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Real Science (Part 2)
| SERIES: Real Science AUTHOR: Jim Schofield |
STRANDS: PHILOSOPHY / THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD |
ABSTRACT: This series of papers is concerned with the major flaws in the current scientific approach in isolating, extracting and abstracting formulae, and the description, and further formulation, of an already existing, and considerably more important, explanatory aspect of Science into THE major and necessary alternative. It contrasts the established and universally applauded pluralist approach, with a so-far, undeveloped holistic alternative. The main criticism of the standard scientific method lies in its assumption that Reality can always be analysed into a hierarchy of Wholes and their constituent Parts, and by this means explain the causes and motive forces that produce Reality as is. To reveal its limitations it likens the usual approach involved to that in a horticultural farm, and compares that with the state in a wholly unfettered area of virgin rain forest, and how it performs. It attempts to show, thereby, how the criticised approach studies a significantly and rigidly controlled set of Domains, and not Reality as is. How this enables Mankind to actually produce for need is addressed, as is the impossibility of dealing with real, qualitative development, and hence the actual Evolution of Reality. After the extensive criticisms, the question is posed as to how these can be corrected using what seems to be an impossible alternative – a completely holistic approach, where everything affects everything else. This leads to the definition of General Development with two different and contrasting phases. One involves slow changes within Stability, while the other, achieves its changes via quick, cataclysmic and indeed revolutionary overturns, in what are called Emergences. The full set of questions posed in these papers, it must be said, are by no means yet fully answered. |
SYNOPSIS: 1. To deliver an alternative to the current pluralist approach in Science must involve a large step backwards to the seemingly intractable holist approach. 2. The “everything affects everything” tenet seems to prohibit both analysis and understanding. But that crude form is in fact a caricature of the actually existing Holism of the Real World. Not all contributions are of equal weight, and the results of on-the-fly determinations are therefore not always ( or even usually) total randomness. 3. The normal technique when faced with unavoidably holistic phenomena was always to turn to averages and statistical laws. But though eminently useable, such methods HID what was actually happening, and terminated the reductionist search for continuous explanation in such areas. 4. Yet unfettered Reality produces ALL our World. Everything we see and understand is the result. And even though totally holistic, all the productions of Realitycan appear in one of TWO different modes. The first is basically stable, while the other is positively revolutionary . 5. It was only the stable phase that was addressed and greatly modified by the pluralist approach. The revolutionary overturns were ignored as processes and only their results dealt with after the event. 6. The pluralist method ONLY became useable productively, when Mankind could intervene to hold down Reality sufficiently for further investigation and the extraction of relations to succeed. 7. Plurality ignored the properties of the Wood for those of the individual trees, and threw out of the reckoning all that could not be held down (but that didn’t stop them changing anyway). 8. Now ignoring the unavoidable interludes of Qualitative Change meant turning our backs on the crucial, Creative phases in development. It was, and still is, the only in these interludes that the entirely NEW could emerge. 9. Creative Change could not be addressed by this single methodology. What could we do to remedy this? |
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