, an active "Balanced Stability", where the thing I want to remove is the obvious "pluralist Balanced Stability" relation, hopefully leaving only the previously hidden nut both active and required factors necessary to complete a Dialectical Analysis.

Finally, there is a whole other contribution encouraged by the "Random Noise", which is the constant, and oft-employed ability of the Brain to "fill an ambiguous Gap with "fitting" images from Memory!

 

 

In a paper by Dr. Mick Schofield - who is a Lecturer in Media Studies, specialising in Photography at Leeds University, England, and a long time collaborator with me on the SHAPE Journal - he raises a whole range of important questions concerned with the illusions unavoidably triggered in the perceptions of viewers from within photographs, containing excessive blurring or graining.

Now, as I am an almost-blind philosopher and scientist, myself, I have been plagued also, by something clearly related to these phenomena, but in my case involving Direct Seeing of the World. Considerable losses to the macular regions in both of my eyes have also led to aberrations in viewing that are definitely not there in the Real World being observed!

The main problem in my case was soon diagnosed as the Charles Bonnet Syndrome, which in the more extreme cases of vision loss, led to revealing important brain functions, which were also clearly everyday useful parts of normal Direct Seeing, but, involving not only less precise information from the Non-Macular areas of the retinas, within my eyes, which it appears, from my investigations and considerations as being wholly replaced by "tilings" taken from recent or older limited-and-squared-off remembered samples, or, alternatively, from still currently available images, taken from seen-areas, that "approproiately" exist all-around the missing direct view, with tiled exact copies - "filling-in any blanks", in other words NOT entirely using actual direct images, of what was being looked at then and there.

It is a well-known trick by magicians, to purposely draw your attention away from where they are doing something, that they do not want you to see, to an area of the real scene, that your brain is no longer receiving as a direct view, BUT only via these repeated memory tilings in which you are not really seeing the present moment, but static fragments of the past. So when he brings your gaze back, in that directly viewed place, real current information is again used, so the magician's hidden trick magically appears!

Now Dr. Schofield is concerned primarily with what happens in observing a photograph, and particularly when the captured image contains a great deal of confusing Noise, and apart from his valid and important contribution, it seems highly likely that "insertions" similar to the ones I have described above could also be involved here - for, as the above trick proves, this neurological process appears to be happening extensively all of the time, but mostly away from the primary focus of the observer's eyes.

Now, this area only came to my attention because being a sufferer from the Charles Bonnet Syndrome, I am also daily concerned with attempting a valid Holistic-Stance-Criticism, of the usual descriptions of natural phenonena, that has prevailed ever since the Greek Intellectual Revolution of the 5th century BC. For, thereafter, Mankind, on having discovered Pluralist Rationality within the building of the Discipline of Pure Forms alone (namely that of Mathematics), quite validly, about forever FIXED Relations, and finding that a valid Approach, extremely beneficial in that area, were so enamoured of its power, that they immediately and wrongly applied it, wholesale, to both General Reasoning and All of The Sciences too. Indeed, from that Intellectual Revolution right up to the present day, that gravely mistaken Stance has been largely maintained as such, in both of these important areas of Reasoning. So, crucially it applies in most Cerebral Reasoning, AND, even more importantly, in the description, interpretation and explanation of observed phenomena! We look for single causes, acting alone, as Fixed Natural Laws, and ignore not only the many others acting simultaneously, BUT significantly also their mutual qualitative effects upon one another too.

And such an omission also leaves out all Qualitative Changes, for "Fixed Natural Laws" can only SUM, and therefore only Complicate, rather than Develop! A whole rich and important set of these effects are ignored, and wholly static and unchanging areas such as photographs will NOT benefit by a return to the very same fixed image, whereas repeated returns to what initially seems to be a fixed situation in Reality, can and does deliver the subtle changes that make for alternative interpretations as The Buddha so profoundly observed in his Loka Sutta.

Let us be resolutely holist, and state that Noise is due solely to multiple simultaneous contributory causal factors - of so many different processes and their relative proportions, that the result appears "totally Random", with every direction and speed of the causing processes so reasonably evenly shared as to give a false impression of reflecting none of its many contributions!

