Issue 57: Natural Philosophy?

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“What is Reality? Who is interpreting it? And how are they managing that?”

This series of papers by philosopher Jim Schofield takes a fresh epistemological look at modern science and offers a strong critique of contemporary theory and practice, from a staunchly materialist standing.

It does so both through a dialectical examination of the discipline’s assumed premises and their historical origins in early philosophy, and through close criticism of a series of lectures by prominent theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed.

Issue 43: Developing a Holist Approach in Science

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I am a professional scientist and mathematician, and also a life-long Marxist philosopher. In the last decade I have finally begun to make substantial progress wherein this diverse background has been brought together into what I call a Holist approach to Science.

It isn’t merely a statement of position. Indeed, it has included a wholly new interpretation of the ill-famed Double Slit Experiments in Physics, as well as related contributions on the Red Shift in Cosmology, and a crucial Theory of Emergences in Philosophy. There was no fitting-up of these areas to an a priori stance by any means. The researches in these areas were crucial in delivering a comprehensive extension of Marxism by a professional in these areas of study.

Needless to say, current work is concentrated upon demolishing the consensus position in Physics - the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Thoery - particularly in the more way-out areas such as Quantum Entanglement, and even Quantization of Electron Orbits in Atoms.

An important part of the remit for this series of papers was established by the tackling of a complete redesign of Stanley Miller’s brilliant holistic experiment concerning establishing processes prior to the Origin of Life on Earth. The great gains of this acheivement are based upon an important set of profound contributions in Philosophy, surprisingly not only on Science, but more generally.

This publication is meant as a basis for those who may consider investigating this amazing and effective alternative approach to the scientific method.

Physics and Philosophy

The closing of Middlesex University Philosophy Department

Are both disciplines really about the Nature of Reality?

What do Philosophy Departments in our Universities do?

I am a physicist, and in my experience, Physics Departments (worth their salt, anyway) do Physics! They do experiments.

So, what happens in Philosophy? Is it like the Art Department in my own (undergraduate) University, which didn’t actually do any Art, but just talked about it? Indeed, I, as a physicist, ended up as the secretary of the Art Society in the University for two years.

Do the members of staff in Philosophy actually practice Philosophy? I ask this question because as a physicist today I simply cannot avoid Philosophy – and, I don’t mean the Philosophy of Science, for such restrictions merely end up being about the History of Mankind in Science, and not about the Understanding of Reality. Surely, Science and Philosophy should be very close bedfellows and work together on this same crucial task?

But, I have also observed that very few of the “doing” physicists have any real idea of their own philosophic stance and underlying assumptions. Yet, after generations of scientists being confirmed materialists (as a matter of course), they, as a body, in the latter part of the 19th century, found that the ground beneath their feet was beginning to shake, and deliver ever more damaging tremors, which threatened the very fabric of their once rock-steady stance. The discovery of the Quantum opened up the biggest ever can of worms. Indeed, great fissures opened up, and something had to be done!

The result, finally consummated in 1927 at the Solvay Conference, was a total abandonment of their prior Mechanical Materialism, but what replaced it was even worse.

In Sub Atomic Physics a totally idealist standpoint, with “materialist” experiments was adopted. Instead of the search for physical causes, the whole approach was re-orientated to merely seek Form in experimental results as sufficient in itself. Causes were either unknown or unknowable, but here in our hands were the useable results. We would not only abandon the next question, namely “Why?”, but we would seek our patterns as themselves being the causes of phenomena. The equations produced were conceived of as the Natural Laws of Reality.

The inference was clear: the found equations were the driving imperatives of Nature – they actually caused observed phenomena.

Let us reiterate that stance!

The purely formal relations (abstracted from Reality most certainly, but there had been simplified and idealised from purposely farmed experimental situations) were turned into being the sole drivers of Reality.

Science had become a branch of Mathematics (and could be researched mainly on a blackboard with chalk). It had been changed into an idealist discipline.

Of course, a fig leaf of “explanation” was vigorously defended, but it certainly was not an attempt at real explanation in terms of physical substances and their properties. It had been removed into the Parallel World of Pure Form alone, which I call Ideality, and as such was doomed

Of course, there had been a great deal wrong with the prior scientific standpoint. It has for centuries been a dualist compromise between an idealist belief in form, and a materialist search for causal explanations, that somehow remained together as a workable compromise. The equations were so useful, you see: they had to be an objective in any research!

And, along with this illegitimate compromise, the materialist stance was indeed entirely mechanist: it did not address reality's development at all.

The odd genius, such as Darwin, though transcending that stance, did not, and at that stage could not, change the basic standpoint one iota. The basic sciences were about eternal Natural Laws, as encapsulated in formal equations.

You could not THEN challenge that belief!

The vast majority of physicists really did believe that everything in the Universe could be directly explained in terms of a straight-through series of causes, right back to fundamental particles, and also that these were accurately described by the formal equations – the Natural Eternal Laws. You can see the amalgam. It wasn’t easy to demolish by individual gains in isolated areas. It was the generally agreed ground!

Thus, though many linking gaps were evident, they would ultimately be closed, resulting in everything being derived ultimately from the Primary Science that was Physics. And, increasingly within that subject the nitty gritty would then have to be the Study of Fundamental Particles.

Of course, such a stance did not represent the real situation. Indeed, it was miles away from a comprehensive position, but it had been productive at all levels for centuries, and would not be renounced with the occurrence of as yet unexplained anomalies.

Until undeniably demolished, most scientists would stick to Reductionism – the concept that eternal Natural Laws at the bottommost layer of Reality generated absolutely everything else above it – all the way to Life, Consciousness and Society. And in such a context, the various different subjects be they Chemistry, Biology and even Psychology were then only forced sub divisions of a single structure, as would be proved as the missing links were found one by one.

But, of course, that assumption is incorrect!

The divisions into different sciences are not down to mere human categorisation. They are, in fact, reflective of wholly different Levels of Reality, which when they first happened resulted in new worlds with their own relationships, that did not exist prior to that Event.

NOTE: The inability of scientists to discover the Origin of Life proves this conclusively: it isn’t a mere complication of existing laws from a lower Level, but the product of a seismic Revolution.

And, the reason that one can be so adamant about this is that the prevailing stance ignores Development almost entirely, and simply believes it is merely complication.

Indeed, this criticism is proved by the predominance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the views of present day Physicists. For such a Meta law is ONLY about dissolution, and says absolutely nothing about what created the evident structures in an indisputable prior Development. Puny efforts have been made to ally the Second Law with Randomness and Chance, in which that crucial progress in the history of Reality is put down to the roles of these random contributions, but the evident ineffectiveness of such efforts prove that they are mere constructs and reflect nothing of the real Development that has occurred at all!

The problem is, and always was, the shortness of the life spans of individual human beings. No individual could actually observe big developments in reality, and indeed, for millennia, Humanity has considered reality as a fixed thing – an achievement and then a maintenance of a natural stability in all things.

Now, stability, as commonly observed, appeared to be the normal state of Reality, and all change, if there was any at all, was tiny and incremental – occasionally passing some formal quantitative threshold, and thereafter slipping things over into a more conducive and maintainable alternative stability. It was an understandable mistake, but incorrect due to lack of evidence.

