JTfM Vol 1 No 1 2008 - ONLINE EDITION - Inclusionality Research

Transfigural Mathematics 

News Ideas and Peer Review 

On the rejection of new ideas in science, we got this from of Juan Miguel Campanario 

Universidad de Alcalá, Facultad de Ciencias, Madrid, Spain, 

“Twice the Journal of Chemical Physics rejected in 1965 the key paper that led to the 1991 

Nobel Prize in Chemistry so rightfully awarded to Richard R. Ernst [Ernst, 1986]. The editors 

claimed that the contents of originality were insufficient for publication in such journal. 

In consequence, Ernst had to publish his findings in the less known Review of Scientific Instruments 

[Ernst, 1991]. 

The truth about Change is that you can’t prevent glasnost from happening, may this be in 

politics or in that in which politics is a subset, that is, in knowledge. Glasnost will come 

when it will come and the gatekeepers of old shall be swept away by the rivers of change. 

Still on the myopia that impedes the progress of knowledge but got swept away by 

change when the world decides to move and the being has had enough of the beaten path. 

From Frank Tipler’s famous article, Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce 

Orthodoxy? we have, 

“...If one reads memoirs or biographies of physicists who made their great breakthroughs after, say, 

1950, one is struck by how often one reads that “the referees rejected for publication the paper that 

later won me the Nobel Prize.” One example is Rosalyn Yalow, who described how her Nobel-prizewinning 

paper was received by the journals. “In 1955 we submitted the paper to Science.... The paper 

was held there for eight months before it was reviewed. It was finally rejected. We submitted it to 

the Journal of Clinical Investigations, which also rejected it.” (Quoted from The Joys of Research, 

edited by Walter Shropshire, p. 109). Another example is Günter Blobel, who in a news conference 

given just after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, said that the main problem one encounters 

in one’s research is “when your grants and papers are rejected because some stupid reviewer 

rejected them for dogmatic adherence to old ideas.” According to the New York Times (October 12, 

1999, p. A29), these comments “drew thunderous applause from the hundreds of sympathetic colleagues 

and younger scientists in the auditorium. 

In an article for Twentieth Century Physics, a book commissioned by the American Physical 

Society (the professional organization for U.S. physicists) to describe the great achievements of 20th 

century physics, the inventor of chaos theory, Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, described the reception that 

his revolutionary papers on chaos theory received: 

Both papers were rejected, the first after a half-year delay. By then, in 1977, over a thousand 

copies of the first preprint had been shipped. This has been my full experience. Papers on established 

subjects are immediately accepted. Every novel paper of mine, without exception, has been rejected 

by the refereeing process. The reader can easily gather that I regard this entire process as a false 

guardian and wastefully dishonest. (Volume III, p. 1850)…” 

Peer Review Policy of JTfM 

The journal, Transfigural Mathematics was launched to publish new ideas. We welcome 

those original ideas which in most cases look strange when they are born. We publish and let 

the entire humanity and posterity know what you have for them. They are the best referees. 

In this regard we would like you send your work to at least two people to go through 

them and pass their comments to us together with your paper. We shall do the rest by going 

through your paper. We combine our comments with the comments you send with your work 

and where the views of the referees agree in a way—whatever the differences—we publish. 

Journal of Transfigural Mathematics Vol.1 No.1.2008 

00b

Purpose 

Original ideas. Innovative ideas. Elaborate account. Creation. Innovation. Elaboration. One is new and strange. 

One enriches the strange that is no longer new. One adds to what enriches the new that is no longer strange. 

While original ideas struggle with the problem of finding the right language for formulating their very concepts 

and the innovative ideas with the problem of not veering off the course of the ideas they set out to enrich, what 

creation, innovation and elaboration have in common is cultivation. They are all cultivation, that is of the mind 

in this case, to convey what it has to the world with the best of care. 

What dons the flamboyant toga of mainstream is elaborate account of what was created once upon a time and 

innovated upon along the way. Most of what comes to the tables of editors of scientific journals belongs to the 

province of elaboration. And most of what gets published belongs to the beaten path of elaboration. 

The Journal of Transfigural Mathematics simply called Transfigural Mathematics was launched to 

publish original ideas which normally find it difficult to get read at all because they are so new, so strange. Of 

course what constitutes the mainstream knowledge are ideas which perhaps for hundred years or more when 

they were delivered unto the world were original ideas. At that time most of these ideas got published because 

they were not tied to careers nor to promotion nor titles all of which are impoverishing the intellectual and academic 

landscape in our time. People simply explored in those days for the love of knowledge and the joy it 

brings to the heart. 

By looking at what props the contemporary economies, from the commercial benefits of computer 

technology to space exploration, the fact remains that most of the foundations of technological breakthroughs 

in our time were laid before governments began to fund basic research at all. Just two examples. The American 

National Science Foundation was launched in 1950. That’s after the birth of relativity and quantum mechanics. 

The German Research Foundation – Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – was founded in 1920. Before then 

relativity, special and general, was already born unto the world. 

Original ideas are at the core of what is called basic research. This is research that is not motivated in 

the first place by any commercial benefit, not by any promise nor promotion of a career but simply by the love 

and advancement of knowledge and the fulfilment of the desire of the heart. That’s why they are always strange 

when they come. That’s why editors of journals that should pass the new voices across to the world feel dazzled, 

in some cases, confused by them and in fear run straight to the elaborate account of what was founded, 

tested and even in some cases, twisted along the line with more accounts coming from all sources like tins of 

tomatoes on conveyor belt. 

As all this was and is still going on, Transfigural Mathematics, was born – the year was 1994 - to take 

the new and strange voices to the world for which they were born to serve. And since no single original idea is 

produced from a single field, it is necessary to open the lovers and beloved of the muse, our readers, to a dialogue 

among and handshake of the disciplines. This means the creative mathematician should write in a way 

that should inspire the artist and so doing link him to the contributions of projective geometry to the arts. Who 

knows, the artist who reads the mathematics paper may find herself launching a new philosophy of art. And 

when next she writes, the writer should allow the poetic in her to communicate with the scientist. Afterall the 

creative scientist has a lot in common with the creative writer. In fact all creative minds have this in common: 

they live in world without boundaries. Indeed they are free. The Journal of Transfigural Mathematics is the 

meeting point of creative minds and the melting pot of original and innovative ideas. 

In a nutshell... 

The general mission of the journal is 

to build bridges between various aspects of intellectual engagements and aesthetic awareness and expression 

and use same as the basis for cross-fertilization of ideas between mathematics, the sciences, 

literature and the arts 

In this regard, the journal sets out to make its readers – and authors 

develop critical attitude to even established ideas 

think of new ways of doing things 

be receptive and be ready to understand new ideas 

contribute to the development of new ideas 

create new systems 

broaden the base of existing systems 

play an active part in the voyage of discovery 

and more. 

Journal of Transfigural Mathematics Vol.1 No.1.2008 01 

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Readership 

Readers of Transfigural Mathematics are people who are searching for inspiration in and beyond their fields. 

They have open minds. They love the odyssey of the mind that goes with arriving at a new idea at all. And they 

love not only the idea but also the engaged, reader-friendly style of its presentation too. Readers of JTfM are 

lovers of new ideas and their innovation that is made to bear on them and of the beauty of language too. So 

they are broad-based researchers. They are incessant seekers. They are simple folks in want of spiritual and 

intellectual pasture to enrich their lives and through this, transform this common space, the world, into a glorious 

habitat that is a blessing to posterity. 

In this regard... 

The journal’s primary aims are 

to encourage talents wherever they may be found and whosoever they may be 

To bring to light great ideas that (i) have been established (iii) are new and have been developed to 

some extent, or (iii) are new and are at the primary 

stage of development provided these ideas have interdisciplinary 

flavour and may or may not be controversial..... 

to inculcate in the readers the spirit of inquiry 

such that the journal has a readership that is 

tolerant of new ideas which in most cases look strange at the beginning 

ready to put things in question 

derives joy from the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake 

Frequency 

Every edition of JTfM is connection-exchange-intensive. The ViewPoint in which trail-blazing mathematicians, 

scientists, writers, artists and philosophers are interviewed requires reading through their works, getting in 

touch with them, setting the questions and requesting for their photographs. Research Papers and articles need 

to be reviewed. There is the need to be conversant with developments in mathematics and the sciences, literature 

and the arts to bring to our readers thought-provoking and inspiring articles in MathsLetters, For The Records, 

Research in the News, SciTech News, WritersDiary, ArtsWorld sections of the journal. Reviews of books 

calls for extensive reading too. That’s why the journal is being produced four times a year. In addition to these 

sections of the journal, there is the Highlight which confronts ongoing research with questions and opens new 

perspectives on established thoughts with the aim of broadening them. For Highlight, contributions are solicited 

from mathematicians, writers, scientists, philosophers of (mathematics, science, knowledge, being, 

mind…), artists and people from other disciplines and engagements. 

Circulation 

With the online edition added to the printed edition, the journal goes far and wide. The journal, through its 

online edition which is far cheaper than the printed copy covers the university libraries, libraries of research 

centres, libraries of writers guilds and associations, arts council libraries and private libraries of lovers and beloved 

of the muse around the world. The printed edition has the advantage of being a book and so ideal for the 

library while the online edition can be pinned together by individual subscribers. 

Donations 

Since its inception in 1994, apart from the donation from a friend, Kenneth Hsü, professor emeritus of Stanford 

and TEH Switzerland and the journal’s MathLetters Editor, Domingo Gómez Morin, the Editor-in-Chief who 

launched the journal has been financing it. The advantage of this is that the journal can choose to and is independent. 

All the same the journal welcomes donations and financial support both of which shall be announced 

and received with thanks. It also welcomes sponsorship too without censorship nor strings. 

Publisher 

The Matran School 

Berlin, Germany 

www.matran.de 

All Correspondence to: 

[Refer under Editorial Executive for Address] 

02 

Journal of Transfigural Mathematics Vol.1 No.1.2008

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 

Lere O. Shakunle 


Berlin, GERMANY 

shakunle@versanet.de 

CO-ORDINATING EDITOR 

Alan D.M. Rayner 

University of Bath, UK 

a.d.m.rayner@bath.ac.uk 

PROJECT EVALUATION EDITOR 

Timo Jarvilehto 

University of Oulu, FINLAND 

timo.jarvilehto@oulu.fi 

CONTRIBUTED PAPERS EDITOR 

Ioulia Fenton 

London, E1W 2UT, UK 

ioulia_fenton@hotmail.co.uk 

MATHSLETTERS EDITOR 

Domingo Gómez Morin 

Caracas, VENEZUELA 

ARTSWORLD EDITOR 

Laura Batson 

Ottawa K2M 2B9 

Ontario, CANADA 

lbatson14@hotmail.com 

FRONTPAGE/CARTOONS EDITOR 

Susanne Pikullik-Bastian 

28211 Bremen, GERMANY 

spb7@gmx.de 

PUBLISHER 


CORRESPONDENCE 

Editor-in-Chief 

Transfigural Mathematics (JTfM) 

Käthe Niederkirchner Str. 24 

10407 Berlin, GERMANY 

Tel.: +49 (0)30 419 35 617 

Homepage: www.transmath.de 

EDITORIAL BOARD 

F.K.A. Allotey (Physicist) 

Kumasi College of Technology 

Kumasi, GHANA 

Reinhold Berz (Medical Doctor) 

Technical College, 

Frankfurt/Main, GERMANY 

R.I.Bogdanov (Physicist) 

Moscow State University 

Moscow, RUSSIA 

Immo Diener (Mathematician) 

Universität Göttingen 

Göttingen, GERMANY 

G.O.S. Ekhaguere (Mathematician) 

University of Ibadan 

Ibadan, Oyo State, NIGERIA 

Arlan Andrews, Sr. (Engineer) 

Andrews Creative Enterprises 

New Mexico, USA 

Oluwole D. Makinde (Mathematician) 

University of the North 

Sovenga, SOUTH AFRICA 

Koji Miyasaki (Architect) 

Kyoto University, Yoshida 

Kyoto, JAPAN 

Wole Soyinka 

(Nobel Prize Winner Literature, 1986) 

Emory University, Atlanta, USA 

Abeokuta, Ogun State, NIGERIA 

EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE 

Aderemi Kuku (Mathematics) 

University of Ibadan, NIGERIA 

Susan Lonac (Literature) 

Whatcom Community College, USA 

Magnus A. Azuine (Biology) 

TransWorldForum, Washington, USA 

ISSN 1430-6433 

Journal of Transfigural Mathematics Vol.1 No.1.2008 03

Editorial 

The ZERO Challenge 05-06 

Research Works 

Lere O. Shakunle, Alan D.M.Rayner 

Superchannel - 

Inside and Beyond Superstring. 

