Quantitative Easing – Printing Money

How long can they get away with it?

Recently, on this blog, we have been revealing the essential role of inflation in capitalism, and how remunerative it is to business, both in borrowing money and in paying wages. But, that general principle exists within a context of production. So, something useable and buyable gets produced – value is added to primary resources to deliver more valuable products. So, how does Quantitative Easing fit into the picture?

For Quantitative Easing is merely another name for printing money! And, doing that with absolutely NO real capital to back it: so, absolutely no existing value or created value is involved. It has merely been invented out of nothing. No one lent previously acquired value to finance things. It is just printed out of paper and ink, and expected to be useable as if it was a holder of real value.

So, what was the intention of those who did it, in the midst of a capitalist crisis?

In the 1930s, Public Works were the suggested answer, for though the wages involved were just printed paper; it put unemployed workers back to work, and produced something of value in the process.

But, that is not the case with Quantitative Easing!

Now, by merely printing money and lending it to people at very low interest from actual governments, you would expect to merely debase the currency. But how would that normally show itself? In a global slump, such as the one they are still attempting to extricate themselves from, the relations in value between the currencies will not immediately and generally reflect devaluing actions. Individual countries will exploit any temporary gains, at the expense of other countries, and the Money Markets will deliver confusing indicators of what is going on.

But, the rival nations won’t sit back bemoaning how they are being treated: they will retaliate.

Indeed, having initially refused to follow the Americans and the British, the European Union, has now decided to do likewise. Quantitative Easing is being tried by more and more countries.

The eventual results will not need a genius to predict! An eventual return to real value will cause an avalanche of devaluations. The essential “confidence” in the power of the dominant capitalists will inevitably evaporate!

In the past there has always been another area of the world to exploit, to re-steady the boat, but where are they to turn now?

This crisis occurred when they finally decided to try their usual tricks, but this time directly upon the working classes, via bound-to-fail mortgages to the poor, and the then deceitful repackaging and selling of these, worldwide, as lucrative investments. They expected to reclaim the properties many times as the short-time owners failed to fulfil their financial commitments, but when they tried to foreclose, they found they didn’t have the property: it had been wrecked! The bottom fell out of the whole scheme and the 2008 slump worldwide ensued.

So, who was left to screw? There simply wasn’t anybody! So, a more subtle means had to be both devised and employed.

One effective trick was to keep wages below inflation for FIVE years, which made ordinary workers everywhere pay significantly to help capitalism out of its crisis.

Also, by sacking vast numbers of public service workers, and then hiring them back into privately owned firms, at zero hours contracts, part-time jobs, and even encouraging “black economy” self-employment, the lie of the working class being safeguarded was erected.

But such tricks cannot be said to have worked globally. Indeed, we have been forced back into the rivalry between capitalist states, to get national advantages of one country over another. The anti Russian clamour is part of this (remember Russia is now back in the capitalist fold), but ploughing it’s own furrow in opposition to the old dominators of world capitalism, especially, of course, the USA.

Also, the cheap labour advantages of China and other capitalist or neo-capitalist economies must wane with the demands for appropriate wages in these countries, so the globalisation trick of getting your manufacturing done where labour is cheap cannot be maintained indefinitely, especially as it has also been necessary to impoverish and de-skill the western working classes, sometimes producing echoes of the past with sub-classes even in countries like the USA and the UK.

And the importation of ex-colonial and ex-communist-bloc workers to the West, as a cheap labour alternative to their own indigenous working classes, has led to increasing hostility among the native unemployed, and consequently the immigrants being blamed for the situations in the metropolitan countries. The radical Islamist movement, both in the ex-colonial countries and in immigrant populations is a symptom of the failure of this ploy.

And, there has been another crucial problem.

The middle class investors are getting little or no interest from their savings, and small or even no dividends from their investments, so a major source of investment capital is gradually drying up.

Another way of re-building a source for such investments is by diverting as much profit as possible to the already very rich. So, at the time when the poor are getting poorer, the rich must be made richer, or they too will just sit upon their cash.

Never has the gulf between rich and poor been this big – as 1% of the population now own as much as the other 99%.

But, the dynamics involved in all this are not planned. They are needed in various ways, to constantly re-steady the floundering boat. But, nothing seems to be solving the crisis!

Take the Euro Zone, the UK’s biggest market, it is teetering on the edge of a new deflationary recession once again, and the right-wing Tories and UKIP want to blame the slump on them, and hence want to leave the European Union (while keeping all the trading privileges, of course).

The methods now being used are getting exceptionally desperate.

The economic blockade of Russian capitalism has been stepped up to enormous proportions, and has been possible because of Russia's dependence upon selling Gas and Oil to other countries. But, on top of this, the price of oil has tumbled due to US Fracking and Saudi Arabian full-throttle selling, and these, along with the World Crisis have caused there to be more oil than is needed to be bought.

You can see that this is still a major crisis, with no end in sight.

So, what will Quantitative Easing do in the long term? The Americans have got away with it because of their dominance in world trade, while the UK also managed to employ it, because of their dominance in world finance.

But now the Europeans are about to try it too.

If it becomes universally applied, any advantages so far seen will vanish for everybody

Printing money on a global scale can only have one outcome. The value of all currencies will tumble – shown not in exchange rates, but in roaring inflation.

The crisis will get worse.

Pure and Applied?

Philosophically, Mathematics has shown itself to be a very unusual discipline, in that it seems to be investigating Forms found in Reality, but is, in fact, more to do with how we humans conceive of, extract and handle such Forms in our thinking.

Historically, the recognition of such Forms in Reality-as-is was never a straightforward discovery - directly extractable as such from that source. For, to even recognise what we were seeing in that complex and varying context, Man just had to both simplify and idealise what he glimpsed, into something both fixed and intelligible. For such Forms as we arrived at, were not what we saw, for they were invariably imperfect and often somewhat transitory, so observers felt they were seeking an underlying perfection below the really existing complexity, and they, with experience and over time, became very adept at the necessary processes involved to reveal perfected and unchanging patterns.

As already mentioned, though seen as unearthing these Forms, they were always both simplifying and idealising them, into “ideal versions”, and, thereafter, studying them instead.

The believed excuse for such processing, was that these Pure Forms did seem to exist “out there”, and the processes of extraction were considered to be mere “tidying up”, and, thereby, releasing the crucial Forms from a natural context of confusing and inessential “noise”, caused by a complexity of other diverse causes, which could be removed to reveal the “real determining heart” of a situation. And, having extracted these causal essences, they could be investigated and their important intrinsic properties revealed.

It was, historically, the initial beginning of Science, even if the actual causality had been inverted, and effects labelled as the actual causes!

Yet surprisingly, many of these initial conceptions have been, at least partially, retained ever since!

And, again surprisingly, this discipline was the very first that Mankind was able to construct into what seemed to be a self-consistent set of relations and rules underlying Reality. And this was so universally taken on by those involved in such things, that, from the outset, these Forms were given Causal Attributes - real things were seen as behaving as they did, because they were obeying the eternal Laws of these Forms.

Hence, these first steps were clearly idealist, and not materialist, in the march of the human intellect.

NOTE: It ought to be mentioned at this stage, that the almighty retreat, in 20th century Sub Atomic Physics, embodied in the infamous Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, was merely a retrenchment back to this ancient idealist stance.

Henceforth, in that area, Form was deemed to be the cause of ALL phenomena, and Equations replaced physical explanations almost completely.

So, in Ancient Greece, truly remarkable strides were made, particularly in Geometry, which was immediately available for investigation via drawing, and this amazing development ended up with what we now call Euclidian Geometry – which is still taught as a cornerstone of Mathematics worldwide.

But, it did have major drawbacks! And, these are not only in its idealist stance, but also in its major simplification by imposing eternality upon all its contributing Forms. They were fixed! And, the implications of this, along with their endowment of being also the cause of phenomena, had deleterious implications for the real study of Reality.