The first cracks appeared, centuries ago, in the studies of geologists, who revealed a changing world clearly recorded in the rocks beneath our feet.

But, this development was incredibly long winded – even thousands of years were insufficient to reveal changes, and significant transformative changes were much rarer – usually only apparent over millions of years. And, as the science developed, what it revealed not only included vast changes in the material forms of continents and even the oceans, but also revealed an indisputable evolution of Life itself, AND even the actual time of Life’s Origin on earth.

Yet this subject, Geology, was regarded as merely a “secondary discipline”: its conclusions were majorly distorted by the fact that Geology was a limited discipline, where investigative experiments were impossible, so clearly, the testable and superior discipline of Physics, which could explain things from bottom to top, was still unchallenged as the product of everything there is.

And sadly, even Geology was mute when it came to the clearly evident step-changes in the record of the rocks.

For such a record, very slowly built up over tens and even hundreds of millions of years, could only clearly deliver established stable levels gradually laid down over colossal periods of time, and the crucial dramatic changes would be located in time, but totally absent as an investigatable record. The essential interludes of major and often qualitative changes were simply unrecorded: all that could be clearly seen would be an impenetrable step-change.

These crucial interludes were invariably of relatively short duration. Indeed, the first indications that such transforming interludes actually occurred were found in the recorded histories and the archaeological revelations of earlier Human Societies. For there, without any doubt, such transforming interludes definitely occurred.

Even in the found remains of earlier human beings, there were clear examples of indisputable evidence of what was then described as the Neolithic Revolution. And, this occurred at a time when the only tools available were knapped fragments of flint, plus a few shaped softer materials such as wood and horn.

Yet in this remarkable interlude, Mankind invented animal husbandry, farming, pottery, weaving and many other new techniques. It was no, slow, incremental set of changes, but just such a relatively short-length Revolution.

Also, from the opposite end of Mankind’s studies, in Social History, came the concepts of Stability and Revolution – an oscillation between long periods of slow, incremental quantitative changes, and short interludes of major, qualitatively transforming changes.

Could this be the natural pattern of all developments at all levels?

Slowly, evidence began to accumulate that this was indeed the case... But, did it change the stance of our physicists? No! They actually admitted that switches occurred in the development of Reality, but also insisted that all of these would ultimately be totally explicable in the usual mechanical materialist ways. No change was necessary in their philosophic stance.

Clearly, following this blinkering, a crisis was unavoidably looming, and it would be a biggy! Indeed, there was a Revolution in the offing. Then finally, that time arrived - the avalanche of contradictions multiplied all the time, and a transcending of the causes (long overdue) became imperative. These head-down scientists were extremely unlikely to allow any generalist, head-up conceptions (by uninformed dreamers) to deflect them from their “holy” path.

The intervention just had to come from without!

It had happened in 19th century politics with the intervention of Karl Marx (a philosopher) into areas such as Social History and Economics, but the necessary intervention in Science was never carried through. Yet, Marx was initially only an academic philosopher – a follower of the idealist giant Hegel, yet his intervention transformed politics.

The question therefore posed at the outset of this paper can now be restated:- “Do academic philosophers DO philosophy?”

What is their position on the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and the consequent switch among scientists to Reality itself, being determined by Formal Relations, as embodied in Equations?

Something MUST be going on, which simply must be in the remit of practising philosophers. For in my developmental studies, contributions by the philosopher Salmon enabled me to see the role of the Principle of Plurality in science. Yet, no moves are then made by today’s philosophers to address this flawed principle, as Hegel would most certainly have done 200 years ago!

The question has to be, “Why?”

Now, if, as seems to be the case, what is studied (and explained?) is merely the History of Philosophy, cannot the trajectory towards Truth be discerned in that, as it was in History by the philosopher Marx?

Marxism and The Origin of Life

 How Philosophy Aids Science

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, that did not happen!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Real Marxism? It is a Philosophy.

There are today many people in left-wing politics, who say that they are Marxists. But, what do they mean by it?

For decades after the Russian Revolution, it was that Event, which guaranteed their stance. It was, after all, the ONLY successful socialist revolution, and had most certainly been led by followers of Karl Marx, after his central theoretical role in the establishment of both the First and the Second Internationals.

But, what was it that made Marx’s position both entirely appropriate and unique?

Activists had been calling themselves Socialists for many decades before Marx, but he started from a very different place to almost all of them. He started as a philosopher; a follower of the Idealist, Frederick Hegel, and his conversion to that standpoint was achieved by the truly tremendous contributions of that academic philosopher in his chosen area of Thinking about Thought. It couldn’t have been more different than that of the majority of avowed “socialists”. And, after his conversion to Materialism, Marx spent a great deal of time criticising what he called the Utopian Socialists.

For him, the KEY was Philosophy!

And by this he did not mean Academic Philosophy – knowing and describing all the possible varieties, but, on the contrary, and with the same imperatives as the fast growing discipline of Science, his objective was to base all political activities upon establishing the closest understanding of the real nature of Society that he could achieve.

And, he was certain that to be able to do that, you had to follow Hegel’s analysis of Human Thinking – Dialectics, but applied to absolutely all developments, and particularly to that of Society itself.

Now, having myself been in one or another self-professed revolutionary party for over 50 years, I can insist that the people I worked with were NOT like that. From being 19 years old, studying Physics at University, I had come across Lenin’s critique of the philosophy, then in the ascendency in Science – Empirio Criticism, and as a real Marxist, he immediately had known that here was a philosophy that was going badly wrong. On reading his Materialism and Empirio Criticism, I knew it too. And from that moment on I became a very unusual person indeed: for I was both a Physicist and a Marxist.

I soon found that, in my academic studies, these two commitments were said to be on opposite sides. Not a lecturer or a fellow student in my course agreed with me. Physics as a discipline was marching steadily in a very different direction from the Philosophy of Marxism. Yet, it was clear to me that the exact opposite should be the case!

Now, experiencing such a revelation was, I’m afraid, insufficient to either bring about this necessary union, or even develop myself as a Marxist. So, I joined an overt Marxist Party to remedy my evident inadequacies. I hoped that I could be an affective political activist AND a better physicist from what I could learn about Marxism.

But, that wasn’t what I was able to get from a very long history in the Communist Party, the Labour Party the SLL and the WRP, nor did I find anything better in the many other varieties of Trotskyism in UK politics.

In fact, philosophically, they were nowhere, and the reason was that they didn’t DO Marxism as professional, full-time method. Indeed, the only reason I had got so much from Lenin’s book was that I was a physicist, and he was dealing with the then standpoint in Physics, but better than the agreed leaders in the field.

You could never become a Marxist by merely reading the Marxism of the past: you HAD to be doing it NOW! And, in an area you were intimately knowledgible about.

I finally became a Marxist by constantly applying what I knew of that stance in my own specialisms. And, these ranged over Politics, Physics, Biology, Archaeology, Evolution, Sculpture, Mathematics and Computing. Indeed, my stance took me on an unusual journey, and by the time I had posts in various Universities, I was the first port of call for researchers in literally all disciplines, who required tailor-made software to aid them in their studies.

