Clay and the Collective Body

 

Interesting stuff on the Red Eye Portal about sculptor Antony Gormley's latest installation Clay and the Collective Body. 

Have a look

How The Tail Wags The Dog

Observing the death-throes of Idealist Science

The scientific investigation of things is always channeled quite markedly by our established preconceptions, assumptions and even our well-established methodologies. How could it be otherwise? And, of course, such determining elements do not just fall out of nowhere. Mankind has had a very long history of such methods, starting as long ago as when they were rather well-equipped apes in the trees of East Africa millions of years ago.

Yet, by a long series of adaptions and consequent changes in modes of living and processing sense perceptions, as well as survival and interaction problems, they have become differentiated from even the closest of their other ape relatives, to be able to do things quite unimaginable in their long past ancestral world.

Mankind, almost miraculously, began to Think, Communicate and Act to an unprecedented degree. And all of these developments were totally unpredictable within their immediately pre-origin states, or indeed any prior stages of development. Adaptions not only fitted this species for necessary actions and methods, but, as always, also extended things into the wholly new possibilities of which Mankind became increasingly capable. Entirely new tasks emerged for the first time capable of being both conceived of, and then attempted.

But, that amazing development route, does not mean that that he directly climbed a pre-existing ladder towards some totally and always available level. Indeed, though most gains were both pragmatic and rarely fully understood, certain conceptual gains “had the legs” to enable a whole series of quite different developments too in an ever-increasing range of areas.

But, every single one, because it was pragmatic rather than conceptual, always had its limits, and could, and indeed did, ultimately lead him astray. But, this was not a flaw, or even an error. It simply could not be otherwise. Progress solely by discovered processes, which attempt to lift you up by your own bootlaces, will necessarily have this property.

What is remarkable is that along the way they did, most definitely, lead to considerable gains, but NOT as a continuous and clearly consequent sequence. On the contrary, each productive set of methods and their retinue of emerging ideas would always and inevitably, come up against an unavoidable crisis, wherein the current tools did not match up to the jobs that presented themselves. And such crises meant that extended periods without any significant new gains were very common.

Something very unusual had to happen to make possible the actual surmounting of any such “terminating” impasse, and as soon as a single individual had reached and somehow surpassed the barrier, Mankind’s communication abilities soon propagated the solution throughout that person’s in-contact groups.

But, if this inevitable “accelerator-brake” trajectory is not appreciated, then the exponents to the most currently fruitful ideas and techniques, will, when confronting such an inevitably final impasse to their accepted mix of ideas and methods, are made inevitably prisoners of their beloved paradigms and techniques, and we can quite definitely say that they had encountered yet another case of the “tail beginning to wag the dog”!

The once progressive standpoint, if insisted upon as the “Truth”, becomes reactionary, and will never traverse the self-generated impasse. Further development will halt at such a point, and future achievements will be limited forever to within the same prior area.

You continue to swim, but only in your own pool: the infinite sea lies forever just around the corner, and unconsidered.

Now, this may sound very pessimistic, but in fact it can be the very opposite, for as Hegel insisted, “Once you are aware of a limit or boundary, you have already passed it!”

The seeker for ever closer approaches to the Truth – the scientist (for example), must be constantly aware of the above described trajectory, and when he or she encounters what appears to be a terminal halt to proceedings, must recognise it, and critically review their previously untouchable assumptions, principles and methods.

Let us look at the current crisis in Physics, which has now lasted for almost a century, and shows, as yet, no signs of any conquest of it at any time soon.

It is, of course, the Copenhagen Era in Sub Atomic Physics! And the ideas and techniques which have terminated progress in this important area are NOT new, but have finally outlived their usefulness: these are the principles of Plurality and Formalism, and have forced a significant philosophical retreat, that previously was seemingly not required.

Now, many will guess what Formalism is, but may not recognise Plurality, though the latter is not only much older than the former, it is also more profoundly important, and has, for well over 2,000 years, been the unrecognised cornerstone of all conceptual developments since that time.

To understand how these remarkable principles have been extremely effective ideas, and have also generated a whole set of successful investigative techniques and consequently extremely valuable theories, we have to, as always, go back to the ancient Greeks.

It is they who most successfully learned to abstract from complex and unfettered Reality certain crucial simplifications, which very effectively revealed what were previously hidden, glimpsed or unreliable in Reality-as-is.

The cornerstone of their method was Geometry, where by the amazing simplification of points, lines and planes into what were actually unachievable forms – dots of zero extension, lines of zero thickness and completely flat and infinite planes, managed to extract shapes, forms and relations which were truly universal.

Euclidian Geometry delivered just such an available World. And working solely within this idealisation, they could address certain problems, relationships, and Theorems (geometric derivations), which were certainly NOT obvious when the natural entities were studied.

The abstract versions had separated Form from its complex, real World Content, and studied it in “splendid isolation”. They believed that they had uncovered the Essences of Reality, but actually they had only revealed the universal features of Purely Abstract Form.

They were working in a totally formal subset of Reality, which because of that major restriction did funnel down into a very much smaller number of common patterns – Forms.

Indeed, it is very clear to me that we should never endow this area of study with the idea that is Reality. In truth it is NOT about Reality as such, but only about the Shapes, Patterns and Forms that constitute a majorly simplified reflection of Reality, which I insist should be clearly labelled as that World of Pure Form alone - Ideality.

It was indeed a magnificent achievement!

It was the beginning of Mathematics in general, for it is the same sort of thing – abstracted Form dealt with entirely separately from Reality, and in its own terms. Indeed, it is the process of Abstraction applied to Pattern alone!

But, of course, this constitutes only one aspect of Abstraction, and for those who require a broadening of their study of its methods and achievements, there is a vast country in Ideality.

Yet, at the beginning of my own investigations, I took many months to arrive at a general diagram entitled The Processes and Productions of Abstraction (shown here)

And this figure shows what a small corner of the whole we are concentrating on with Formalism and Mathematics. [The index identifies that sector which constitutes Ideality, and that it amounts to only about one sixth of the diagram in the bottom right corner.]

I feel that I should say at this point that I am not an external and perennial critic of Mathematics. Throughout my education in Grammar school and University I was always at the top of the class in Mathematics, and have since dedicated very large periods to solely mathematical researches. I am indeed a mathematician.

So, these criticisms and revelations are well-informed and well-founded - and, of course, totally incapable of being the basis for most problems and decisions in Life (though two Indian mathematicians recently published a novel in which the hero is sure that the truths and logic of Mathematics are indeed just that).

So, because they are so closely related, I must, before I go any further, reveal the content of that other principle – that of Plurality.

This is the basis of all Analysis!

It assumes that any Whole can be analysed into its constituent Parts, which subsequently could be brought together to actually make that Whole. And repeating the analysis exercise, with each and every Part, would reveal its components in the same way, and thereafter be repeated to end a “possible infinite regress” with a final arrival at a set of fundamental units related by eternal laws.

Now that descent we all know as Reductionism, but hidden within it is the pluralist assumption that the various Parts are entirely separable. This is a crucial assumption, and in certain cases a valid one, but it is only very rarely true.

It means that Wholes are the result of these separable Parts coming together – nothing else is involved in the essential thing that we are abstracting. When we invert Reductionism, along with the assumption of Plurality, we believe that there is a causal set of links all the way from the fundamental and final basic elements to everything in our World. They are inevitable consequences of particular mixes of those bases, complicated in layer upon layer.