But in any direct viewing situation the variety of possible contributuons is never infinite. Indeed the evident natural stabilities (that regularly present themselves and persist for very long periods) seem to infer both an increasing limitation upon the number of such factors, and the tendency to filter out completely the more insignificant ones, along with the preponderance of almost direct opposites to diminish the effect of those opposite processes, while maintaining them as still existing balanced pairs.

Now this alternative conception, would make destroying the confusing background Random Noise, the equivalent of throwing out the baby with the bathwater!

"Why?" 

Because that Random Noise is a still existing collection of simultaneous processes, currently subdued, but nonetheless vital, as balances change within the overall mix.

And what should be removed once it has been established, must be the clearly evident ones, leaving what is left to deliver its effects, and probably showing different effects and extractables, thereafter.

This paper and discussion follows on from the issues raised in the last issue of SHAPE Journal (Truth and Illusion, Special Issue 70). You can read the full edition here

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.

The Role of Mankind

Sándor Bortnyik: The New Adam, 1924

The Role of Mankind in Understanding 

and Interacting with their World

The Grundrisse Lectures by David Harvey are already-and-unavoidably taking the study of Marxism well beyond a dialectical analysis of Capitalist Economics, to also begin to delve ever more deeply and revealingly into Mankind's essential-and-unique role as the only Thinking species upon Planet Earth, and maybe also in all the possibly reachable Universe at large!

For, productive Labour has long been Mankind's most self-determining and indeed qualitatively-developing feature in their evolution, and therefore has been playing the Key role in their Socio-Economic advances with respect to their increasing knowledge amd control with in their containing-and-developing Living World context, in which they both dwell, seek-to-survive, and even to prosper.

For, along with their bipedal gait, and a flexible and manipulatable hand, with an opposable thumb, Human Beings, in consequence of all their extensive potentialities, have also developed advanced, new and unique cerebral capabilities, which, after millions of years, led first to primitive tool-making, from sharp flint fragments, as well as the means to make and control fire, develop a Hunter/Gatherer, Family group existence, and simultaneously initiate the beginnings of Language, which, all taken together, enabled their considerable geographical spread across literally all accessible areas of our the globe.

And ultimately, via the transforming effects of the epoch-changing Neolithic Revolution, which also brought-in the beginnings of extensive Human Societies - and via Farming and Animal Husbandry, also led, in a remarkably short period of time, to Intellectual Revolutions, primarily in Ancient Greece, but also (and in a very different and important direction) in Ancient India too.

For, though initially somewhat limited by the development, for the first time, of a kind of Reasoning (the strict and damaging, but easily arrived-at Plurality), still managed to deliver both the very first rational discipline, Mathematics, along with a kind of Logic, based only upon wholly fixed relations and concepts!

Thereafter, Mankind was no longer just a continuing development of Homo Habilis (the priginal Handy Man), but, by then, one already capable of Thinking too: and that vastly transformed his capabilities, in that he also sought Reasons for everything that occurred, and NOT ONLY in what way and how he could use those revealed discoveries.

Man was now a Thinker, as well as a Tool-Maker and User, so instead of only asking "How?", he also began to ask "Why?"

So, there arose a division of Labour between achievements by hand, and those by brain, that were ALL still only carried out by Human Beings. And, aids to the making of new things, though involving an essential content of New Thinking, were still the products of Mankind, as also, of course, were the then invented machines.

And though, in modern times, these techniques will be programmed into Computers, rather than being the mere spades and wheeled-vehicles handled directly by people: they are still designed by, driven by, and even programmed by them too!

Sándor Bortnyik: The New Eve, 1924

Artificial Intelligence is merely the instructions devised by an expert in the given field, and then coded by a programmer, co-opeerating with that expert, then entered into a computer-driven-machine. That was the actual Labour-and-prior-knowledge involved in equipping, such a system!

AND, crucially, if that programmer was NOT implementing the detailed knowledge-and-understanding of an expert in the Real World field involved, the program delivered will be useless! The machine is still totally dependant upon the labour of the programmer, and, in turn, that involved in the knowledge of the discipline expert.

As such a System Designer myself, I can assert that NO machine can ever THINK!