Clearly, the extrapolation of this assumption onto many other non-mathematical ideas was inevitable as well as being profoundly mistaken. For though Forms could be “found” in real situations, they were never the determining causes for those situations, and as the real determinators changed, so did the evident Forms.

Forms, as such, were permanent (that is as Formal abstractions), but their real existence was always temporary and never causal!

The consequences were extremely damaging: most things were dealt with as unchanging, and the basic tenet of Formal Logic, which was an intellectual product of this development – that is A = A – the Identity Relation, cast in stone the un-changeability of the ideas and elements involved in this major extension of what had been learned in Mathematics.

NOTE: That this is still around and propagated, was revealed in a book entitled A Certain Ambiguity by Guarav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal, published only a few years ago (2010 - Ed).

But after, maybe, 2,000 years of Greek Science, based upon such a position, a breech was made in the then towering edifice of that “science-based-upon-Logic”, into one based upon careful observation of concrete Reality. Finally, a new approach was developed, which was, in fact, materialist Science.

Perhaps surprisingly, the new approach prospered in tandem with a rejuvenated Mathematics, because Science was now based upon quantitative measurements, and hence was regularly delivering dependable data sets, clearly also revealing Forms to be extracted and formulated into useable Laws. And, of course, the “ideal experts” for doing this, were the mathematicians, who by this juncture had amassed a truly remarkable number of Forms “to fit all possible patterns”.

An extremely fruitful cooperation developed between idealist mathematicians and materialist scientists, and sometime, and somewhere, something was bound to give! A unifying concept arose that was that of Natural Law. When experimental data was turned into an Equation, by the mathematicians, it was agreed by both parties to be a causing and eternal Law – the scientists had in fact succumbed to the idealist position of the mathematicians.

But, this purely pragmatic compromise was never a solution. Indeed, it was yet another example of a Dichotomous Pair of contradictory conceptions, which couldn’t both be true!

Yet, without a transcendence of the ever-evident theoretical impasse, the two groups pragmatically “agreed to differ” (at least partially), and both stances were kept – using one rather than the other, when it was clearly productive to do so.

And, though the idealism of Mathematics affected Science, the materialism of Science also affected Mathematics, and the result of this was the wholly different discipline of Technology – the application of scientific discoveries in advantageous inventions and devices.

These technologists were not interested in Theory, and they were also not enamoured of Pure Mathematics either.

They required a kind of Mathematics that enabled their purposes – they claimed Applied Mathematics as their own vital Toolkit, and indeed, regularly invented new tricks to facilitate their objectives, whether or not they conformed to either theoretical stance. They were completely pragmatic and nothing more.

Interestingly, the three, closely-related disciplines, not only went their own ways, but on quite different philosophical bases.

Science was primarily materialist.

Mathematics was entirely idealist (termed Pure Mathematics).

Technology stuck to Applied Mathematics, but was entirely pragmatic – “if it works, it is right!”

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.

Why me must save the NHS!

Michael Sheen speaks on protecting the NHS - Bedwellty Park

New Special Issue: The Unknown Ocean I

Read it here

This is the 31st Special Issue of the SHAPE Journal, and the first in a three part series entitled The Unknown Ocean - a body of work examining how little we actually know about Reality, and how we will have to change our methods of exploration entirely, if we are to go any deeper.

In pulling together this set of Special Issues of the SHAPE Journal, the writer has a particular objective in mind. He is not looking back at the past achievements of Science and Philosophy, but looking forward to the still-pending investigations into Reality, from a very different standpoint, which he is certain, will transform both of these disciplines. The reason for this is that a major threshold lies before Mankind, which so far they have refused to address, and hence never transcended, and, instead, continue with the old views and methods, which, in themselves, are incapable of transcending that evident impasse.

In all the main intellectual disciplines the old hang-ups are still well entrenched, underpinning both Modern Science and Philosophy. These crucial areas are weighed down with the abstractions, constructions, assumptions and even principles of a now significantly failing past intellectual stance. For these are no longer worthy of delivering a productive and developing standpoint, essential at this time to produce any real progress at all. Science has run out of steam. Since 1927 Physics has only moved backwards towards an even more defunct idealist standpoint.

Yet, the way forward has been, at least, indicated, for the last 2,500 years with both the Holism of the Buddha in India, and the scepticism of Zeno of Elea.In spite of a long period of stagnation, philosophically, finally, only 200 years ago, Frederick Hegel, in his main philosophical undertaking, revealed the inadequacies of our concepts, and why they were inevitably so. But, of course, Hegel was an idealist (an obvious disadvantage in his own primary objective of unifying Philosophy with Science) so that, not even his leading disciples, namely Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, saw that Hegel’s gains in the area of Human thinking just had to be re-established within the alternative, materialist philosophical outlook, and, of course, intimately wedded to Science. But, that just hasn’t happened!

Despite brilliant contributions by scientists like Darwin and Wallace, and the major gains in Philosophy made by Marx, the necessary re-construction of a consequent philosophy among scientists did not occur. And, that has been a major problem. Now, the situation is beginning to change, as this writer, and many others worldwide, begin to question the impasses and anomalies proliferating in all areas of Modern Science, and are endeavouring to construct a new, and sounder basis, and this series of Specials deliver some suggested steps in an advancing a wholly new understanding upon a, so far, unimplemented standpoint in Science and in Philosophy together. It is, of course, a presumptive claim, so he has broken the argument down into three parts, commencing here in the first of these, with a series of essays which establish his premises, before entering those uncharted depths.

Building with Other People’s Bricks

Or References, References, References!

Though an academic, I am not a great fan of references.

Indeed, readers of my writings will notice an almost complete absence of these links to other people’s prior work, which may be surprising as such are always considered absolutely essential in the academic world. And, the arguments for these seem to be totally sound: credit where credit is due, a useful path to detailed relevant prior works, and many others.

But, I still wont do it, and the question has to be, “Why?” It is certainly not because I don’t gain from the contributions of others, so why should I be so adamant about it?

It is to do with one's purposes in doing research and publishing the results. In a perfect world where the philosophical ground was totally sound, and, therefore, needed no correcting, such a method would be absolutely correct. But, that isn’t our world, and never has been.

The main problem we face is in our unavoidable, intellectual inheritance – the paradigms and the principles, and even the “banker” facts, entities and methods that are considered to be both necessary and available, are actually never of that assumed, ideal kind. Indeed, clear problems could be, and indeed have been, unaddressed for centuries in the modern world, and for tens of millennia at earlier times in Mankind’s short history. We are, at the same time, informed, and yet also manacled, by our previous understandings.

Now, if all this is true, think what it will mean if we accept the status quo generally, and are only rearranging, or updating, a few of these "bricks". We are very unlikely to come upon the major anomalies in our current position and then attempt a complete overhaul of our assumed bases.

In such head-down work, we are unlikely to be challenging anything crucial: we will have accepted the general stance of our colleagues and be arguing over fairly trivial additions, changes or extensions to that view. But, in saying that I don’t mean they are a waste of time, just that they will never challenge the major cracks in the foundations of our understanding.

I have, in several different disciplines chased the more accepting tasks, but they are always about “small ponds”, and it is the vast oceans that must, in the end, be tackled.

So, what delivers with new knowledge or discoveries in fundamentals?

The primary task must, first, be to always relate new things to the prevailing consensus, in an attempt to integrate it meaningfully. And, in so doing, the purpose was surely to integrate them intrinsically into that foundation to extend and strengthen it in both overall coherence and comprehensiveness.

Yet, is that always a part of most published contributions?

No, it isn’t! Indeed, I was often perplexed by the abysmal standard of so may introductions and conclusions bracketing the books of quite famous scientists (Werner Heisenberg comes immediately to mind, but it is, to be honest, a truly endemic fault).