Now, this sounds quite reasonable but if we find those Parts by experimental techniques in specially constructed and constrained set ups, we can assume that what we get by these means will be the same as exist in the Whole in which they exist in totally unconstrained Reality. They are totally separable and unchanging as contributions, and hence, when we have by the same sort of methods identified ALL the component parts, we should be able to produce the Whole from them. Now, though this can be true in certain stable situations, it is usually totally wrong. They are NOT separable! Plurality is wrong!

The alternative to this assumption of Plurality is Holism, which insists that such separability is a myth, and though “something-like” our extracted relation (in an experiment) occurs in Reality, it is certainly not exactly the same. Reality is NOT produced by contributing separable laws.

Laws are produced by particular interacting and mutually affecting mixes within Reality, and when that changes so does the Law, sometimes so radically that you could not even relate the new Law to the old law; they could be entirely different.

Yet Science is built upon Formalism and Plurality.

How was it so successful, for it most certainly was?

It worked because we didn’t apply the extracted laws in totally unfettered Reality. On the contrary, we had learned to first rigorously constrain a section of Reality to a remarkable and maintained degree to reveal, and then extract relations more easily. And then we also found out that our laws would only work when applied in those exact same Domains, from which we had extracted them.

We are the horticulturalists of Reality!

We create the ideal plots, cultivate and maintain them, learn all we can to improve them to most effectively extract our necessary “truths”, and then apply them within our perfect plots to grow what is possible there.

Now, this has worked well in very many areas for several centuries, but you cannot cover all of Reality with greenhouses, controlled environments, irrigation and appropriate fertilisers. At certain crucial points, we must confront Reality as it is! And that occurs mightily in Sub Atomic Physics.

Now, the effect of all our constraints and consequent extractions upon our conceptual and practical approaches was not immediately evident, but turned out to be nevertheless absolutely crucial. We only very rarely address qualitative change!

Our construction of Domains, and the extensive constraints within them, effectively impose an artificial stability upon an invented situation: we make absolutely sure that the area of study does not qualitatively change under our hands into something significantly different. We kneel on its chest and hold down its arms and legs to study its properties.

“Stir thoroughly, then wait for equilibrium, before taking any measurements” is the usually applied imperative, which encapsulates this approach more generally. We know that to get results we must study stability! We, very sensibly, only look in stable conditions for our relations. We, effectively, reveal the Science within various versions of Stability.

Indeed, each and every law (equation) that we uncover is always a law of the precise conditions that we set up and maintain in our experimental area – our Domain, not only of extraction, but also essentially of application too. Though we know well enough that qualitative changes do always happen naturally in all unfettered Reality, we don’t reveal why they happen, because we very effectively prohibit them in our experiments.

Now, the usual response to this assertion is the bringing forward of the many examples of Change of State (Phase Change) readily admitted to by each and every scientist. They all with surprise explain how they are very well aware of the changes from solid to liquid, and liquid to gas, and are then admonished by reference to rules about Latent Heat. But any such laws are about energy transfers only! They don’t explain why these qualitative changes occur: they merely describe what occurs energetically. Causes are never part of equations: they are succinct descriptions only!

And whenever we are confronted by such changes, we institute two quite different responses. We turn away from causes and instead do overall statistics!

Latent Heat is merely a measure of the energy involved, that is necessary as part of the transition, which will transfer from one organisational regime to another, and, as it stands, merely as a quantitative amount, it could never be said to be any sort of explanation of the change!

So, in the past there has always been what we can describe as an accompanying explanatory narrative, which is additional to any constants and equations, and which derives from our knowledge of and theories about the structure of solids and liquids, so that when these True Theories are coupled with the quantitative stuff we feel we have a solid handle on what is going on. And, when real explanations are extracted from scientists in an area such as this, what they say derives very little indeed from the quantitative descriptions, and almost entirely from the qualitative theories, that appear in the always-accompanying narrative. Then, we hear of balances between opposing forces, which settle into stable arrangements, and which can explain everything from ordinary expansion on energy input, the breakdown of the current Phase into something very different on a Change of State.

This is our solution!

We do NOT actually explain anything with our purely quantitative formulae and the various thresholds, which signal Phase Change. We give our static forms together with purely verbal explanations, based upon qualitative models or metaphors. And this is always the case over the widest range of phenomena too.

But, we do not know how to address Dynamic, Qualitative Change in process: we just get out at the relevant “floors” where stability has been attained, and there is very good reasons for this. Such transitions are never simple and formulatable as are relations within stability, especially when the latter are extracted in artificially stable and specially constructed Domains. Our sciences and our scientists do not know how to deal with Significant Qualitative Change.

Now again, many would dispute this, but they are mistaken.

What we do is state what we know about some particular changing phenomenon, especially if the various stages map onto something else that we are very familiar with. We “explain” by analogy! “Just like that over there!”, is not, I’m afraid an explanation. It is certainly useful, and allows some things to be inferred, and others to be seen more generally, but it is appearance and not essence. It is something we know from experience to be the case, and not something we understand.

Our investigations are either carefully chosen or rigorously constrained (or both) to allow our usual extraction of relations. We build Roman Roads through the countryside of Reality; we do not usually investigate Reality’s own passages of creative change. But, of course, this means that we ignore vast tracts of the most important areas and processes that are actually transforming Reality.

Let me illustrate this with the most important example.

We know nothing about Revolutions! Now, the reader might reject such an area as freakish, biased and unimportant, but this only demonstrates that they do not even realise that all qualitative changes of real significance only happen in just such Events, not only in Society but also at every single Level in the development of Reality since its start.

These Events are termed Emergences. Indeed, at every single significant turning point in the history of Reality, all important qualitative changes only occur in relatively short episodes of truly revolutionary change, in Emergences! And, in between, there have been many very long periods of Stability, in which most things stay relatively the same, varying only in inconsequentials – usually quantitative and formulateable!

Even the absolutely crucial relationship between Stability and Emergence is never addressed. We merely take the transformed situation and study it entirely within its own terms as a “New Science”!

After the, actually certain, Origin of Life from non-living substances and processes, we merely address the new Level of Living Things and call it Biology! And it is really studied in isolation.

To report that non-living processes still occur, is of course true, but to assume that when they seem to be happening within Life they are exactly the same is rubbish!

The crucial question of exactly why and how the first Life came to be is nowhere known or understood.

NOTE: In Brian Cox’s repeated comments in the Wonders of the Solar System TV series on BBC TV, he seems to infer that the occurrence of Life would be automatic given only conducive conditions, appearing more like reproduction than miracle.

It is not part of what we do, is it?

But, the Quantum Crisis did a great deal more to disable Sub Atomic Physics. It ultimately led to the victory of Bohr and Heisenberg at Solvay in 1927 and the establishment of a new order in that branch of Physics, for the essential explanatory theories or accompanying narratives were declared to be wholly self-kid, and all such contributions banned.

Instead the only reliable and hence “truthful” gains of past methods were deemed to be the extracted and “essential” Equations alone. And, without that crucial explanatory framework, the causes of phenomena became the extracted, “objective” laws themselves. Science was not only transformed to be entirely pragmatic (like Technology), but also switched around to now be also idealist!

Theories, as they used to be, vanished, and were replaced by equations alone. And, if you had one that worked, it was thereafter termed to be a “theory”.

Of course, it was no such thing: an equation is a description only, and a purely formal one at that. Yet, if you consider it to be more than that, you are saying that, “Obeys this equation!”, is the cause of a phenomenon.

It most certainly is not!

So, how does this once so appealing, “waggily-tail” get to remarkably wag the whole dog in very misleading ways?