The Natural Inclusion of One in All 07-50 

Lere O. Shakunle, Alan D.M.Rayner 

Relativity and Quantum Mechanics—a Collision Between Two Space-Excluding 

Geometries and their Resolution in Transfigural Geometry 51-53 

For the Records 

Nigerian Film Industry and Nollywood Films. 

Interview of Tunde Kelani, Kate Henshaw-Nuttall, Ejike Asiegbu 

by Ahaoma Kanu, National Daily Newspaper, Lagos, Nigeria 54-70 

Research Work 

Timo Jarvilehto, Veli-Matti Nurkkala et al. 

Reading as anticipatory formation of meaning: Eye-movement characteristics 

and fixation-speech intervals when articulating different types of text 71-79 

Research Paper 

Okom Nkili F.C.Ofodile 

Toll-like Receptors and Prion Disease: Relevance to Pathology and 

Novel Therapy (Part II. Continuation from Part I in Previous Edition) 81-93 

ArtsWorld 

The Dancer: Sketches by Susanne Pikullik-Bastian 95 

PoetsCorner 

Alan Rayner : In Spiral Inclusion 96 

WritersDiary 

Lere Shakunle : Tropical Dreams 97-105 

Letters to the Editor 106-109 

Limits of Rationality 110 

Frontcover Painting: 

Beethoven's Seventh © 2008 Vas Gardiakos [www.ArtMusicDance.com] 

The image may not be edited or used in a manner that may be perceived as being in bad taste. 


Without the research 

to which I 

was led by the 

zero spirals of 


(TfM), I 

am sure I wouldnt 

have come across 

some of the great 

books, if not the 

greatest of them 

all, that have come 

and continue to come my way on and about the 

Zero. Name them, The Nothing that Is. A Natural 

History of Zero by Robert Kaplan; Zero. The 

Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife; 

Patterns in the Void. Why Nothing is Important 

by Sten F. Odenwald. And without these 

spirals and the numbers from which they originated, 

I wouldn‘t have been interested in these 

books at all. And without being interested in these 

books, I would have lost the story of the romance 

about the implications of Zero for the 

whole of mathamatics, the Void for science and 

religion and Vacuum for physics. I didn‘t know 

about these things until fluid logic numbers were 

born. And when the zero emerges as that from 

which everything originated as contained in the 

zero spirals, I still would not know the depth all 

this was taking me until I began to ask fundamental 

questions about how it all began and 

what things are made of—all of which took me 

into the mystery of being and the world in which 

we live. Fluid logic numbers originated from 

meaning resulting from content and context. E- 

very logic number as everything in this world 

has content which has no meaning without context. 

We can therefore say that meaning is at the 

centre of context and content. In this case since 

zero is at the centre of things, it is also the origins 

of meaning. This leads to a lot of questions. 

These questions are tied to issues. These issues 

are to be found in mathematics, science and religion. 

Now, in dealing with these issues which 

are about zero and zero, we shall enter the world 

of zero through the books above. In doing this, 

we shall show why in the final analysis, the nagging 

questions we ask ourselves, the fear of 

darkness of the Void, and how the conflict between 

faith, the 

fountain of divine 

intuition and the 

seat of creative potential 

and knowledge 

that pastures on 

reasoning, are all 

resolved by zero 

which gathers to 

itself the outer infinity 

without and 

spirals inward to 

itself the inner infinity within. 

Now to the books, beginning with Charles Seife: 

“At the zeros of the universe, logic fails. Quantum 

theory and relativity fall apart. To solve the 

problem, scientists set out to banish zero yet 

once more and unify the rules that govern the 

cosmos. If the scientists succeed, they will understand 

the laws of the universe. We would know 

the physical laws that dictate everything to the 

edges of space and time, from the beginning of 

the cosmos to its end. Humans would understand 

the cosmic whim that created the big bang. We 

would know the mind of God. But this time, zero 

might not be easy to defeat.The theories that 

unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, 

that describes the centres of black holes and explain 

the singularity of the big bang, are so far 

removed from experiment that it might be impossible 

to determine which are correct and which 

are not. The arguments of string theorists and 

cosmologists might be mathematically precise 

and at the same time be as useless as the philosophy 

of Pythagoras. Their mathematical theories 

might be beautiful and consistent and might 

seem to explain the nature of the universe – and 

be utterly wrong. All that the scientists know is 

the cosmos was spawned from nothing, and will 

return to the nothing from whence it came.The 

universe begins and ends with zero. (Seife, 

Charles, pp 214-215)” 

At the core of this problem is that the zero of 

mathematics and that of physics are not the same. 

When physics talks of absolute zero this has 

nothing to do with the zero of mathematics, the 

land which the n of physics which shuts it away 

also from the infinity of mathematics fears to 


What this means is that there can be no theory of 

everything from a physical point of view. And 

this brings us to the nature of all-inclusive as 

against the authoritarian, sin and go to hell God 

of the religions. God as The Infinite (Ralph Waldo 

Trine) who is inside and outside the zero and 

inbetween (see diagram below), is beyond human 

imagination to grasp and so it is not possible 

for any field of knowledge in which zero 

and infinity are banned, as we have it in conventional 

physics, to know God. That is one of the 

challenges of the zero. 

As if this is not frustrating enough for a 

field of knowledge which is arrogating to itself, 

if it can unify the four fundamental fources of 

physics (not indeed that of Nature because these 

forces result from reductionism) the ‚theory of 

everything‘ Robert Kaplan begins his book with: 

„If you look at zero you see nothing; but look 

through it and you will see the world. For zero 

brings into focus the great, organic sprawl of 

mathematics, and mathematics in turn the 

complex nature of things“(p.1). He continues on 

other page with: 

„While mathematics is first and foremost an art, 

it is an art applied by science to unriddle the 

world: and now zero will step out again as itself 

to lead this unriddling“ (p.129), and ends the 

book with: 

„I write this in the midst of things, in the middle 

of time. The world extends away on every side 

[plus and minus], taking its coordinates from a 

quiet center [0] fiftully seized as self, which, like 

Wallace Steven‘s snowman, listens and beholds 

Odenwald puts finality with: 

„As we enter the twenty-first century, the scientific 

investigation of space has begun to show 

space as an almost incomprehensibly alien 

landscape in which the rest of existence is embedded. 

In the end, space ranks as the greatest 

enigma that physical science has yet to confront. 

It is the origin of time, mass, energy, and as far 

as we can tell, even the universe itself. Both the 

miraculous story of our origins and the bittersweat 

glimpse of our destiny are written within its 

dark tapestry.“ (p.13) 

In the work on superchannel in this journal, how 

everything is made of Space, Void or Nothing 

which is Zero is shown. According to Odenwald, 

„Only the Void can outlast us“ (p11) And it is in 

this Void the dark energies that will circumscribe 

our destiny are hidden (p.11) 

The problem is that neither the classical 

nor modern mathematics, with their number theory 

and the algebras and geometries that derive 

from them—and in reality all geometries are — 

has the key to the secrets of the zero. While the 

zero of classical and modern mathematics are 

beyond physics, it is that the zero itself has an 

inner world within and not just the outer world. 

This zero, the creative potential zero (0) of 

Transfigural Mathematics, which also contains 

the zero of classical and modern mathematics is 

shown below:. 

Zero and the Making of Meaning 

Nothing that is not there and the nothing 

that is.“(p.219) 

And what does that mean, Nothing that is not 

there and the nothing that is, from which Kaplan 

got the title of his book? It means „Nothing that 

is not there [Being that is not] = (−). The 

Nothing that is there [Being that is] = (+). Between 

them is AND which unifies them. This is 

zero. And this is the logic of fluid logic numbers 

(-1(0)+1) = (-(0)+) or simply –0+ once we don‘t 

forget that we are dealing with creative potential 

zero (0), the seat of the zeroids. To all this, 

1. The Zero Challenge by Lere O. Shakunle 

(work in progress) 


06 


SUPERCHANNEL 

Inside and Beyond Superstring 

The Natural Inclusion of One in All 




email. shakunle@versanet.de 

Alan D. M. Rayner 

University of Bath 

Bath BA2 7AY, UK 

email: a.d.m.rayner@bath.ac.uk 

Beyond Objectivist Science 

Before we immerse in the mystery of the superchannel, there is the need to disabuse the 

mind of a gross misconception that is being bandied about in the garb of scientific propaganda. 

It is beyond, yet typical of the arrogance of objectivist science to lay claim to a theory of 

everything. It is far, very far, beyond the discrete limits of the purist physics that for the sake 

of convenience, not truth, excludes zero and thereby the infinity and continuity of space 

from its fixed frame of reference, to be capable of comprehending anything, let alone everything. 

So what could possibly be the point of a theory of everything? 

A Theory of Everything that does not represent the flow of Nature, which excludes 

human suffering and yet whose foundation is a battle between One and Other and between 

being and Nature, has nothing to do with values that hold the human family together in loving 

relationship. A theory that pretends to be representing everything but has no answer on 

how to stop the binge party and bring the children back home from the streets, that cannot 

stop war and strife, has nothing to contribute on how to stop the Age of Separation and 

replace it with the Age of Communion. A theory that is nurtured at its foundations by exclusion 

and so lacks the answer to and does not even concern itself with how to attain a peaceful 

world and stop the assault on Nature stops being a theory of everything as soon as it comes 

in contact with the reality of human existence and yearnings for love. 

A true theory of everything should be all-enveloping. It should embrace all human experience. 

It should show that Nature, Being and the world are inseparable. It should be the 

source of and means of revitalizing our deepest values. It should bring love back into this 

common vineyard that is threatened with being torn asunder. This theory should encompass 

the religions, the sciences, arts, literature and other hemispheres of human experience and 

engagement by including them all, one in the other as flow-forms. In other words, being, nature, 

world, transcendence, dreams, hopes, fears, struggles, all these and more should flow 

into one another with One including the Other in a theory of everything that all of us can i- 

dentify with. That truly is a theory of everything – and more than everything because it includes 

everywhere in limitless space not just every seemingly definable local matter! 

To construe such a theory of everything is a mathematical challenge. It is also a philosophical 

challenge. It is a metaphysical challenge too. It has to transcend, as we shall show 

in this work, the fundamentally materialistic province of physics and divisive dogmas of 


Superchannel—Inside and Beyond Superstring 

orthodox religion. It is not a challenge that any of the objectivist sciences, including the 

whole of physics, can face in isolation because the very foundations on which these sciences 

were built as they are now are where the fault lines lie. 

As a mathematics, this theory has to show how to liberate itself from the formalism 

that reduces it into dots and scratches, indeed into meaningless symbols on paper, which are 

only good for manipulation and whose central role is to keep the head busy with endless 

complication. It has to return mathematics to the heart of things where the formal lifeless 

systems that physics inherited from it are replaced by breathing and living flow-forms in 

which the head and the heart are balanced by the being of love and care at the central focus 

of attention and intention. This mathematics from the heart should be our heart. This philosophy 

from the heart should be our heart. Inside this mathematics we should see ourselves, 

should see others, our other-selves too and beyond this, we should see how One flows into 

All and All into One such that the being, nature and the world which are torn asunder by the 

logic of exclusion that dominates the sciences flow into one another as everything in Nature 

flows. The mathematics of our heart is not an abstraction, not a formal system with rules and 

derivations and other technicalities with which formal knowledge barricades itself, through 

the separation born in the illegitimacy of its exclusive logic, from humanity. 

In this mathematics from our heart, everything unfolds like the buds of the flowers o- 

pening to the sun and when they reach the infinities that identify their dynamic beings, that 

is, relative infinities, they fold back for a rebirth. And so behold! Like in Nature, the numbers 

flow. The point breathes and becomes space. The line folds and becomes forms. The 

becoming is in being just as space is in form. From this we have the forms which are things 

that we see in, around and beyond us. It is their flow that makes them the relative infinities 

that they are. It is their folds that make them the other-inclusive forms that they are. And it is 

their relative infinities that give them the space that includes and which they include within 

the all-inclusive space of being, nature and the world. This is transfigural mathematics which 

has at its core the inclusional philosophy of transfigurality – the responsive opening of the 

‘One alone Self’ to the receptive influence of its inner and outer neighbourhood. With this 

inclusional philosophy, we have an intellectual programme for comprehending the communion 

in common space of natural flow-form identities and their evolution through natural 

inclusion – the co-creative, fluid-dynamic transformation of all through all in receptive spatial 

context. 