Though I didn’t plan it, my specialism became Computers in Control in a surprisingly wide range of disciplines. I even won a BIVA award with a colleague for our Dance Disc – a Multimedia Aid for the Teaching of Dance Performance and Choreography.

With an increasingly Marxist stance and method I became the leader in this field, and finally got a professorial Post in London University, on the basis of this work.

There could be no doubt about the importance of Marxism as a philosophy, but, the understanding of exactly what that meant in particular areas of application, was something that had to be discovered, involving both successes and failures.

It wasn’t an infallible formula, but a philosophical method that had to be constantly re-applied to an ever-changing context. Book-Marxism was a waste of time, and speculative-Marxism also regularly proved inadequate. Marxists had to be professionals in the best possible sense.

Now, problem number one was that many “Marxists” would agree with all of this, but only apply what they had learned to tackle, which was solely concerned with political problems. But, that could be a dead end! The real power of this philosophy was its universality and its recursivity, for that meant that it could, and indeed, should, be applied to all other disciplines, especially those that were your professional area of expertise.

So, how does it differ from the usual approaches?

First, there are no eternal Natural Laws in Marxism!

The task is always to increase the amount of Objective Content in your theories.

Let us take the example I know particularly well – Physics!

This supposed-to-be Basic Discipline – on which all others are causally based, is incorrect.

It is the simplest basis, but can tell us nothing about the real dynamics and development of all other higher levels of organisation. Most particularly, it can say nothing about Life, about Mankind, or about Human Societies. Indeed, the modern Marxist stance on Physics has been greatly advanced by discoveries at higher levels – not least in the revelation of Emergences (or Revolutions) in the real Qualitative Development of these levels. For now, these same features have been revealed as absolutely imperative in Physics itself – especially in the Major Crisis now unresolved for almost a century!

Indeed, more generally, the usual methods were constantly coming up against both contradictions and dichotomous Concepts, and “solved” them by setting up new categories of study, to ignore these impasses, and carry on with the same methodology, but now in a new, isolated subject. The old methods proliferated the number of these categories, and forever shelved the contradictions that separated one realm from another, as something for “resolving later”.

Now, how did this affect my attempt to become a real Marxist, via my own specialism – Physics? I finally realised that it was up to me. No one else could do it for me.

Initially, literally all my work as a teacher in schools was determined by what I had been taught in my own education. And, there was much there to be communicated and explained to my students. Indeed, it was this imperative of Explanation, that had taken me upon a different route from the now-in-charge physics community. Explanation, which I considered to be Science’s main virtue, was steadily being replaced by Formal Equations as the real, driving causes. So, as a teacher, I from the outset considered it to be my job to “Explain Why” things happened as they did.

The effect on my career was significant. I switched first to solely teaching Mathematics, then Biology, and finally, Computing.

But, in spite of a better approach, I still had to develop philosophically, when I finally scaled the heights via Further Education, finally getting posts in Universities in Hong Kong, Glasgow, Bedford and London. The clincher was when I switched from a Teaching Department to Computer Services, and made my job one of helping researchers in ALL disciplines by writing tailor-made computer programs demanded by the full range of discipline experts. Success in a variety of unusual disciplines caused me to be approached to write a chapter in IBM’s Research and Academic User’s Guide.

Only then, did my philosophical development become consciously Marxist.

The epitome of this work was to be awarded a British Interactive Video Award for the Dance Disc – a multimedia Aid for the Teaching of Dance Performance and Choreography. A following series of projects took us to a leading position in the field, where we have been for 15 years. You would think that more experienced practitioners in the Dance World would catch up and pass us, but it hasn’t happened. There are NO Marxists working in Dance Education!

Now, the above is, of course, a very truncated account.

Indeed, I continued to do research of my own in Mathematics and in Philosophy, and by 2010 I had produced a non-Copenhagen Theory of the Double Slit Experiments and a New Theory of Emergences. My colleague in Dance and I produced another dozen titles, and she was awarded a Ph. D. for her brilliant adaptions of her extensive teaching knowledge to our products.

When my sight began to fail, I retired from that work, and became a full-time Marxist writer on Science and Philosophy

And, in politics, it wasn’t just activism, or knowing what Marx said in innumerable situations. It was definitely his philosophy and dialectical method that was crucial. And, I had to apply it (once I grasped it) to the biggest ever Crisis in Physics – the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and begin to solve its many anomalies to confirm that I was finally a Real Marxist.




Postscript:

Of course, this very short paper has said very little about The Marxist Method, because stating in it generally is neither easy nor informative. The core of the Method is constructed upon Hegel’s discoveries into how we actually think, and, most importantly, how we are regularly brought to a halt by impasses, occurring as consequences of our assumptions and principles. What he then delivered was not just a view of this trajectory, but also a means of transcending its impasses.

And, of course, the detailed nature of these will look very different in widely separated disciplines. Finally, this method cannot be a final and fixed set of procedures, but will be at any juncture limited by the width of our applications and consequent understanding. So, to continually develop it, it has to be re-discovered in discipline after discipline, and literally all the time, not only solving the particular problems involved, but also in developing the philosophical method too.

New Special Issue: The Unknown Ocean III

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The 33rd Special Issue of the SHAPE Journal is now available. It is the third and last part of our Unknown Ocean series, continuing our journey deeper into the uncharted depths of reality, this time concentrating on the new methodology necessary for truly understanding it.

The Past & Future Bases for Science

Can we definitively establish the philosophical bases on which Science has been built?

There are extremely important reasons for this question. First, there is the evident way that it has totally transformed human society via Technology. And second, it has inexorably led its practitioners (and the rest of society) into an unavoidable theoretical cul de sac, with persisting and innumerable contradictions and anomalies.

It surely, therefore, has to be the most important task of our age to attempt to transcend the caused impasse in understanding Reality more fully?

There must be a major and universal, but un-admitted crisis in Science as a whole. But, it isn’t transparently evident, because both scientists and the public are deceived by the continuing and even accelerating successes of Technology.

Another confirmation of this crisis is that I, in a long life in Science, have never seen so many of its leading practitioners shouting out its believed-in virtues so loudly (and regularly) from the rooftops!

They doth proclaim too much!

Practitioners are uncomfortable, but see only more contradictions and crises ahead, and have to convince themselves (and everyone else) that the current ideas and methods will see us all through to what we seek.

But, the proof of the pudding has to be in the eating!

And, in Sub Atomic Physics that is evident in both its experimental practice, and in its so-called “Theory” The experimental width has narrowed down to a solely technology-led development: new, ever more powerful telescopes (which see ever more) and Accelerators (which smash “fundamental” particles to smithereens in order to see what they are made of). And, both deliver a relatively constant stream of new discoveries and associated data to fuel the now established narrow paths of development, into a relative torrent.

Yet, the so-called theoretical results are indeed philosophically abysmal. And while ever-new, but inexplicable, discoveries in Space also lead to ideas like Dark Matter and Dark Energy, the cosmologists retreat into unfounded speculation concerning multiple dimensions and unseen Universes, along with the purest of pure Forms in Mathematics, such as String Theory and a Space-Time 4-dimensional “purely formal substrate” to deal with Gravitation.