But, surely that aspect must be imperative? For new contributions to fit together to deliver more than the sum of the individual parts, must be the objective? And, I consider that in what I publish, that has to be my major objective.

Now, trawling through many different sequences of prior contributions, none of which are addressing such imperatives, will certainly not help in that endeavour. Not knowing where each contribution is situated in a clear and overt standpoint, will only deal in un-positioned bits-and-pieces, without overt ground. I used to do this and frankly got nowhere in establishing where all the diverse contributions were grounded. In the end, it became clear that they were grounded in each other, but without the implicit, common ground being revealed. Confronted with anomalies a researcher would NOT be able to find the causes in such contributions: as their sources would always be too particular and head-down to reveal their bases.

So, with such intentions, I have to have my own systems for dealing with new contributions. What I read about only survives if it fits with what has already been turned into a coherent and comprehensive stance, which I or others have been able to muster and reveal.

But, there is also a second and equally important method.

It is one, which is aware of the anomalies present in current theories, and is constantly on the lookout for discoveries that may be appropriate to address these failures. With such a pair of criteria, you could never accuse this scientist of being head-down; he is decidedly head-up!

In saying all this, I must emphasize that this approach is not an example of old theories rejecting all that is new. In a sense that is closer to the truth about the usually employed methods, where defence of your own past contributions can swamp all other considerations. No, this alternative approach is very open to the “New”, because it has a constantly referred to agenda of problems-to-be-solved being applied to all new contributions.

Science, at its best, celebrates new features, which advance the overall understandings of Reality. So, coming across something new the two sets of criteria outlined above, must be applied.

First, does it fill a prior “gaping hole” in our current understanding, and second, does it fit into the already coherent system of ideas.

So, when reading the accounts of new contributions, it is in addressing these two aspects, and hence is never trivial. This is because Mankind simply cannot alight directly upon Absolute Truth. Indeed, the very imperative of fitting in with other prior ideas that inevitably imposes a kind of “fitting approach”.

We simplify and idealise the knowledge we gain from Reality to “make-it-fit” and hence we cannot use past knowledge as the supreme authority in assessing the new ideas. As well as demanding coherence, we must also check both the new and the old against the only final arbiter for a scientist – and that has to be Reality-as-is!

So, two very different sets of criteria are involved in assessing and interpreting new discoveries, and they can pull in opposite directions. Indeed, more often than not they do precisely that, and for very good reasons too.

Hegel in his Thinking about Thought studies realised that our quite understandable urge to fit things together, always necessitated a “bit of tailoring”, and what we achieved in that process not only delivered at least partly useable results, but also inevitably distorted things in some way. In other words, all abstractions are necessarily flawed, and the errors will come out further along the paths of attempted explanations.

It is why we must never be satisfied with merely formal equations, and always go on to explaining things too.

Indeed, he predicted that the mistakes would reveal themselves in a remarkable way.

What would emerge from any agreed set of assumptions and principles would, at some stage, be a pair of seemingly totally contradictory concepts – and, surprisingly, they would both be based upon the very same premises.

Hegel called these Dichotomous Pairs. And, there were two very different ways to handle them; the thinker could simply be a pragmatist, and use each where it fitted best, is one of them.

This eventually split Reality into two subsequent paths of explanation, and if not tackled to resolve the contradictory pair, would create new categories, or even, ultimately, separate Subjects of study – like Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics etc. etc. Keeping studies within such coherent limits meant that explanations could proceed without ever transcending the contradictions.

So, if this is a mistake, what did Hegel offer as a more fruitful alternative?

Surprisingly, he did not suggest what most people attempt to do in such circumstances, which amounts to “finding out” which of the pair is irrefutable “true”, and which is, therefore, entirely false. Hegel realised that such a task was impossible and would not advance the situation one iota. For, in a sense, they were both false, so trying to give one or the other precedence would not suffice. He revealed that such Dichotomous Pairs gave us the chance to reassess the underlying bases for both. The task became to reveal exactly what the common bases for the Pair actually were. It would be hidden in the “taken-for-granted” premises on which the used lines of reasoning were based.

And, perhaps even more surprisingly, it was very often the most basic principles involved, which were the problem. To transcend such a dichotomy meant that those premises must be exposed, criticised and replaced.

Now, such a task would by no means be easy, and in spite of the discovery being, even in Hegel’s day, 2,300 years old from its first recognition (see Zeno of Elea’s Paradoxes), Mankind had not arrived at Hegel’s proffered solution. They had always taken the pragmatic routes described above, and managed to achieve a great deal without tackling this crucial problem. Even after Hegel, 200 years ago, only one group, in that extended period, not only carried on with his methodology, but also switched their overall stance from Idealism (Hegel’s position) to Materialism (which at that time was the stance of almost all scientists). But, that group, who were initially dedicated students of Hegel, were not accepted by the scientific community of that time, primarily because the new thinkers were extremely active in revolutionary circles, and because the Materialism the scientists based themselves on was very different from that of the new group.

The stance of literally all the then current scientists was embodied in the ideas expressed by the French scientist Laplace, which defined a particular form of Materialism – later to be entitled Mechanical Materialism. And, they were more than happy with their current Laplacian stance.

The constant re-appraisal of all premises certainly did not suit them! Once set upon a keen and stimulating ride, they did not want to be always analysing critically what they were doing. They wanted to get places, fast! And, even with their current stance, they still had a whole world of things to investigate by their, then well-established, methods.

So, though the obvious alliance should have been between the new Dialectical Materialists and the and the Mechanical Materialist scientists, that crucial cooperation never occurred. And, to this day, the task is still awaiting completion.

Now, that necessarily extended diversion above had to be made clear, to put the problems of the path towards Truth into some meaningful perspective.

Clearly, there are assumptions and principles (not to mention incorrectly devised and idealised entities) behind everything, and the problem of publishers of research papers becomes almost insurmountable! How can a wide variety of papers be published, which are certain, in some respects at least, to disagree with each other, without that being evident overtly in the individual contributions?

The publishers had to, on the one hand, judge whether the papers should be included or rejected, and on the other, had to, somehow, ensure that the readers of those contributions would be able to find these things, for themselves, by tracing back through the referenced influences of the writers involved. Clearly, sufficient references were the chosen method of ensuring that such a search would be possible – or so the publishers believed!

Nevertheless, that imposed provision wasn’t sufficient! And, the number of academic journals increased to limit the common premises to particular areas, so then, with some sort of consensus within the potential contributors to a given Journal, such worries could be shelved (to an extent!)

Indeed, in research, some years ago, into these references in Journals, it became clear that defined groups arose, which formed “common reference sets”, and, in fact, limited the possibilities of finding new paths via the absolute necessity of agreeing to their group consensus. Indeed, a phenomenon arose of building the new entirely with “other people’s flawed bricks”

And, this meant that, in these already existing groups of researchers, the underlying premises would not be evident, not only in the initially encountered paper, but also in the majority, if not the complete set, of the references quoted.

The new findings of a researcher, which did not conform to these common set of premises, would not be likely to be included, and if it was, the stance would have to be discerned by a study of the references, or alternatively, be included by the writer in his paper.


It is, of course, the latter policy, which the writer of this paper always follows. It is the writer’s job, not only to proffer new evidence, but also to establish the ground for it, if it in any significant way, differs from the usual consensus.

It is what this writer is doing now!

Postscript:

In this saga of academic references, some mention has to be made of the so-called “Scientific Reporters”, who regularly inhabit scientific magazines.

These people do not seem to do any science themselves, but instead (somewhat like theatre critics) trawl around the current offerings in academic journals, to reveal the alternatives being proposed to current problems. And, with such “commentators”, the whole thing is put together entirely with “other peoples bricks”. And, therefore, like Lego, various different “possible” structures are (very briefly) defined.

No real conclusions are ever made, and they are usually terminated by leaving any final judgements to be delivered by future, well-defined experiments for posterity to construct.