Questions Without Answers 

The good news about string theory is that most of those who work on it don’t talk about the 

theory of everything. And with new mysteries unfolding inside their atoms which their mathematics 

cannot explain yet alone penetrate, those who are honest to themselves doubt 

whether the so-called theory of everything is possible at all. And come to think of it how can 

the unification of forces – all material things as we got them from the Standard Model and 

Supersymmetry that are supposed to unify quantum mechanics and the gravity of general 

relativity to give quantum gravity claim to be the theory of everything. With so much that 

objectivist science cannot understand nor explain, with the most delicate and mysterious regions 

of being locked out of its inquiry and with its fear of the pillars that hold mathematics 

together – zero including infinity, space and continuity, how can whatever happens in physics 

lay claim to a theory of everything? 

Be all this as it may, it is very commendable, the geometric imagination that led to the 

creation of the string of string theory. It is comparable to the creation of atom itself even if it 

has nothing to do either with Nature in which everything flows or with a reality that transcends 

even as it includes the matter-material of the atomic outlook. The central problem with 

08 



string theory is that the mathematics that produces it lacks the foundations for what it proposes. 

And so, it was a leap of imagination that led to it in the search for the unification of 

quantum mechanics and gravitation of general relativity that should produce quantum gravity. 

That no progress is being made in terms of discovering something that shows the physical 

reality of string in spite of the internal consistency of the many branches of classical and modern 

mathematics that are being made to bear on it has everything to do with the mathematics 

itself. The mathematics that produces string theory also called superstring lacks the 

foundations for the existence of its central entity. It is not the first time in history that this 

will happen. The insoluble problems in mathematics originated from mathematics that could 

not solve them just as the notion of string originated from a physics that lacks the foundations 

for itself. New branches of mathematics have had to be launched, witness the proof of 

Fermat’s Last Theorem, to solve such problems. In some cases an entire new mathematics 

has to be invented. In extreme cases, new foundations have to be built with a new mathematics. 

The last example applies to the mathematics that produces the physics of the superchannel 

that is being explored in this work. 

Now to the questions whose answers could not be found in the mathematics that produced 

string theory and many of whose branches are being applied on it. A line is not possible 

without a point. This being the case, where does the superstring, that is string theory, 

get its line from? There is a problem here. If it begins with a point, it has to end with another 

point. What results is discontinuity because a line by itself is not continuous unless it has no 

point that begins it and no other point that ends it. Due to this discontinuity, what lies along 

the length of the string is contiguous – aligned – but not continuous – in communion. If it is 

not continuous, how can its vibrations which should replicate the continuity of the line represent 

all possible particles in the universe? This leads to another problem. If the string is continuous 

on the line, then it cannot be divided into parts to end up as a segment. Because this 

is not the case, the string has to be a segment, therefore an Euclidean line with a point at the 

beginning and another one at the end. That’s why string theory bans infinities, continuity and 

zero. 

But there is a solution to these problems. These solutions are to be found in the new 

paradigm of physics that produces the superchannel. Before we get that far, the new paradigm 

has a solution to the continuity problem of the superstring. The solution is called relative 

infinity. 

There is, however, another, more immediate and in some ways more understandable 

problem. String theory desperately wants to escape from the determinacy of the point-like 

view of atomic structure deep in the foundations of physics that is being shown more and 

more by observations arising from this same physics to be inconsistent with reality. The answer 

it found to the problem was to transform the point into a line, that is, a string. It is this 

string that is now being asked, through its vibrations to represent the point-like particles. At 

the level of strings therefore, point masses, that is particles, have to be replaced with string 

whose vibrations will now stand for different particles. This is saying goodbye to the fundamentally 

atomic outlook of quantum mechanics. On the other hand, gravitation as a field 

stretches out. Therefore it is a line. Now this line is chosen to represent the particle of quantum 

mechanics through its vibrations as a string. What is being done here is asking the line 

to play the role of a point. But a line cannot play the role of a point if it lacks the properties 

of a point intrinsically. In other words, a line has to show how it begins as a point and as it 

spreads out it becomes the point again. In that case, the line is no longer a line nor the point a 

point as we know them. We should be having a point as a line and a line as a point and so 

doing, overcome the point and line dichotomy in Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries. 

This is not possible in the foundations of the classical and modern mathematics both of whose 

branches are being made to bear on the strings of string theory. In these foundations, a 



line is a line and a point is a point. And as a point, space which is crucial to solving the continuity 

problem of string theory through a kind of infinity that is non-existent in its mathematics, 

is not included in the point nor is the point, represented by the so-called natural numbers 

and their quantum equivalents at the micro-level, included in space, its habitat. The new paradigm 

in physics that produces the superchannel has answers to these questions and even 

more. And so, let’s explore together. 

Superchannel and Superstring 

Before we go into the phenomena of the physics of the superchannel, we shall begin with the 

fundamental differences between superchannel and superstring. Superstring originated from 

an outlook in which the world as a singular whole is made of discrete matter in a singular 

whole universe of material things. These singular things are somehow isolated from one a- 

nother in and by the ‘nothingness’ of empty space that somehow fills the whole universe, to 

the extent that they are made of atoms which could as well be sand grains without any means 

of combining coherently together in sand dunes, let alone capable of forming rich and varied 

chemical relationships. 

Superchannel originated from an outlook in which the world is a breathing-point or 

dynamic relational hole, that is, a living world in which space and what is inside it are included 

in each other in a dynamic flow-form of internal continuum in external continuum and 

the other way round. 

Like the Planck length described later, which is discrete and the product of fragmentation 

of the line until it reaches the stage that is beyond the visible, the continuity of the string 

is the continuity of the fragmentation of the line which in the end is no longer continuity but 

contiguity. This kind of so-called continuum is therefore really a ‘contiguum’ arising from 

the segmentation of the line. On the other hand, the superchannel is a continuum externally, 

internally and in the deep. Any point in the superchannel does not divide it but flows into the 

one before and after it and these others also flow into others that also flow into them. The 

superchannel therefore is a superflowform. 

We cannot know what makes the string of the superstring vibrate but we can appreciate 

what make the line flow when transformed into a channel. They are local (informational) 

spheres of non-local (spatial) influence called zeroids. 

Mathematics, Physics, and Evolutionary Reality 

Einstein (1921) said, "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, 

and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." Of course, he was right in one way 

but not without qualification in another. There can indeed be no bridge between classical or 

modern mathematical reality and human reality, that is, the reality of the inner-outer world 

and the reality of the outer-inner world. Mathematics, as we received it from the ancients, is 

based on a conception of reality that is inwardly directed to itself but has nothing to do with 

the unique inner realm from which arises the awareness of being as becoming, whose qualities 

involve love, hope, dreams and other noble qualities that make us human and hold our 

world together. 

The mathematics of this work, transfigural mathematics, is based on the thesis that it 

possible for the laws of mathematics to refer to reality, by which we mean both natural and 

naturally human reality, and yet be consistent, assured and true. What does this mean? 

What this means is that if our mathematics is founded on truth, then its reality should 

not and cannot be different from natural reality. And as for physics, once we get it right for 

10 



mathematics, we also get it right for science. Meanwhile, the inverse brings us not only to 

the heart of the matter but also to what truly resides in the heart of matter. This is how we 

go: 

(i) Mathematics makes physics possible 

(ii) Physical reality is not the same as mathematical reality 

(iii) Mathematics, even though its reality differs from the 

reality of physics, is the language of physics. 

It is the last that leads to the question, why? Why is it that whilst, as we shall show, mathematical 

and physical reality differ, mathematics can nonetheless be effective in physics and 

in other sciences? We will confine our investigation to physics. To answer this question we 

need to answer the question, what is the reality of physics? If we can get hold of this reality, 

then we can be able to establish whether the foundations of the mathematics we have are 

such that they could lead us to natural reality. If on the other hand, the reality of physics differs 

from what our hearts tell us is true about natural reality, then we would say now we have 

the answer to why mathematics is effective, so to say, in physics. And if this reality is strange 

to the truth and still works, then we are sure that neither the foundations of physics nor 

those of mathematics have anything to do with the reality of human existence and since it 

has no answer to emotional and spiritual yearnings of our being, these foundations have 

nothing to do with the truth. In scientific language, this would mean that these foundations 

are inadequate. 

We say this because if our mathematics comprises symbols devoid of meaning and 

physics is made of things that have no life nor love in them, it is little wonder then that one 

could be applied on the other to get results. This will be birds of the same feather flying together. 

No, this is jumping into conclusion even before we put the details of the matter on 

the table. 

So what is physical reality? No, this is not even where we should start. We need to 

know the reality of mathematics before we go to that of physics. This is very important because 

what happens to the entities of physics is determined by mathematics. An atom, which 

is a creation of the human mind and unlike a flow-form has no representative in Nature, is 

not possible to imagine without the so-called natural numbers of classical mathematics. So 

what is mathematical reality or, to drive home the point, what does mathematics mean when 

it points out a thing and says, that’s one of my realities? 

St. Augustine tries to combine existence with reality in his writings on numbers and 

geometry. According to him, knowledge of God is possible only through numbers and geometrical 

objects and infinity being made of numbers is the source of acquiring knowledge 

about God. What he does not add but doesn’t need to is the infinities – positive and negative 

– when added together give zero whose secrets are not accessible to us through classical and 

modern mathematics. 

We have the following from Augustine: 

“Knowledge of numbers and geometrical objects indicates that "there exists some 

eternal and immutable perfection which does not let mutable things to perish, but in a 

sense it allows them to traverse the paths of time in all the variety of decided shapes 

and calculated movements" (De lib. arb. 2.16.44). These truths are not created, they 

are discovered in the soul. Their existence is independent of the existence of the soul ; 

they only empower the soul to do what it can and should do : know God and itself, the 

soul. Knowledge of numbers is a path leading to knowledge of God, and if we have in 

the soul an idea of eternal numbers, then we ask ourselves about their source. But what 



other source can it be if not God ? 

[Adam Drozdek: Beyond Infinity. Augustine and Cantor] 

From what we have above, numbers and geometrical objects don’t need to justify their e- 

xistence and if we can know eternal numbers then we don’t even need to ask about their 

source because their source is God. 

Augustine says the eternal and divine numbers are in God and that the numbers of mathematics 

are a reflection of and not the real divine numbers. 

If we have to relate this to reality, Augustine would say these divine and eternal numbers 

which are in God and may still come to us contain divine reality, are inside where the 

human reality that includes mathematical, physical and other realities has its seat. However, 

Drozdek’s argument that God has to exceed infinity, somehow throws a spanner in the 

works. He says: 

“God necessarily has to exceed infinity; since infinity can be real, it is conceivable for 

it to be part of the physical world. For example, the world can be envisioned as a 

sphere, but this sphere would be limited and it would always be possible to conceive a 

larger sphere - even an infinite number of such spheres. Hence, God exceeds any such 

imaginable sphere, and since it is the very essence of God that nothing limits him 

(divina essentia incircunscripta), then - according to the famous saying - God is an 

infinite sphere with center everywhere and circumference nowhere.” 

This cannot hold because it is the very nature of infinity to transcend what can be counted as 

material physicality within the confines of discrete boundaries. Infinity is unreachable except 

through zero which brings forth other infinities – inner infinities – inside the zero itself. The 

problem of physics with infinity has to do with the fact that infinity transcends what can 

physically be defined. It is beyond the limits of, whilst including a sphere inside spheres and 

whirls inside whirls. That’s why Georg Cantor calls God the absolute infinity, which, according 

to him is unreachable. 

From David Valdman in his Mathematics and Reality we have the following on mathematical 

reality: 

The concept of graphing a function is a perfect example of this—high-school education 

gone horribly wrong. What does it mean to say y = f (x)? This is a mapping of x as it 

ranges over the real line, onto the real line (R→ R). You plug numbers in, and get 

numbers out. It is the literal taking of a line, a one-dimensional space—a cut rubber 

band, if you will—and morphing it appropriately. For instance, let's “do” y = x2. 

Taking your cut rubber band, fold it in half (since negative numbers become positive), 

and stretch its end. A more complicated example: y = sin(x) can similarly be described 

as coiling a taut string around your hand and elbow. Notice that I'm asking you to do 

something. A function is a verb: a performance on a space. However, when someone 

asks you what is y = x2, you might say it is a parabola: a thing. Where is the parabola 

in this description? The parabola only exists when we consider the function y = x2 as a 

collection of points (x, x2). A parabola is a noun: it is the "trace" or the "range" of 

points (x, x2) that are the result of the action of mapping x → (x, x2) over some do 

main”. 