The current Grand synthesis (though it is currently being challenged by even worse idealist nonsense) has for some time now been The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, with it “cornerstone proof” delivered by the famous Double Slit Experiments, and its abandonment of explanatory theory for pure mathematical descriptions, standing indubitably upon an entirely idealist stance.

Crisis? They are in a terrible mess, and daily only dig themselves deeper into the mire!

Oh, I am well aware they would all deny it vehemently, but I have never, anywhere, met worse philosophers than are presented by modern physicists. If the reader needs convincing of this, may I recommend reading the truly atrocious Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg, who along with Niels Bohr, established the Copenhagen stance, and won the day over giants like Einstein at the Solvay Conference in 1927. [Yes, it is a long time, and confirms my description of the impasse being still totally unresolved to this day]

But, the actual causes for this crisis were never revealed, and were by no means even new. They had been around for literally millennia, and never resolved. Indeed, from the time of the illustrious ancient Greeks, some 2,500 years ago, a major split took place in what later became known as Philosophy. The two streams that emerged were concerning the ultimate Nature of Reality: on typified it as holistic, as embodied in the ideas of the Buddha, and the other was pluralistic, which was subscribed to by literally all of the famous Greek philosophers.

It was an important split, and, at that time, unavoidable, due to Mankind’s still undeveloped ideas in such areas. They were, in fact, very different ways of trying to understand Reality, and both made assumptions to facilitate those investigations.

Perhaps, the holist view was, surprisingly, much closer to the true Nature of Reality, but at that time pretty well unable to direct any sort of investigative practice.

The pluralist view, on the other hand, was very different, for it did, indeed, provide an effective and useful method of studying Reality. It made it perfectly OK to “hold Reality stall” – to actually both isolate and change an area of Reality by farming it in carefully protected and maintained plots, where as many confusing or “inconsequential” factors as possible were either removed or held constant. And, this was considered not only legitimate, but actually the only way to reveal what were considered to be eternal causing Laws, that were actually driving it

Now, from a purely pragmatic view, the comparison seemed to be a case of “no contest”, for the holist view merely led to a human-based outlook, while the pluralist view led to a technological methodology that could be made to actually work. What it involved was an active intervention into Reality within isolated Domains, which were ideally tailored to reveal normally hidden relationships, by the elimination or control of literally everything else.

It was clearly a powerful approach, and when carried out in the best possible way, did reveal something, not only informative as to cause, but also useable in producing required outcomes. It was indeed almost magical! Clear patterns were revealed that could be extracted and even formulated into mathematical equations, to be used when required.

BUT, they could never be used in totally unfettered Reality. Not only had Reality to be completely controlled, but also in exactly the same way that had enabled the extraction of the revealed form to now be used. But, nevertheless, it was a great success! However, its consequent formulation into a philosophical standpoint was far from the Truth.

For philosophically, it identified the actual motive forces of Reality as precisely these relations that had so carefully been arranged for in the very unnatural and necessary conditions for their revelation and extraction. It just wasn’t true!

What had been developed was a Technology for using parts of Reality, but NOT yet a means of understanding Reality. So, even alongside this technological stance and productive method, there appeared a very different stance, which was holistic, and attempted to explain phenomena in Reality in terms of the revealed properties of the substances involved.

These were, of course, the theoreticians, who were always trying to integrate various discoveries into a comprehensive overall scheme.

Remember, these two different stances co-existed awaiting an expected future bridge between the two. But, this situation also led to an inevitable growing apart of the various groups of scientists involved. We had the observers and data takers – the Experimentalists! Also, there were the theorists with their ever-wider attempts at explanation. And finally we had the technologists, with their equations and pragmatic purposes.

And, as time passed they didn’t ever manage to approach a single view, but instead grew ever further apart.

Indeed, an interesting much wider social effect was imposed, due to the continuing success of the technologists, in that these gains were increasingly turned into the main purpose of Science, so that the constant question became, “But, how can you use it to benefit everyone?” And also, “What can you make using your discovery?”

The technological tail increasingly wagged the investigative dog!

The proof is evident absolutely everywhere. Bigger and better telescopes, and bigger and better Colliders are now the only sources of new data, and computing products get smaller and more powerful by the day. Can anyone doubt the totally dominating imperative in today’s Science?

But, the defeat of the explanatory theorists at Solvay, also involved a major turn “theoretically” – for without the presence of both alternative stances as embodied in the pluralist/holist Dichotomous Pair involving both physical explanations and formal descriptions, the very last vestiges of real theory were rooted out, and replaced with completely with mathematical forms, with some apparently “theoretical” trimmings but real coherent and comprehensive explanations were banned!

Sub Atomic Physics now subscribed fully to the idealist position that Formal laws drove Reality entirely.

What “explanations” there were, became entirely secondary and descended into mere analogies, rather than delivering a real understanding of what was occurring and why. And this descent was thoroughgoing.

Comparing the new offerings with those employed by James Clerk Maxwell, make the distinction clear. He had effectively used an analogistic model, of his own design, of the nature of the supposed Ether filling all of Space, and used it to derive his famous Electromagnetic Equations. But, nothing remotely like this was now evident. Where Maxwell's analogy was derived in accordance with known phenomena, and in both delivering them and his equations, the new analogues were very loose and uninformed placeholders to excuse their now untouchable equations. At best, these analogues were mere "illustrative tales from macro Reality".

Now, some 200 years ago, there was a strong opportunity to rescue Science from its inevitable major crisis. It came in the work of German idealist philosopher Frederick Hegel from his studies into “Thinking about Thought”. For, he realised that human beings were in a seemingly impossible position when it came to actually understanding Reality, for they were not evolved to tackle such questions at all. Physically and mentally human beings were, and still are, hunter/gatherers, for since that time, the usual process of Natural Selection no longer determined things with the human race’s abilities.

Via bipedal locomotion, and the new and flexible use of the hand, the brains of hominids had indeed developed, but with homo sapiens, and particularly after the Neolithic Revolution (much too recent to allow significant genetic changes to be Naturally Selected), things changed, and future developments had absolutely nothing to do with selection of genetic changes, and instead were all about socially passed on knowledge via teaching and nature of Man’s thinking had been genetically selected for in a past era, which involved absolutely nothing about the questions being addressed here.

So, all of today’s human beings did not come into the world equipped-and-ready to tackle the questions arising in Science and Philosophy.

They would be forced to “pull themselves up by their own bootlaces” – in other words used what they were equipped with to find pragmatic and indirect routes to greater understanding, and would be by making concepts that were NOT correct, but, nevertheless, contained enough Objective Content to allow effective uses to be achieved in certain achievable conditions. Such conceptions would always and inevitably have finite “shelf-lives” – the time would always arrive, when they would completely run out of steam in attempting to solve certain problems.

And, at such points, the incorrect concepts, would lead to Pairs of consequent concepts that were completely contradictory. They couldn’t both be true!