We still have to set up more and more exclusive and extreme Domains to get the reproducibility required for reliable relations to be extracted as “the underlying essences”, and the contents of these defined and maintained Domains become more and more special and unlike any current or past situation. So much is removed or held constant that all holistic effects are also totally absent. We usually limit our entities to at most two, and sometimes only one(?). And gigantic machines costing billions of pounds are constructed to add what they consider to be the only necessary ingredient possible – Energy! And the only phenomenon they can conceive of, conducive to this style of investigating, is the majorly destructive Collision – the total dissociation of their accelerated entities and their targets (now often the very same things) into whatever is the result.

Of course, they can never control what happens after a collision event, but because the conditions have been so strictly erected and constrained, they infer the construction of each Whole in terms of its “broken” Parts. Now, where have I heard that before?

You are right! It is indeed Plurality, applied not in the greenhouse-type conditions where it is usually employed, but in an arranged cataclysm. And guess where all the evidence for such mammoth dissociations occurs? It is only in real world Emergences, which always commence with a cataclysm of enormous dissociation, but then go on to a series of alternating Phases in entirely opposite directions, involving on the one hand creative construction of New Order, and on the other by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, until an entirely NEW complete Level is created out of the almost totally unconstrained detritus of a complete Level dissociation.

Do you think that our Copenhageners at the Large Hadron Collider will do it?

The Socialist Economic Revolution I

 So, as revolutionary socialists, instead of borrowing at some-significant-cost from the ill-gotten gains of the wealthy, we must face the task of relieving them of this crucial component of all economic life in a modern country, so that it is still available, though no longer as a guaranteed and ample sustainer to a parasitic well-living class, but as an essential social resource for setting up and developing producing and serving organisations.

Now, how do we do that?

Clearly, they will not give up their easy life without a major struggle. If they could see no alternative but to throw themselves off skyscrapers in the 1920s Depression, they will certainly not take the removal of their sustenance by the Working Class lying down. They will fight it determinedly, and expect to win!

And, if they begin to realise that they just might lose, they will hide their wealth away in hidden or defensible areas like the Romans’ Latifundia or even their own private sub-states, be it a Caribbean island or a mountain redoubt. [Where do you think the buried treasure hoards from over a thousand years ago got to be both hidden, but leaving no survivors knowing of their locations? They had clearly both lost the battle and indeed perished]

No, these people will never agree to such a loss. We won’t be able to simply “vote-it-in! Much less of a threat caused the Spanish ruling class to back Franco with his imported Moorish armies, who fought to defeat the elected Republican Government, and their allies.

Clearly, all committed revolutionary socialists must address the necessity of Revolution, and finish with the idealised dreams as seen from a rational high plateau of Stability to be somehow achieved by consensus means. That isn’t this world!

Who decided on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and was their reasons for intervention the truth? Those who determine on a socialist future will certainly have to fight to win their country, and then socialise ALL wealth!

But sadly, most of that wealth is an inflationary myth! Its value within world-wide Capitalism is not merely dependant upon its cost or use-value alone, but also on both the control and the buying power of the wealthy - and, it must be added, upon the ability to borrow: those who have the resources will always trust others of their class with prodigious loans (as long as they will benefit too).

And the hegemony of the dominant capitalist powers inflates what they have at the expense of those worldwide who deliver what they produce at prices determined by those powers. And thus this underwrites the ability of those who now own to make a substantial profit out of them.

A paper dollar backed with armed forces possessing worldwide reach is “worth” vastly more than a mammoth stone ring (as their indicator of wealth) on the island of Yap (how much labour was needed to produce such a “sign-of-wealth” would mean nothing in a capitalist world). Labour may be the original source for the value of all commodities, but convertibility, and a well-heeled market can inflate it prodigiously.

And when such a global parasitic system is no more, real value will surely begin to reassert itself! The resources and effort that has gone into any commodity, along with its clear use-value, will determine its value once again. And those who can, with skill, knowledge and hard work, will be the only contributors of extra real value. Though it has always been the case throughout history, it is only in a classless society that this real relation will regain its actual status once more.

For, such a “revolution” in value is an unavoidable consequence of an actual genuine Socialist Revolution. And it means that not only will the capitalists try to run away with everything that they can carry, but even their supposed wealth, when taken over, will rapidly revert to its “actual-value” – a ten pound note will be worth the paper it is printed on: such agreed wealth will melt away!

Now, the consequences for a Socialist State, on taking over the wealth of the capitalists to re-employ for the public good, will find that much of what they confiscate is of much less value than it was given within Capitalism.

 “Is this shark preserved in a tank of formaldehyde really worth millions?”

“Is this solid gold compact studied with gems really worth tens of thousands of pounds?”

Clearly, the answer to both these questions has to be “No!”

Such prices require a market equipped with sufficient wealthy individuals to indulge themselves. With no incredibly wealthy people, who will pay £500,000 for a ring for their spouse? Or Buy an £10,000,000 estate as their new stately home?

So, rather than fighting to possess paper money and contracts etc., the new regime will have very different objectives.

Of course, such a return-to-value will not occur immediately. Whatever bolt-holes there will be, even temporarily, for the super rich, their jewels and their gold will buy sustenance and defence for a time.

NOTE: It should be no surprise that the Faberge trinkets of the Russian Czars and their aristocratic penumbra still turn up at Antiques Roadshows. They have been sustaining the escaped aristocracy for generations as they finally declined to nothing.

So, following a Revolution, all their expensive items must be confiscated too – to prevent them using such wealth not only to preserve them (in waiting, so to speak) but also to prevent their funding of opposition to the new Socialist State. And even their paper money and other virtually valued wealth must also be taken from them. They, to survive, will have to do what we have had to do all our lives. They will have only themselves, their hands and their work to provide all their needs. Of course, it is true that most will be entirely ill equipped to do that. The only possible way out of her dead-end life for Mary Queen of Scots, was to plot the overthrow of (to her) a foreign monarch – Queen Elizabeth of England: absolutely nothing else was considered either feasible or even possible. She could not live like a peasant: for she would perish in no time at all!

Now, it isn’t generally realised just how wasteful the old capitalist regimes were, and still are. Without the increasing pressure from below, they would still just turn their ownership into ever-increasing ”possessions” in ever-larger stately homes or mansions.

Though they vigorously pretend otherwise their “charity” and concerned “providing of work” for the lower orders are merely fig leaves covering their real motives. Their main purpose is to sustain themselves and their progeny indefinitely in the state to which they have become accustomed.

The produce of society is constantly transformed into either further encrustations as displays of wealth in the prized palace of the infinitely idle, or as the means to own an ever-larger slice of whatever industry and commerce there is.

Why the things that these parasites collect are considered to be our culture beats me! There is infinitely more real quality in 1 year's work by a great teacher than a lifetime’s display of what wealth can buy – after all they made NONE of it! And the craftsmen who did make it would never spend so much time and effort on things for either themselves or other ordinary mortals. These things were for the Elite! They had to be “over the top” and colossally expensive: they were the badges of their in alienable “rights and privileges”.

Once such parasites are no more, society will turn its imagination, industry and genius to Mankind and Reality at large, and not invest it in a privileged elite. Service will replace Success. And Profit will be as dirty a word, as was Usury in the Middle Ages.

Instead of Technology merely making the rich richer, it will at last do what it has always been promised to do. It will make life easier and work will take up a much smaller part of our lives. We will instead have time to develop ourselves, and pursue ever-widening interests.

Now, the question must be addressed, “Why would a Socialist State need Capital? Is that not a contradiction in terms?” The answer, however, is simple: it is “No!”