It’s a nice job, if you can get it, but it doesn’t usually solve much, does it?

Consensus or Truth?

The Purpose of Academic Journals

(Originally published 2010 in response to an article in New Scientist)

In both the editorial and in a Special Report in New Scientist (2764), the issue of the moderated publication of scientific papers was addressed. The main emphasis in both these contributions was about the relative ease or difficulty involved in getting your contributions published in Journals, and they concluded that it is much easier to do so in the USA than elsewhere. Their main figure is shown below.

The main discussion around this figure is interesting and worthy of study, but there is another quite different and significant slant on the data presented which was not addressed in the New Scientist article. That unrevealed content is just how the consensus in a particular research area gets both established and maintained. It will, of course, be initially generated in conferences and with department discussions, but such collaborations are both too local and too personal to achieve any significant weight and momentum.

Surely then, the main areas for the establishment of a consistent view must be via the Journals and their implicit imperatives evident from what is accepted for publication. It will therefore be, both in what are the commonest positions, but also in how such “agreements” affect what is expected of researchers attempting to get their “foot in the door”.

A colleague of mine in submitting research for his Doctorate was returned to the task several times to “inflate his references”. Without solid evidence of his having addressed ALL the “relevant authorities”, his contribution would not be accepted.

NOTE: Now I have to add here that I have known this colleague for 40 years, and in a long career, he is by far the best teacher I have ever come across, and his methods are both exemplary and innovative. His thesis was on his remarkable contributions in his specialist teaching area, and as usual was a masterful and significant effort, but in spite of all this he was directed to “do it right”. He had to establish his credentials within the relevant body of contributions worldwide before his work was accepted.

Now this seems eminently reasonable, but when I am reading anything, I do not constantly have to make sure that “all possible alternatives have been included”: establishing value is not done by a measure of comprehensive attention to all accepted alternatives.

In contrast I have been writing in my current areas of research for some five years, and include very few mentioned references to other contributors in the same field, and there are very sound reasons for doing this.

The most important process involved in integrating externally sourced ideas into your own coherent World View, cannot be by mere additions. If it was the constant adding-in would make the overall result not more understandable, but indeed a great deal less! The only purpose of including new ideas is that they correct, or extend and deepen what you already understand. NOTE: I didn’t say “know”, but “understand”!

And such a process isn’t a map with flags showing all the places you have visited, but an ever more understandable and coherent part of a general World View. You don’t mention all your teachers and exactly what they taught you in establishing your overall understanding, do you?

If a researcher is presented with an impressive network of mutually referring authors and their contributions in the chosen field, each with an individual slant, and many cross-qualifying or rejecting arguments, it becomes very easy to be sucked into a closed network of assumptions and arguments.

In my recent work on Zeno, I came across an anthology of writings on this remarkable Greek philosopher gathered together by Wesley Salmon, and was duly swamped with a thousand possible lines to follow. But chasing all of these was NOT the way to go forward: only a way to join the club! 

So. I did what I always do, and alighting on something which evidently threw new light on my current concerns (and even difficulties) , in this case Plurality, I set about first understanding what was meant by this philosophical term, and then integrating it into my own work.

But such a process should never be merely a selective rationalisation! Nothing could possibly be gained by such a blinkered undertaking.

Though, from my earlier comments, it may seem that I was cherry-picking, taking only what I could massage into my previously constructed fabric of ideas that would only be possible if you were merely constructing your own personal world. That couldn’t be further from constructing a World View, which attempts to explain all things: to be both coherent and comprehensive!

You can rest confidently on the work of many others, as embodied in the prevailing consensus, or you can attempt to actually understand, piece by piece and as a coherent and holistic whole all that you can choose to experience or access. Such is a much more demanding mistress! You don’t merely collect and remember. You have to inter-relate and begin to understand the necessity of these relations.

When very young, you have no choice but to take on the consensus penumbra of the work of others. You simply do not have sufficient experience or techniques to wrest everything for yourself from this complex World. But as time passes, you begin to be troubled by inconsistencies, gaps and evident uncorroborated assumptions, and you begin to make connections on your own account. But, of course, even then, you find yourself at a major disadvantage, and have to establish your initial small truths and build outwards.

Indeed, you are very soon aware of the flaws and indeed weaknesses in your own position and constantly seek to remedy them whenever and from wherever you can. Whatever it is that you are reading, it will always present considerably less than is the result of your own constant efforts and the supreme arbiter for anything you consider has to be YOURSELF!

So instead of such an approach being local and superficial and definitely NOT to be trusted, with these criteria and approach, the opposite is the case. If you can’t satisfy yourself that you understand something, then you don't. Such imperatives will always be much more objective than those which test your ideas merely by their closeness with some scarcely understood consensus.

Finally, let us be clear just how permanent is the already acquired core of ideas to which new material can be inserted and integrated. It is open for abandonment, at any time, if something better can replace it.

As a long term student of Emergences, I am aware that all “conclusions” will only be temporary stabilities and that every one of them will in time be undermined and dismantled in the process of an Emergence, which will establish a wholly new and higher Level on its conclusion. Knowing this, you can't defend your personal position to the death, but, if it is proved to be wrong, you then undertake its replacement by something wholly better.

The yawning slide into Postmodernist eclecticism was ever presented before my feet, in this large Anthology, if I had succumbed and attempted to check out, and deal with, the vast numbers of ideas contained within Salmon’s offering. There is a method of travelling which says you cannot know in what direction the Truth lies, so you must find the best place from which to survey the maximum of the surrounding landscape, before you make a move. That position is best achieved by my integrating method.

It doesn’t necessarily take me in the optimum direction, but it does ensure that when I achieve my next temporary summit, I will make the most well-informed decisions as to where to go next.

I feel I have to ask what the purpose of an Anthology such as Salmon’s is for! It certainly aims to be “comprehensive”, but in the classical philosophical way, that presents ALL the options (within a general consensus) and seemingly makes no real conclusions, and takes on no resolving responsibility. As a teacher I know that the latter must be addressed. Otherwise no real help is involved, and hence as a contribution no real progress is proffered.

It is a contribution in Philosophy not unlike that of Tycho Brahe’s contributions in Cosmology: which delivered no answers, only facts? So, if the researcher in his chosen area does NOT address this “consensus body of ideas”, you will be rejected out of hand!

As your “lack of required ticks” on the checklist of necessary mentions grows, it becomes increasingly clear that you do not qualify as a serious researcher, but are more of a self-indulgent selector of “conducive scraps” and will be rejected as “unworthy” of inclusion.

You will be assumed to be wrong, merely because you do not supply comments or arguments to everything across this significant consensus.

It turns out to be an easy way of rejecting the majority of contributions. The assessors use the criteria of the consensus to judge whether you are worth considering. Now this is a very surprising criterion!

It's like saying that the Truth is that opinion held by the most people involved in that particular area of study. “You must be wrong because most people do not agree with you!”

The position of mine expressed here may seem to be a very unfair damning of a system of peer-review that has grown up over many years to make the assessment of contributions both fair and “disinterested”, so such comments as I have stated here may seem untenable. But, let us be clear, most scientists while wanting to find their own special area, will, at the same time, find security in settling into the most widely-held basic consensus position. They will basically agree with the consensus (to ensure acceptance), while vigorously seeking barely-trod outposts to establish their own "unique" contributions.

The imperative ensures, on the one hand, a highly conservative and conformist position, while on the other hand, specialising to an extremely thinly-spread area.

For a new member of any group of scientists working in a given area, such a heady and hard-to-integrate overall range of material will, of necessity, demand a great deal of work, merely including the minimum number of meaningful mentions to inflate the final references list to acceptable proportions. The new man will be sucked into the current debate and also, and significantly, into the hidden, but universal assumptions of the group. One has to ask, “With such a forming environment and demanding schedule of legitimising work, will, of necessity, put our freshman on the right road, or will it do the opposite – and wed him to the prevailing consensus, with little chance of breaking through to a better position?"