They were termed Dichotomous Pairs, and the only way Man could conceive of dealing with them was to first attempt to find which of the two was correct, and when this inevitably failed, as it always did, was to use which one of the Pair fitted a particular problem effectively, and to switch to the opposite one when it didn’t!

This “pragmatic” solution is still what we do to this day.

But, Hegel went further: he had a method of transcending the impasse presented by such a crisis.
He soon realised that the problem could never be solved by merely comparing the two opposites within the dichotomy. What had to be done (which was by no means easy) was to unearth the key assumptions and even principles common to both concepts in such a Pair.

The task became to undertake a deep critique of these bases and then find better alternatives. Only by this “dialectical” method could such impasses be truly transcended.

Clearly, what Hegel had discovered about Human Thinking, also applied to Science. For, all our theories and derivations had been devised within Human Thinking too. Science wasn’t independent of us, and never could be!

But, though we would always, time after time, hit the buffers, and the impasse would be signalled by the achievement of these Dichotomous Pairs, which could indeed be tackled indirectly by the discovering and replacing of the things upon which they were ultimately based.

With this achievement, the way was indeed open for the unification of Science involving this valuable new approach.

Why didn’t it happen?

It wasn’t just another trick in the Formal Logic set of reasoning methods. It was based upon an alternative holistic approach, which not only differed fundamentally from centuries of pluralistic methods in Science, but also did not deliver an alternative methodology for the full programme of scientific activities and uses. The task was NEVER undertaken!

Yet, though the pluralist approach had proved very effective in a very wide variety of practical uses, its requirement of the necessary provision of ideal conditions for each and every “law” being used was a very expensive way of doing things. And, its inabilities to accurately represent totally unfettered (indeed naturally acting) Reality, was not only misleading theoretically, but continually led to seemingly insuperable impasses and Pairs of contradictory concepts generated from the very same bases. brought each and every sequence of consequent steps to its own dead-end. And, as investigations penetrated ever deeper into the very heart of Reality, the system became increasingly useless in delivering any real understanding at all.

Technicians would undoubtedly continue in the old was, upon their well-trodden and successful paths, but that would no longer suffice for scientists.

A conscious and essential Revolution had to take place, which would be upon literally “all new ground”. A new Holistic Science had to be built, and the universally employed pluralistic methods would in many important areas have to be totally transformed, using an, as yet undelivered, holistic set of methods, and, of course, an explanatory approach to Theory once more.

The direction of investigations will have to be wrested away from those only interested in the exploitation of new discoveries, and back into the hands of those attempting to truly understand Reality.

New Special Issue: The Unknown Ocean II

Read the issue

The second part of our Unknown Ocean series, and the 32nd Special Issue of the SHAPE Journal, continues our journey deeper into the uncharted depths of reality, questioning the impasses and anomalies proliferating in all areas of Modern Science today, and endeavouring to construct a new and sounder basis for our explorations of the world around us.

The Fall

The Real Origin of the Big Bang? 

Let us assume an almighty collapse of Universe-wide proportions of a prior and flagging Universe, which is finally running out of steam, but still carrying within it the developments and constructions of eons.

Clearly, such a cataclysmic event would have to signal the termination of some prior and stable phase, in which the Universe had been developing within a generally acting set of conditions: the most likely, considering what we know of our presently existing Universe, being one of a long-standing and continuous expansion.

Effectively, only a switch to a new, all-prevailing dominance of Gravity, could cause the termination of that phase, and begin such an all-encompassing collapse.

The universe, throughout its spread, would then begin to fall back, on increasingly more extensive fronts, towards its overall centre of mass. Of course, the question, as to where the collapse would begin, certainly presents the first difficulty.

Close to that centre of overall mass, the effective pull inwards would, necessarily, be small. For, very little matter would be there compared with the universe as a whole. And, also, most of the matter, outside of such a position, would tend to cancel out, leaving only a small imbalance to effect such a pull.

The most likely place, therefore, where the pull towards the centre would all be both one way, and due to the combined mass of the whole Universe, would have to be at the extreme peripheries. For, all the gravitational pull, in such positions, would be inwards, previously overwhelmed by some prior cataclysmic event, which threw everything outwards at a colossal speed and swamped, by that initial impulse, any purely gravitational pulls in the opposite direction. BUT, that event could never be a continuous pressure outward, but something of a short duration, the involved momentum would be continually opposed by the general, inwards pull of Gravity.

Clearly, at some point the expansion would run out of steam, and a switch to a collapse would ensue!

Let us assume, therefore, that the collapse would commence at these extremities. And, as it got closer to the centre of mass, the pulling force would increase, so the fall would continue to accelerate.

But, if that Universe were at all like ours, it would not be uniform: it would consist of innumerable concentrations – from planets and suns, to dust clouds and galaxies. And, if the collapse, from the outer edge, were occurring inwards as some sort of wave, this increasing flow would encounter various differing elements of a fragmentary universe, picking up extra weight, but definitely not uniformly, but instead in various fits and starts – sometimes of absolutely colossal proportions.

It would be like a strong flow of water, superimposed upon a relatively calm pond, but also having various floating centres of different sizes in a relatively stationary ground.

The Fall would not be a simple contraction!

Not only would it cause spinning vortices of some of these obstructions to be created, but it could also precipitate local collapses, and even trigger local explosions and supernovae.

In such tumults, what survives could be from many such sub-phases, and include some surprising survivors too. And, as these would be local any explosions, they would not be sufficient to reverse the speed of the general collapse but would, themselves, be twisted like vortices, creating temporary pauses in the general collapse, and also temporary stabilities within these spinning remnants.

Imagine the event, in all positions, like a fast flowing stream, with individual local obstructions and even explosions, twisted into vortices – all accompanying the general flow.

This indicates that during the fall, many such temporary reversals would inevitably occur, with the effect of breaking up the involved material objects into more and more fragmentary units, but not all of the same minimal size Instead, they would be produced in a diversity of different sub-phases, from different stages of prior development.

Ultimately, we assume a total-universe-involved final crunch, at the centre of its mass, which would result in a final gigantic explosion. But, this would, most certainly, NOT be in a “dimensionless dot” – a Singularity, composed entirely of totally disembodied Pure Energy and nothing else.

Such idealist myths are the extrapolations of Mathematicians, NOT scientists! Clearly, the cataclysm will always precede any such state, and will be diverse throughout its initial execution. The overall result will be generally outwards, but radically altered by its almost continuous and varied sub-phases, all the way down to that final Daddy-of-them-all – the ultimate reverse into an explosion!

This could, indeed, be our famed Big Bang, which would then start a new overall expansion, and the building of a Different and Original, New Universe.

But, as with all such cycles of catastrophe and re-construction, what is produced will never be exactly the same as that which was lost.

Indeed, in spite of the tremendous proportions of the whole Event, it would not start from a single given point in time, but be the final consequence of a whole series of crises, pauses and even temporary rejuvenations.

The final turn around would be the culmination of all these contributions, and would commence in different ways and at different times, until the whole process moves were entirely outwards in an enormous Explosion.

Both the Singularity, and its nature of pure, disembodied Energy are false extrapolations of abstract equations taken well beyond their applicability.

They are Formal Myths!