The modern world for Mankind is no longer a hunter/gatherer one, neither is it merely that of the farmer. It is a manufacturing existence using ever-developing technology to deliver ever-expanding needs and wants. And you can’t start a viable manufactory on your kitchen table, or live freed from all commitments in a commune in Mid Wales.

Modern Society needs Industry, Commerce, Academic Research, Education and many other very expensive organisations to not only deliver its present needs, but to expand and enrich the lives of all its peoples. Charity has never been enough, and the resources to construct the necessary organisations cannot be achieved by good will alone.

So, the concentration of wealth as a resource for such undertakings will not only continue to be necessary, but will have to grow considerably.

Now, clearly the question is, “Who will hold such resources, and monitor their legitimate use. And who will choose what projects deserve appropriate funding?”

Indeed, all “delivering” types of organisation will aim to make “surpluses”, which will not thereby convert directly into higher wages for that group of workers alone. Some will also go in local projects for the public good, while a proportion will be centralised as “capital” (or more properly “funding”) resources to fund projects and organisations of all kinds. But no one will get rich, and no politician will accrue considerable power, which would be mis-used.

The question of the source of Financial Resources will still be very important, and its repositories and controls, which do NOT exist, at present, will have to be devised and developed.

New Special Issue: Philosophical Musings II

 

 
 Read it here

This collection of papers follows on from those contained in Philosophical Musings I, and has a similar purpose.

Neither was intended as a coherent and comprehensive establishment of an arrived at philosophical standpoint, but, on the contrary is intended to reveal the processes of philosophical investigations necessary to establish an alternative position to the current consensus.

Now, it is the long held position of this writer that it is in precisely this area that current-day Marxists, have crucially neglected the very discipline which gave Karl Marx and his colleagues the wherewithall to establish the most important developments in Human Thought for many centuries.

So it is hoped that these will lead those who are stimulated by these Muses, to themselves once again address the philosophical questions and develop what Marx established to equip political activists with the wherewithall to appropriately and effectively intervene. For some of the productions of such methods by this author SHAPE Journal includes most of the most recent important efforts, in particular The Theory of Emergences 2010.

New Special Issue - The Parting of the Ways

Read here

The following paper, which attempts to identify and display the exact point at which Science took the formal, idealist path, and abandoned the theoretical/explanatory tradition almost entirely, to negate its former purposes and direction, and replace them with an inevitable and indeed terminal dead end, as its alternative.

It is not an easy task, for the most important moves for this ultimate bifurcation, were taken long before the clear and unambiguous split occurred. For, up till that final switch, a dual situation had not only existed, but had facilitated a reasonable amalgam, which though not entirely coherent, did manage to keep the best of both the involved flawed approaches, and thus keep things open for a reasonable, if somewhat eclectic, view of Reality.

So, this task has to start with those long-held, yet erroneous assumptions and principles, then describe just how such a basically contradictory mix of formalist abstract equations and causal explanations could between them approximate closely enough to Reality to allow a plausible and useful amalgam, that on close inspection was certainly unsustainable and indeed conflicting.

It was, of course, possible because the two dissimilar halves of the conceptions were used for very different functions - one was for use, while the other was for explanation: the latter was an effective explanatory narrative accompanying the quantitative use of the equation in predictions during actual functional use. The two were, in effect, “complementary” and delivered an overall mix, which delivered on both important fronts.

Now, whenever such contradictory dichotomies exist, it is because both sides of that contradiction are significantly flawed, while at the same time reflecting some real, and indeed vital, aspect of the situation. Both sides contain some Objective Content.

Notes on The Secret Life of Waves

The Secret Life of Waves
(A TV programme on BBC4 30 July 2012 by David Malone)

These notes can only be a reminding placeholder for a significant subsequent paper on this interesting programme as a multiple re-viewing of the hour long piece and detailed note-taking would be essential to pick the significant ideas and references out of it for a comprehensive Review.

For example, many experts have short guest appearances, and are necessarily constrained by their having to deal with a non-scientific, yet sensitive and intelligent, presenter, so they are forced to explain their particular knowledge and contributions rather than just deliver “the relevant equations”. Now, this is rarely their preferred mode of describing what they do and how they justify its relevance, so their contributions must be carefully assessed and dealt with one at a time, and in turn.

Several reminders can be picked out having watched the piece uninterruptedly twice during the last 12 hours, and these notes could help direct subsequent viewings when seen again under a maximally controllable delivery (such as iPlayer or the like), so that stops, starts and repeat studies of particular sections can lead to an adequate set of interpretable notes.

Now, what is significant is that the programme maker (David Malone) is just that: he is not a professional scientist or mathematician, and he constantly looks for and requires analogues within the actions (of water waves in particular) for much wider, and indeed human considerations.

He never starts with equations.

And he repeatedly talks about “waves” not being of water, but of Energy, and being a Process rather than an Object. And, in my opinion quite correctly, he does not start with tackling Breaking Waves on a Beach, but surface wave propagation over undisturbed stretches of water.

Capillary Waves caused by the effect of the merest breath of wind, are seen to grow and widen as more wind-energy is included into Gravity Waves that can totally traverse 7,000 mile wide oceans, by which time they are only millimetres in peak-to-peak amplitude, yet have spread out to cover a truly vast spread of surface water, and hence by that time constitute a vast repository of energy derived via the winds from the Sun.

He correctly insists that in such propagations the water itself does not move with-the-travelling-wave translationally, but individual parts of the water oscillate in an up-and-down and forwards-and-backwards fashion, but overall and overtime stay where they are! The Wave itself moves, but its moment-by-moment carriers DO NOT go with it!

Indeed, he looks for, and finds (both directly, and by questioning his invited experts) a vast series of analogues for such behaviours elsewhere in Reality. He even goes so far as to see such behaviours as universal, and though he does stretch the models rather a lot, his undertaking is legitimate (as long as the tail does not wag the dog).

But, it also has to be emphasized that he does NOT break away from the consensus assumption of Plurality, and therefore sees natural events and behaviours as both determined and explicable by their pre-existing Laws.

Of course, in that assumption he is in agreement with almost all scientists (and that is why they can talk to one another). Yet, he also constantly takes a much more holistic view, without seeing that such a stance does not sit well with the assumption of its direct opposite – Plurality!

For Analysis – the obvious consequence of Plurality, is based upon every Whole being made up of a set of entirely separable Parts, and hence legitimises the analytical seeking Level-below-Level for sufficient and finally ultimate causes.

But, he does insist, with justice, that Waves are profoundly important throughout Reality, and with the evident preponderance of Gases and Liquids (Fluids) with wave disturbances propagating through a medium, and by this means, distributing Energy became a universal element of Reality.

The insistence upon immutable objects is seen as an error of timescale, and a longer view will inevitably reveal unavoidable changes, not even known about in the more usually employed vastly shorter timescales. Indeed, one expert Talked about Equilibrium Laws as being about long lasting but never eternal stabilities, whereas, what he termed Transient Laws were seen as only happening in unstable interludes. And, clearly, though we can divide up Reality and apply these different Laws as appropriate, such a categorisation leaves no room for explaining how one leads to the other: overall causality is not addressed.

Of course, the twin errors of Formalism – Mathematical Logic and Idealism – the supposed nature of things, both constantly intercede in our assumed ideas of Reality, both from the presenter and his retinue of discipline experts.

Nevertheless, overall there is much to be thought about here.

YES, “thought about” rather than “be entertained by”, which shows the seriousness of this excellent programme.

Indeed, the particular mention (to do with jets and even the Jet Stream and North Atlantic Gulf Stream was of the existence of so-called Rossby Waves, which happen laterally to the direction of wave propagation (particularly in such “jets"), and though they are clearly related to turbulence, they also seem to help the maintain the integrity and narrowness of a jet, and stop it from spreading ever wider, and hence allow it to persist over immensely long distances.