My contention is that it will, most certainly, and for the vast majority of fresher scientists, lock them into the prevailing consensus.

Important aside: In quite another area, I have been researching the trajectory of qualitative developments of all kinds – not only in the ideas and theories of Mankind (both in Science and further a-field), but in self-evolving Reality itself. And what has become very clear is that such growing changes are NOT merely incremental extensions or additions, but, on the contrary, and most crucially, occur in rather rapid changes of a quite revolutionary nature, generally termed Emergences.

And, after more than a decade of studies in this area, I have discovered that the significant changes are never, ever the results of progressive, incremental developments within our agreed consensus. Quite the reverse is true, in fact, and the initial phase of such an Event is always an initial major crisis, which results in an inevitable cataclysmic dissolution of any previous stable and continuing state. The whole edifice collapses because the structure was based on and maintained by things which though for a period did keep things stable, they were always temporary and are never eternal systems.

The dissolution is then followed by a seemingly chaotic interlude, which turns out to be the only climate in which real, innovatory changes can ever occur, yet also by their “youth” and simplicity, will just as inevitably generate their own immediate challenging, and fairly quick demise. But such a trajectory does not end there. Indeed, what follows is a regular oscillation of developments, both forwards and backwards, though each new temporary stability lasts a little longer than the last, until finally a new, and persisting Level appears which seems to be the end of the process. It certainly is the end of that particular Emergence. The reason for its “success” is always its self-maintaining features, which oppose all other contending possibilities, whether dissolutionary or progressive.

Thus the most remarkable thing about such a New System is that it was born of relatively-free significant change and innovation within chaos, yet to persist it had to become intensely conservative, with a whole galaxy of processes tuned to suppress ALL new qualitative change of any type that pressed in any direction at all.

Now, these trajectories are so strong and universal, that they will certainly apply to scientific bodies of Theory in a given area, just as they seem to apply to everything else. So this must change our prejudices about the generally accepted positions (the consensus) in any particular area, and, of course, the academic journals with their peer assessments will unavoidably be a vital part of this conservatism.

They will suppress non-conformist contributions out of necessity! 

Indeed, it is not far from the truth to state that, “The consensus is always wrong!” Now, this means that to be too strongly determined by the weight of general opinion conforming to a consensus, will certainly have the effect of “drawing your best-teeth”, and in the end, turning you into another member of the “agreeing group” – and hence easily accepted as a “serious contributor”, because you are aware of the consensus and embrace its “collective wisdom”, while thoroughly investigating your own small (usually comparatively non-challenging) part of the general area.

The reader may well get quite angry with all of this (and as with the avid defenders of flawed Democracy – “as the best there is”), and may well demand to know what alternative this critic has to the universally applauded peer-assessment system agreed to by everybody else.

And that would be a very valid point to make. Without some tested and agreed consensus, anybody could say anything and your subject would be more like one of the usual TV channels than a serious concentration of “truth”. I can only make two points to counter such a sound defence:

ONE: I do read what is going on in a remarkably wide range of areas of study, and

TWO: I refrain from being determined by the evident implicit consensus. In other words I take a sceptical position to the consensus, by noticing its evident inconsistencies and philosophical immaturity. I consider it my task to attempt to improve in some way on the current consensus.

It just has to be incomplete, and even erroneous, so my task is to both reveal and correct it where these things occur.

The most significant developments that I ever make come from criticising my own contributions; now this may seem contradictory for my criticisms are supposed to be with the generally agreed consensus.

But, where do you find them? You find them within your own ideas: you cannot avoid them! All knowledge and theories are social (NOT individual), and even when you consider that you are having totally original thoughts, you are mistaken. The bulk of what you “know” is second hand, and cannot be otherwise. But to address such things as they appear “out there” is almost impossible. But, within yourself there is some sort of integration. Without it you would merely be a repository of unconnected “facts”. If you have always tried to understand what you have been taught, read or even found out for yourself, you will have integrated each new morsel into a rich and complex system.

What better place to correctly dig out the socially-passed-on flaws?

So, by now, after a lifetime of doing this, I read both new publications and crucially, my own past papers. And in this latter activity, I always find errors and inconsistencies, that require correction or removal, and my co-ordinating and understanding producing principles are coherence and comprehensiveness.

After a lifetime as a teacher, I realised that NO TRUTH is possible, if localised only within a single specialism. The seeker for Truth must be a polymath, he/she must study all areas of serious research – the search for real understanding has to be completely interdisciplinary.

Now, notice how different that is from my earlier description of “joining the consensus”, while “finding your own niche”. That trajectory only leads to conformism and narrow specialisms, whereas what is required is the widest range of areas and the attitude of the revolutionary. Do you agree?

Addendum

Now I cannot terminate this paper without a word about the diagram from New Scientist that triggered it off. I include it again here, so the comments will at least be adjacent to their subject.

This diagram was provided along with the article The Stem Cell Wars [New Scientist 2764]. Have a good look at how the various contributors are related by cross references. On the non-US side literally all of them refer to a single source (Yamanaka), while on the US side, apart from Yamanaka, there are a series of key contributors who refer to each other as well as who seem to be referred to by a large proportion of the rest of US contributors. You would be hard pressed to consider that the non-US side amounts to a consensus, but what about the US side, some 17 different individuals form a network of cross references. To supply informed peer-assessors would doubtless draw upon this network to judge new offerings.

How do you think that this might affect a determining consensus?

Interesting debates from the States

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

Science as Religion - Einstein Wrong?

Recently discovered this guy's work... some parallels with my own?

"Empty" Space

re-posted via Temporal Illusions

Trees of Life

The Role of Marxism in Science & Thought

Occasionally, realised links crop up in the most surprising of seemingly unrelated places. For example, though any Marxist would see a definite link between Hegel’s Dichotomous (Contradictory) Pairs in Thought and Darwin’s Evolution of Life on Earth, they would not expect the same descriptive diagram to throw light upon both, but that is certainly the case.

 

When considering Darwin’s famous scribble of the Tree of Life, with all its bifurcations and extinctions as a product of Natural Selection, who would have guessed that an almost identical figure could be as revealing a descriptor of Hegel’s studies in Thinking, and his recognition of Dichotomous Pairs as results of expiring sets of assumptions and principles?

Yet, we should have guessed that something like this was possible, for, such Pairs are both based upon the very same premises, yet cannot both be true, and hence, deliver an immediately, terminating possibility of staying pragmatically, with such opposites, and using each only when it fitted certain situations, OR, alternatively, and much more productively, go on to exposing the errors embedded in their common premises, correcting them, and thus allowing a transcending of the impasse to a better, and further developable set of ideas.

Yet, as even these simple diagrams show, the two descriptive diagrams are certainly very similar, AND, crucially, the extractions from one, informed by the fossil record and current studies of still living species, could surprisingly also throw light upon the problems encountered in Thought, and particularly in Formal Logic. While, in the opposite direction, extractions, from the developments and extinctions in Thought, could better inform our ideas in evolution.

Now, it is true, these comparisons could be seen as both trivial and man-devised, delivering only how clever the deviser had been. But, what has been described here and illustrated by these diagrams, are merely only the first step, in a thorough-going, and profoundly informing, investigation.

For, how is it that Marxists were able to study Social Development in human History and thereby be able to recognise the universality of revolutionary events, as true, not only in societies, but also in absolutely all developments in Reality?

It is the most profound contribution of Marxism to Human Thought! But, we can also put it in a very different way.

Is it not precisely because most scientists are not philosophical Marxists that Modern Physics has got into the unholy mess it now resides in – not to mention the many spin-offs from this, such as Modern Cosmology? Do you, for a second, believe in the Multiverse?

No, to ban such crossovers is counter-productive and guaranteed to lead into the mire!