The actual event has been elsewhere generally traced as a common trajectory in what are termed Emergences, which occur in all kinds of developments, and at all Levels, and none of those investigated are the least like the current consensus by the mathematical cosmologists, who currently rule the roost!

Let us be clear, all sorts of entities, at many different stages of development, WILL come through this gigantic event, and thereafter significantly play a major role in the subsequent developments. At No Point was there only Energy. All strictly pluralist attempts to track the trajectory of the development of the new Universe, from “known” and “eternal” Laws, will never deliver anything of value. They are merely intellectual exercises, based upon incorrect assumptions and principles.

To even begin to tackle the suggested Big Bang, researchers must first turn away from Formal Logic and Pure Mathematics, and begin to study the crucial transforming events of all significant development – the Emergences of the wholly New.

And, no single development path will produce any relevant results. The process will, on the contrary, consist of many diverse strands from the outset, with very different contents, depending upon what happened to those ultimate remnants during the Fall.

The simple bottom-up conceptions, of the pluralist cosmologists, ascribing all subsequent differentiations to initial quantum fluctuations, in an initial Singularity, is clearly unfounded speculation, based entirely on a narrow regime of particle accelerators and atom smashing for their evidence.

IT is the diversity of surviving bits from the Fall that determines these consequent developments. For, that produced final mix, may well include fragments from all sorts of phases, and so the trajectory, of developing competitions and dominances, will be entirely NEW, because of the local unique mixes, and different in different localities, which will then come together to generate new crises and resolutions. Indeed, even during the new general expansion, there will be surprising localities, n that supernovae could be occurring, and local collapses of surviving galaxies completing their final stages of the Fall!

This seems to ensure that though these ideas imply an oscillation between successive collapses and expansions, and, therefore, looks like a never-ending repeat, it will never be mere repetitions.

Every single Universe will, indeed, be different, with its admixture of fragments from diverse phases in the prehistory of the Universe, very different victories in the various competitions, and hence different stabilities will be inevitably established.

It isn’t merely repeating the same every time!

Clearly, the mathematical Singularities play no part in this development, based essentially upon the Theory of Emergences. For, such dramatic transformations never do relate to such formal abstractions, in any known cases! 

For, such Singularities occur when simplified and idealised processes (rather than the actual real ones) inevitably “bomb-out”, and something totally unpredictable from those prior formal descriptions, replaces them. In all real processes, such cataclysms do not totally terminate all previous histories, or deliver pristine and pure beginnings. They will be both dirtier and replete with elements of the past, and will, on turn around, beget a wholly new development.

Physics is not the Basic Science

 It is, at best, the earliest.

Criticisms of the usual way that Reality is investigated by Science in general, and Physics in particular, are invariably rubbished, not only by the rank and file of these disciplines, which together constitute an admittedly very fruitful approach, but perhaps even more vociferously, by the denizens of this set of disciplines.

But, I’m afraid that they are wrong, and for very good philosophical and scientific reasons.

For, the usual methods and their consequently associated theoretical conclusions simply do not address what I call Reality-as-is! Indeed, what is always dealt with is a limited and certainly modified selection from Reality.

Neither can the methods they use deal with anything other than completely stable situations – either as they occur naturally, or, in the overwhelming majority of individual situations, in totally man-devised and constructed Domains – expressly designed to make Analysis as simple and easy as possible. “You know you have it right, when the targeted relation sticks out like a sore thumb”

Priority One in preparing to do an experiment of this sort, is to first isolate a well-defined situation for study, and, thereafter, to implement a great deal of tailoring, involving both the elimination of the more confusing other, non-targeted, factors, and also by purposely holding tightly constant many others, in order to actually farm that Domain appropriately to display clearly a single targeted relation, in order to investigate that as straightforwardly as possible.

Clearly, if this could then be done separately for each and every significant relation (each with its own tailor-made domain), then the overall situation will be, supposedly, cracked, understood, and be able to be used to particularly useful purposes. One relation and its associated domain at a time.

To complete the process this farming of the chosen plot is intended to make it ideal for displaying, and then extracting by measurement, the targeted relation, and then its idealisation by fitting-it-up to a purely formal pattern or Equation, so facilitating its purposive use.

NOTE: such a process was totally inconceivable prior to the Neolithic Revolution, which changed Mankind’s mode of existence from a roving hunter/gatherer existence, to one dependant upon staying in one place, appropriately transforming a plot, and then growing what you needed.

This set of procedures is, by now, a well-honed, and highly successful methodology, turning an ever-increasing Knowledge Base into the ideal tool for subsequent Predictions and productive Use.

But, nevertheless, it only indirectly increases our understanding of Reality.

For, at no point is Reality-as-is addressed directly. Instead, and in Mankind’s usually effective and pragmatic way, it bypasses the imperative for Understanding, by instead employing the immediate and survival imperative for practical use. And, such a purpose cannot be denounced. It has led to what we call Technology, and an ever more far-reaching control of our immediate and necessary environments.

Photographs by Edward Burtynsky

It has produced our current World!

BUT, no one can say that such methods deal with Reality-as-is!

On the contrary, what is investigated is a highly unnatural, farmed set of situations, designed primarily to reveal a given, at first only glimpsed, and then targeted, relation.

The supposition is that the relation and its equation so affectively extracted, is still the very same one as exists in completely unfettered Reality. And, the philosophical justification, finally included to justify this methodology, is the famed Principle of Plurality, which insists that all simultaneously acting factors in the Real World are due to Eternal Laws, and are hence independent of their concrete contexts. Each is wholly separable, and in no way distorted by where it occurs.

Any evident variations that unfettered Reality seems to deliver are simply put down to additions of many different relations, none of which is in fact in any way modified by its co-existing partners in a situation, and which delivers what it does as merely the sum of the many independent contributions, varying only in their relative magnitudes, but unchanging in their essential natures.

Clearly, if this Principle were true, then all the tailoring of situations would be entirely valid, for they are then just an effective means of revealing the eternal, and hence unchangeable, natures of the relations involved.

But, this is merely a belief!

The major plank, for accepting it, is the occurrence, in complex situations, of dominances, where, in spite of the multiplicity of simultaneously acting relations, the sum can tend towards an integrated result, which, via dominance, implies an underlying, main eternal law.

But no evidence apart from the classical pluralist method of simplifying the experimental context is available.

The two things seem to support one another, but they are actually mutually dependent upon one another: no independent evidence has ever been gathered to prove it.

The very methodology actually prohibits any means of dealing with Reality-as-is, for the usual methods deal with Reality by significantly changing it to produce an overall, if somewhat simplified, stable situation, which is then turned into what appears to be that of an unaffected particular part, and this, thereafter, is always considered as a revealed Eternal Law. But it isn’t!

And, in addition, such a Principle can never explain when and why the relation will ultimately, and certainly, fail, so that a very different one takes over.

But, even these criticisms are much too weak to reveal the most damning inadequacy of this Principle, for the most important episodes in all of Reality, which have to be explained, are those when an existing stability begins to break down, until it finally dissociates completely. And not only that, for it then is always replaced by a wholly new situation, sometimes even at a higher level of organisation, and then involving its own top-down causalities to distort the remaining bottom-up factors still in evidence. For, such always involves new entities and properties, which just did not exist within the now replaced stability.