An objective of a fuller study might well be to address my favourite “storm” – the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. For recent papers have found Rossby Waves both on Jupiter and Saturn, and having interesting effects on maintaining the perplexing structures that are observed on both these amazing planets.

Another crucial area has to be the use of “Wave Theory” in the sub atomic area of Physics, where the forms are used in a very different way- as a deliverer of probabilities of diverse possible behaviours over a whole range of points: even the position of a particle is given by this formalistic method as only a probability.

The Particle/Wave Duality is also clearly important, and any serious study of waves must be directed against this monolithic diversion of all prior use of waves in Science.

Brian Cox: A Wonder of the Universe and His Reification of Time

As is usual whenever I am watching that shining star of TV Science, Brian Cox, delivering yet another repeat of one his many programmes “explaining” the intricacies of Modern Particle Physics to the uninitiated, I'm afraid that I cannot help but get very angry.

For, in spite of his status as a professor in a prestigious British University, and his high level work both in America and at CERN with the Large Hadron Collider, he continues, in spite of the acclaim he evidently receives, to be a very poor scientist.

But, it is not, I suppose, entirely his fault alone.
For the vast majority of his colleagues and predecessors over the past eighty-odd years certainly believe in exactly the same things and stand upon the very same ground and assumptions as does he.

All of them, when pressed to “explain” their area of study, are sure to resort to the same sort of narratives about what has been going on in the Universe since their (almost holy) Big Bang - the universally agreed Origin of Everything. And, lets face it, such a significant group delivering such a wide-ranging account, is almost certain to steam-roller through almost any possible complaints and queries of a puzzled and uninitiated public.

And these scientists know this.

They are aware that though they are more than satisfied with what they are doing and the way that they are doing it, that is still not sufficient for the general public. The plethora of these TV spectaculars and many similar articles proves that the final establishment of these ideas cannot yet be said to be totally complete.

So, the reasons for my disgust, is not only at this current “scientific consensus”, but also that it attempts to prohibit the very standpoint and method that made Science the Glory it had become in the past. And finally, I get really angry at Brian Cox’s attempt to blind us with his mammoth pile of 20th century “scientific inventions”, to give that final extra credence, to the currently agreed consensus.

But, you might with justice ask, “How can the scientists of the past have been so marvelous, and those of today be so bad?” It is a fair question, and to answer it must involve the exposure of the gigantic Crisis in Physics of the early 20th century, stemming from the discovery and definition of the Quantum.

For 30 years, contradiction after contradiction quickly removed plank after plank of the previously considered banker assumptions, and, in the mounting tumult, two rival groups battled for domination.

One Group, the traditionalists, was led by Albert Einstein and many top physicists, while the other group, the “revolutionists”, was led by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, who pressed for a totally “new” approach.
And the acceleration of the decline occurred when the Solvay Conference in 1927 led to the defeat of the traditionalists and the triumph of those led by Bohr.

Amazingly, on the basis of the evident inability of Science to solve the contradictions exposed over this extensive period, the new group suggested that the old approach involving Explanation, must be not only abandoned, but also actually prohibited. The alternative to the inadequacies of the past was proclaimed to be The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory. And, in spite of the obvious prestige of their opponents, this group carried the day entirely upon pragmatic grounds.

“Why did you need Explanation, when you could find formal ways of predicting things adequately for use?”, was their basis. The “new men”, in spite of their “radical” stance, still could not cope with the Quantum in terms of any sort of consistent and coherent explanations: so explanation must be dispensed with! No matter how they had tried, it just didn’t seem to make explanatory sense. Particles could act like waves, and waves could act like particles, and what was evidently exactly the “same thing”, could switch between these two “modes” in merely different circumstances. “The Wave/Particle Duality has killed explanation”, they insisted. And their conclusion was that Mankind would never, and indeed, could never; explain things at this level of Reality. ALL Explanation had to be abandoned as being “beyond our ken!”.

But there were very long-standing reasons why this retreat was lauded as a “Revolution”! For many centuries most scientists had always been content with extracting relations from Reality, and finding Forms that would fit such “real data”, for they knew how to tailor such Forms into useable Equations, with which they could confidently predict for any chosen conditions. If they couldn’t explain but they could predict, that was considered enough! It was certainly the view of the Engineers, during that enormous period of dramatic progress, termed the Industrial Revolution.

And this remained true after the both the Quantum Crisis and the Copenhagen “revolution”.  BUT, and it is a very big BUT, though they could still predict; it was of a very different kind. For the first time NO accompanying explanatory narrative was possible. Only Equations remained! Scientists had to take what these meant on trust, and this released them to use literally any Forms that could be made to fit the data. For example, Wave Equations, which classically could give the amplitudes at a given point at a subsequent given time, were now radically re-used to give probabilities for all possible “particle” positions throughout a whole wave, as to whether it would be there at a given time. It was certainly NOT how such equations had been used before, but it did allow a kind of prediction that could indeed be effectively used.

Probabilities and Statistics had long been developed to do similar things for random sets of events, like the throw of dice, of the turn of a playing card, but these were of very special cases with sets of equally likely events or what would be most probable knowing many prior cases. And it was this pure Mathematics that the New Men of Science integrated into their Wave Equations. As with the Ptolemaic theory of the planets, they had found a mathematical method that could predict perfectly, but was entirely wrong in any associated  “explanatory” narrative! In the very same way, they didn’t know why, but they had a handle on how!

Now, it is quite clear that any dyed-in-the-wool pragmatist may well wonder why this was so reprehensible, and the answer is that all Explanations – Physical Theories, were henceforth being rejected as invention, and mere man-made constructs, and the only way to deal with experimental data was to extract from it Natural Law. And in consequence it was now deemed that such laws, themselves, made things happen. Things obeyed the Natural Laws of Reality: Equations gave you everything that you needed. They were no longer mere descriptions – Pure Forms, but had been transformed into supposedly driving essences that made Reality what it was. The materialist basis of Science had been abandoned for a Kantian form of idealism.

And it turned out to be much worse than even that!
For instead of experiments being devised to deliver new knowledge, relations and patterns, and hence allow major improvements in old explanatory theories, or even complete replacements, things were turned completely around.

The ONLY reliable place to even search for new forms, processes and even “entities” was deemed to be within the Equations themselves! From a Real World based discipline, Science was transformed into one where equations were the sole reliable source for any developments in what was now called “Theory”. And it was from them that all sorts of new properties and even “new” entities were identified and became the contents of new “theories”.

This negated the whole basis of prior Science and theories, which had always involved causal explanations, but these were dumped, and instead equations derived from data, were henceforth dubbed as “theories” in themselves. But, of course, all equations are only overall purely formal descriptions of the patterns displayed, so this New Science was not resident in Reality, but a reflection of it in that very different World – that of Pure Form alone – indeed in Ideality!

Now, though curtailed, the above reasonably extensive preface was essential to establish the ground from which our TV star must be criticised.

Brian Cox is most certainly of the Copenhagen School. And though mammoth experiments are still conducted by this School, they are almost exclusively in High Energy Accelerators, where particles are smashed together at ever-higher speeds and energies, in order to find from among the shattered debris of the consequent destruction, some “new entities”. And these must match to the forms devised by “theorists” from Equations. The “Higgs Boson” is just such an extraction, and the LHC was expressly designed and built to find this crucial and purely theoretically devised particle, which the new theorists say was the basis for the first appearance of Matter itself in the Universe, during the first fractions of a second of the Big Bang.

