Having finally buried The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, both philosophically and physically, the time has come for establishing the Revolutionary Alternative, namely Holist Science.
It is not entirely new, but does need to be firmly established among the wreckage of the Copenhagen defeat, to re-orientate the Scientific Experimental Method on Holist rather than Pluralist grounds, to re-construct the most basic of the sciences, Sub Atomic Physics, beyond the limits imposed upon it by Copenhagen, and to begin the reunion of all-the-sciences upon a common, coherent, consistent and comprehensive ground - always promised but never delivered, throughout the millennia of Pluralist Science, and its ever-increasing dominance of Form over Content.
There have been isolated interludes in the past within other, assumed-to-be-secondary sciences, such as Biology, Geology, and even Astrophysics, but the concreted-in Pluralist Foundations of the majority of sciences and specialisms, have always turned attention away from Explanation to Effective Production - from True Science to Technology - with an all-embracing emphasis upon usable Mathematics and Equations, rather than the building of Real and General Understanding.
The Nature of Reality and the Significance of Oscillation
Our first conception of Reality was always bound to be of its human-scale entities, eminently stable and persisting forms, processes and products. For what actually exists, at greatly smaller levels, is entirely unavailable to our senses, and because such knowledge did not inform our prosperity and survival, such as is implicit in the "our-scale" things we need and use to survive or even to prosper.
But, what are those larger-scale seeming permanencies? Are they really as permanent as they appear to be? No, they are not! Indeed, the more we investigate them, the more frequently do we encounter much smaller-scale components, which are all in persisting oscillation.
Clearly, opposing effects are simultaneously effecting things, which find some sort of persisting balance in oscillation! We can see less permanent versions of similar oscillations, even at our own macro level, in the vibrations of strings, and even in those of many rigid things, but they soon lose energy to the surrounding atmosphere, and fade away.
The clearly evident vibrations, at our level, are always transient...
What are far more important, are the oscillations at the micro level, which do seem to persist indefinitely, without ever fading away! And, by far the most important form of such oscillations is the orbiting of one body around another, which can be "permanent", and actually exist at every level from the Sub Atomic to the Cosmic.
Various explanations of these orbitings, some of which can last for billions of years, have been suggested, The Cosmic persistences being said to be due to their happening in a vacuum, so there is nothing to carry away the involved energy. While, at the other extreme, in the oscillations of atoms in solids, are said to be actually maintained by the ambient-temperature energy of the surroundings, in intimate contact with the oscillating atoms.
But, what about those orbiting electrons within atoms?
They can be both promoted and demoted, from-and-to external energy sources, BUT NOT in a continuously-changing way: the orbits only exist at particular radii - all others are prohibited (the famed quantisation of orbits).
But, these same properties also persist in the supposed vacuum of Space!
Now, similarly "quantized" orbitings have been created, in the laboratory, and at the macro level, when deliberately made to occur in a liquid Substrate, under surprisingly simple conditions. Now, before anyone gets too excited, may I inform any doubters that ALL that was involved in these experiments was a single silicone oil substrate, and absolutely nothing else!
They were carried out by French physicist Yves Couder: and the writer of this paper has concluded that some of the remarkable phenomena produced there, in particular the orbitings of the produced "Walker entities", were made possible entirely by the presence of Vortices generated within the Substrate, and both maintained and even quantized by the two-way transfers of energy, between such a causing orbit and its produced vortices, due entirely to the constantly repeated orbits, only balancing-out to stability at particular orbit radii!
The significance of this, if true, will be enormous! For, this theorist has already applied these ideas to the quantized orbits in atoms, and also has explained all of the anomalies of the Double Slit Experiments, primarily by the presence of a currently undetectable Universal Substrate.
The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory is now already mortally wounded! And, many of the inexplicable properties of "Empty Space" are also receiving physical explanations, in terms of this same currently undetectable Substrate.
And, that Universal Substrate isn't just an unsupported speculation, without a detailed explanation of its composition, that too is well under the way, and currently holding up very well.
Though this may be dismissed as unsupported speculation, I have to strongly demur - especially when the alternative, the Copenhagen stance, isn't even a Theory, but merely a formal description, bolstered by a remarkable series of speculations!
No indeed. I take my methods from those of James Clerk Maxwell, who, seeking an explanation of the then also currently undetectable Universal Substrate - The Ether - devised a purely theoretical Analogistic Model, composed of Vortices and "electrical particles", to explain the functions of that substrate, and from it managed to develop his world famous Electromagnetic Equations! He was using the only means available to the investigator deprived of sufficient access to what he required to address a given problem. He knew, very well, that our theories, at best, only ever reflect the amount of Objective Content in our explanations, and that they would inevitably be replaced by others, containing more of that Objective Content thereafter.
So, theories, which explained more than those they replaced, were entirely legitimate in maintaining the necessary ongoing ascent. But, wild speculation was still prohibited - no Gods here!
Instead, the sincere investigator would seek analogues elsewhere in Reality that were already to some valid extent understood, and attempt to weave an effective explanation out of those - That is what is being dome here. That is the postulation of a currently undetectable Universal Substrate, using everything we know about "Empty Space", and as many analogues from known and detectable substrates as possible.
Clearly, if validly established, the universal presence of a material, yet hidden Substrate, will undermine many assumptions in current physical theories.