Such Emergences are always creative and not just reorganizations of the same set of Eternal Laws.

These crucial developmental interludes of real qualitative change and creation are in everyday language described by the word Revolutions, but academically now generally termed Emergences. And these are totally outside the capabilities of a pluralist determined scientific method.

For that criticised approach in Science cannot ever deal with the creation of the New, so real Developments, occurring in all the major achievements such as Life and Consciousness, are unaddressable by that methodology, which can only be applied within Stability, and nowhere else!

Now, though the physicists are adamant that their science is the Basis of all the other sciences, it is actually, not only a myth, but, in fact, a disabling detour that will never be able to address development at any level at all.

How can a science, which is incapable of dealing with development, be the Basis of all said-to-be derivations from itself? For the very qualities that make developing Reality what it is are totally unavailable from such a pluralist standpoint.

And that is a standpoint that only works within Stability – the complete prohibition of qualitative change, And, it can only be made to deliver anything at all in natural or engineered stable situations, if all developmental elements are excluded on principle, and by the methodology used.

Indeed, at present, only those sciences addressing higher levels of Reality, such as Biology for example, implicitly ask how they came-to-be: they just cannot avoid the question! And, they are also confronted constantly with qualitative change in every single living thing that is studied.

Indeed, it was, and still is, from these higher sciences that the wherewithall to address Emergences came, AND, perhaps surprisingly, came up with wholly new methods to deal with them.

Photograph by Ansel Adams

The Origin of Species was a triumph of Biology in understanding Reality-as-is - and was totally unaddressable by Physics.

Indeed, it is these creative interludes that constitute the most significant periods of qualitative changes.

In fact, they also occur even within Physics, but are totally ignored (or even emasculated) by the dominant approach within that science: so they are never properly investigated.

In all the various levels of Reality, where these interludes of creative, transformational and qualitative change do occur, it was also how all these higher levels were originally created from simpler levels. But, nevertheless, the physicists not only claim primacy for their science, but also refuse to investigate how the higher realms of Reality came to be.

Instead, they continue to insist that all higher levels can be completely explained by Physics, using only physical Eternal Laws. It is, of course, nowhere near the truth!

And to compound the felony, it also prevents physicists from explaining qualitative changes even within their own areas of study. The Wave/Particle Dichotomy proves it!

Indeed, it is perhaps the most damning evidence from Biology of the inadequacy of Physics (as it is currently considered) that it is these so-called derived sciences that managed to deliver The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, and the crucial research into the Origin of Life in experiments carried out by Stanley Miller. And, perhaps pointing the way, the crucial phenomenon that focuses attention upon the nature and reasons for Qualitative Change is embodied in the explanations of the existence and origins of Metamorphosis in living things.

Metamorphoses Post

The problem boils down to the inadequacy of the Principle of Plurality in dealing with Reality. The opposite alternative of Holism is clearly much closer to the Truth, and this does not see Reality as the simple summation of existing Eternal Laws, but, on the contrary, that it is a developing Reality that actually generates these “laws”, which will always depend upon context for their actual forms.

They are simply not eternal!

Contemplating The Precipice

Dealing with Holisitc Complexity

To say the least, my current deliberations are getting more than a little ”hairy”, and I feel that I am skating upon very thin ice. For, in chasing the basic conundrums of Modern Physics, it has become very clear what had always been avoided, to a significant extent, and were now almost totally ignored, were the actual explanations of phenomena. And, this had been achieved by taking the much easier, alternative path of merely describing, and then formulating the purely quantitative data from phenomena into deemed-to-be essential equations.

But, this route can no longer be followed, and I am forced into uniquely tight corners, by the inherent contradictions generated by the one-sided, and indeed, the aberrant and misleading methodology that is usually employed.

For, in attempting to base yourself on past achievements (in which you can have no choice), you invariably find yourself constantly seeking causal sequences of explanation, yet always hitting the premature termination of each uncompleted series, and having to attempt to “do it for yourself”!

For example, my professor, many years ago, at Leeds University was world famous for his “Stoner’s Sub Groups”, but in my efforts in attempting to integrate atoms into a non-empty background, I had then, unavoidably, to explain the Copenhagen Interpretation’s probabilistic methods in terms of an actual filling or substrate of Empty Space, actively interacting with a nucleus-electron system within an atom.

The “usually necessary”, almost total isolation of investigated subsystems, and the consequent separate theories and equations, invariably meant that many transitions could not possibly be included. And changes of system always meant the abandonment of one theory and equation for another. You rummaged about in the “bag of solutions” to find a form that fitted, and the causes of the transitions were never properly addressed.

So returning to Stoner’s Sub Groups, I reckoned that my earlier suggestion of the actual existence of a space-filling paving might be relevant within an atom, and an explanation of Stoner’s discovery might well throw important light upon what was happening concretely inside an atom with its own internal substrate.

I reckoned that such a substrate, as I had postulated for my Theory of the Double Slit, would, in this particular set of circumstances, have to not only surround the atom, but also exist within it too!

If this were the case, the orbiting electron would have to negotiate through the internal substrate, as it attempted to respond to the electrostatic relationship between the electron and its nucleus.

After all, I have never understood how the demotion of the orbit of an electron in an atom (with its clearly physically caused electrostatic and magnetic properties due to a concrete set of circumstances), could transform the energy released into a wholly disembodied form that maintained complex electrostatic and magnetic properties in an infinite oscillation. The question, surely, had to be , “How?”

But, elsewhere, in attempting to explain Fields in a vacuum, surrounding a charged particle, and the effect of the “field” on any other interloping charged entities, if I had also to deal with action-at-a-distance, and I was forced to again define a substrate that could articulate all these effects.

NOTE: as you can see, each thing led to another. And, if a genuine causal chain (which is always assumed to be there) was to be found, and itself explained, you quickly zoom off to you know not where.

One thing incessantly led to another, and I found myself having to explain Stoner’s Sub Groups in terms of the inter-relation of orbits, fields and substrates within an atom.

So, as you can see, the imperatives involved are Real Physics, and not just the usual, formal descriptions, but I have to admit to frequently becoming swamped by what appeared to be “infinite regress”.

But, that is, of course, unavoidable, and was why for hundreds of years pluralist-based Science has dominated. For, it tidily avoided such precipitous routes!

The advantages, of pluralist assumptions, are that all such causal sequences are unnecessary for effective use of a single equation in its appropriate Domain. You could isolate! And, such considerations were sidelined as “theoretical” or even “academic”, and Science motored “ahead” with its small “steps in isolation”.

“Can we use it now?”, was the insistent cry. “I don’t want to know “Why?”, all I need is ”How?”

So, as soon as you decide to take the holist route, the endemic pluralist simplifications of past Physics no longer deliver the crucial essences of Reality, but are merely pragmatic simplifications, and manipulations of “the appropriate ground”.