The parabola made of points is one of the realities of mathematics. But this reality only 

exists on the condition that its foundations are valid. In other words, the reality of anything 

cannot be discussed in isolation from the conditions under which it arises. This matter has 

12 



been dealt with extensively in [Shakunle, Lere 2006-2008, Number Theory of Transfigural 

Mathematics, Chapter 0 with the title Mathematics, Existence and Reality] 

The fundamental entities of mathematics from which others including the parabola 

take their roots are number, point and the line. This means the reality of parabola is predicated 

on the reality of number, point and the line. So what is existence? 

Brouwer’s intuitionistic mathematics which is based on constructivism, has a different 

approach to the meaning of existence in mathematics. 

Constructive mathematics is distinguished from its traditional counterpart, classical 

mathematics, by the strict interpretation of the phrase “there exists” as “we can 

construct”. In order to work constructively, we need to re-interpret not only the exis 

tential quantifier but all the logical connectives and quantifiers as instructions on how 

to construct a proof of the statement involving these logical expressions. 

Here, mathematics is a free creation of the human mind, and an object exists if and only if it 

can be (mentally) constructed. 

Well, one wonders whether a novelist constructs her story. Yet the story exists because 

it is drawn from within human reality. Even in mathematics, there is a lot that the mind sees 

so clearly that cannot be constructed. In such cases, it is only imagination that takes a plunge 

into the unknown. And when creativity brings something out in mathematics it is always the 

case that there is quite a lot that cannot be constructed. In transfigural mathematics, for e- 

xample, the inner world of the zeroid which is visible to imagination cannot be entirely 

constructed because beyond its hyperspace there is the trans-space of spiritual awareness. 

On the one hand constructivism encourages creativity by leaving everything open while 

on the other hand it bottles it, indeed locks it up by demanding concrete construction as 

the basis for existence. To this creativity will reply that it is not possible to construct all that 

is accessible to it. That’s the reason why creativity will continue, because bringing something 

to the world is like sleep-walking. One is awake yet asleep; awake in waiting, asleep 

in introspection. And when the idea eventually arrives, there is a lot of scribbling on the 

paper in search of a definite order that is hidden in and underlying the very idea. So what 

exists all along is the idea which has its seat in transcendence but reveals itself to the human 

mind. 

Valdman says something before what is quoted above, which we would like to use for 

introducing the discussion on the channel we want to tunnel between mathematical reality, 

physical reality and human reality with spirituality included. This is very important. It is because 

it shows that the superchannel or any other entity of its physics is not a discrete physical 

entity but somewhere that derives from human reality, which includes mathematical and 

physical realities amongst others. Here is what he says: 

There need be a time when we draw our heads from the clouds and write something on 

a piece of paper. Even the number 1 is a pure abstraction. If the number 1 actually 

existed, it would be on exhibit in a museum with crowds of mathematicians waiting to 

behold its majesty. The benefit of numbers and equations is that they provide an iso 

morphism, or exact correspondence, to the platonic concepts they define. It is usually 

best to think what is behind the curtain of an equation. 

Now this is isolated 1 of classical and modern mathematics, that is 1 that is even isolated inside 

a set. That is 1 which like every other so-called natural number is isolated from the 

space that it both includes and inhabits. With 1 detached from its environment which is the 

space into which it flows and from which others flow into it, as we have in the fluid logic 



numbers of this work. So, it, 1 has no place to stand and can simply be nowhere, a singularity 

all alone with no possibility of spatial neighbourhood because the infinity and zero of 

space has been abstracted from its material content and vice versa. But with the infinity and 

zero of space included as in fluid logic numbers, it can be here, there and everywhere like 

every ‘thing else’ in the world. 

This takes us to physical reality. What is that, physical reality? The reality of physics is 

based on correspondence theory of truth which we call correspondence theory of fact. The 

theory says that for anything to be regarded as true in physics it has to correspond with something 

in Nature. The question is what is that with which it has to correspond in Nature if 

the Nature of physics is not the raw pure Nature of beautiful flowers, lovely smile, yes of 

beauty of carriage and character and the glory of love which flows from within to without 

and from without to within to keep not only the human but also the cosmic balance? 

“Physics has made much progress in piercing through the mist pervading our senses to 

realize that trees, buildings, people, etc. are not fundamental to our world, but are de 

rivatives of more basic forms. Indeed, notions of color, hotness or coldness, hard or 

soft, fragrant or foul, quiet or loud are not what they seem: colors are electromagnetic 

waves of various frequencies; temperature is the average velocity of particles; tenacity 

is the arrangement of molecules and bonds; odor is an interaction between air-born 

chemicals and nasal receptors; volume is the amplitude of sound waves, etc. There has 

never been a moment in which you have actually touched an object; you have only felt 

the repulsive force of its electrons upon your own. There has never been a time in 

which you have seen an object; you have only interpreted the waves it emits, waves 

that are not part of it. All of our senses are fictions that at best refer to some underly 

ing truth. Like numbers and equations, our senses provide an isomorphism bet 

ween truth and subject—between external and internal reality.” [David Valdman] 

The question is, is this reality, what we have from physics as quoted above? Is it reality 

when the beauty of the sea with its infinitude of waves is reduced to lifeless molecules and 

the loftiness of tree to atoms and the touching of the baby to feeling the repulsive force of 

the electrons emanating from her on our own? How can we relate this kind of strange reality 

to human suffering? Indeed what has all this to do with the tending to the flowers and enjoying 

the melodious songs issuing out from the birds? Are those all atoms and vibrations and 

what again is there to reduce everything into sand grains? And where is existence in all this? 

Of course, Valdman does not forget to confess that what we got from mathematics as reality 

on which science bases its reality to invest it with exactitude is nothing to compare with human 

reality which should be the source of their validity. And on this he makes his choice. 

“If I had a choice of which reality I would rather experience, between a ma 

thematical one, a scientific one, or the one we perceive, with absolute resolve I would 

choose the latter. All the mathematical and physical insight we may have will never 

detract from the beauty of our world; it will only make the illusion more magnificent. 

But the big picture descends by understanding the correspondences between these 

realities and from where they stem. This picture stares beyond our perceptions and 

into the heart of what it means to exist, to be real. Mathematics may be the lens 

through which truth is exposed, or it may not be. But regardless, in my estimation, this 

undertaking is the most fulfilling journey within the capabilities of man. We have been 

given the gift of reason so that from this rock we can fathom the furthest corners of our 

universe, and the deepest layers of reality. Now it is on our shoulders a matter of 

dedication.” 

14 



In transfigural mathematics, as we shall get to see, mathematical, scientific and human reality, 

what Valdman calls the heart of what it means to exist, are brought into natural communion. 

We shall come soon to that. 

Reality is not possible without existence. Apart from ‘there exists’ of mathematics 

which is a formal language that confers existence by fiat, we do not get anything concrete 

from physics as this relates to the existence of its entities. So, for an answer to a physics 

question, we need to turn to mathematics. When does a thing exist in mathematics? 

In what we have below, Lawrence Spector also attributes existence to numbers by relating 

them to physical existence which does not go as far as what we have from St Augustine. 

Apart from the idea of a natural number, or the physical existence of one, such as ten 

fingers, we have the clearest of models for what we call its mathematical existence. It 

appears in Euclid's Elements, where a figure, such as a circle or a square, will "exist" 

only when we have drawn it. For it is a principle of logic that we may not assume that 

what we have defined exists. (We can define a unicorn, but does a unicorn 

exist?) And so to simply define a "square" according to our idea of one is not enough. 

Rather, it is our ability to draw a square -- to produce it -- which shows that it is more 

than just an idea. As with everything in life that begins as an idea, we must bring it 

into this world. If we cannot, then it is nothing but an idea, which is to say, a fantasy. 

Is it sufficient that a thing exists because it is produced? In that case, if a lie is produced, it 

doesn’t matter how, it also exists even if it does not meet the simple criterion of consistency. 

The question is, can a lie exist? In other words, can what is not true exist? The only real answer 

can be that for a thing to exist naturally, it has to be a true presence in Nature. Only truth 

exists naturally in both its material and immaterial form. But notice here what is not admitted 

to exist in classical or modern mathematical definitions, because it truly cannot be 

constructed in local concrete isolation – the non-local omnipresence everywhere of the zero 

and infinity of immaterial space. 

Now, having disposed of that, let us examine another condition for existence in mathematics. 

As an extension of what is written above, we also have this: 

Let us apply this to numbers. We say that a number will exist, mathematically, when 

we name it. Naming will be a form of producing it. If we have not named it, whether 

in writing, speech, or thought, it does not yet exist. 

[Lawrence Spector, Approach to Calculus - What is Number?] 

This still doesn’t solve the problem either. It doesn’t because we are still not told what a 

number is. Naming is not the same as meaning. It is meaning that confers existence on naming. 

So what is number? 

Originally a number is known to be a plurality (refer Reality and Transfigural Perspective 

in the next section below). In other words, no single number is alone. This is the fundamental 

idea that led to the creation of sets. 

The matter is put concretely by [Erich Reck, Frege's Natural Numbers: Motivations 

and Modifications] in relation to Frege who would presumably through the folding and unfolding 

journey of creativity, have prepared the foundation if not the launching of set theory 

but for his opposition to number as plurality: 

For Frege, the main problem with the notion of "plurality" ("multitude", "group", also 

"totality", "collection", and even "set"), as used before and during his time, is that 

it is left unclear how concrete or abstract the relevant pluralities are supposed to be. 



From a contemporary point of view, it is natural to think of them as (finite) sets, where 

sets are understood to be abstract objects. 

With his natural number a loner in space, Frege’s natural numbers are based on the following: 

Responding to the problems he finds in connection with the notion of "plurality" in the 

literature of his time, Frege's first basic move is to replace it with the notion of a 

(sortal) "concept" (itself in need of clarification, as he realizes himself later). This 

replacement brings with it two Fregean observations, closely related to each other: 

First, the relevant concepts can be recognized to account for the needed individuation 

in numbering, an aspect often left obscure in earlier views. For example, when we say 

"ten companies" …., the unit of what is being numbered is provided by the concept 

"company"; while when we say "one thousand men"…., an alternative unit is provided 

by the concept "man". Second, numerical statements can now be analyzed as state 

ments about concepts. Thus, "Jupiter has four moons" turns out to be a claim about 

how many objects fall under the concept "moon of Jupiter", namely exactly four. Ta 

ken together, this accounts for both the relativity (relative to a concept) and for the 

objectivity (given a concept) of numerical statements. 

On individuation in numbering Frege is still loyal to the space-excluding structure of natural 

numbers so-called while they now serve in his philosophy of mathematics as formulated in 

his Grundlagen der Arithmetik as adjectives that tell us more about the noun as in ten companies. 

We don’t know what ten is from this. In fact it lacks existence as such were there no 

companies to refer to. In analysing numerical statements as statements of concepts such as 

Jupiter having four moons, four derives its meaning not from itself but from Jupiter and the 

moons. It is Jupiter and the moons that confer existence on four. In fact “four” can be left out 

and be replaced by ‘blue’ which is also a concept and the statement still stands anyway. This 

Fregean approach boils down to formalism and is neither about the meaning nor existence of 

‘four’ without which the moons can stand alone. This is because a=b could as well be used 

with a as Jupiter and b as ‘has four moons.’ 

For example, it would have been different if we are given four to represent moons and 

from it we can see how they differ and how they are similar. For example in fluid logic numbers 

we can have 1 which would be the moon 1 which is 012 and with its logic numbers we 

can begin to explore the world of moon 1 in which moon and 1 are the same. And while we 

are doing this, we are also inside what is before moon 1 on the left which is 0 and the moon 

2 after it which includes space, therefore the context of number called 1 which according to 

fluid logic number is something specific that inhabits space that includes it and which it includes, 

an example being the moon of Jupiter. This would mean that to be in moon called 1 is 

to be in the moon or something called 0 and moon called 2 such that every moon includes 

itself and those before and after it and through them includes everywhere in the cosmos that 

includes it. 

The good news about this is that we don’t need a=b for Jupiter and its moon but 

fln(x i ) j in which x are the moons and j is Jupiter. We don’t even need the so-called natural 

numbers 4 for Jupiter! 

In fluid logic numbers we can have Jupiter with its moon as fluid logic number 1, that 

is: 

16 


in which all the moons 


i = 01, 10, 21, 12 

j = Jupiter 

with the centre in (11). These (01, 10, 21, 12) are the numbers of a fluid logic number as the 

moons of Jupiter. For example to be in 01j is to be in moon 01 of Jupiter. In fluid logic numbers, 

number is not qualifying anything. It is not a tool of anything. It is the thing as itself 

and space which is context C or environment E that includes natural, social, cultural, intellectual 

and spiritual awareness and expression. 