Admittedly, clever, man-devised analogies, without any profound content, will regularly be put forward, but the proof of the pudding is always in the eating. Really profound cross-links will immediately begin to reveal new and important understandings, and lead to obvious progress.

For example, the epiphanies experienced by this Marxist were in very surprising areas of study. For I have been both an educator and a researcher all my adult life, and in my fifties and sixties I was involved in developing Multimedia aids for teachers of Dance Performance and Choreography, along with an expert in the field of Dance Education. Who would have thought that, philosophically, the only solutions to the many problems presented by effective Access and Control to exemplar video and film footage would demand a Marxist approach?

And, later, when my sight was failing, and I looked to the scientist Ramachandran, with his studies of Blind Seeing and Visual Neglect, to find ways for me to cope with my deteriorating condition, that I should begin to understand what the actual Eye-Brain system was doing in delivering effective vision.

Only in the last month (January 2015) I read about studies in the conception of Time by the human Brain, which gelled very well with my own work of 12 years ago upon Seeing.

Now, in case my readers will dismiss these gains as unimportant, I feel that I must bring in my “Big Guns”. After a lifetime as a physicist, and throughout that time an opponent of the famed Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, this scientist found that he was able to apply his now further developed Marxist philosophical approach (coming, of course, from the above mentioned researches), to Wave/Particle Duality in its prime citadel – The Double Slit Experiments, and managed to explain all the anomalies without any resort to the Copenhagen stance. And, following this, I am now involved in a detailed study of the real, concrete contents of what is usually supposed to be purely Empty Space.

Indeed, in retrospect, I think I can say with confidence that the failure of the self-proclaimed Marxists, to have tackled ANY of these questions, is a measure of just how far they have strayed from what Hegel, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky had put into our hands. The failure of Marxists is because they were no longer continuing to develop Marxism in the many areas that required such an approach. They were NOT Marxists.

Issue 37 of Shape: Redshift

The famed Redshift, found by the astronomer Hubble, when searching the Universe for galaxies, was interpreted as a Doppler-like Shift, due to these galaxies receding away from the observer (Hubble himself), and if this were true, it would give a reliable measure of the distance-away from him that these sources of light actually were. But, what if is wasn’t a Doppler Shift at all, but something else?

Read the issue.

The Invisible (yet active) Contents of Empty Space

Following a long investigation into various phenomena revealed since the discovery of the Quantum over a century ago, it becomes increasingly clear that the anomalies that came up could only be addressed in a scientific, explanatory way by the assumption of a physical substrate filling all of so-called Empty Space.

Of course, such a substrate was not an original idea, for it seems an inevitable conception when attempting to explain what actually and persistently happens there, so it has come up before. At one time all scientists believed in such a substrate, which they called The Ether, and though it was entirely a theoretical construct, it did seem to answer many of the questions posed by phenomena of Empty Space.

Indeed, it was on the basis of a conceived-of Ether that James Clerk Maxwell derived his equations of Electromagnetism, which are still used to this day.

But, that theoretical medium was never found! Try as they might, the scientists involved could find nothing that actually fitted the bill, and the whole concept was simply dropped.

Yet, similar undetectables have always been considered, and new ones are added to the list of necessary substances all the time to “theoretically” explain anomalies – from Dark Matter to Dark Energy, and invisible Dimensions galore.

Frankly, there has to be something out there, which is both susceptible and positively reactive, yet cannot, by the usual means, be positively and directly detected. As a theoretical exercise, therefore, this researcher attempted to devise a particle, which was of no net charge, no magnetic effects and remarkably no apparent matter content either. Clearly, the only way, such an entity could possibly exist, was by it being composed of other sub particles with opposite properties, which effectively cancelled out, within such a stable union.

Now, there is a well-established model that could be used as a starting point. It is, of course, The Atom!

It may not, initially, seem appropriate, until we consider its Form and its widespread occurrence throughout the whole of known Reality. In the simplest case, the Hydrogen Atom, it consists of a positively charged proton, orbited by a negatively charged electron. And this delivered a neutral entity, but with an evident net Mass and a magnetic dipole effect.

But, it is remarkably stable, and its two elements are kept apart, in spite of their opposite charges, by the relative speeds they had, on first encounter, which was transformed into the speed of orbiting, and thus kept them apart.

It is not an unusual pattern, for, as we know in Cosmology, Stars, Planets, Moons and even Galaxies follow very similar stable patterns indeed. The question becomes, “Could we construct another joint particle, on the model of the atom, which could cancel out all the properties of its component parts, and thus become undetectable?”

For, if the two components were of exactly equal size and opposite charge, both the net charge and the magnetic effects in the combined particle would be zero.

All that remained and spoiled our intentions was the unavoidable and eminently detectable Mass! Clearly, the question presents itself, “Could we have sub-particles of directly opposite matter types?”

For example, if we used one electron and one positron, with one of ordinary matter and the other of antimatter, perhaps the result might be an undetectable joint particle?

But, not only that!

As with the atom, it could also contain extra electromagnetic energy in the very same way, by the promotion of the orbits to a higher energy level. And, in the same way could release that energy via the demotion of such orbits.

Doesn’t this ring a bell?

Have we not defined a physical Photon?

It would be undetectable as a particle, but could carry energy within it!

But, as well as existing as a “disembodied” quantum of energy, it could also exist everywhere without that extra energy, and be totally undetectable: it could be the basis of an undetectable substrate – as an Empty Photon?

Now, this entity, or something very like it, might well answer quite a few questions currently unexplained in Modern Physics. And, one famous experiment literally cried out for such an entity. It was, of course, The Double Slit Experiment.

But, to play a role in that experiment, this particle would, somehow, have to be literally everywhere, forming some kind of substrate. So, it was, therefore, conceived of as forming a “Universal Paving” composed of these particles – not a liquid or a solid, put a Paving of descrete particles in a close-packed formation, actually filling all of Space.

The problems and anomalies of the whole range of Double Slit Experiments were tackled with this paving as a universal intermediary, between the missiles fired at the Slits, and finally recorded upon an ultimate detection screen, and everything was causally explained!

Yes, absolutely everything, including the vanishing of phenomena when things were attempted to be detected in various regions of the experiment.

Compared to the usual Copenhagen-based standpoint, with its Wave/Particle Duality and Possibility Mathematics, this alternative was infinitely preferable, and didn’t involve the idealistic retreat of the Copenhageners. It was, indeed, worth investigating, and delivered a theory containing more Objective Content than that which it replaced.

As always, of course, such a theory cannot claim to be the Absolute Truth, but using the criterion of containing more Objective Content, it had to replace the usual theory!

The most important unexplained phenomenon in Nature is surely the Propagation of Electromagnetic Energy (such as Light) through totally Empty Space.

Could our suggested paving of these undetectable particles fit the bill? The answer was, once again, a resounding, “Yes!” For, the quanta of electromagnetic energy could be passed on from unit-to-unit, in a bucket-brigade fashion, and the renowned, but unexplained, constant Speed of Light, would now be merely the speed of transfer from one particle of the paving to the next.

And, to cap it all, this actual particle has been observed in the Tevatron at Fermilab, and there termed the positronium

And though, in those circumstances, it was shown to have an incredibly short lifespan before it dissociated back into its components, that is what you would expect there, and it was an assumed stable version that would play the role within such a universal structure as a general paving of Empty Space.

Now, before everyone has a fit, let us be clear what has been achieved here.

It was from the outset a theoretical construct to see if something like this had legs. The positronium (or neutritron, as its devisor has called it) may not be “the Truth”!

But, something like it may actually be involved.

And, as it has turned out in this continuing line of investigations, this particle alone cannot be the sole ingredient that fills the whole of Empty Space, for, in spite of its successes, it has also failed to explain (with its current composition) several other major questions that also have to be answered for such a space-filling substrate.