Indeed, the quality of Thinking that goes into a Computer Program, AND a controlled machine, even today, is still totally inadequate to do literally ALL the tasks we can currently give them - and will always continue to give them in the future. And the reason for this resides in the kind of Logic (or Reasoning) that is implicit in all current Programming Languages and throughout the whole of Mathematics too.

Reasoning, as we generally know it, is wholly Pluralistic. Formal Logic assumes all relations and concepts are - forever FIXED - like the components of a machine.

Indeed, I spent most of the 1980s designing tailor-made control-programs across a very wide range of diverse disciplines, always along with discipline experts, in a University in Glasgow. Yet, nevertheless, only finally began to successfully address these major flaws via dedicated Multimedia Aids, applied to Film and Video recordings of dynamic Dance Performance and Choreography, in the first decade of the new Millennium. And, frankly, I have seen neither a similar general use, either in that area, or anywhere else, in the time since then.

So what is generally considered to be Artificial Intelligence, applied to computer-controlled machines, is still wholly pluralistic (comprised of fixed and discrete components - very unlike the evolving natural world) and totally incapable of applying any Human-like Intelligence automatically.

Indeed, the calamities frequently experienced in such situations, are not caused by correctable errors, but by irretrievable Pluralist Logic.

As a qualified professional Physicist, it still took me a lifetime of work in the field and latterly a whole decade of dedicated research to demolish the wholly Pluralistic Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, currently still dominant in Sub Atomic Physics.

Indeed, both ALL Technology, and all the so-called Sciences too, have not only been crippled by Pluralist Reasoning, but also completely idealised in abandoning physical explanations for mere mathematical formulae, in order to conform to the Plurality of ALL Mathematics.

Sándor Bortnyik: Composition II, Pink and Blue, 1921

And Industry, for centuries, has had to break recognised useful Natural processes (always involving multiple, contending factors), to turn such processes into sequences of very simplified restricted separated-single-factor processes, involving purposely arranged-for pluralistic steps to attempt to replicate the Natural multi-factor situations: and, consequently, only skirting around the Real non pluralistic World.

The seemingly unsolveable problems have always been to attempt to handle simultaneous, mutually-affecting factors, in order to both control sequences of different factors, and separate their individual effects, and thereby lose their various cross influences. Indeed, the nearest that could be achieved was by whole sequences of single law steps, but these were not only always approximations, but also always, by the way they were set up, could not but eliminate all cross influences, so that things that always happened in Natural phenomena, were guaranteed to be absent in the whole set of simplified sequences,

Indeed, it was at first considered to be impossible to handle a dynamic and Holistic World scientifically, but modern researches into multifactor circumstances have begun to reveal how so-called temporary, and long-persisting "Balanced Stabilities" can, and indeed do, replace the supposedly-permanent Stabilities on which Plurality is based. And the natural processes, in the Real World, are actually made up of alternating sequences of different long-lasting Balanced Stabilities, interspersed with short-period Emergent Interludes, where one long-persisting Balanced Stability is, via a series of Crises, finally totally dissociated. And, when, in what appears to be a resultant Chaos, a constructive Phase, via a series of partially successful Crises, finally achieves a wholly New and long lasting Balanced Stability! We can call this an Emergence, or even a Revolution. 

These can never be explained or understood mechanistically. 

The role of Mankind now, must be to try and work out a different way...

The real trajectory of Qualitative Change

Issue 69 of SHAPE: Waves and Fields

Waves and Fields

Waves and Fields in Media

This new issue of SHAPE Journal tackles some of the most important problems in Physics from a Marxist perspective - revealing the science’s overlooked assumptions and disingenuous methods in comparison to new materialist Substrate Theory. This new kind of Physics assumes a hidden medium of Lepton particles permeates the known Universe, propogates light and explains some of Physics’ darkest corners - from pair production to quantised orbits to Dark Matter to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

As scientists dug ever deeper into Reality, even approaching the mythical “Fundamental Particles” of the Universe, which were supposed to be the original causal sources of absolutely everything, the proliferation of impasses became so abundent that “Explanation” itself was abandoned as a myth, and replaced by Mathematical Forms alone.