From what we have above, we can now say that in fluid logic numbers, you don’t need 

to define anything at all. All you need to do is write down the number which stands for a locally 

distinct identity in the world. This identity is a flowform made of folds of the zero spiral 

[Shakunle, 1994] In the example above, fln(1)j is Jupiter. It could be any other planet in 

the cosmos. What is important is that this number unfolds to reveal its logic numbers (01, 10 

(11) 21, 12) which are locally distinct identities that include space and in which space is included. 

These identities flow into others and others flow into them everywhere. 

Since there are different types of 1s in fluid logic numbers, for example fln(37) is also 

((01,10)(11)(21,12)) even though its structure is more complex that fln(1), we can also have 

all flowers as fln(37) with different types of foldings. It is their folding numbers and types of 

foldings that differentiate Jupiter with its moons from any other moons of other planets. 

What this also shows is that Jupiter has both external and internal identities. In other words, 

it is not a world out there. It is as external as it is internal because it flows into everywhere in 

the cosmos and everywhere in the cosmos flows into it. At a stage in the exploration of its 

innermost, which is called the hyperspace, it is discovered that Jupiter is neither an object 

nor a subject but a type of fold in a living breathing universe. We shall have more to say a- 

bout all this later. What is important now is that the fold that is Jupiter may not be as 

complex as that of a flower, all the same it is a fold and so alive in a living world as the bird 

or the flower. And this fold, as we have shown briefly above, is a fluid logic number. That’s 

reality! In this case, space is included in number and number is not auxiliary to anything. 

Number is identity! 

According to what we have above, to Frege, numbers are objects. This means the people 

who write about them are subjects. This is an objectivist relation to numbers in which 

stones and pebbles are also objects and human beings are subjects. As objects, they are dichotomous 

Other that is cut forever away from the subject, the One. Frege’s approach to 

numbers doesn’t help us an iota in relating mathematical entities which are seen as objects to 

human reality in which everything is a subject. There is nothing like object nor subject in 

fluid logic numbers. 

Nor is that all there is to the problem with Frege’s approach to natural numbers, socalled 

because they don’t relate to space. Frege leaves a vital presence out of his work on 

numbers as contained in his Grundlagen der Arithmetic. If a number has been named, it has 

to show what makes it exist and be real and that is, it has to show that is it is here in this 

world with all its lack of platonic perfection to partake in our suffering as it does in Nature 

and at the same time it has to be drawn towards the harmonic correspondence that beckons 

and urges the becoming being on to deep and lofty values. In other words, this number 

should be here and there simultaneously, in one to engage in the crucible of human experience 

here and now and in the other to evolve. The here flows in the there and the there flows in 

the here through the zeroids of life and love. 

What this means is that true ideals are there yet here, not as the absolute goals or fixed 

‘niches’ of a prescriptive evolutionary process, but as the moving goalposts of an improvisa- 



tional process. They are present in the core of a dynamic relational process that involves variations 

continually diverging and converging co-creatively around a changing theme, not 

divergences that have to be removed from the Darwinian competition to be number one, alone, 

at best exalted and exhausted at standstill at the end of the struggle for eternal life that 

has no life at all! Ideals are to be attained but once attained they transform into further ideals 

such that what it being struggled for here has been attained but is yet to be attained. 

It is like love. Or it is the heart of love, the truly evolutionary ideal. It is somewhere 

there. But it is here. As soon as it is attained, it produces others of its kind which show that 

what has been attained is the beginning of a journey without an end. Like walking on a continuous 

line. Like infinity too. 

Evolutionary Reality and the Transfigural Perspective 

The place to begin with reality and existence is the question, what is number? The Greeks 

grappled with this question for so long and when they reached continuity, they had to abandon 

it even though its lack of solution produced other types of number apart from natural 

numbers that we got from them such as reals, rationals and transcendentals all of which 

complicated the problem rather than solving it. These creations were aimed at solving what 

number really is, which is, as we show below, a plurality. 

So, originally, what is number? John Mayberry has this to say: 

As Klein points out, in Greek mathematics a number was defined to be a finite plurality 

composed of units, so what the Greeks called a number (arithmos) is not at all like 

what we call a number but more like what we call a set. It is having a finite size 

(cardinality) which makes a plurality a “number” in this ancient sense. But what is it 

for a plurality to have a finite size? That is the crucial question. The Greeks had a 

clear answer: for them a definite quantity, whether continuous like a line segment, or 

discrete – a “number” in their sense – must satisfy the axiom that the whole is greater 

than the part. We obtain the modern, Cantorian notion of set from the ancient notion 

of number by abandoning this axiom and acknowledging as finite, in the root and ori 

ginal sense of “finite”– “limited”, “bounded”, “determinate”, “definite” – certain 

pluralities (most notably, the plurality composed of all natural numbers, suitably defi 

ned) which on the traditional view would have been deemed infinite. 

[John Mayberry, The Foundations of Mathematics in the Theory of Sets, 

(Cambridge University Press), p.x] 

It is this definition of number as a finite plurality that gave the inspiration for the creation of 

sets of set theory. Sets are numbers seen as not being alone but being contained in their past 

if not in their future. While this plurality grapples with the demands of the Ancients on what 

number is, it fails to accommodate the space both inhabits and is inhabited by numbers. It 

only deals with the inhabitants as discrete entities. In other words, inside the set of numbers 

or things, there are spaces between them. This, as we said, is not the fault of sets but that of 

the Ancients who abstracted numbers out of their environmental context. It is this very space 

which a thing needs for its breathing, indeed for its being alive and the same which makes 

the world the breathing-point of transfigural mathematics. It is the very space which a thing 

needs for its motion. It is this very space which is necessary for the flow of life, yes of love 

itself. It is inclusion of space in things and things in space that makes all of Nature flow. 

Where things flow, they are never alone because One flows in the Other and the Other 

in One. And where this is the case, every number is a plurality that includes itself and the 

others by including space which now includes it. This is the foundation that produced the 

18 



fluid logic numbers of transfigural mathematics that leads to the transfigural perspective on 

reality. 

This transfigural perspective takes us to the reality we demand of mathematics and 

through it from the sciences for them to relate to natural and naturally human reality which is 

the test of their validity and claim to have value at all. 

The transfigural perspective which we shall not go into exhaustively here is as follows: 

If it exists, it is real. 

If it is real, it is true. 

If it is true, it is One in Other 

And the Other in One. 

This is the heart of love. 

The centre of One Other Together 

This centre is everywhere. 

This means, for a thing to exist, it has to be real. For it to be real, it has to be true. For it to be 

true, it is has be One in Other which Other is All and All in One. Where these conditions are 

met, there is love. This love is the focal point at the centre of everything. And this centre is 

everywhere. This means it is love, the inductive presence of receptive space that holds being, 

the One and Nature, the Other together such that to be in One is to be in All. In love, the 

physical, the biophysical, the emotional, the intellectual and the spiritual flow in one another 

as rivers of life. 

One in Other makes every number a plurality. If the set had not left space out of its 

members, it would have taken us close to the plurality of fluid logic numbers in which One 

is in Other, therefore One is in All and with that would have taken a giant step on the road to 

the unification of mathematical, scientific and other realities with human and natural reality. 

Therefore, the mathematics that we have, classical and alas modern mathematics which 

was founded on set theory do not fulfil the conditions of transfigural reality which is the unification 

of mathematical, scientific and human realities, the kind of unification without 

which no theory of everything can claim to be theory of anything at all. 

While this is the case with mathematics, physics and other sciences, how should our 

mathematics change so as to represent natural reality which involves the intellectual, the cultural 

and the spiritual planes of awareness and so doing, integrates physics and the other 

sciences in the same human reality? 

For mathematics to fulfil the transfigural conditions of reality, its fundamental entities, 

that is, number, point and the line, should truly represent life, love and creativity. In it we 

should be able to see ourselves in the others and the being in nature, nature in all and all in 

love through which we enter the glorious realm of spiritual awareness. 

Our problem here is the struggle to see through appearances, indeed ghosts that becloud 

the human firmament. The answer to these appearances that sever one from the other is 

in the heart of things. It is in love, in truth without which nothing can really exist. 

One in Other is a flow and therefore the reality of things is that they flow. The reality 

of everything flowing in Nature is that things cannot be separated from space, their habitat, 

which includes them and which they include. Therefore, for our mathematics to have assurance 

in the way it refers to reality it has to flow and be continuous, that is, the numbers and 

everything in this mathematics has to represent Nature’s flowing, folding and forming. 

Now, before we get into the mathematics whose laws are assured and dynamically embody 

Nature, being, the world and transcendence, let’s take a quick tour of some of the phenomena 

of the physics of a fluid-logic-numeric mathematics that is based on a breathingpoint 

which is in motion inside and outside itself. This point is a line because it is the river of 



space. But this line is also a point because space as flowform gathers to itself. Space in this 

context is a flowform landscape which includes valleys and lowlands, indeed includes all the 

undulations that are available in the contour of a landscape. 

In a flowform space of fluid-logic-numeric and spiral outlook, every body which includes 

space and space that includes it is undergoing change in size while in motion. It is expanding 

and contracting which is the effect of space pooling in and out of it. This is the 

swimmer’s effect that is easy to imagine. What this means is that things are undergoing continual 

change in motion. A sitting body is heavier than the one in motion because the spacepool 

effect is not as pronounced on it as the one is motion. 

What the sitting body and the one in motion have in common is that while sitting or 

moving, everywhere registers every thing that is happening in them inside-out as they register 

what is happening everywhere, outside-in such that even if one, they are many at the same 

time. No body can therefore be treated in isolation from the environment of people, places, 

flora and fauna, personal history, hopes and dreams that constitute its context. 

With this it is welcome to the physics of superchannel. 

Unnatural Exclusion – The Origins of Discontinuous Modern Mathematical 

Physics in The Classical Abstraction of Material from Immaterial Nature 

Breathless Figures – How Matter is made to Count as 

‘Everything’ and Space is Made to Count For ‘Nothing’ 

There is good reason to suppose that as terrestrial, omnivorous, bipedal primates unable to 

digest cellulose but equipped with binocular vision and opposable thumbs that enable us to 

catch and grasp, we human beings are predisposed to view the geometry of our natural 

neighbourhood in a very objective way. We see ‘boundaries’ as the limits of definable 

‘things’ and ‘space’ as ‘nothing’ – a gap or absence outside and between these things 

(Rayner, 2004). Perhaps if we had eyes on the sides of our heads, like rabbits, or lived our 

lives immersed in water, like whales, we might be more inclined to a panoramic perception 

of our living space, along with the sense of being pooled together rather than set apart by it 

(Rayner 2003). But we are more like beached whales that have managed to sprout arms and 

legs and run around instead of run aground like the creature below. 

[Caption next page] 

20 



‘Landed, Stranded’ (Oil painting on canvas and poem by Alan Rayner, 2000, A reflection 

upon the evolutionary inversion from aquatic to terrestrial life). ‘I used to be, within the 

sea, an identity of you and me, submerged in commonality of sounding, between airy heights 

and bottom depths, waving correspondence, through inseparable togetherness, of content 

with context. But now, dry, abstracted, space comes between us, a separating distance, an 

unbecoming outside, alienating forms as fixtures, stranded in isolation, entities, nonidentities, 

conflicting, oblivious of our belonging together. Oxygen, now moving fast, not 

languidly, tans our hides, protecting our inner spaces, against its own consuming presence, 

supporting combustion, burning us out. But all this sealing, removes our feeling, setting our 

content at odds with our context, so that we push against the pull, with backs to front, itching 

to relieve unbearable friction. And so now, just let’s go, and, with loving fear, dive into the 

clear, and swim where it’s cool, to be in with the pool, together.’ 

We are also, however, creatures with extraordinarily creative imaginations, along with the 

ability to develop technologies that enable us to see telescopically and microscopically beyond 

and through the limited horizons that are available to our naked eyes. So it seems equally 

extraordinary that for millennia we have allowed the visual illusion of an absolute demarcation 

between matter and space – ‘something’ and ‘nothing’ – to dominate our logic and 

scientific and mathematical accounting for natural form and dynamics. But we have done so, 

and continue to do so, to the detriment of our potential for deeper understanding of natural 

evolutionary processes. 

Notwithstanding the advent of quantum mechanics, relativity and non-linear theory, all 

of which are implicitly based upon evidence that space cannot be abstracted from matter – or 

vice versa – at any physical scale, we continue to abide mentally by a mathematics that in its 

very foundations imposes discontinuity between ‘substantial figures’ and ‘empty 

background’. Arithmetically, this discontinuity is evident in the treatment of ‘natural 

numbers’ as exactly definable points along a finite, widthless line that begins at a point and 

ends at a point and so cannot attain either absolute zero or absolute infinity, even though these 

latter concepts are vital to all kinds of calculations. 