For example, it cannot explain Fields, both electrical and magnetic, and even more importantly, it cannot explain Gravity.

Yet, why should such a substrate be so simple?

Why should it contain only one kind of elementary unit?

We have a good, general analogistic model, involving the cancelling out of properties via mutually-orbiting sub particles.

Could not space be filled with a variety of such undetectable units, but with different contents and modes of existence? Using the same basic premises, it is surely possible to devise other joint particles with different properties to the neutritron, which because of their differences may well be able to deliver the as yet unexplained features?

The necessary theoretical line was obvious. Could we devise other undetectable particles, which could deliver the other phenomena?

And, in the initial attack upon electrostatic fields, it was attempted using this time, the pair of mirror-image joint particles, which in equal numbers, and moving about randomly could also be effective en mass – for they would cancel out over the population instead of within each and every joint particle. And, by making the joint pairs those of unequally-sized particles, these could deliver effects that the neutritrons could not.

Now, this research is still in the early stages, but already several concepts have been considered – the static paving AND the randomly moving, gas-like entities.

But, as with the matter states of Solid, Liquid and Gas, we can conceive of different states or phases, which could act together to ultimately deliver all the phenomena occurring in Empty Space.

The research proceeds!

Transcending Levels

How Hierarchies of Level are created & Transcended in Explanations

The current work on Abstraction, as published in the latest Special Issue of the SHAPE Journal (January 2015), was, and could only be, the first step in a long and difficult journey, for as with external Reality itself, there is NO direct causality between its fundamental, basic particles, and the most advanced level features that occur therein. That is not to say that there are no causal connections, of course, but they are by no means unitary or direct.

Just as efforts to explain the origins and properties of Living Things in terms of elementary particles, or even the last immediately prior Level before Life, is impossible, as it is also never achievable to explain Thinking in similarly related lower order terms – even cells and synapses will not deliver what is required.

As in Reality in general, there is an undoubted hierarchy of Levels involved, each with its own system-dependant forms, which are never mere summations of totally unchanged basic units from one level directly producing the next!

For one thing, any significant developments always require revolutionary events – usually termed Emergences, and these involve not only entirely new structures at the new level, but also, though the lower producing level continues to exist, it is significantly changed in various ways, first by the cataclysm, which precipitated the transformation, and thereafter by the new level above it. Once a new level is established and stable, the level that led to it no longer exists as such.

Indeed, these Emergent Interludes are so revolutionary that they cannot be explained directly in terms of what came before in the immediately prior Level. Indeed, those parts of the old, which were radically changed by the processes involved, were so initially dissociated as to be consequently reconstructed upon entirely new lines, as a consequence of the transforming event, as to thereafter no longer able to play the same role. The emergence not only creates the New, but also changes and limits the old too.

And, any attempt to explain that transformation in terms of what currently remains at the lower level, will be impossible, never mind the complex following sequences that would have also been part of the whole Event.

Some examples of this are well known, such as the impossibility of explaining Life from currently non-living situations at the lower Level. And, of course, our present task, that of dealing with Consciousness is another.

Now, the direct proof of these assertions is the unavoidable division of studies into different subjects – like Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Geology are not just difficult problems, delayed until some time in the future, when they evidence will be available for them to be tackled, but are, each and every one, a reflection of the emergence of entirely new Levels, with wholly new properties and laws as also are, crucially, the top-down transformations that are the inevitable results of such events.

Now, though some simple features are so explained, all the important ones are not! But, what confuses this is the simultaneous existence of the various, relatively independent Levels. For, if a lower Level were to be removed, there is no doubt that all the Levels above it would vanish too.

It seems to be a contradiction, but it is usually explained in terms of the relative independence of the Superstructure and the Base. This occurs in all aspects of Human Culture, so we are certainly familiar with it. And, it is often used as an argument against the Marxists, by saying that they cannot explain their own existence with their “strict determinist ideas”.

Though, such an argument is clearly not well-founded, as it is ONLY the Marxists, who know about and study Emergent Interludes (Revolutions) that occur in all levels of Development.

Indeed, the realisation of the occurrence of these crucial Events throughout Reality in Development was recognised first occurring in the Development of Human Societies, which suffered totally transforming Revolutions. And, in studying these throughout History, thereafter led to a wider application, across the board, in all Developments in every area of Reality.

Of course, knowing something of Stabilities, Crises, Dissolutions and trajectories of Change is never sufficient. These have to be unearthed in all areas of study – in their own terms.

But, without a doubt, knowing what cannot be done focuses our attention on the areas, which can be investigated, and also philosophically changes such investigator from pluralist to holist, and equips them to look for the key impasses, via which all progress can be made.

Finally, as many failed attempts have proved conclusively, the task of explaining how a Level emerges from a lower level ground turns out to be impossible by the usual means, and with the usual assumptions.

Attempts made by using the currently existing features of an evidently lower level to explain the creation of the new one above it will always be impossible.

And the reason for this is simple!

On creating the new Level, the Emergent Interlude, which achieved it, not only built the New, but first had to dismantle literally all the control features of the prior stable Level causing its dissociation as a System, and hence removing all inhibitory controls, and hence enabling the wholly New to emerge.

With the so-called “policeman processes” dismantled, numerous new proto systems quickly developed, and competed, until the ultimate victory of one, or of a related or coordinated set, changed a complex, competitive situation into a single system with its own control processes to maintain its dominance.

Thus, not only was a new self-maintained Level established, but it also via top down controls, changed the still existing lower Level.

It was no longer that which had precipitated the Emergent Event.

Hence all attempts to use a current lower level to explain the one above it is bound to fail, for it isn’t the one that was involved in the transforming Interlude!

You think there's a multiverse? Get real (Review)

A Major Misconception of the Heavens
(and everything else too)

The article entitled One True Cosmos in New Scientist (3004), by physicist Lee Smolin and Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger, is a significant step in the right direction in Cosmology, but their sound suggestions are not, as yet, sufficient to cure the malady that today infects current ideas in this area.

Nevertheless, it is Mangabeira Unger’s philosophical contributions that are crucially important and necessary, for they display a clear, outsider influence to dispel the navel contemplation now rife in Cosmology.

For, it is definitely in the area of Philosophy that Modern Physics (and its ever more dependant offspring, Modern Cosmology) that the major inadequacies most certainly lie. The main point of criticism is correctly directed at the concept of The Multiverse, and their clear condemnation of such a stance as unscientific is certainly correct.

Their arguments upon that position need no added amendments from this philosopher-physicist. But, their criticisms constitute only a first and essential step. No mention is made of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and the massive retrenchment that it caused in Modern Physics, or, indeed, the whole idealist fiasco of Wave/Particle Duality. The errors exposed here are too narrow to account for the major diversion that has been instituted over the last century.

It has to be the case though, that the standpoint these critics describe, must also infer further consequent criticisms, which have certainly not been elaborated upon in this article. What is also spelled out, however, is what they call the "Newtonian Paradigm", which they see as a method developed for the investigation of local subsystems, which are in Cosmology wrongly applied to Super-systems on a Cosmic scale. But, the errors involved are in fact much more fundamental than that.

For what has become the norm in Science is the isolation, filtering and necessarily rigorous farming of experimental Domains (subsystems), in order to investigate them. And, what is involved, in that, isn’t just a matter of taking a subset of Reality to investigate. What is always achieved amounts to a great deal more than a mere artificial isolation of a natural subsystem. Every such Domain is always significantly changed - not only have many factors been purposely removed, but those remaining have also been artificially controlled, expressly to produce an unnatural, yet revealing context – tailored or farmed to clearly display a previously only glimpsed (and, in this special context, easily achieved) sought-for relation. Yet, what can then be extracted is NOT what was acting in the original, unfettered Reality-as-is: is, always, a produced simplification and idealisation, of what was originally glimpsed.