And, the first giant Sequoia to fall will be the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory.
While the next must be all of those that insist upon totally Empty Space, anywhere!
For, with the kind of Universal Substrate that has been developed to demolish Copenhagen, a rich background for literally all phenomena has been established, and, crucially the supposed cause of Quantization becomes a generally possible physical ground, occurring everywhere.
Add to this the increasing role of both oscillations and orbitings, and their intrinsic participation in interactions with that Substrate, and a whole new approach at all scales becomes crucial.
As soon as you consider the consequences of a Holistic World, the possibilities as compared with the usual strictly Pluralist standpoint actually explode dramatically into a host of new possibilities - not only into myriads of previously unconsidered alternatives, but also into the effects of sliding amounts of different components in all compound entities and processes, but crucially, in addition, into also including both rich joint interference patterns, and, in gradually varying mixes of different components, even how they produced consequent combined, mutually affecting, and sometimes, significantly, wholly unpredictable results.
Mere quantity changes are expanded into changing qualities, and even the emergent production of the wholly new! The traditional pluralist approach cannot deal with such in any meaningful way: we just have to accept them and find pragmatic ways of including them.
Only the holistic approach admits there is more than mere complication in the emergence of the new, and it isn/t a purely continuous process: sometimes it requires a major dissolution to even make possible a new direction of developments. And as, distinct from the old conceptions causality can act in both directions = from the old to the new, and from the new to the old. What is actually possible leaves the usual assumed combinations of fixed entities and eternal Laws well behind, on the foreshores of the Pluralist World: the majority of the vast oceans of the Holist World remain to be explored!
Now, perhaps surprisingly, the cornerstones all of Mankind's effective intellectual disciplines, ever since the Ancient Greeks, have been entirely dominated by the Principle of Plurality - a definition of the "nature of things" that always treated them all as qualitatively-fixed, which had originally been applied to the shapes of things, and related all existing shapes to combinations of individual Perfect Forms, that is as mere additions of various amounts of several of those always-the-same components. Indeed, the following major successes with such Shapes, enabled not only the construction of a powerful means of dealing with Forms in general, via Mathematics, but, was also exported to form the basis of a new reasoning with Statements of Fact, termed Formal Logic! And, within a generation, was also extended to the early attempts at Science.
Now, elsewhere, by this theorist, this has been rigorously contended as totally ignoring all Qualitative Change, and even the indisputable Evolution of things in a trajectory of qualitative developments.
For, absolutely nothing in nature is a mere Legoland-like constructional puzzle!
Lego Moog
Clearly, the diametrically opposite Principle of Holism, with its tenet, "Everything affects everything else!" has to be much closer to the Truth, yet it hasn't been comprehensively applied to any of Mankind's Intellectual Disciplines, thus far! But, the flaws of Plurality have long been known, though never recognised as such.
The best early critique was formulated by Hegel, and converted from his idealist approach to a strictly Materialist one by Karl Marx. Yet, a comprehensive application to Physics has never yet been attempted.
Now, this is currently underway by the writer of this paper, but within his other interests, it rapidly became clear that the most appropriate area for a truly Holist Approach to be both demonstrated and even developed, just had to be in Music, and especially in Electronic Music!
After centuries of pluralistic structures in Music, particularly in the West, the forms began to "break the rules", though in a remarkable way still using instruments actually constructed to deliver the old pluralist scales. Yet, certain stringed instruments, without-frets, did allow portamento - sliding between "legal notes". And, an increasing awareness of Oriental music, (particularly that of India) revealed a much richer sonic world, with instruments expressly designed to make portamento an integral part of the artistic expression.
But in the 1960s the musical experimenters using tape loops and early electronic musical instruments, such as those used by Terry Riley with his "In C", also extended the variations to a much wider set of changes, initially at least, NOT totally under the control of the players.
Like the fractal mathematicians watching their constructions, produced by algorithms on computers, generated ever more unpredictable forms, so the musicians did likewise with combined cyclic sounds and very slowly indeed reflected another aspect of Reality.
And, in Physics, the French physicist Yves Couder, focussed primarily upon the properties of liquid media, devised analogistic experiments at the macro level, using a liquid substrate, and absolutely nothing else, to produce persisting entities called Walkers, which began to reveal qualities analogous to those occurring at the Sub Atomic level, including quantised orbits.
Now, those may not seem to be related to our thesis here, but they are!
The Holist approach is much closer to natural Reality than Plurality, especially when phenomena occur in a Universal effectible and affecting Substrate. And, by far the most controllable discipline involving its propagation and receipt via a medium is MUSIC!
And, it has the property of being directly receiveable by the senses of human beings, especially those with a musical bent. This enables not only the discovery of the wholly new, but when the very instruments of production are directly under the investigators hands, variations can be made to listened to examples explored with immediate and direct feedback.
Now, Terry Riley and his colleagues were performing musicians rather than scientific investigators, so they were making primarily artistic decisions, as to exactly when they came in with their contributions. But, that meant that they did not have a complete idea as to how their contribution would affect the following overall piece.
Other performers since, playing the same "In C", decided to have a random number generator choosing when the various contributions would be added - you could just as easily have scientists choosing when to bring in certain elements to achieve certain sonic effects. Clearly all three versions would be different, and reveal different "music"! But there can be no doubt that such investigations would go beyond what the more usual kinds of music would deliver.