The upshot is that space is excluded from all numbers that can amount to anything, and 

so is treated as nothing, a purely external, passive void. Only explicitly definable material 

forms can be quantified – counted and accounted for in this schema. Nature is treated as 

though it is constructed purely from discrete, absolutely discontinuous units – isolated entitities 

or ‘independent singlenesses’ that, in themselves are inert, only capable of being forced 

into movement by some ineffable internal or external function. 

The profoundly unnatural quality of this schema was recognised by the poetic imagination 

of William Wordsworth (1815). In the context of his disagreement with the likes of 

Erasmus Darwin, Wordsworth protested that ‘in Nature everything is distinct, yet nothing 

defined into absolute, independent singleness’, not ‘defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened, 

- yet nothing distinct ..[as].. will always be so when words [he might equally have said 

‘numbers’] are substituted for things’. 

Moreover, this schema is a source of deep and inescapable paradox that affects all conventional 

mathematical ‘proofs’. As was demonstrated by Kurt Gödel in his mathematical 

formulation of the famous paradox in which a Cretan informs you that all Cretans are liars, 

the problem resides in assuming ‘completeness’. Any ‘complete’ or ‘entire’ object that thereby 

has nothing outside itself is inescapably self-referential and so impossible to verify or falsify 

‘independently’ (e.g. Hofstadter, 1980). 

This difficulty will continue to blight our understanding of both Nature and human nature, 

sustaining deep and damaging conflict between ‘one’ and ‚other’, so long as we do not 

address and transcend the imposition of discontinuity that lies in the initial premise of objec- 



tively definitive logic. We also need to recognise that this premise resides not only in the 

foundations of numerical definition, but also in the related, unnatural dimensional constraints 

of idealized geometrical figures. 

Stilled Life – The Dimensional Collapse of 

Euclidean and Superficially non-Euclidean Geometry 

The definitive framing of Nature within an infinitely extended cubical box with a fixed centre 

but no outside is characteristic of the idealistic geometry of Euclid, which collapses the 

infinite dynamic possibilities of space throughout everywhere (i.e. as a non-local presence) 

into just three structural dimensions. Through this geometry, space, time and matter/energy 

are conveniently homogenized in a way that enables them to be packaged and quantified in 

independent, uniformly linear units that can be added, subtracted, divided and multiplied as 

whole entities and fractions according to the rules of elementary arithmetic. 

The unrealistic and self-referential nature of this geometry is immediately obvious 

from its representation of dimensionless points, widthless lines and depthless planes, all of 

which signify the complete exclusion of space from matter. It abstractly imposes discontinuity 

and cannot reproduce the dynamic continuity and radial dimensionality of natural fluid 

flow from which it can only be derived by solidification. It models the crystalline arrays in a 

block of ice, but not the fluidity of what can melt and vaporize from this block through the 

inclusion of ‘latent heat’ (i.e. inclusion of ‘space’ as a vital presence, not a passive absence). 

It is an artificially imposed inversion of natural order, which puts the cart before the horse 

but nonetheless remains deeply embedded in the metaphorical ‘building block’ foundations 

of objective logic, science and mathematics. 

This way of thinking was reinforced by the success of Newtonian mechanics in describing 

the world as a set of moving whole bodies separated by empty space. According to this 

schema, all movement, or acceleration, deceleration or redirection of movement was measurable 

in accordance with fixed time intervals and attributable to calculable external force. 

Linearity was given precedence over non-linearity and gravity assumed to be a property of 

mass alone. And yet, as Newton himself admitted in his preface to ‘Philosophiae Naturalis 

Principia Mathematica’: ‘I wish we could derive the rest of the phaenomena of nature by the 

same kind of reasoning from physical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to 

suspect that they all may depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some 

causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in 

regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, 

philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles 

laid down will afford some light either to this or some truer method of philosophy’. He also 

commented that ‘it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so 

many regular motions ... this most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could 

only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being’. 

Kepler, on the other hand, saw space itself as God, the great co-ordinating, harmonizing 

geometric influence orchestrating the ‘Music of the Spheres’. As he said in his 

‘Memoir’ (cited by Koestler and Butterfield, 1989): ‘Why waste words? Geometry existed 

before the Creation, is co-eternal with the mind of God, is God himself (what exists in God 

that is not God himself?); geometry provided God with a model for the Creation and was 

implanted into man, together with God’s own likeness --- and not merely conveyed to his 

mind through the eyes.’ 

In truth, having reduced Nature down into discontinuous rectilinear packages that neatly fit 

22 



inside the box, it is impossible to regain the original dynamic continuity without implicitly 

re-including the non-local space (infinite dimensionality) that was excluded by the reduction. 

The pretence that it is possible, as in calculus, to reconstruct or ‘kick start’ natural flow in 

this way from elementary discrete units is at the heart of the paradoxes of completeness, already 

described, that bedevil rationalistic argument and conventional mathematical 

‘proofs’ (Rayner, 2004). 

No more than a set of points along a line can a contiguous series of freeze-frames, as in 

a cine film, give more than an illusion of the original continuous movement, and yet our orthodox 

approach has made us unable to describe movement in any other way than by means 

of reducing it to successive locations in an abstract reference frame. The freeze-frames are 

reductions from, not ingredients of the original. It may be mathematically convenient to reduce 

our selves and others to fit into freeze-frames as discrete numerical statistics, but it 

grossly demeans the creative potential of our real, dynamic Nature. It reifies the false dichotomy 

between One and Other that sets the scene for conflict and cruelty to replace care and 

compassion by fixing the centre of self at the centre of all. 

Even the so-called ‘non-Euclidean’, Riemannian geometry used in Einstein’s (not 

Poincaré’s) version of relativity theory cannot resolve the problem of continuity. Although 

this geometry recognizes the fundamental curvature, and hence space-including non-linearity 

of a naturally dynamic cosmos, it is localized to a fixed and depthless surface and requires 

ineffable force to get things moving and shaking. Neither does ‘fractal geometry’ provide a 

solution, because whilst this implicitly includes space in its fractionation of the dimensionality 

of irregular structure, it still does so within the constraints of a fixed Euclidean frame 

and hence excludes non-local, dynamic possibility. Indeed, modern non-linear and complexity 

theories generally continue to exclude such possibility and hence cannot adequately represent 

natural evolutionary processes. Only a deeply non-Euclidean, dynamically continuous 

geometrical and numerical system can truly represent the dynamic continuity of natural evolutionary 

flow form (cf. Rayner, 2004). 

Paradoxical Addiction – the Self-Closing Loop of Objective Definition 

So, why is it that in spite of our natural human creativity, we have continued to constrain our 

imaginations within discrete, self-imposed limits? The answer may have much more to do 

with the psychology of fear, than with a truly scientific endeavour to seek truth through investigation, 

sound reasoning and evidence. Put simply, most of us are profoundly afraid of 

death and uncertainty, seeing in these terrible possibilities of self-annihilation, pain and a 

loss of control over our destiny. We recognise that to open up to non-locality is to make ourselves 

vulnerable to these possibilities, and so seek to avoid what we perceive as ‘the void’ 

at all costs. But paradoxically, through this fear of doubt and darkness, we may categorize 

the world and ourselves in a way that actually increases our susceptibility to suffering, whilst 

excluding loving influence from our lives. 

Care and compassion – common passion – for our natural dynamic neighbourhood give 

way to cruelty and conflict as we enslave ourselves (the literal meaning of ‘addiction’) 

within an adversarial culture of well-rewarded ‘winners’ and impoverished ‘losers’. Seeking 

the impossible combination of absolute security and absolute freedom, we accept Darwin’s 

falsehood and Hitler’s ‘great lie’: ‘the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life’. 

And we ponder tragically, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet upon the great false dichotomy of the 

objective logic of the excluded middle: 

‘To be or not to be, that is the question: whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the 

slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by op- 



posing end them?’ 

In this way, we suffer unnecessarily, and reify our fears in our science, mathematics 

and everyday commitment of life to the service of death and consumption. By trying to close 

the loop, we get stuck in the loop, and cannot fathom our way out. But by losing our fear of 

including the void, we can find love and death in the service of life, creativity and deep 

scientific and mathematical understanding. We may even discover that our mortal vulnerability 

is not so much our Achilles Heel that needs to be armour-plated, but our Achilles Heal 

that makes us feel Better: 

Achilles Heal 

A gap breathed space 

Into the fortress 

Of a soul walled in 

By dreaming of Absolute security 

In its individual completeness 

Elevated above some baseline standard 

Of soles firmly planted 

At odds with one as another 

In foundations of quicksand 

Set fast in cement 

How quickly this dreaming 

Would fade 

In less than a lifeline 

Of certain anchorage 

When doubt made its fearful question 

Of presence felt 

In a blow below the belt 

That crippled unbending fixture 

Into sharply wrought relief 

Curved into some new and ancient 

Awareness 

Where no One could still compete 

When stilled by its own completeness 

Of idolized concrete 

Inviolate to all but its own violation 

Of unfelt presence 

So deeply disconcerted 

By no sense of nonsense 

In the absence of its motherhood 

Through which to find communion 

From sole to soul 

Unblockaded 

By proud pretension 

A humility restored 

24 



To Faith in individual failure 

As sure and omnipresent sign 

Of love in human nature 

Opening all ways 

To unending Recreation 

In the very Shadow of Tragedy 

The Community Play of Foolish Genius 

Beyond restrictive lessons 

In Schools of Guilty Thought 

That burden the bleating Heart 

With endless ways to blame and shame 

By reserving the right for One Alone 

To claim superiority 

A Case in Point – Paradoxical Strings and Superstrings 

Strings, Numbers and Point 

The journey to the strings of strings theory started with atom. And the journey to the atom 

started with the question about what matter is made of. And so, to understand what a string 

is, the place to begin is the atomic theory. 

According to David Cooke in The History of Atomic Theory, Leucippus, a Greek philosopher 

who lived at around 400BC was the first person to arrive at atom as the answer to 

the question by the Greeks of his time about the way matter is made. 

“According to Anassagora, it is possible to subdivide matter in smaller and smaller 

parts, and he proposed that this process can be continued with no limit. In Anassago 

ra's view, you can always divide a bit of substance into two parts, and each of these 

parts is also divisible into two parts, and so on--no matter how small each part gets 

there is no problem dividing it again into even smaller parts. But according to Leucip 

pus, eventually you arrive at small particles which can not be further subdivided. Leu 

cippus called these indivisible particles atoms (from the Greek word atomos, meaning 

“indivisible”)” 

What Anassagora says is the same as what obtains in the counting numbers – erroneously 

called natural numbers – of classical and modern mathematics. Now let’s have 1 as an atom. 

can be divided into parts give ½, ¼, 1/8,…which, if continued, should end up with zero. In 

other words, the destination of the parts is zero. The matter is explained the other way round 

with another example in [Charles Seife. Zero. The Biography of a Dangerous Idea]: 

“It is sometimes possible to add infinite terms together to get finite result – but to do so, the 

terms being added together must approach zero. This is the case with Achilles and the Tortoise. 

When you add up the distance that Achilles runs, you start with the number 1, then add 

½, then add ¼, …, and so on, with the terms getting smaller and smaller, getting closer and 

closer to zero; each term is like a step along the journey where the destination is zero. (p.43) 

This matter ought to have been clear to the Greeks of old. But they didn’t have zero in their 



mathematics. The implication of the division of 1 into parts that approaches but does not 

reach the zero becomes clear where we replace the wordings in Seife’s book with the language 

of physics as propounded by Democritus. There we have: 

“When you add up the distance that Achilles runs, you start with an atom, then break 

to get half part, break to get one-quarter parts, …, and so on, with the terms getting 

smaller and smaller, getting closer and closer to zero; each part is like a step along 

the journey where the destination is zero (p.43) 

This, in the Greek understanding, is the infinite void, that is, emptiness. The atoms cannot 

move without emptiness. In this emptiness, this infinite vacuum, zero and infinity are wrapped 

together. According to (Seife), this was a shocking discovery. Atomic theory was in a 

quandary. Aristotle came to the rescue with a convenient fix that has persisted as a deep 

problem in mathematical and philosophical logic to the present day. The atomists need infinite 

vacuum for the atoms to move in. There is no zero that represents emptiness in their mathematics. 

Under such a situation, no progress could be made. Aristotle’s solution is to ignore 

the possibility of infinite vacuum and turn the universe into discrete nutshells. According 

to Aristotle, there is no void but beautiful local spheres that surround the earth. In this way, 

space is replaced by atoms which Aristotle sees as the habitat of the earth. The earth is surrounded 

by local spheres (atoms) which are solidly bounded. 