Now, it must be stressed that this whole group of physicists DO NOT explain phenomena, as they would have attempted to do before Copenhagen. They, when asked, would immediately produce equations and with a series of these alone show that their experiments matched to the Forms involved.

Now, Cox, to his credit, knew that he could not do this in a TV programme.
He knew that his TV audience would not know what he was on about, if all he could offer were equations. They didn’t dwell in Ideality as he was pleased to do, but in concrete Reality. So, he attempted to explain the new physics, and his only available method was to avoid Theory (in the previous explanatory sense), and instead revert to the oldest methods of Science – the use of Analogies.

NOTE: In an episode of the TV quiz show QI, wherein Brian Cox was a member of the panel, and Sub Atomic Physics “came up”, one of the comedians, who were amazed at what Cox had to say, insisted that she only understood anything in terms of Analogies! And that turned out to be Cox’s own solution to “explaining things” too.

Cox also, rather cleverly, looked for his analogies in the most devastatingly magnificent scenery of the Natural World and seen Universe. In “illustrating” what is basically Ideality, he walked through multiple natural scenes, or showed images or animations of elements in the Heavens, and made his various analogies with parts of these breathtaking images, to infer that real ground lay behind his almost beyond-belief ideas.

Crucially, in the episode that I have been watching, he was attempting to explain the origin of all the known elements in the universe via Fred Hoyle’s brilliant theories involving Nuclear Fusion in Stars.

Now, this is certainly very important stuff, but though he knew all the relevant equations he had to deliver some sort of “explanatory narrative” via his analogies. He had to show how all the elements came originally from Hydrogen nuclei in the core of the first stars, and then subsequently in a series of later revolutionary reformulations of such stars. But, it is clear that he was (and usually is) in deep trouble with this. He just couldn’t find an analogy that had any merit at all! So he ended up with attempts that were, to say the least, pathetic.

He initially used soap bubbles created by the usual child’s toy – by blowing through a small plastic hoop that had been dipped in a strong soap solution, Now these individual bubbles would occasionally stick together to form pairs, triplets and higher order collections, which he mapped onto the various nuclei of the elements.
But Hoyle’s mechanism was Nuclear Fusion, and soap bubbles were in NO way at all similar to that process. There was nothing in common with the real thing except arithmetic.

Now, such was never the scientific use of analogy, so it must be said to have totally failed to deliver on this phenomenon. But, he isn’t alone. This generation of scientists can only describe the appearance of things and never explain. So Cox’s soap bubbles were a kind of description, if a poor one. Any attempt at delivering a cause to the uninitiated, was made even more difficult by the prohibition of such things. Handicapped by not being able to use equations, and banned from explanatory theories, Cox could only give a purely descriptive model.

A little later in the same day, this writer caught another of Cox’s Wonders of the Universe episodes, and in this he was exposing the nature of what he called Deep Time.

Now, of course, the everyday conception of things sees such a tiny sliver of time, that what is changing (i.e. everything) appears instead to be totally constant, and Cox correctly exposed that, in many areas, only the study of things over truly colossal periods of time could expose what was actually going on. But, even this could mislead...

As time is expanded, for many iterations, all that becomes evident is “change” – and seemingly in small increments. The really big and radically transforming changes only appear in the record as inexplicable discontinuities. So, it was important that he also correctly showed that studying the Heavens allowed this like no other possible investigation, because the further that you looked into Space, the further back in time was what you saw. [This was because of the finite Speed of Light]. And, by far the most revealing content of studying the Heavens over vast periods of time even though the observer is fixed in NOW, meant that the cataclysmic changes could be actually observed. The most telling of these are, of course, the Supernovae.

But, sadly it must be said, he then went on to ascribe what happened over billions of years to... Time itself(?).

He made Time the cause(?) of the developments.

You may not believe this so I suggest that you look at his programme and notice how he talks about Time in dealing with the evident history of Reality as revealed in the Heavens. For here you cannot use complication and incremental inconsequential changes to “add up” to all major Qualitative Transformations.

Clearly, even with Cox’s own descriptions, the History of Stars is a drama of periodic catastrophe and re-igniting upon an entirely new basis, and finally in Supernovae. Reality actually develops qualitatively via Emergent Events!

Yet he felt he had to subordinate what he was describing to his Natural Laws, which are eternal and are expected to produce everything automatically at every consequent level.

So he settled upon Time itself as the active agent.

Sad isn’t it?

Sculpture by Jim Schofield

What next for Libya?

 

The attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the subsequent deaths of the US Ambassador and three other Americans has brought this troubled country back on everybody’s agenda. It has been out of the news for some time now because, from the Western Powers point of view, there had been nothing “good” to report. 

In spite of mammoth support for sections of the then opposition against Gaddafi by these major powers, without which he would certainly NOT have been overthrown even now (as Syria is certainly proving), they are certainly not getting what they expected from their expensive intervention. 

But that support, mostly military and using both missiles and attack aircraft, still could not guarantee the dominance of that section of the opposition preferred by their western collaborators (and another look at Syria proves that also).

[NOTE: Even Winston Churchill after “winning the war” was still booted out of office by the returning forces and their hard pressed families in the 1945 General Election in the UK]

Indeed, the western supported group couldn’t even gain control of their own country, or even complete the task of dealing with Gaddafi, without the Libyan people taking things into their own hands and doing it for them.For in particular areas attacked by Gaddafi’s troops managed to first fight them off, and then pursue them all the way to Tripoli, and thereafter to Gaddafi’s home town, where they found him and killed him.

And it was these so called armed militia who began to control certain areas of the country, which they then refused to give up to any central authority (whoever they might be).

Naturally, the Western Powers were extremely concerned at these developments. Such independent armed groups were not what they had had in mind, for a post-Gaddafi Libya.

They, on the contrary, expected their support for the initial Middle Class opposition groups and the removal of Gaddafi, to lead to their protégés getting universal support from the Libyan people, and thus the consequent establishment of a western-style capitalist democracy to occur “quite naturally”. Only in this way, they reasoned, could they expect to see a profitable future from lucrative Oil deals with the new rulers.

So, from the very day of the final victory, these powers were calling upon the opposition Provisional Committee to immediately establish the Rule-of-Law - that is the immediate disarming of the militias and the construction of a new regime with adequate police and army to “guarantee” the situation.

But, that did not happen.

The Libyans “February Revolution” had instead an increasing chance of turning into their “October Revolution” (That is in the same way as in Russia in 1917). 

That was certainly not the intention of the Capitalist Powers, and the accelerating leakage of control to the Militia Groups, seemed to require instead a very strong regime to make things safe for what they wanted to see there – like a friendly Gaddafi or Mubarak, perhaps.

Those who lauded the Arab Spring for the sake of the peoples involved, must beware what the capitalist powers may resort to next. The killings in Benghazi could be used to excuse the “sending of robust help” to establish stability: intervention may be the next move! 

Indeed, already US drone planes have been used in East Libya, ostensibly to root out Al Qaida cells supposedly encamped in that area, and there is an increasing amount of discussion also on how the West can help to establish a countrywide Rule-of-Law.

Beware the bringing in of advisors and trainers and the stepping up of drone attacks, but this time quite definitely against the militia groups, for they will certainly not hesitate to attack those attempting to complete the Revolution in their own way.

On monitoring the US TV channels, I was amazed to hear absolutely nothing about the derogatory film made in California by a citizen of Israel along with several American collaborators, which was the reason for these reactions, not only in Libya, but also in Egypt. Yet within 24 hours strong suggestions are being propagated by the US that the attack in Benghazi had nothing to do with that film and inferring that it had been planned totally independently of that occurrence.

