PART THREE

by ALFRED DE GRAZIA

A Comment on the Q-C Test and Its Individual Items.

(Original text of test has a white background. The commentary is on normal font.)

The conventional science part of the C-test assumes that a common set of attitudes toward the method and findings of science is possessed by scientists, a correct set which, put into practice, gives a correct view of the real world, inorganic, organic, and human. These attitudes or beliefs are but an intuitive sample of a larger unknown number that would presumably give the same results when administered to the same individuals. The set of attitudes reflects with limited but fair accuracy the paradigm mentally possessed by twentieth century scientists. Since the paradigm is most general and cosmic, all propositions about it are partial, irregular, insufficient, and the individuals taking the test will naturally distribute themselves in different attitudes towards them.

There are many ways of posing the attitudes as principles. One could attempt to use five propositions as the core of the conventional scientific ideology, or ten, or twenty or fifty.

Validity and realiability might be enhanced. Often in test-construction, a large number of test items are chosen and then the invalid and unreliable subsequently discarded, until the smallest number that completes the universe of inquiry is left remaining. Often the salient and valid few are doubled or trebled to be sure that the respondent understands what the inquirer wishes him/ her to understand, especially when the universe of respondents is intellectually, morally, linguistically and otherwise diverse. In the present situation, the Q-trenders may be even more diverse, for once the constraints of conventional scientific ideology or scientism are broken, the escapees and refugees scatter in every direction.

Most conventional scientists will largely accept the C-test, scoring high, whereas the quantavolutionaries will score on the C-test in varying degrees of acceptance, or so we surmise. As the test-constructor sees it, a mark of '5' means an item is most likely true, a mark of '4' means the item approaches broadly some truths, a mark of '3' denotes uncertainty, a maybe-yes maybe-no position or a lack of sufficient awareness or knowledge to cast a judgement, or both of these plus a failure to understand what is intended or what is meant by the item. This is the infamous "don't know" category that haunts the pollsters. If the individual's position is important, usually the test-maker provides for an extensive and intensive interview, a depth questioning, to get the nuances of the impasse, whereupon the test-maker places the individual respondent more to theone way or the other. An item marked '2' would be deemed to mean that the statement is wrong-headed and contains little broad truth. A '1' is to inform the test authority that the item is almost surely untrue. Some experts would warn against even an attempt to order the postures and attitudes of people in this most complex region of human thought. Aside from all the technical and straight psychological arguments of the testing discipline, a substantial contribution to the theory of this kind of test must come from works such as those of Karl Mannheim on the sociology of knowledge, Hans Vaihinger on the nature and logic of fictions, and Ludwig Wittgenstein on the construction of meaningful statements.

Here it should be made clear that there is no real-world difference of 1 or 5 or whatever between the five phases of each item or between one item and another, and it has already been said that there are different bands of respondents who will settle firmly upon one reply and disdain a number of other items. The scores also say little about the degree of indignation with which rejection of other markings is regarded. The very sight of an item on evolution will elicit not only a mark of 1 or 5 but with the mark a snort of resentment against opposing markings.

That is:

one observes everywhere and in all things differences between time A and time B, which are almost always minute in relation to the total shape of things but amount to the vast differences between what was and what is, owing to the accumulation of small changes over long periods of time.

That is:

what happens to one being or existence has a limited scope, affecting others little or not at all, as an avalance will affect whatever is in its path but little more, or the death of one species will hardly affect many species.

That is:

Practically all that is present on Earth has evolved solely under the influence of combinations of ingredients and forces that preceded it on Earth and which in turn and ultimately go back to the earliest ages of the Earth.

That is:

little by little, the material that composes the planets gathered in clumps that continued to draw in other material until most of the original outbursts from the Sun were housed in them, while space was vacated.

That is:

many shapes and physiologies and systems of being came about as one minor change succeeded another and elaborated differences that were originally minor into major differences.

That is:

the Moon began independently to agglomerate a large mass but lost its independent motion vis-a-vis the Sun, as it was gradually carried into the Earth's orbit by the Earth's gravitational field but maintained an acquired new equilibrium locked at a distance to the Earth.

That is:

soils and rocks and aquatic channels today can be shown to have been formed by the forces that today uniformly with the past work upon them.

That is:

on the whole, the past has been like the present, such that the changes in earth and life forms have averaged changes proportionate to elapsed time, each being and existence developing a unique pace owing to infinitely small changes in rate occurring through long ages.

That is:

accommodating to its environment and multiplying by successfully competing for scarce goods with other species and individuals, a given set of individuals, brought into being as a species by a genetic mutation or related series of mutations, reinforces its identity by separation from otherwise similar species, consciously or accidentally caused.

That is:

evolving like every other life form, an animal related to the great apes and sharing much of their genetic and behavioral constitution, mutated and survived by virtue of an ever-growing brain that could cope ever more successfully with a variety of environments through discoveries prompted by realistic experimental reasoning.

That is:

an orderly memory, which contained readily a great many lessons obtained from experience, and permitted self-examination as well as systematic observation, brought on an accumulation of useful information that could be used for material progress and amusement in many forms.

