Title: Continuum
First published: 1974
Description: For extensive additional information, see:
http://www.greenwych.ca/cm-ad.htm

Continuum is an interdisciplinary work, showing how the various "subjects" in life (physics, music, biology, sociology, mind, body, you name it) are like the fences that are placed over a sweeping and continous pasture to delineate ownership or some other attribute. The pasture is continuous -- a continuum, but the fences are an arbitrary invention. 
So are the definitions of the traditional "subjects" we study in schools. Reality is an infinite continuum, and definitions are just as the word itself suggests: "de-infinite," or "defined." It's possible, and often amazingly illuminating, to alter the definitions, and like cutting the loaf on a different or compound angle, you can see a new kind of shape to the slice. And often learn things that solve what have been mysteries inherent in our standard viewpoint. 
Take this approach, apply it to the grand sweep of evolution, and the understanding of evolution increases. 
But Continuum also combines other subjects together, like music, acoustics, society (anthropology), psychology and archeology -- all mixed up into "one" intertwined subject, without the traditional "fences." The result, at least in terms of trying to re-construct the origin of music, has been amply rewarded in the well-reviewed book "The Origin of Music," a book which lately has been confirmed and re-confirmed by new archeological finds and current psychological research. 
Another mystery is solved in this book -- that of matter and its "properties." This is best explained from an excerpt by the author in answer to a caller on a radio talk show: 
In answer to the man who wanted to know how differing quantities of electrons, protons, etc., in atoms could lead to such different properties: He likened it all to different coloured marbles in his hand. Adding more of the same marbles (electrons, neutrons, protons, etc) shouldn't make a difference, so why does it make a difference in atoms by forming new elements with different properties? 
The answer is for him to think of the electrons and protons and neutrons as letters in an alphabet, not marbles. Take the word "elbow," for instance. The letters are e, l, b, o, and w. We don't even have to add more letters to change the meaning and connotations of the word (or the "properties" of the word). The same letters can be rearranged and spell "below," a whole different property, and again, we can rearrange and spell it as "bowel," a far bit "below" our "elbow." Again: The word "three" becomes "there." The word "pearl" becomes "apparel" when you add one more of the same -- another "p" and and another "a." 
Properties are all in the arrangement of the atomic particles, because properties do not exist in the thing itself, but in the relationship of one matter to another. Our man may object that this makes properties nothing more than a "perception." Well, what is an electron? It's barely more than just an electrical charge. And what, after all, is that? 
What is a "thought" or, for that matter, a "perception?" Each is very real, as they have accumulated in the world to change the face of the planet physically. But can you put a thought in your hand? Or on a scale and weigh it? Thoughts are just the weightless "insubstantial" relationship between the synapses, neurons and grey-matter molecules in our brain. Yet we know that thoughts are darn real as they move our bodies and hands, which physically change the earth. Our thoughts move matter, indeed! 
Matter's weighty apearance as seeming hard and "substantial" is just one of matter's properties. Not all real things have to have these "substance-like" properties. In reality, matter is a bit more ethereal, itself being a matter of "how it's spelled," more than anything else. There's the real mystery. Where does the "image" end and the "substance" begin? Or maybe we were tricked into this semantic dead-end by the very properties we thought were part of matter itself -- Tangible, weighty, substantial and "hard copy," and confusing them with being intrinsic to the matter rather than to its relationship to other matter (ourselves included). 
The relationship is as much "matter" as is matter. 
A further revised and expanded excerpt from "Continuum," called "Evolution of the Social Brain," deals with the main thesis in Continuum. Is the earth a living being, as a whole? Are we developing a social planetary organ of thought? Is there any evidence for this?

================= REVIEWS ==================
 
"...I at least know what it is about, and can say that...I am excited (there, I said it)...it is the sort of (work) for which I have been waiting..."
Tony Bennett
Unicorn Bookshop, Wales, UK
 
"...fascinating, intelligent, and perceptive."
Douglas Truax, Manager
Institute for Social Research
Ann Arbor, Michigan
 
"Thank you for your article....I Wish we could publish it in our journal, but we just don't have the facilities....I have read it with great interest and am in substantial agreement."
N.A.Coulter Jn, M.D. Synergetic Society, N. Carolina
 
"Thank you for sending your interesting manuscript, which we would dearly wish to have been able to consider. However this Foundation is in an acute financial crisis...but we are still very sorry....."
Ken Coates
Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation ,
Nottingham, England
 
"A few months ago I noticed a reference to Continuum...it looked interesting (so) I ordered a copy for our library. When it arrived, it lived up to my expectations and more...."
Rebecca S. Biefeld, Librarian
Syracuse University, N. Y.
 
"We looked over the excerpts of your book...with considerable interest and admiration...:'
M. & J. Craig
ProActive Press, California
 
"Thank you so much for sharing your vision with us. It is a responsible, in-depth effort to awaken people to (our) predicament...having been asleep so often for so long."
Stephen Levine
Unity Press, California,
 
"...fascinating..."
Gail Larrick
Glide Publications, California
 
"Our feeling is that you should have no trouble finding a publisher for it:"
Gerald Hausman
Bookstore Press, Massaehusetts
Subjects: Philosophy, Miscellanea, Biology, Collective mind, social brain, collective thoughts, wholeistic, parts and wholes, Art and society
LC classification: B68 .F56