Aristotle who distinguishes between actual and potential infinity does not need the infinite, 

nor the need to use it and so the potential infinity of dividing the line doesn’t exist 

either. So the infinity of space and line are banished forever more until we can no longer afford 

to ignore it if we are truly to understand the evolutionary nature of nature and human 

nature. The issue is this. When space is excluded from matter, the points at the endpoints of 

the line remain. What the Greeks banned in their mathematics and which forms the foundations 

of the philosophy of Western world is the infinite vacuum of space which is replaced by 

Aristotle with discrete atoms. Nonetheless, domineering as it was, Aristotle’s system was 

destroyed by the reality of void and infinity, that is, zero and infinity. The matter is put succinctly 

thus: 

“Afterall, there were only two logical possibilities for the nature of the void, and both 

implied that the infinity exists. First, there could be an infinite amount of void – thus 

infinity exists. Second, there could be a finite amount of void, but void is simply the 

lack of matter, there must be an infinite amount of matter to make sure that there is 

only a finite amount of void – thus infinity exists. In both cases, the existence of the 

void implies the existence of the infinite” (Seife, 47) 

Notwithstanding the existence of void (zero, emptiness, space) and its infinity or that of matter, 

the counting numbers are based on the outlook of Aristotle in which the atoms are standalone 

and stand-apart entities in relation to the so-called void, that is, the space between and 

among them. 

To show that these counting numbers are the same as Aristotelian atoms, let us examine 

the conditions which the Greeks, through Democritus give for the atoms. These are 

(Cooke): 

I 

II 

III 

All matter is composed of atoms, which are bits of matter too small to be seen. 

These atoms CANNOT be further split into smaller portions. 

There is a void, which is empty space between atoms. 

Atoms are completely solid 

26 



IV Atoms are homogeneous, with no internal structure. 

V Atoms are different in ...i) their sizes. ii) their shapes, and iii) their masses 

Of these conditions of being an atom, point II is that which relates the atoms to the ‘natural 

numbers’ and shows these numbers in principle to be the same as atoms. According to II, 

there is void as empty space between the atoms. Atoms need this space for their motion. But 

to the atom space does not exist – that is, space is immaterial and counts for nothing. The 

atom moves in space but does not include space. But as soon as it moves, suddenly space has 

to be present even if it is regarded as an absence. It is like the point of Euclid which we shall 

have time to explore later in this work. The Euclidean point can’t exist. If it is zero dimensional, 

this zero is emptiness in Greek mathematics and so doesn’t exist. But as soon as Euclid 

gets to the line, the point that he sends to the limbo suddenly re-appears like a magician pulling 

a coin from nowhere off his hat. As soon as the atom moves, the space that to it does not 

exist suddenly re-appears. 

Now let’s get more concrete with all this. The so-called natural numbers – only ‘socalled’ 

because to be natural is really to be a flow – are in their discrete structure as we got 

them from the Ancients, atoms. These ‘natural numbers’ 0,1,2,…have spaces between them. 

For 0 to reach 1 it has to move from point to point. And where this is done, there is always 

space between one point and the one before and after. And since 1 cannot reach 0 on the left 

nor 2, this means these numbers have nothing to do with one another. They are like monads 

with no window to the outside world. All this prepares us for the journey of the atom to the 

strings. 

The Greeks ban zero from their mathematics, therefore the zero is also banned from 

the atoms. The journey of the atom to the strings is therefore the journey to the zero which it 

cannot reach. If 1 is an atom and it is a line, the string is therefore the smallest of the smallest 

line ever. From its quantum foundations, originally, the string is a point, indeed the 

smallest part of the atom, that is a subparticle where atoms are broken into smithereens and 

the smithereens are broken again and again. It is called the Planck’s mass. This mass is seen 

as a string in string theory, that is, as the smallest length of the line closest to the zero 

without reaching it. In this case it is called Planck length. 

In what follows we shall take a mathematical excursion in the atom and from there we 

shall get into the physics of it through exploration. We begin our journey to the atom with 

the ‘natural numbers’ of classical and modern mathematics. In this case, there are two approaches. 

One can begin to break 1 into its fractional parts until it is no longer possible to continue 

because it is getting inside infinity. Physics fears infinity. It will rather choose to stop at 

n which is a willful termination of the journey of the mind – no more and particularly no 

less! In this case it is material physicality that stops the mind from exploring. Physics would 

argue that continuing the journey on the line in the direction of zero cannot produce the least 

indivisible part because the splitting can continue without end. But the same argument can 

be shown to defeat itself because the place where the journey is willfully stopped cannot 

claim to be the most indivisible part either. And since what lies ahead in infinity is certainly 

more than what is contained by n as the endpoint, it is certain that what is known about a 

thing in isolation cannot be the truth even if it produces results. This is the zero and infinity 

challenge. This step-wise way of relating to the world results from the construction of numbers 

which is based on potential infinity. But the challenge is actual infinity in which all is 

seen at once by the mind. This is the idea that inspired the creation of sets and the launching 

of set theory by Georg Cantor. The problem however, as we pointed out, is that it is not possible 

to see all at once if each is alone as a discrete point in space, as applies to the numbers 

or members of a set. 

The Greeks were quick in banning zero and infinity from the foundations of their physics, 



firstly because of its recalcitrance in producing the least indivisible part and secondly because 

of its mystery. Instead the line between 0 and 1 is used as the road to the atom. The line 

can be divided into two and this can again be divided into two to become one-quarter. The 

half of ¼ is 1/8 and so the division of the line goes in the direction of the zero. A circle can 

be drawn round the line of (0,1) with a centre which is where proton and neutron reside. The 

electrons are circling round them. By breaking proton, the quarks emerge which are fractional 

parts of 1/2, ¼ and so on. Each point which defines a particle is smaller in size than the 

one before it. Very close to zero the point disappears. This is the level of quarks. Much closer 

to zero the Planck particle is reached which is called the Planck length, that is, a particle 

at which matter is no longer divisible. The point has practically vanished at this stage. But 

theoretically, there is still a point! This point, the closest to zero in physics, is visible only to 

the eyes of imagination. This point is a string. How this all looks mathematically is presented 

below. 

The Discrete Numerical Makings of an Atom 

String is the next-to-zero distance on the line and a zero-sized point (marked with an arrow) 

on a number line. It is a very small distance and a very short (invisible) point. This string is 

correspondingly derived as a discrete infinitesimal unit from a contiguum of discrete points 

aligned with one another and not a continuous flow line. 

How do we get to this mathematical picture of the atom? The answer to this question is 

28 



to be found in the definitions of the so-called ‘natural numbers’ of classical and modern mathematics. 

What these atoms have in common is that they are as discrete as the monad and 

the counting numbers of classical and modern mathematics. Quantum mechanically, what 

this means is contained in the diagrams below. 

In the above diagram we have 1 as a thing with one atom. This 1, classically, is also itself an 

atom. And this atom is matter-material. We give some examples below: 

Other elements are made by adding more protons. Lithium has 3 protons, Beryllium 4 protons, 

Boron 5 protons, Carbon 6 protons and so on. In each case for an uncharged atom, the 

number of electrons will equal the number of protons. The number of neutrons can vary giving 

different isotopes. 

With 

E n = A, B, C, D, E, F, G,… 

we have, 



Atoms and Excluded Space 

In the world of the large, the tree will be seen as standing alone, a person as alone, a machine 

as standing alone and the chair as standing alone such that everything is cut away from the 

receptive pool which is space. These things, according to physics, are made of atoms and so 

internally and externally, both in the micro-world of quantum mechanics and the macroworld 

of Newtonian mechanics, they are atoms. They are spread all over space. 

From the above space-excluding entities follows the generalization below. We call it Atom 

Equation. 

Atom Equation 

which is based on the space-environment–excluding hierarchies of greater/less than relations. 

The hierarchies are: 

Subparticles→particles(protons,neutrons,electrons)→atoms→molecules 

→organelles→cells→tissues→organs→systems→organism→species 

→population→community→ecosystem→biosphere. 

which, being matter-material, are all metals and machines. And so the whole world in the 

equation a la atom is a machine. Life too! 

The journey from bulk matter to quarks, including the nucleus which is composed of proton 

and neutron with electron circling it is presented below: 

30 



Diagram used with the permission from Etacude.com 

In the diagram, the three quarks which make up the proton which is positive are two up 

quarks (u) and one down quark (d) are shown. Neutron is neutral and is made of also three 

quarks which are two down quarks (d) and one up quark (u). Electrons are one class of leptons. 

These are electron (e-) and positron (e+) both of which annihilate each other when they 

meet to produce radiation. Actually the word ‘annihilation’ is not correct at all except that it 

originated from the language of the physics of Newton where two bodies don’t meet but 

‘collide’. The electron and positron could be said to diffuse into gamma radiation when they 

meet. The neutrinos are the neutrino electrons, neutrino muon and neutrino tau respectively. 

Neutron is proton plus electron plus antineutrino. 

These parts are mathematically approaching zero in their divisions as in the Zeno paradox 

whereby according to Leucippus, you will arrive at smaller particles (parts of whole 

counting numbers) that cannot further be subdivided. These parts are the subparticles of a- 

toms that lead to the strings. And because Greeks have no place for zero – as in the creative 

potential zero that contains zeros and infinities in fluid logic numbers - in their mathematics, 

they stop short of reaching inside the zero to begin with the journey of how everything 

within such a space-including place. 

Origins of Strings 

Most writers on string theory rightly trace the origins of string theory to the problem posed 

by the hadron. Historically, the journey to the strings of string theory began by trying to understand 

what protons are made of? What was found after experimentation was unexpected. 

The new products of collisions in particle accelerators that were discovered were initially 

called resonances and later called hadrons. These hadrons quickly became many. Hadrons 

are either baryons or mesons. A baryon contains three quarks while a meson contains a 



quark and an anti-quark. In that case, a proton is a baryon, that is a type of hadron, made of 

three quarks. These are two up quarks and one down quark (uud). The example of the meson 

is a pion which is made of an up quark and a down antiquark. 

The definitive presupposition or ‘prophecy’ that is guiding the investigations that single 

out these hadrons is that things are made of atoms, which are point-like. This prophecy 

continued to be self-fulfilling until the quarks emerged. Before then, based on the same outlook, 

particles could be isolated from one another even if they are, based on the foundations 

that produced them, isolated from space to make them conform with the discrete numbers of 

classical and modern mathematics even down to the fractions. Trouble began when it was 

discovered that quarks cannot be isolated from one another or the hadron that includes them. 

Since to launch a new foundation in which point-likeness does not hold would bring the 

whole of physics tumbling down, the only solution is to refine the outlook. The requisite refinement 

was provided by Richard Feynman (in Why Hadron Physics DRAFT 2000, bj). 

A vizualisation based on Feinman’s refinement requires that the reference frame is removed 

from the laboratory, in which electrons? collide with energetic protons moving in opposite 

direction with the speed of light. This reference frame requires proton to be viewed as 

a beam of point-like constituents. These constituents are called partons. The electrons therefore 

collide with partons which are now viewed as quarks. 

As the field enters 1970, questions that could not be answered surfaced. One of them 

puts the picture of quark into question. The other asks to know why during violent collisions, 

quarks could not be knocked completely free. This is called confinement in nuclear physics. 

Confinement is the phenomenon in physics that ‘colour-charged’ particles such as quarks 

cannot be isolated. Confinement states simply, “you can never pull hard enough to liberate a 

quark from a proton”. Quarks are confined by strong interaction to form pairs and triplets 

whose net colour (nothing to do with colours but just a way of giving names to quarks) is 

neutral. We shall have more to say on this phenomenon later. 

The theoretical response to this is to conclude that quarks are bound together by elementary 

strings with constant force that is independent of the string as presented below in 

which q stands for quark and bar-q stands for anti-quark. Quark and anti-quark therefore 

constitute geometrically, the ends of the line – Planck length – that is the string. 

This idea was extensively developed but it couldn’t explain the phenomena from 

which it arose. For a while, the sun was allowed to set on it. When it resurfaced, it was not 

applied to the force between quarks but was directed to the synthesis of quantum mechanics 

and the gravity of general relativity with other forces in nature. It is here that string theory 

finds itself up to this day. 

In all this, what string theory initially sets out to do is to understand the properties of 

32 



protons and neutrons that constitute the nucleus of the atom with the electrons circling a- 

round them. It did not succeed in this but then goes its own way to show that with it – string 

of string theory otherwise called superstring – the four forces of nature, the electromagnetic, 

strong and weak forces together with gravity of general relativity can be unified which, if it 

works, could then be called the theory of everything. However, quantum chromodynamics 

(QCD) which, like string theory, studies the structure of strong force also presents itself as a 

contender for this turf. Quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong force, is 

closely based on quantum electrodynamics (QED), which describes the interactions of electric 

charge and photons. QCD and QED are examples of a particular class of quantum field 

theories called gauge theories. This is depicted diagrammatically below. 