That is:

cumulative experience in all aspects of life was put to work in the collective memory of the group as the basis for suggestions of improvement in technique and organization, and in the origination of new acceptable behavior and utensils.

That is:

lacking command over himself , his fellows, and his environment, the early human grasped for support at whatever seemed more powerful and possibly helpful, gods who at first imitated his savage qualities but later on gods and finally one God who were culturally advanced in their offerings and demands of humans, to the point of being a large factor, for most unscientific people at least, in inspiring them to virtuous conduct.

That is:

although only rough estimates of the age of the Earth and the several periods of its organic and inorganic evolution can be obtained, continued progress in chronometry has moved the age of the earth and its epochs to ever longer times, allowing thus adequate time for all of the observed transformations to have taken place.

That is:

radioactive decay, occurring at constant rates over enormous periods of time, has been measured in association with its environment, organic and inorganic, and these have been shown to have ages generally much greater than geological measures alone have produced, showing the latter to have been partly conjectural, even if vastly longer than biblical time had been. Different radio chronometries are highly correlated when applied to the same objects, and variations have been successfully accommodated to settle differences. With the development of dendrochronology, dating from layered ice cores, radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence dating, and other chemical, thermal, and historical methods, few lengthy gaps remain in the geological and biological record that are unapproachable scientifically.

Note: two persons with the same average score may differ greatly in their fully described positions. Paired comparisons are recommended, and ultimately also the comparison of individual scores with a universe of hundreds and thousands of scores, not only as to averages but as to matched item correlations and other parameters.

The above instructions repeat closely those for the Conventional section. Perhaps it should be added here that unmarked items should be scored as 3 on grounds that they are the effect of confusion or unreadiness to commit an attitude.

The key words behind quantavolution (Q) are change, large-scale, and abrupt. Essentially, change refers to a detectable difference in anything between Time 1 and Time 2 . By the world is meant the universe and all that it may contain, including its motions and events.

By most is meant something not much less than entirely, and what is left over consists of changes that are local and gradual. Large-scale applies to spaces and things and behaviors that rather arbitrarily we would envision as at least the size and features of Russia or South America or the Caribbean Sea. The change would occur abruptly, which we define as time durations from an instant to a century in which 50% of the total physical transformation happens. Terms used for quantavolution, "development by packets", include catastrophism, neo-catastrophism, saltation (a jump), revolution, apocalpse and punctuated equilibrium. A salient argument against the use of the term "catastrophism" is that it denotes a total misfortune, whereas a moment's reflection will persuade one that a great part of the fortunate inheritance of the world comes from the same catastrophes -- including the quantavolution or abrupt evolution of the human being.

Quantavolutions were not contained to a set of rocks, a chosen people, a given language, a particular climatic sector, etc., but within their large limits were all-encompassing. All spheres of nature and humanity were directly affected, and their effects were transmitted to every succeeding generation of rocks, genera, and cultures. Too, a Q employed all forces of nature: if the Q took the form of a meteoroid, water, fire, wind, and exploded earth acted simultaneously and in chains and mutual interactions.

The Earth was itself formed from exoterrestrial elements, an obvious deduction, but the fact leads to a realization that probably at no time in its existence has the Earth been out of touch with the exosphere. From its beginnings, the Earth had no internal force or energy that was not exoterrestrial in origin. Its volcanism, earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods have been compelled by exoterrestrial bodies composed of perhaps every kind of mineral and gas, and of every degree of density.

Explaining the solar system is readily accomplished by introducing a theory of binary stars, ever more frequently observed, in which the explosion of a heavily charged sun expels a mass of debris whose largest portion, though a small fraction of the sun, acts as an electrical pole exchanging charge with the sun along a current of electric fire, which also serves to create a vast electromagnetic plenum in which planets, with their own electrical properties, develop. Conditions for the growth of life forms are often favorable and persist until the electrical axis and the tube around it expire, whereupon the planets are "on their own," so to speak. Although the theory of solaria binaria is unique, it can easily entertain a number of quantavolutionary theories that have been developing in recent years that portray the solar system undergoing a series of explosive and high energy events.

Geological, astronomical, paleontological, legendary, and archaeological research has settled upon more than one and conjectured up to a score of global catastrophes in natural history, such that it is possible now to hypothesize a quantavolution at the end of and beginning of every major section of the geological column and every cultural period of the brinze and iron age. Among the greatest in effect have been, among geologists, those associated with the global fracture system circling the world, among paleontologists, those associated with the disappearance of the dinosaurs, and the flowering of life forms early in the Permian period, and among ancient historians those deemed by the ancients to be connected to the conduct of the planets and affording evidence in the wholesale destruction of ancient civilizations repeatedly.

Scientists divide unevenly into a majority who believe that the Moon was captured by the Earth a billion and more years ago, and a minority who believe that the Moon separated from the Earth at an equally early date, most of these expert grant that the event was catastrophic and quantavolutionary. Evidence points to the Pacific Ocean Basin as the source of the crust that was wrenched from the Earth by an electrically attractive passing body, coincidentally with a fracture that shot around the world as the continents-to-be swung in a great gravity slide to fill the basin. Besides the mainly crustal loss of the Moon-gathering, the fully-encrusted Earth lost additional material as debris into farther space and swelled in volume as its charge diminished.