We must oppose all such lies and demand,

“All Power to the Libyan People! Complete your Revolution!”

SHAPE needs YOU

 

...to comment on our work!

An urgent dialogue is required on important new philosophical ideas published on Shape Journal - all responses welcome.

To facilitate this vital task, each issue on the Journal now has links to where you can comment on what you have read.

Any other ideas on how we can make this dialogue easier are also welcome - comment below!

A View from the Bridge

How Mankind Finally Began to Join his Islands of Understanding

One aspect of Man’s long struggle to understand the World that he inhabits has to be the unavoidable abstractions, simplifications, constructions and diversions without which very little could be and initially was, achievable. For that World, though full of Form and the promise of explicability, was, at the very same time, complex, changing and laced with inexplicable crises and changes of direction. And it did not always give up its secrets very easily!

So, after many tens, if not hundreds, of millennia, Man realised that most of his World was currently beyond his ability to make sense of it, and he turned to one area that seemed stable and unchanging – the Heavens. And though he didn’t at that time actually understand the contents of the night sky, he did manage to extract patterns from it and begin to be able to predict heavenly occurrences before they happened. There was Order there!

Now, this was a very small part of what he desired to know and understand, and he finally realised that when he couldn’t find such reliable areas as the Heavens had afforded him, he would have to find ways of both simplifying things in Reality and “holding it still” (keeping it the same) for long enough for its hidden forms to also be revealed and even extracted. And after a very long period in which his gains had been extremely minimal, Man found the means to begin to do this in particularly conducive areas, and the conquest of Reality finally began in earnest and even accelerate.

But, we should be clear that in contrast to the usual conception of the process, the Found Path was not a simple cumulative build-up of truths, whether evident or hidden, into an ever more extensive aggregation of solid gains, which would ultimately cover absolutely everything. Indeed, Mankind did not, and certainly could never, deal in Absolute Truth!

The only available gains were definitely only relative, and beset by simplification and error. And, most important of all, they required an essential partial tailoring of local sections of Reality into conceivable and useable Forms to make any sense at all!

But intelligent and careful observation and even a radical simplification of Reality alone were never sufficient!

Mankind had to farm situations to make them simpler and more easily discerned formally and even more importantly, actually firmly controlled. And the principles, which were generalised from these types of investigations were handle-able categories, into which all phenomena were at first organised and later force-fitted.

Of course, arbitrary self-kid was certainly NOT the intention, and it would be more accurate to say that Reality was extensively and effectively farmed (or modified and controlled) to ensure both easier extractions and fruitful and accurate predictions to desired and planned outcomes: localities of Reality were isolated, simplified and improved to make the task much easier.

In spite of many misconceptions, and inaccurate abstractions, Mankind did indeed advance his knowledge, and made the most of his extractions by always improving his conceptions to maximise their Objective Content – in spite of error, salient points of truth were included!

Now, this particular aspect of the whole process was, without doubt, an absolutely brilliant achievement: for it enabled a Part of Reality, Man himself, with clearly inadequate means at that time, to “pull himself up by his own bootlaces”. And in spite of constant errors, build in enough of this commodity to enable reliable USE of his conceptions to be possible. In effect Man learned to judge his own theories and explanations in terms of their aspects or fragments of the Truth, so that they could be effectively used.

What this meant was that though theories could be incorrect, they were neither completely arbitrary, nor were they pure invention. They involved certain glimpses of the Truth within them: they were artificial receptacles containing germs of Truth. And therefore in carefully arranged situations, they could be made to deliver intended outcomes.

Such achievements are totally breathtaking in what they enabled Man to do.

But, because of this necessary diversion – the pragmatic, rather than the profoundly explaining methodology predominated, and the true nature of Reality was often significantly misunderstood.

It was as if God was a farmer like ourselves, and made the World out of the very extractions that we were also able to achieve.

We called our extracted relations Laws, and conceived of the World as entirely DUE to the playing out of these basic “God-given” rules. Of course, we knew that most of these driving essences were not yet “in our hands”, but we believed that we knew how to achieve them given sufficient time.

A developable conception of the World was thus constructed, but it was actually upside down! Laws were seen as producing Reality, rather than Reality producing the Laws. We conceived of Reality solely in terms of these Natural Laws, which produced absolutely everything. And such a standpoint led to a series of important and mistaken basic principles such as those of Plurality and Reductionism.

NOTE: To say “mistaken” is not the most appropriate description, however, for both of these principles were extremely productive, and certainly led to many major gains. But, they were confined to either natural or artificially constructed situations, and are most accurately described as “Truths of Stability”, when it was naturally available or could be artificially arranged to exist.

And for many centuries there appeared to be no contradiction between Concrete Reality (as conceived of in the above manner) and the idea of God. For where did the many Natural Laws come from? Were they eternal, and had God settled upon them, and set the World into motion entirely governed by these Laws alone?

What Mankind had achieved, was definitely an advance on all prior conceptions in living things, but he too was also an animal, and his competence in dealing with the World, and ensuring his success as a species were essentially pragmatic gains rather than those delivering true understanding.

The perfect lion cannot be said to prosper because it understands its World, but because it has been appropriately selected to prosper within it. And in spite of a colossal step change in Conscious Thought, it didn’t, and indeed couldn’t, emerge in ready-made perfection.

It was entirely new and initially all its advantages were only to be measured relative to all Mankind’s competitors, prey and predators.

It was the “skilled workman’s” intelligence that initially developed, and more philosophical thought arrived very much later in this development. It couldn’t be the other way round!

Perhaps an example will clarify this trajectory.

Plurality was an arrived-at principle, which saw every discernible Whole as analysable into its constituent Parts, and even the properties of the Whole might be explained adequately by those of its Parts.

But, absolutely crucially these components were always seen as entirely separable – that is they could extracted from their context without in any way changing their essential nature: they could be separated without loss. In deed, this principle was so unassailable, that the process allowed a very informative reverse application – the adding of these Parts together to make the original Whole, and this meant that Analysis had also delivered Synthesis as its natural reverse process.

Clearly, if this Principle were totally true, the process of Analysis would be the most perfect Route to Understanding, for every Part could itself also be subjected to the same sort of Analysis, and ultimately it could, at last, terminate on arriving at eternal, immutable and fundamental components of everything that exists at all levels of complexity.

So Plurality begat Reductionism, and legitimised the Farming Technique of simplification and the conversion of Limited Situations to expose and extract these separable Parts. It was surely the best Route to a Full Understanding!

The weaknesses of Plurality were often contrasted with its supposed direct opposite – Holism, which denied absolutely the separability of all discernable Parts, and suggested instead that everything affected, and indeed modified, everything else, so that the Pluralist Methods of restriction and control to “expose” the crucial (and separable) Parts was a misleading myth.

In contrast, it was surely the full and active context that made a Part what it was, and such isolation, restrictions and modifications to any context would necessarily change the given Part into something else, determined by the modified context.

Now exactly how much change was involved was, of course, vital! And to prove the point completely, the pluralist analysis had always to be subsequently used ONLY within the same context from which it was extracted – what we term The Domain of Applicability!

What Mankind had developed was a strategy for holding down limited and modified locations from which reliable extractions could be made, and in which they also had to be used. The crucial thing was the constancy of the Domain: it must not be allowed to vary significantly!

