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The cycle begins

An essential aspect of the constitution of all living structures is the urge to exploit the possibilities of existence to the full. New kinds of organisms need to be ever more adaptable in order to live among the existing ones. The ultimate development of biological evolution is the phenomenon of “consciousness”, which has spectacularly expanded the existential possibilities of the human species. This is clearly demonstrated by human beings’ domination of the world compared with the mere survival of their ancestors. It is also evident that consciousness has not been a tentative, gradual development, but an evolutionary leap forward.

By virtue of its superiority, this consciousness collectively creates a world that is above nature, for which the instincts, which successfully guide other primates through their niches in nature, are never sufficient. Only the conscious can guide people through a world created by conscious beings. The crux of this is that the instincts are the same, and the conscious is at their service.

In order to ensure that a “jungle of ever higher refinements”does not arise, the conscious must transpose instincts to a human culture. Humanity is still a long way from achieving this. Real human suffering does not spring from faulty design of the species, but—a frightening idea given historical and present atrocities—defects in the shaping and development of the conscious.

The necessary knowledge is put forward by this Concept on the basis of what science has produced so far, such as what is life, a human being, free will, happiness. Scientific knowledge is derived from the systematic questioning of what appears to be reality. Knowledge can only ever be obtained from such questioning. Philosophical work therefore starts with the incorporation of relevant knowledge: “The narrow gate that leads to wisdom.”Kant

Immanuel Kant,

1724–1804

Knowledge compellingly leads to an enabling form of organisation of human societies—in other words to one that offers all its members the framework for a fulfilled life. It also invites individuals to use this framework to the full. However, acquiring this knowledge depends on the will to do so, and putting it into practice requires self-control, both of which emerge from it. An enabling organisation also requires those knowledgeable, self-disciplined individuals—enabled individuals—who are its product. This desirable state therefore cannot be decreed, but can be catalyzed—by enlightenment.

Dissociation from conventional philosophy

Conventional philosophy starts from ordinary language concepts such as “justice” or the “meaning of being”. Kant even says derisively that it “gropes about concepts”. It does not care about reality, but about what philosophers have said. As the experiment is to science, so is the quote to philosophy. Philosophy seeks wisdom—a wisdom, however, that is not based on knowledge, but is a shot in the dark.

The hypotheses of philosophy cannot be proved scientifically—there are only philosophers, whose thoughts can be studied. They have published at least a million printed pages over the centuries, in which the majority—in line with the nature of such philosophising—are concerned with refuting others; some even turn their backs on their own published works. Thus even studying them all does not lead to universally applicable knowledge.

Structure of the concept

The Concept of Uncompromising Humanism makes no assumptions about anything in advance, nor does it presuppose any specific knowledge. It proceeds on the basis of perception and comes to conclusions using intuitive logic which readers can reconstruct for themselves, including concepts such as the theory of relativity or the hypercycle (the origin of life).

Ludwig Wittgenstein,

1889–1951

Friedrich Hegel,

1770–1831

Before Kant, and to Kant himself, it was taken for granted that philosophy was able to acquire all available knowledge. However, at the start of the 19th century science began to move at a speed that philosophers could no longer follow—and even if they did, they were soon left behind by the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. They fell back on “the clarification of propositions”,Wittgenstein and some even resorted to mysticism, which is not what they should aspire to—rather, they should acquire the fundamental knowledge, move beyond it and perform their former tasks on the basis of this new, magnificent structure.

Consciousness radically expands the horizons of the conscious being—spatially, temporally and socially—especially as it includes the conscious being as the “self”. As expanded horizons offer both possibilities and threats, the consciousness has to interpret everything it perceives within them. If it lacks knowledge, it manages with assumptions and assertions; but as world history makes clear, it is knowledge that brings the greatest success. The selection criterion in the obtaining of knowledge is freedom from contradiction, firstly with regard to reality and secondly with regard to all verified knowledge. Ensuring the maximum possible freedom from contradiction serves two purposes, the force of a statement and its completeness.

The inevitable conclusion is that a model explains the whole or it explains nothing. It is only complete if it explains not only the world, but also the thinking behind the explanations. Despite all attempts at didactic concentration, the quantity of knowledge to be processed for conclusiveness is extensive. This is not all—anyone who embarks on it will only know once they have made the investment whether it was worth it.

A closed circuit of statements? Sciences explain circumscribed reality in terms of circumscribed reality, and thus have by now built up an exponentially increasing, enormous body of knowledge; and yet no-one feels responsible for the consistency of the whole. Philosophers after Hegel have capitulated before the task, even sneering at those small-minded people who attempt it despite their warnings.

The basis for the Concept of Uncompromising Humanism is formed by the way in which the consciousness imagines the world to be; it ascends in stages towards the thinking that produced this imagining:

1.A priori intuitions.Kant Space and time ineluctably form the coordinate system in the human brain, within which it represents the world.