Unfortunately Mathematics is a Pluralist Discipline, requiring only fixed determinations of disembodied entities and forms, so it was always congenitally incapable of addressing what was required. Instead of seeking the engines of Qualitative Change, which might explain the evolution of matter and the rules which seemingly govern its behaviour, the discipline was still permanently orientated to seeking only eternal Natural Laws. Sub Atomic Physics, experimentally, was primarily restricted to seeking new discoveries in ever-higher- energy Colliders, or ever more powerful Telescopes - as if somehow technological progress would prove to be a magical salve to these shortocomings. All the while, Physical Theory was religated into the mere exotic manipulation of Mathematical Equations. Physics had been totally emasculted!

As a result, such an important scientific discipline has been effectively disabled from being analysed in the usual classical way, and, in spite of the sophistication of the Mathematics involved, on any completion, it has still been returned to its inadequate means of the past - explaining very little, yet delivering over long periods of time, a stream of seemingly constant states, each of which maybe “Wholly New”, to give the false impression of real descriptive Progress, but that old simplifying Phase has long passed.

What is clearly required today is a Revolution in Explanatory means, which can no longer avoid the crucial mechanisms of Real Qualitative Change - something the old single causes can never deliver.

Now, such a requirement cannot be solved by the usual kind of Causality: it is not a specific result requiring a single cause at all, but, on the contrary, more like a Complex, multi-factor System, that in exceptional circumstances changes into a very different one, or even a wholly new, never-before-experienced Emergent State.

It is a problem, which most certainly, involves many simultaneous factors, which have NOT led to Chaos, but, on the contrary, have arrived at an overall-interacting- mix of processes, that usually delivers a reliably stable- and-unchanging overall state (in fact appearing as a permanent natural and unchanging arrangement allowing that assumption of the eternal laws of physics which dominate the field), but which in particular and unusual sets of internal changes, can flip-as-a-whole into a new and different, but temporary stability, once again appearing to be another “permanent” result!

Clearly such Qualitative Changes are never the result of a particular single cause, with a known outcome, but, on the contrary, actually a temporarily-balanced outcome of a complex system, which will find a balance in one of its many possible outcomes, yet most-of-the- time stopped by the internal consequent changes that actually automatically oppose any externally imposed changes, in various corrective ways. But, exceptionally, can alternatively also wholly dissociate, and thereafter re- organise into something entirely NEW. And as the whole thing involves many different factors and levels, each and every one accompanied by one or more balancing opposites, so, the overall results are not easily diagnosed.

Now, unlike the usual Pluralist kind of Causality, the Dialectical form is never, so-directly, predictable: indeed, though the changes often take place within relatively-short Emergent Interludes, it initially involves the trajectory of a whole sequence of dissolutions, and a following, and often-entirely-new sequence of constructive associations, to finally deliver one-or-another from a whole range of possible final outcomes. Indeed, these Emergences are so quick-and-diverse, that the detailed trajectories seem impossible to theoretically reveal!

But, nevertheless, it was surprisingly discovered happening within Social Revolutions, and at much slower tempos, which could indeed be effectively interpreted, dialectically. Indeed, it was, in just such solvable situations, that Karl Marx finally got a general handle upon holistic processes of change, and enabled successful outcomes within a whole series of such Revolutions occurring in the 20th century.

Now, historically, the total absence of such a Dialectical means of analysis, meant the continuance of the prior Pluralistic Approach, which could never cope with such Changes, so the usual method was to, successively, greatly simplify the real situation, until it finally DID conform to Plurality, for each and every recognised Law, applied separately, within separated, tailor-made series of set-ups, would be necessary. And, to compound the felony, the other defining aspect of Plurality - that such acting laws were independant of one another, so their combined results would be given by mere additions, would also and quite incorrectly, be included in the analysis.

Naturally, in spite of such multiple, separately carried- out experiments, to model the Natural Combined Event, the results would NOT conform sufficiently, so further restrictions were included to remove any possibly- transmitting intermediaries, such as any Media, which could intervene, with the excuse, seemingly verified by the Michelson/Morley Experiments, that Space itself was totally empty of any Universal Substrate!

But, of course it was the role of such substrates, which enabled many phenomena to be adequately physically explained by Waves within them.

