Univironmental determinism

Scientific Theory
Name	Univironmental determinism
Type	Scientific philosophy; theory of evolution and causation
Author(s)	Glenn Borchardt
Keywords	microcosm, macrocosm, determinism, infinity, Neomechanics, evolution, Four Universal Motions
Year	2007

Univironmental determinism is the philosophical doctrine developed by Glenn Borchardt and set out in The Scientific Worldview (2007). Borchardt describes it as "the simplest and greatest generalization of all," and states it in a single sentence:

What happens to a portion of the universe is equally dependent on the infinite matter in motion inside it and the infinite matter in motion outside of it.

It is the companion doctrine to neomechanics, and Borchardt presents it not as a theory of physics but as the universal mechanism of evolution — applicable to a galaxy, an atom, an organism or an idea alike.

The microcosm and the macrocosm

The doctrine rests on a division Borchardt makes at every scale and at every moment:

• Microcosm — a portion of the universe. Any portion. Borchardt uses the term deliberately to replace "system" and "object," both of which he regards as smuggling in the false idea of a bounded thing with an inside and no relevant outside.
• Macrocosm — the portion of the universe residing outside that microcosm.
• Univironment — the composition and properties of a particular microcosm and its macrocosm, at a particular moment.

The entire universe equals a particular microcosm plus its macrocosm. Because the assumption of infinity holds in both directions, every microcosm contains infinite matter in motion and is surrounded by infinite matter in motion; there is no smallest constituent and no outermost container. What a thing does is therefore never determined by its internal constitution alone, nor by its environment alone, but by the interaction of the two.

As a correction to one-sidedness

Borchardt's central claim for the doctrine is diagnostic: he holds that most philosophical and scientific errors are failures of balance between microcosm and macrocosm, and that they fall into two families.

• Overly microcosmic errors treat a thing's behaviour as arising from within. Solipsism is the limiting case — the belief that only the internal exists. He classes what he calls systems philosophy, including Einstein's, as erring in this direction.
• Overly macrocosmic errors treat behaviour as imposed entirely from outside. Fatalism is the limiting case. He classes Newtonian classical mechanism as erring in this direction, over-emphasising external forces.

Univironmental determinism is offered as the corrective that neither reduces to: causation running equally in both directions, always, at every scale.

Determinism without prediction

The doctrine is deterministic in the sense that all effects have material causes — but Borchardt's assumption of causality holds that all effects have an infinite number of material causes, and his assumption of uncertainty holds that it is impossible to know everything about anything, though possible to know more about anything.

The result is a determinism that explicitly does not promise prediction. Complete knowledge of any microcosm would require complete knowledge of an infinite macrocosm, which is unavailable in principle. Borchardt argues this dissolves the usual objection that determinism has been refuted by quantum indeterminacy: what the evidence shows, on his account, is that causes are infinite in number rather than absent.

Application to evolution

Borchardt's most far-reaching claim for the doctrine is that it is the universal mechanism of evolution, and that neo-Darwinism is a severely limited special case of it — limited in two ways. First, it applies only to the biological domain, whereas univironmental determinism applies to any portion of the universe whatever. Second, it reduces the microcosm to genetics, and so under-weights everything else inside the organism as well as the macrocosm outside it.

On the univironmental account, evolution is what happens whenever a microcosm and its macrocosm interact over time, with neither side privileged. Borchardt predicts the doctrine will have its greatest impact in modern physics, cosmology and philosophy rather than in biology.

Adoption in the Four Universal Motions

Univironmental determinism is used as a foundational principle of the Four Universal Motions, the particle model of Robert de Hilster and David de Hilster in which gravity, magnetism, light and electricity are one particle moving in four different ways.

The fit is structural rather than nominal. In that model no force is a property a body possesses: gravity is the net result of impacts delivered to a body by the surrounding flux of G1 particles, so what a body weighs is a fact about its macrocosm as much as about itself — while the shadowing that produces the imbalance depends on the body's own internal constitution, how much of the flux passes through it and how much is intercepted. Microcosm and macrocosm each determine half the outcome, which is Borchardt's doctrine stated mechanically.

The same reading extends through the model. Inertia is reinterpreted univironmentally: a body continues in motion not because of an internal property but because the surrounding gravitic field keeps impacting it. And the model's two gravities — G1 particles at the celestial level guided by faster G2 particles at the quantum level — assert that every microcosm has a macrocosm below it as well as above, carrying Borchardt's assumption of infinity in both directions into a working mechanical model. Each of the four motions is defined as occurring "at all macro and micro levels of the universe."

The result in both frameworks is the same: no true pulls, no action at a distance, and no portion of the universe whose behaviour can be accounted for without what surrounds it.

Relation to Borchardt's other work

Univironmental determinism sits between the foundation and the applications in his programme:

• The Ten Assumptions of Science (2004) supplies the ten consupponible assumptions, with infinity the thread running through them.
• Univironmental determinism (2007) draws the general consequence of those assumptions for causation and change.
• Neomechanics applies them to mechanics — classical mechanics adapted to infinity.
• Infinite Universe Theory, the Neomechanical Gravitation Theory and Universal Cycle Theory apply the result to cosmology and gravitation.

Borchardt used the framework directly in "Einstein's Most Important Philosophical Error" (2011), where the microcosm/macrocosm analysis is the tool by which he diagnoses the objectification of motion.

Standing

The doctrine is not used in mainstream philosophy of science or in evolutionary biology, and its claim to supersede neo-Darwinism has not been taken up by biologists. Borchardt presents it as following from assumptions he concedes cannot be proven, and asks that the competing assumptions be held to the same standard.

Its appeal to readers of this wiki is its generality: it is one of the few explicitly stated alternatives to the reductionism that treats a thing's behaviour as a property of the thing, and it supplies a single vocabulary — microcosm, macrocosm, univironment — for objections that are otherwise made piecemeal across physics, cosmology and biology.

See also

• Glenn Borchardt
• Neomechanics
• Infinite Universe Theory
• The Ten Assumptions of Science: Toward a New Scientific Worldview
• The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein
• The Four Universal Motions in Physics — a model built on this principle
• David de Hilster, Robert de Hilster

External links

• Progressive Science Institute
• The Scientific Worldview — Borchardt's blog