2.Continuum, mass, cosmos. A continuum logically and essentially fills the perceived space—from Anaximander to Einstein. In “deductive physics”*, on which the model is based, mass is derived as the dynamic of an appropriately-specified continuum, and this continuum carries the expansion of the universe.

3.Atoms, elementary particles. The interaction of dynamics of masses produces interference phenomena that are the basis of all that is perceived. Elementary dynamics are structured into atoms, and atoms into inorganic molecules and, under appropriate circumstances, into organic ones.

4.Life. The huge accumulation of organic molecules on Earth led in a single event to a hypercycle of mutually-determining molecules: the basis for life. As far as is known to date, this has occurred only on Earth.

5.Biological data processing. In the course of evolution, the interaction between cells and cell structures was increasingly augmented by meetings between simple representatives of biochemical states—by means of signals in conductive pathways, ganglia, brains.

6.Thinking. Biological data processing gave rise to thought, which cannot avoid perceiving the world as a body in the coordinates of a priori intuitions.

The ontological circle answers the question “what can I know?”, with which Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” is concerned. However, beings with the benefit of consciousness do not have ontology as their primary aim, but happiness in their own lives. They demand answers to the kind of questions posed by Kant in his “Critique of Practical Reason”: “How should I act? What can I hope for?”, and to the question of how societies should be organised politically, economically, culturally. The basis for answering these questions is the certainty of the existence of free will. Kant postulated this without further ado, while current research into the brain questions it. The Concept of Uncompromising Humanism recognises it by its indispensable function, that of evaluating and selecting the solutions that thinking produces for the world, where instinct alone is not sufficient. In the space opened up by free will the possibility of successful life emerges—“happiness”.

Ontological circle

The Concept shows what successful individual life is and what leads to it, and also what are the conditions for it: the “enabling state” and its prerequisite, “enabled citizens”. Each presupposes the other, both are derived from the preceding stages and form the foundations for the postulation that “all people could be equally happy”.Lichtenberg

Georg Christoph

Lichtenberg, 1742–1799

Each piece of scientific knowledge is based on a proposal that has “stood the test on the touchstone of real-ity”.Kant In the Concept of Uncompromising Humanism, this proposal is the whole. It passes the test, as each of its stages are proven science and each stage emerges strictly from the previous one. It thus becomes clear that knowledge is that which is built up by consciousness and not, as Plato would have it, items in an inventory of knowledge that predated humans, to which they gain access gradually.

Hyperstases

The proposed Concept is confronted by two didactic challenges:

–A kind of uncertainty principle: the volume of knowledge needed for conclusiveness is incalculable; on the other hand, argumentation based on incomplete knowledge is not conclusive,

–The progression from one stage to the next.

Bypassing the uncertainty principle requires consolidation, visualisation and concepts such as self-organisation, evolution and data processing, which incorporate wide ranges of facts while at the same time retaining their essence. The quantity of individual items of knowledge does not prevent an overall picture from being gained, but is a prerequisite for it, as when completing a jigsaw puzzle.

In the difficult task of understanding the leaps from one stage to the next, it is worth recalling the following:

–A sandcastle is made from sand, but is not sand; it is a castle—something new that was not already present in the sand;

–A melody consists of notes, but its essence is not the notes;

–Life consists of molecules, but its essence is not the molecules.

Add to this the phenomenon of self-organisation; if a load of gravel is tipped onto a building site, the debris forms a cone; this occurs of itself, as the cone was not thought out in advance. Similarly, if equal spheres are pushed against one another they organise themselves into equilateral triangles without any outside intervention. The Concept describes this selforganised evolution of the stages with the new term hyperstasis1: hyperstasis = product of the self-organisation of a substrate.

Inexplicable basis—six hyperstases

Human beings do not carry the world in their heads, but ideas of it, and the coordinate system for these representations are space and time. Anyone who, without any philosophical intention, asks what space and time are, will soon realise that it is impossible to refer them back to other concepts or to imagine they do not exist; they form the indispensable coordinate system for imagining the world. This insight renders unnecessary a range of philosophical questions, such as what is time or eternity, why anything exists at all and what is its purpose. Deductive physics removes the incompatibility between Einstein’s theory of relativity and a priori intuitions.

Self-organisation

Hyperstasis I: As a hurricane is formed from imbalances and consists of air and water yet is not air and water, but dynamics of them, so mass is the dynamic of the continuum. This is specified, while Anaximander’s apeiron, Plotinus’ One, Descartes’ aether and Einstein’s space-time continuum were only ideas. The mathematics needed to determine the behaviour of a continuum are field theories. All the major theories of inductive (conventional) physics are field theories, and they can be used to calculate, but not explain, the behaviour of everything from elementary particles through to galaxies.