Now, this is absolutely crucial, but also, in order to assume that what we finally have in our hands is exactly what was acting in the natural unfettered situation, we have, in addition, to assume the Principle of Plurality. Otherwise, we cannot make all the extensive, consequent reasoning that follows.

For example, what is finally extracted is assumed to be a Natural Law – and ALL naturally occurring situations are assumed to be mere summations of such Laws, and also that NONE of these are in any way changed by that process. The Principle states that all such factors are both separable and unchangeable contributions.

So, what are the consequences of such beliefs? It means that if sufficient farming of appropriately designed and produced Domains are carried out, a whole set of these eternal Natural Laws will be put into our hands to explain literally all associated phenomena. But then, a following step is also crucial! For, it is assumed that all phenomena can be built solely out of these Natural Laws by mere addition.

But, it just isn’t true! For, if it were, you wouldn’t need technologists at all. Neither would you need experimental scientists to construct appropriate experiments revealing these “Natural Laws”.

So, though I commend the argument about subsystems in this article - it is, as I have explained, a much more important problem that has been revealed, AND must, somehow, be transcended!

The crucial underlying Principle of Plurality, which not only sees Reality as analysable into separable eternal Laws, but also sees these as permanently fixed. Philosophically, that makes these “Laws” primary, and NOT caused by their context. This is an idealist position! And, if they do NOT reveal actual eternal Natural Laws, but instead only actually arrange Domains of Reality to artificially deliver what seem to be such, then, they have not so much revealed, as at least partially constructed, what we end up having in our hands.

And, this means that the processes involved – The Newtonian Paradigm – which constitute, in fact, the standard experimental methods of Science – do not reveal, but only “deliver”, due to the carefully arranged Domains.

And, what they deliver are NOT the eternal building blocks of Reality.

Yet, of course, they are still eminently useable! For, we not only construct the appropriate Domains in order to reveal these “Laws”, but also construct the very same Domains in order to effectively use them! So, the Paradigm stands.

It is OK for technologists and product producers, but, it is just terrible for those attempting to understand Reality. Ever-better theories are undermined from the outset.

The next criticism in the article concerns the so-called “special nature” of our Universe, when compared with what can be produced by the known set of”Laws of Physics”.

Indeed, starting with such Laws, it is considered almost inconceivable how we could ever have arrived solely at the Universe we now quite evidently have. So, to attempt to explain that anomaly, the scientists felt they could do no other than put forward the conception of the Multiverse, for within that, every conceivable Universe is possible, so ours would be included. Among the infinite number of all possible Universes, produced by random mixes of “the Laws”, if all were worked out, would, in time, turn up ours as one of the set.

But, our Universe isn’t a "special case": It is, indeed, the only one there is.

Comparing it with a set of laws in all their possible configurations means nothing. The whole trajectory of such reasoning is seriously lacking, on so many levels. Everything from the idealist stance of the laws coming first, to the incorrect assumption that they are fixed, and finally to the belief in the Principle of Plurality – they produce results that constitute a mere house of sand!

There is no proper reasoned case for The Multiverse: it is merely a formal sticking plaster to cover a real gaping hole in our understanding!

The criticisms involved are not just many and varied, but are cumulative – each one precipitating more, and as soon as one brick is shown to be dodgy, the whole edifice comes tumbling down.

So, that being the case, major changes in the assumptions and principles we employ must be implemented.

The problem is, “Where to start?”

It can only be at the level of an alternative underlying Principle to that of Plurality, and, historically, that has always been the Principle of Holism, which is defined by - Everything affects everything else!

All things are variable, including the relations between things.

Laws don’t determine contexts, but contexts make Laws!

And, with such a World, only a single trajectory was followed, giving us the one Universe we now have. BUT, any assumption of straight through causality is also wrong. Analysis is always a simplification, and universal Reductionism is a myth!

Lastly, and most importantly, development isn’t incremental, but involves long periods of Stability interleaved with short dramatic interludes of revolutionary transformations.

The so called Newtonian Paradigm is only usable in constructed and maintained Domains, and the real changes that occur can only be addressed by studying and understanding Emergences, where all significant qualitative change occurs!

[Indeed, though the philosopher in this fruitful pairing clearly insists upon variable Laws, he does not see development via revolutionary Emergences, but entirely incrementally, which significantly alters his suggested solutions to these philosophical and scientific problems. So, to some extent, his attitude upon this reflects his political stance and activities as a government Minister in a capitalist government in Brazil]

One sound conclusion of these writers is that our conceptions of scientific laws do need revising significantly.

That conclusion is explained by = “discarding the assumption that the same kind of laws that work on the scale of small subsystems of the World, will work, scaled up, at the level of the whole Universe.”

Of course, as already explained above, there is a great deal more to it than that. All our laws are predicated upon differently constructed and constrained Domains. But, if, in addition, they are also included in Hierarchies of Systems in Reality – each with its own laws, then but only then, would I be inclined to agree with them.

Yet, the initial creation and subsequent evolution of such hierarchies must also be explained, and this can only be achieved by the occurrence of Emergent Episodes – Revolutions, which are clearly rejected by these writers.

The point is made by these writers about how the “Natural Laws” can be used to deliver an infinite number of non-existant Universes, but the “Why?”, appended to this, is inadequate – merely stating that they cannot be applied to things as large as the Universe, for that simply does not cover sufficient ground!

For, the real reasons are far more basic and explicable!

The Laws extracted by the usual means are NOT the driving essences of the Universe, but simplified and idealised Abstractions – arranged for in tailor-made Domains, and not about unfettered Reality at all, they are only about Pure Forms alone that can be extracted - and in so doing defining a different World, in which only pure forms exist, a non-real World, which I call Ideality!

So, the laws we extract, manipulate and even use are merely Laws of Form and certainly NOT the comprehensive creators of all of Reality.

We have a name for such studies limited to such a world: it is termed Mathematics.

And, this must be the most damning criticism of Modern Science: it has abandoned concrete materialism for formal idealism!

For, its Motive Forces of Reality are deemed to be the Formal Relations – the “Natural Laws” – farmed-for in all experiments, and involving only Pattern – without physical, causal explanations, and hence these are not about concrete Reality-as-is. No wonder such theories get nowhere: they are not what we assume they are!

Finally, the writers conclude that a new principle must become the basis for a New Science that we require to tackle the Universe. But, as they are not clear what the Principle was that they were assuming, they are not yet in a position to define its alternative. That mistaken Principle was not merely about local subsystems rather than Universes, but about ALL scientific investigations. It is the Principle of Plurality.

And, the new alternative has to be that ancient Principle, which is both the opposite of Plurality, and also has, in a contradictory way, been the essential ingredient in all the best scientific explanations throughout its history. It is , of course, the Principle of Holism.

What is required is the extension of traditional holistic explanations to also devising, carrying out and interpreting experiments. And we are still a long way from that!

Sadly, in identifying three principles, which, it is suggested, will lead to the way that these writers suggest is essential, include one which constitutes, in fact, the main problem with the current standpoint. For they insist - namely “Mathematics is not a description of some, separate, timeless, platonic Reality, but a description of the properties of one Universe”.

No it is not!

On the contrary, what they say it is in that statement, is simply not true. We don’t seek mere descriptions but causal explanations! So, in spite of a really valuable intention, they end up shooting themselves in the foot.

Addendum:

May this philosopher/physicist suggest some areas, he has already contributed to this problem, over the last six years, in the pages of the SHAPE Journal on the Web.

They are:-

The Theory of Emergences

The Theory of the Double Slit

Abstraction

A Hero of Holism – Yves Couder

Myths of Tegmark

Brian Cox’s Theory of Everything

Truly Natural Selection

Nothing

Marxism I, II, III

Analogistic Models

The Superstructure and the Base.


My work (Jim Schofield) can be found at the following sites:

SHAPE Journal
SHAPE Blog
SHAPE Channel on Youtube