The Wave or Particle Nature of Light exemplified by the disagreements between Newton (for Particles) and Huyghens (for Waves) was resolved by the belief in Waves, but somehow without-a-Medium.

But this, in the 20th century, was removed from physical explanation alltogether, and via a construct known as Wave/Particle Duality, “unified” by a wholly illegitmate mixture of Wave Theory and Probabilities, gave useable results, purely pragmatically, via mathematical formulae alone.

But, there is the much more important aberration ofUnderstanding, now dominant across all the Intellectual Disciplines, which does not merely distort our view, but damagingly emasculate our ability to travel, even slowly, towards the objective of revealing the Truth of Reality. For Plurality, as is totally unavoidable in Mathematical Reasoning, has long been uncritically extended to both Formal Logic and literally all the Sciences. So that Qualitative Change, which is the only engine of all the varying qualities of Reality, and all development too, have been totally excluded from our view of the Universe.

Yet, there has been a tenuous, and often, all too frequently, an almost invisible link - to a solution, literally equally as old as has been the influence of the current consensus established by the Greek Intellectual Revolution, some 2,500 years ago.

It consisted of a totally opposite stance, which was developed by the mystics of India, simultaneously with the Greek Revolution, and greatly influenced by The Buddha, in which the determining essence of Reality was NOT Stability, as it was with the Greeks, but Qualitative Change - as evidenced by The Whole Living World, and the Consciousness of Man, both of which were available all the time and everywhere, though far more difficult to extract than the simplifications of Plurality.

It became known as Holism!

But these two alternatives appeared as mutually exclusive, so once one of them had been decided upon, consideration of its direct opposite appeared not only impossible, but actually incomprehensible! Though even within the Greek dominated arena, a dissenter called Zeno of Elea appeared immediately after the Intellectual Revolution, who in his Paradoxes, where he applied legitimate contradictory concepts to Movement, was able to expose many rationally untranscendable impasses, though he wasn’t aware of it, to the falsity of the Pluralistic stance imposed by the Greeks, upon General Reasoning from Mathematics.

And it wasn’t until some 2,300 years later, that the German Idealist philosopher Hegel, resurrected Zeno’s crucial exemplars, and considerably extended them to a much larger number of Dichotomous Pairs of Contradictory Concepts, that a possible reason for them appeared to be revealable.

And it boiled down to the impossibility of Plurality in situations where certain things could and indeed did change over time, in these particular cases, due to their being caused by two simultaneously-present opposites, in which the current relative proportions of each of them could change, and naturally cause a resultant switch in dominance between them.

It was a simplified explanation, but was then extended to a more complex System wherein everything varied, but arrived at complex Systems that settled into self- correcting, apparently permanent Stable States (such as those considered primary in Plurality and Physics).

The keys were still natural opposites, but “interpenetrating” in various ways to deliver an important System of corrections to Pluralist Formal Logic, which Hegel termed Dialectics.

NOTE:

An important contribution to this theory was recently developed by the writer of this paper in his researches into the pre-Life Chemical processes, which had to have preceded the first appearence of Life itself, in Systems of Natural Organic Chemical Reactions, and their overall trajectories of change, which were the prerequisites of Life, and which I called Truly Natural Selection.

Of course, Hegel’s version as an idealist philosopher was to his mind, and could only be about Human Thinking: but the transforming step was completed by the Young Hegelian follower of Hegel - namely Marx himself, who transferred over all of Hegel’s gains to a wholly Materialist stance, which only then could be correctly applied to both Reasoning and Science, initially by his own Key Intermediary of History. within the most profound Qualitative Changes ever - those occurring within Social Revolutions, as their necessary slow-tempo revelations, and his ever burgeoning Critique of Capitalist Economics, as the detailed coherent definitions of all such Qualitative Changes, in an on-going, constantly developing, yet constantly contradictory System.

Sadly, the final steps in this new Intellectual Revolution, which just had to be the detailed application of Dialectical Materialism to Science, took another 149 years to be addressed by this particular 21st century Marxist, and only completed in the latter part of 2019.

In this new issue, these dialectical studies are taken further, looking at the role waves and fields play in physical holistic systems, and how their study might change Physics forever.

Read Issue 69 of SHAPE Journal here