Hyperstasis II: The combined effect of the dynamics of elementary masses leads again to something completely new: structures. This is because the rotation in space inherent in the dynamics of masses describes an axis (spin), an orientation which space, as a concept, lacks. At the lowest level in the hierarchy of stable structures are protons and neutrons, which in combination with similarly stable electrons form atoms, from which come molecules, and in favourable circumstances complex organic molecules (which are still not life). The science that describes the formation and cohesion of structures is called quantum mechanics. It arose of necessity from guesswork, however it evolves compellingly in deductive physics from the dynamics of masses, thus descending from the Olympus of the inconceivable in the same way as the theory of relativity.

Plotinus, 205–270 ; René Descartes, 1596–1650

Hyperstasis III: The essence of the leap to life lies in a cycle of structures, in which the positive of DNA is the blueprint for the negative and vice versa (hypercycle). In this way, the phenomenon of information enters the universe, on Earth according to the laws of nature, but apparently only a rare occurrence in the wider universe.

Hyperstasis IV: The combining of biological molecules into cells and of cells with each other is controlled by concentrations and differentiations: those which are to act on one another are in contact and those which are not are separated. The next great leap forward is to representatives of the forces emanating from molecules, to simple signals. This is the leap to biological data processing—the ultimate source of all intellectual activity.

Hyperstasis V: The essence of the leap from biological data processing to thinking lies in decoupling certain aspects of data processing and making them independent from forces driven by reflex and instinct. This decoupled data processing constructs an image of the world, which in the infant soon becomes so all-embracing that it contains the subject itself. Once again we have a cycle: the subject thinks—thinking produces the subject.

Humans cannot be explained by the laws that govern life alone. What constitutes humans, i.e. thought or, in other words, consciousness, distinguishes them from other primates not just by degree, but categorically. With consciousness a phenomenon enters the universe that is as new as life itself. Consciousness is that expansion of the horizon which is the source of all joy and sorrow, all hope and fear, all that is human.

With consciousness comes free will as a concomitant, not as an additional hyperstasis. Humans are not free to choose into which world they are “thrown”, and as what; rather, their freedom lies in the next step to be taken, and it is this freedom that they perceive. Similarly, “happiness” is a concomitant, of the physiological nature of learning: life-affirming intentions and experiences lead to the release of hormones that promote a positive mood.

Hyperstasis VI: The last of the hyperstases, culture, embraces innumerable human lives. Culture is more than the accumulation of individuals’ behaviour—it produces language, society, the state, economy, science, art, philosophy and religion. These are all self-organised over historical periods, developing from barely-differentiated beginnings into distinct independent cultures, although the substrate always remains the same: human nature.

Jacob Burckhardt,

1818–1897

Robert Walser,

1878–1956

Genetically, humans have not developed further over the timeframe of human history. This was the starting point, for example, of Jacob Burckhardt’s description in “Reflections on History” of “humans, who remain unique, ... enduring, striving, acting, as they are, have always been and always will be”. On the other hand, the religious, political and economic organisation of societies does evolve, defining the framework within which individuals, their consciousness and aspirations develop. Moreover, the 20th century saw substantial development of this framework with regard to human rights, democracy, education, health and welfare—despite all the century’s retrograde barbarism. Nevertheless there is still a very, very long way to go before we achieve a culture worthy of human nature, that of “Uncompromising Humanism”.

Humanism, to summarise, represents the striving for a way of life and social conditions that are worthy of our species. Humanism has been celebrated in thought and verse from Horace to the German Idealists of the 18th and 19th centuries, only to be most tragically defeated by reality: rather than high ideals, it was wars, genocide, communism, national socialism that prevailed. The celebration of the ideal subsided gradually, and more dramatically after the Second World War. The ideal of humanism was not a false one, but it is not enough merely to desire the desirable. “In matters of peace, talent and instinct play a more significant role than good intentions, which are of themselves totally characterless.”Robert Walser

Horace, 65–8 BC

Uncompromising Humanism is the kind of idealism that begins with knowledge, the defining quality of humankind. Only that which has its basis in reality is viable—the idea of the world endorsed by the world. Proceeding from a priori intuitions to hyperstases, the Concept of Uncompromising Humanism inevitably results in the following: individual happiness need not fail any more than bold dreams, provided that human beings are enabled, know what there is to be known, and set their sights beyond the short term. Societies are enabling when individuals decide for themselves what is possible for them to decide; the same applies to the community, province, state; and states thus exist to serve the development of their citizens.

Since the Concept strictly follows reason, do its arguments not then lose sight of the “innermost being”, the “divine”, in each human being? Absolutely not, because reason

–provides a navigational instrument to help the innocent innermost being through the world created by human beings—the more viable the knowledge, the safer the path;

–teaches individuals not only how to find their way in the world but also to recognise and awaken the innermost being in its purity, wisdom and affirmation of life;

–in so doing reveals the divine in humans;

–shows the way, despite all the pressures and barriers that exist in the mind and in the world, towards the real, unfathomable, inalienable possession of a wise, stable, affirmative personality.

The difficulty here is that knowledge has to be acquired. If the love of knowledge in the world were as great as the love of God is in religious declaration, humanity would have progressed much further. In the words of Horace: sapere aude (dare to know).