The fact that these simplifications also were effective in revealing dominant factors, and hence facilitating “situation farming”, made accelerated (though aberrant) paths very easy to construct and follow, while everything else was ignored. And, the justification, the Principle of Plurality, made this methodology “sound”, as all extractions were deemed to be “separable”, and hence independent of context.

In addition, the collection of individual relations was sufficient for most practical applications, and the crucial drive towards inclusive, and indeed, ever more comprehensive theories was abandoned, with a measure of “justification”.

But, the Principle of Holism (the opposite of the Principle of Plurality) is that you cannot do that!

You can simplify, but NOT to reveal Essence, but only to reveal the more dominant contributions, and then in a purely formal, idealised and usually entirely quantitative form of relations - Equations. And, of course, such procedures are fine in limited and controlled contexts: the dominant factors can be made to work “almost alone” and in an idealised form. But, such an approach makes the important transitions from one qualitative situation to another impossible to address in an explanatory way.

“This happens when that threshold is passed”, is NOT an explanation. It is a placeholder for a missing explanation!

Causality becomes increasingly impossible, for each and every local truth has been found by actually removing what in unfettered Reality takes the situation to a very different set of phenomena.

The dynamic of a rich and changing Reality has been surgically removed, and replaced by only a series of artificially “true” snapshots of what was really going on.

Current Science is no longer the philosophic standpoint, from which the meaning of Reality-as-is can be addressed, but instead an equation-led, pragmatic bag of practical, unchanging equations!

It is increasingly breathtaking just how much is never explained, and how eclectic are even the very best of scientists. Without a qualm, such scientists will put aside one theory and pick up another, better-fitting one, and leave any explanation for the caused transition completely unaddressed.

Now clearly, such tasks are not individual, and limited in their content: they are too complex for one person to deal with. If ever there was a form of investigation that MUST be addressed socially, it is the current Crisis in Physics. There has to be too many balls in the air for a single juggler to cope with. You need a team, and a trained and integrated team at that.

Modern Physics is dying fast, and the present ideas and paradigms are simply not up to the tasks presented in the current era.

Documentary on the Philosophy of Science

Documentary by Michael Coldwell on the work of philosopher Jim Schofield. "The Problem With Science" looks at several flawed assumptions at the heart of the scientific method, and how they have adversely effected how we see the world.

While few would deny the great technological and scientific advances of the last century, even fewer are aware of the methodology's many drawbacks and pitfalls, and how these have lead us to a distorted view of reality, and an inability to understand both qualitative change and the inexplicable emergence of the wholly new.

Is the answer to adopt a more holisitic approach to Science?

A New Special Series on Marxism

The major difficulty in defining an agenda for the essential work of Marxists today is just that the necessary range is so vast, and yet any selectively biased content will undoubtedly have the same damaging effect as has been shown to be the case in the concentrations followed in the last period.

The work must be carried forward on all fronts. But, in merely saying that, such cannot, of itself, reconstruct the ground on which current Marxism is pursued: that could indeed remain exactly the same, but applied to a wider variety of areas. There is clearly more to it than mere range.

Indeed, there can be little doubt that the standpoint of Marx and Engels has been abandoned by current Marxist, even though they continue to strongly acclaim the virtues of those giants. Frankly current Marxists have abandoned Marxism, because they are simply not up to the task.

But, if so, how can such a Series re-establish the sound philosophical standpoint of the founders of Marxism. It clearly cannot be achieved by merely quoting selectively from those masters. The current practitioners have to do what Marx and Engels did, only more so, and in a much wider and more demanding set of areas.

For, as these philosophers showed, there is absolutely NO specialist area of human investigation that cannot profoundly benefit from the supreme holistic, philosophical standpoint of Marxism.

But how on earth can we redefine that, and ensure that it is indeed used as the point from which to view Reality in every possible respect? It is clear to this author, after a lifetime of participation in many different Sciences, and a worthwhile contribution in many of them, that the touchstone area to ensure that the correct approach is followed has to be Science, before almost anything else.

Now, this general area was widely ignored after the early Marxists, and indeed, in spite of the quite evident major crisis in Sub Atomic Physics that has now lasted for around a century, no one Marxist has been able to address this impasse, and currently many of the same ilk are queuing up to actually conform to the retreat that goes under the title of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and its consequent and wholly idealist developments.

The test piece for this required rejuvenation of Marxism has to be the Defeat of Copenhagen – totally and unrecoverably!

Now it wont be easy, for this “section” of Physics has turned away from explaining Reality to exploring a much more amenable World – that of Pure Form alone, the domain of the Mathematicians, which I insist on clearly identifying as Ideality!
Yet it is hard to depart from a definition of Science as The Study and Explanation of Reality in all its aspects, and hence it is not only inseparable from Philosophy, but would seem, at its best, to stand upon identical ground to Marxism as a philosophical standpoint. And though, in small areas, a new approach to Science, which is entirely holistic rather than pluralistic has begun to appear in a number of specialisms, they are totally uncoordinated.

No comprehensive methodology for a Holist Science has been developed or even admitted to be necessary.

The total abandonment of the holist idea behind Miller’s Experiment concerned with an investigation into the Origin of Life on Earth, shows just how indissolubly wedded to Plurality is the Science of Today. All the consequences of a pluralist standpoint dominate current Science, from Analysis based upon the separability of all contributing factors in any situation, right down to a causing hierarchy to the simplest of fundamental, immutable bases – Reductionism.

Indeed, the true Nature of Reality is denounced, to be replaced by the much more easily used pluralist and domain-based construction.

Yet, as this author has demonstrated, a modern version of Miller’s Experiment is entirely possible, using techniques already available, from pluralist science, but used to contribute to an entirely holistic core experiment.

Now the overall task outlined here is clearly much too big for a single Special Issue of SHAPE Journal, or even of an ambitious book. And it is certainly too big for a single individual to tackle either effectively or comprehensively.

But, to establish this vital area will require specialists: scientists who are dissatisfied with the universally dominant pluralistic approach.

The author of this paper has been involved in Marxist politics all his adult life, but there were never enough scientists there. In spite of being a mathematician, a physicist and a biologist himself, his clear commitment to these disciplines was invariably dismissed as a deflection from the real issues. My political colleagues were mistaken! It is the responsibility of Marxists to include Science as the only other discipline possible to reveal vast tracts of Reality. To ignore Science, or even worse to merely follow its pluralist bias is unforgiveable.
A start must be made!

This new Series of Special Issues of the SHAPE Journal, will be totally dedicated to Marxism in Science.

The purpose will be to encourage many more to join in the effort and submit their own contributions.

The intention is to cover the following areas at a rate of 6 volumes of SHAPE per annum:

1. A Revised Version of Miller’s Experiment
2. The Theory of Emergences
3. An Alternative Marxist Cosmology
4. The Alternative to Copenhagen
5. A Holist Science
6. The Origin of Life on Earth
7. Not Absolute Truth, but Objective Content
8. Truly Natural Selection
9. Order and Chaos
10. What is Mathematics?
11. Form and Content
12. Stability & Revolution

These are intended to be interleaved with other Issues of the SHAPE Journal, appearing about every two months or so, and should therefore take two years for the complete cycle to be completed.

Read MARXISM I here