Man imposed his own stability upon a holistic World in order to be able to analyse, extract and predict parts of it, and mine a measure of Objective Content there from. Of course, he was also confirmed in his beliefs in this regard, by the fact that natural stabilities were extremely frequent (if decidedly temporary), so that he felt that “the World was like that”, and hence his methods were entirely legitimate. Indeed, he had no trouble with his necessary regime of restrictions, for he considered that “unfettered Reality” involved a complex mix of these separate-able Parts, and his techniques were merely to expose selected ones, with multiple overlays to confuse the issue.

And it also must be made clear that there was a tendency for Stability to establish itself literally everywhere, while the seemingly natural consequences of its alternative – an entirely holistic World, was seen to lead only to total Chaos – with all contending factors (or Parts) getting absolutely nowhere. This was obviously useless as a conception and was dumped in favour of a pluralist World.

NOTE: Yet such naturally arrived at Stabilities did NOT mean that the contributions involved were entirely separable: it could occur due to the combined effects of modified factors arriving at a state of stability in a self supporting higher system.

Indeed, such a conception was very much more informative than some mechanist idea of stability, for in that real stability, the mutual modifications would arrive at a balance, a self-imposed state, caused by its in built mutual modifications. You can have a natural form of progress – an evolution of Reality. But as with all such directly contradictory dichotomies, neither is ever the truth!

The Clockwork Orange was as incorrect as the chaotic Universe. There were obvious processes of change taking place, and though natural stabilities were clearly self maintaining, and hence could persist for relatively long periods, they were NEVER eternal, and crucial Revolutionary Events did happen in which prior stabilities could be overthrown, and entirely new ones established at a higher level.

Scientists who studied Life could not avoid these imperatives for long, especially when allied to that unanswerable catalogue of evident and significant changes – Geology. The timescale of the lessons in the rocks proved to be in millions of years, and even billions of years, in particular parts of the currently exposed surface of the earth. And even in the citadel of Stability – Physics, problems began to arise in, on the one hand, the world of the extremely small, and on the other, in the world of the colossally large – in the stars which exploded in Supernovae with galaxy-sized emissions of light and energy.

It was becoming clear that changes (sometimes of colossal sizes) did indeed occur, and attempts were made to allow these changes as a normal part of Stability. But they were steadfastly seen as very slow-paced, and the consensus explanation was usually of tiny incremental changes within Stability that “added up” to a significant Qualitative Change. So, the generally agreed approach in Science was not threatened. Change was either slow (but according to determinative laws), or was caused by outside influences, such as collisions by asteroids or comets. The trouble is that such “tidying” did NOT match the evidence when it was carefully uncovered, studied and measured. The most blatant non-conforming evidence was that of the “supposed” Evolution of Life obtained from Geology.

Now great efforts were made to explain these changes incrementally, but in Pagel’s great statistical processing of such available data, he proved that Speciation – the appearance of totally new species, had to be caused by a Single Event: somehow all the significant changes had to happen within a single, revolutionary Event. And, this confirmed the intuitive standpoint of most evolutionary biologists. Qualitative Change was NEVER the result of incremental changes within Stability, which imperceptibly came up to, and then passed, some critical threshold that identified the point of birth of the new species. People were able to hide behind this conceptual frig, because the durations of these transitions were so short, that they were invisible in the fossil record in the rocks. Such changes could only be the result of a major crisis event, in which the stabilities were no longer sustainable, and collapsed entirely. Indeed, the actual cause for change was NEVER the Impulse of the New (as was usually supposed), but the inadequacies of the Old. Speciation is always the result of a crisis and collapse. The New didn’t grow up entirely and unobstructed within the bosom of the Old Stability at all! Indeed, it was totally prohibited from doing so by the defensive/aggressive “policemen-processes” of each and every stability.

An important confirmation of the necessary crisis conception is surely the phenomenon of Adaptive Radiation, wherein a whole diverse bunch of alternative speciations are seen to arise from a single ancestor line. For though this makes sense following a collapse, it doesn’t do so as a successful victory of a whole diverse group of parallel speciations.

They could only begin to construct freely entirely new possible routes in the unfettered Chaos left by the collapse of the Old. These crucial, yet invisible Events became known as Emergences, and all the crucial cases were Events such as the Origin of Life on Earth, and that of Consciousness in Man.

But these were only the large, evident peaks that had to be explained. At very tiny, but higher, Levels such Emergences were always happening. Indeed, the philosopher Hegel, who made major contributions in this area, correctly identified Human Thought as the arena in which Emergences were always happening.

In the brain of the Thinker there can exceptionally be almost Permanent Revolution. Perhaps the most extensive and important contribution to this general area was in the much narrower region of the Social Development of Mankind itself, where Revolutions occurred, which dismantled the Old Regimes entirely, and made possible the entirely New.

Indeed, Hegel’s best and most profoundly–thinking disciple, Karl Marx, turned his investigations into an analysis of Class Society, with its internal Class Conflicts and the inevitability of Social Revolution, though NOT, it should be added, the inevitability of such Revolutions being successful.

Yet generally, such an approach, particularly in Science was very rare indeed. And the vast majority of scientists carried on with their now well-established and successful pluralistic philosophy and methods.

EXCEPT, of course, that even there, it increasingly proved inadequate in what heretofore had been its banker areas – in the search for elementary particles.

The shaky bridges over the tumultuous seas of Turbulence and Change were proving ever more inadequate!

For, the natural consequence of a pluralist standpoint could only lead to increasing specialisation into ever smaller areas of arranged stabilities, which unavoidably became ever more isolated from each other, and, most importantly of all, for the construction of any coherent and comprehensive overall view.

All that could be termed universal was the generally applied pluralist methodology, which was possible because the whole method led away from Reality and into a study of Pure Form alone – and the region so defined – Ideality is indeed universal, but deals only in Pure Form and nothing else.

And, the transitions between these specialised areas became ever more difficult to deal with, and shrank into a set of thresholds with leaps to the new area when these were transgressed. NO trajectory from one to the other was ever delivered: their methods made that sort of “explanation” impossible, so they banned all attempts to do so as illegitimate following the Victory of the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory at Solvay in 1927.

As an Information Technology expert in Higher Educations (In Hong King, Glasgow and London), I allocated to myself the remit of assisting all post graduate investigations by involving computers and tailor-made computer programming. I was daily moving from one area of stable ground to another, and was only successful because I subordinated myself to the objectives of the served discipline and the researchers who sought my help. And, it didn’t take very long to find that I was regularly moving in an unpopulated land.

Most parachuted-in experts did NOT serve the objectives of those they were supposed to be assisting, but, on the contrary, ended up turning the “served” research upon its head, and converting it into a new branch of their own specialism. Such interventions were not only unhelpful, but also clearly both counter-productive and even damaging, and rarely led to anything significant.

But, the strategy, which I had discovered and settled upon, had very different outcomes. In a relatively short period of half a dozen years the I.T. involvement in several disciplines had allowed significant advances to be achieved by the primary researchers, working in their own disciplines and following their own chosen lines of research. And due to these successes, this particular “servant” was ensured of a rapid series of better posts, finally achieving a professorial level at a College of London University. The reasons were in the quality of the service that was given to primary researchers, and the willingness to subordinate himself to their objectives and to learn as much as he could about them.

Slowly, in addition to a richer knowledge in widely separated disciplines, there also arose an alternative overview of all these diverse and currently separated areas.

This scientist found himself in a position to make significant contributions within the served disciplines, and crucially changing his standpoint from deep within a single isolated subject stability, to one consciously positioned upon the bridges between many disciplines.

Indeed a View from the Bridge!

This was the only view that could throw a necessary light upon the defining differences of the individual disciplines, and, most crucially, the never questioned assumptions and principles that were the source of many long standing contradictions and indeed barriers to further developments.