If one were to dig anywhere in the world, one would find practically everywhere an incomplete series of rock types and periods, with no two such drillings being alike. This claim goes counter to the prevailing belief in conventional science that a normal deep drilling to basic rock usually would produce mineral and fossil layers in their proper chronological order with few or no layers or ages missing.

Apocalypses refer to the catastrophes pictured and popularly revered in the Christian epic of St. John. Here it is a mnemonic nickname for quantavolutions. If charted, a Q occurs with little warning in years, days, and other units of time, except that a repeated threat is historically marked and watched obsessively by special priesthoods and the populace. Despite the warning, the events themselves, of course, are precipitous; what is one day here is gone tomorrow, a civilization, a culture, a great plain, a river, etc. After the peak period of activity, however, the Q at first steeply declines and then ever more slowly diminishes its effects until it establishes a mood of "it will not happen again." Thus, according to Q theory, C continental drift theory, even though its acceptance was a concession to a Q theory, is incorrect in believing that the continents have always been drifting very slowly, but that what is slow now was once a continental cracking and rafting at considerable speed.

The scale and intensity of Q implies the decimation of species and paleontology increasingly locates and admits to the catastrophic ending of species. At the same time, C theory will not admit the sudden creation of new species in the same conditions of catastrophe whereas the Q theorists can claim that the same conditions allowed the springing forth in quick time of new families and species. Q theory accounts for the persistence of species as well as the destruction and creation of species to produce the puzzling array of flora and fauna of today.

Several Q theories of the birth of man are possible. One is indicated here. A gestalt is a sudden complex perception and cognition of a large body of mental material that has hitherto been disassembled and unknowledgeable. In a suddenly new natural environment and atmospheric state and in a minor genetic change from the hominid, a new being emerged with a delayed instinctive apparatus, connected with the bilateralism of brain hemispheres and functioning, such that a microdelay in the transmission of menal oeprations ensued, sufficient to expand the destinations around the brain of stimuli and the awareness of doubt about the meaning of the stimuli and a fearful need to control the multiple selves that were groping "thoughtfully" with the disparate end-locations of the stimuli. The mentation and behavior of the new animal is diagnosable today as a general schizophrenia, with its basic symptoms of shock, aggression, compulsion, and displacement.

The instinct-delay cerebral system genetically or permanently demanded by a new environmental constant quickly installed a memory blockage or amnesiac system to limit the flood of fears and doubts and contradictory demands on the new person. The amnesiac system allowed, or was compelled by overload problems to bring about, an amorphous unconscious. The unconscious fostered a random, partially controlled, and imaginative surfacing of materials that were the source both of aesthetic creations and hypotheses, which, when subjected to demands to restore the more comfortable if less competent instinctive system of the hominid, also developed logic, calculation, science, and, in a word, rationality.

Speech and variegated behaviors emerged promptly and spontaneously with the poly-ego and its talking to itself. Transfer of first epithets, imprecations, and commands to the greatest powers known, the happenings in the sky and the responses of the earth, would impregnate catastrophe in the language as it developed for mundane use. The same would characterize the swiftly developing culture -- with rites, priests, magic, acoustical and electrical performances, fire-control and cuisine, etc. This hologenetic Q-theory stands alone perhaps to contend with conventional theories of linguistic and cultural genesis.

Practically all religions, although some exceptional persons will claim the opposite, are in the line of descent from the primordial religiousness. With the illusory establishment of the first gods and of delusory devices to control them, the basic elements of religious practices from then until now were fixed: appeasement, obsessive forms of divine communication, sacrifice, basic artistic forms, authoritative ideologies, institutional imitations of the sky and earth-connected divine illusions. Successive quantavolutions repeated the same types of physical disasters and fell upon peoples that were inclined to fortify their old religions rather than to devise new ones, but at the same time would often rename the old and condemn them to try their fortunes with new, more powerful gods.

Some Q theorists have attempted to preserve the appearances and save a great many reputations by staging their quantavolutions in accord with the present billions of years of "proven" earth history. Such would be, for instance, the theory of "punctuated equilibrium," an awkward euphemism as well as a scarcely justified faith in the swollen periods given to the past, now approaching 5 billion years. The problem of erasing these billions is easy when it comes to traditional geological measurements of time that employ stratigraphy, that apply uniform erosion rates of today to the past, et al. The problem is more difficult when it comes to measurements by radioactive decay of chemical elements, but here, too, uniformitarian assumptions can be brought into question: electromagnetic conditions of the past, far different than those of today, could eradicate the great stretches of time claimed by conventional scientists.

At least one branch of Q theory questions the roots of so-called rationality, yet accepts the newer logic and linguistics as its only tools for arriving at "truth." It accepts experiments and the scientific method generally and it guards the method by psycho-sociological analysis of the processes. It is not mystic nor magical nor religious nor populist. The Q paradigm reconstructs the historical and scientific world with the historical and scientifically defensible weapons of science.