Source: Christina Markert – Physics Workshop AT Austin November 11 2006 

(The ‘Little Big Bang in the Laboratory’ – Accelerator Physics) 

This diagram shows the analogies and differences between QED and QCD respectively. According 

to the quantum theory, strong force holds the nucleus of atom together. And an attempt 

to explain what binds the quark is also an investigation into the nature of strong force. 

And since force is a boson (force particle) other than fermion which is an elementary particle, 

this would then mean that the force that binds quarks is also a boson. That’s why string 

theory began as bosonic strings. 

To understand what is going on here, it is crucial to realize that the very idea that there 

can be such ‘things’ as fundamental forces, and that there are particles, bosons, that can be 

responsible for these forces, which operate on elementary particles called fermions, arises 

from the initial assumption of discontinuity of matter from space that is embedded in atomistic 

physics and number theory. Correspondingly, in conventional depictions of electromagnetism, 

a magnet exerts a force on another magnet because each one is a local source of 

an electromagnetic field and this force diminishes with distance. Transfigurally, however, 

there is an agency both inside and outside the magnet that unifies it not only with itself but 

with everything and everywhere in the world. This is because the transfigural outlook, even 

though it is built on flow-forms and their folds, would see the local magnet not as isolated 

object but as an inclusion of the non-local receptive space throughout the cosmos as a mag- 



net in which things flow into one another without north being separated from the south but 

with a common focal point or fulcrum that balances their odds. This would mean that there is 

south in every north and north in every south and that each fold which is present but intrinsically 

fluid depending on the complexity of the foldings has a common centre. Even then, as 

we shall see when we get to the superchannel, there is more to this than meets the eye, because 

we are not dealing transfigurally with elementary particles and force particles. Instead 

we are recognising the dynamic natural communion of both through a shared central focus in 

the flow-fold-forms that are not discrete points but folds and in which a point is a line 

(linepoint) and a line is a point (pointline) that breathes in space, without contradiction. 

What are conventionally called ‘forces’ therefore boil down transfigurally to coherences 

or inductive influences in the dynamic configuration of receptive space as it folds in and 

out of things that flow in and out of it with hills and lowlands, waterfalls, bubbles and other 

features of the sea and landscape and air. In the zeroidal flow there is no arbitrariness as to 

how alpha-omega curves with the zeroids as their springs flow. In other words, motion does 

not require the imposition of externally localized force as in the classical setting of physics 

but is inherent in the nature and condition of everything dynamically including and included 

in everywhere. 

What is crucial to understanding what is going on as we shall see when we get to the 

superchannel which is therefore a line of points that flow, that is flowpoint, as the inner infinities 

of the zeroids. We only say this in passing to prepare for the journey ahead. 

Meanwhile, still on the fundamental forces of physics. These are explained in (Sunil 

Mukhi: The Theory of Strings: A Detailed Introduction) below: 

Like electromagnetism [whose elementary particle is photon], every other fundamental 

interaction must have its own mediating particle. Precisely three other kinds of funda 

mental interactions are known. One of these is the familiar force of gravitation, while 

the other two are nuclear forces that were only discovered in this century: the "strong 

nuclear" and the "weak nuclear" force. The former is, in particular, responsible for the 

binding of protons and neutrons to make up the nucleus of an atom, while the latter is 

a totally distinct force and gives rise to phenomena such as radioactive decay. The 

weak force is the only one which violates left-right symmetry or "parity". Gravitation, 

like electromagnetism, is a long-range force, which is why these two have been known 

for a long time. The two nuclear forces are short-ranged, and are therefore not com 

monly observed at everyday distance scales. So, we may ask what is the elementary 

particle associated to each of these interactions. To gravitation, we associate the 

"graviton", a particle that has not been directly observed but is strongly believed to 

exist. To the strong nuclear force we associate a set of particles called "gluons" becau 

se of their glue-like binding properties, and to the weak nuclear force we associate 

another set of particles called "W and Z bosons". There is compelling evidence for the 

existence of gluons, while W and Z bosons produced at accelerators have been tracked 

directly. This, then is a summary of all fundamental forces and force-carriers known 

or believed to exist as of today. 

To summarize: gravitation, which is perceived as a long-range force is mediated through 

particles called gravitons. Electromagnetism is also long-range, with photon as the mediating 

particle. Weak nuclear force is short-range, its mediating particles being W+, W- and Z bosons. 

Strong Nuclear Force is short-range, its mediating particles being Gluons. These forces 

also have spins, that is, gyrations. 

In his new book, The Elegant Universe, which is a rich source on string theory, Brian 

Greene describes what could be the inspiration of the very idea of string. Strings are about 

34 


esonant patterns. These patterns, based on what Greene says, draw their inspiration from the 

violin whose body has resonant frequencies. What should not be forgotten and which Greene 

hopefully didn’t forget is that the way that these patterns are depicted in relation to string 

theory is not natural. This is because they are depicted as being produced by the division of 

the violin string as a line isolated from yet somehow in communion with the spaceincorporating 

resonance chamber of the violin body. That is, the violin frets are depicted as 

discontinuities imposing discrete divisions of the string as a line to produce different sounds 

through vibrations in the violin body. In other words, the lengths of violin string that vibrate 

between frets are not depicted as continuous flow-forms but as discretized segments between 

infinitesimal divisions of the line. The frets are like numerical points imposed on the line, 

which disrupt its natural flow-form to yield isolated musical notes incapable of incorporating 

what comes both before and after them. This foundation, which is the basis also of the unnaturally 

strident brightness of digital music and digitized recording, is artificial. Moreover, it 

doesn’t really work because the violin strings are space-including channels – not spaceexcluding 

lines – that are pinched into distinct but not discrete intervals by the violinist’s fingers, 

as inclusions of the common space in which both violin string and body are in dynamic 

natural communion. In other words, resonance is characteristic of channels as inclusions of 

space, not matter vibrating in isolation from the space around itself, which then somehow 

resonates in sympathy with it. 

The reciprocal problem of exclusion of space from material body is evident in the supposed 

gravitation waves of general relativity. Again the theory is based on natural phenomena, 

but here it is the excluded body as a discrete point mass, not a string, that curves - by 

warping - the space around itself. Here space is portrayed as a passive actor whose curvature 

is determined by the weight of the object that is in it, yet not included by it. Einstein does not 

mince words on the exclusion of space from what is inside it. One of his famous quotes is 

‘the environment is everything that isn’t me’, which implies that the environment, whose seat 

is space, is everything that is not the person, nor the thing that moves in it. 

The central ideas of general relativity have been neatly summarized by the American 

physicist John Archibald Wheeler. In a now famous phrase Wheeler said: 

This is depicted below as 


'Matter tells space how to curve. 

Space tells matter how to move.' 

in which space is curved by matter in the middle. 



The dislocation of matter and space into mutually opposing relationship by objective definition 

is obvious in this phrasing. One tells the other to curve while the other tells the one to 

move. Distance between the two is maintained because it is based on ordering the other what 

to do. This split contrasts with the mutual inclusion of space with time in space-time, and 

energy with matter in energy-matter. It arises because of the fundamental discontinuity 

implicit in a geometry and associated number theory that although non-Euclidean retains the 

dimensionless point mass as a discrete entity on a depthless curved surface. 

The obvious resolution of this split, and its reciprocal paradoxical expression in the 

independent vibrating string of energy-matter and weighty warping of space-time, can be 

found in the mutual inclusion of matter and space. This gives rise to an endless energy flow 

of electromagnetically reconfiguring space or ‘place-time’ with distinct but not discrete harmonic 

intervals that manifest as distinguishable but not fully definable forms, that is as locally 

distinct ‘somewheres’ that dynamically include and are included in everywhere. This is 

the resolution offered by the inclusional transfigurality of the superchannel, which truly does 

bring energetically responsive electromagnetic information and receptive space into the continuity 

of a dynamic natural communion, not set them in contiguous opposition. 

Correspondingly, in a physics of the superchannel of deeply folding – not just superficially 

curved – space, the alpha and omega spiral configurations that flow into and out from 

focal zeroids reciprocally transform both matter and space as dynamic inclusions of their 

common environmental context of energy flow or ‘place-time’. In other words, depending 

on the folding of space in which somewhere is locally included, its dynamic form changes 

accordingly. There is no ordering one-another about in this because each is finding expression 

through the other in a natural communion. They are in communion because what is defined 

independently as ‘matter’ in traditional physics is included in the flowing ‘form’ of folding 

space physics. Matter is exclusively material but form is all-enveloping. Matter divides. 

Form unifies. Matter is discrete. Form is a flow that folds. Matter is made of atoms or fields 

or waves which are intrinsically atoms. Form is made of folds that are neither field nor particle 

but incorporate both as energy flow. Matter is not space. Form is the energetic folding 

of space that flows. 

And so in every space-embodying, local fluid identity ‘A’, there is an identity ‘–A’ 

before and another identity, ‘+A’ beyond it such that this very ‘A’ is a dynamic inclusion of 

itself and its environment, which together comprise its spatial neighbourhood and local-nonlocal, 

complex inner-outer self identity. ‘Self’ includes ‘other’ as its neighbourhood and so 

both uniquely situated locally and pooled spatially together with all, everywhere. 

By contrast, in the curve-or-move space-matter relation of General relativity, one excludes 

the other. In fact one is the anti-other. All the same, even if space is excluded, gravitational 

waves are rooted in what could be natural if space, the habitat, was not excluded from 

what is inside it, the inhabitant. This is not the case with strings and vibrations. 

What we intend to point out here is that an outlook whose foundations are rooted in 

what is artificial with its inherent inadequacy lacks the capacity to encompass the essence of 

naturally flowing form. As a leap of imagination that opens the floodgate for mathematical 

innovation, string theory is superb, notwithstanding that the mathematics that produces it has 

only a formal, abstract reality. This takes us back to mathematical reality again. 

Reality, as we say, is not possible without existence. For a thing to be real, it has to 

exist. In the limited regions in which physics has been operating in the Standard Model using 

its quantum foundations, it is possible to fix things to agree with what one would like to read 

into them. The problem with string is that one has now completely left the region that is physically 

accessible. One is no longer dealing with physical reality at a level that is close to the 

zero. One is dealing with dimensions that are extra-physical in which the human imagination 

is completely in charge. The mathematics whose reality is based on ‘natural numbers’ of 

36 



classical mathematics and the set theories which extend their provinces but didn’t go as far 

as speaking the language of being, nature and the world, cannot be effective in string theory 

because it cannot prove its existence and so has no basis for its reality. In other words, even 

if string exists, it is not possible to show its existence. And if it does, it can only be shown to 

exist by a shift in paradigm in which mathematics and physics do not wilfully, as always magically 

make a line out of a point but shows the point to be the line without contradiction. 

Where this happens, what we get will not be the string but a line that is a channel whose dynamic 

form is the superchannel. 

We are still not done with strings. We still want to explore further to see whether it is 

possible to rescue the idea from the discrete artificiality of the mathematics that produces it. 

Simplisticity – The Mathematical Derivation 

of Strings and Their Complications 

Objectivist logic depends for its supposed power on a method that attempts to simplify nature 

by means of reduction, that is, by willfully ignoring those aspects that it can’t encompass 

in its own definitions – the true meaning of zero, infinity and continuity that resides in 

the receptive omnipresence of space. The result is that such logic arbitrarily imposes discrete 

limits – for which there is no evidence or good reason for belief in – upon natural fluid flow. 

This imposition renders the spatial continuum of nature discontinuous and so 

easier to explain, manipulate, quantify and communicate about in literal and objective terms. 

But complications, paradoxes and damagingly erroneous concepts arise from this simplisticity 

as 'artifacts of definition', i.e.due to the exclusion of receptive spatial context from purely 

material objects. Truth is sacrificed for the sake of the seeming convenience and authoritative 

power given by the logic of mutual exclusion and opposition. 

By contrast, what we call inclusional simplicity arises from understanding and relating 

dynamically to the continual evolutionary transformation of natural fluid flow. Natural 

boundaries are understood as dynamic relational, locally manifest, responsive informational 

(electromagnetic) interfacings in an omnipresent, non-local continuum of receptive space 

everywhere. These natural boundaries provide a basis for recognising dynamic distinctions, 

not imposing discrete definitions, amongst local configurations of energy flow (i.e. 'flowforms'). 

Messiness and irregularity arise from turbulence and variable viscosity in an indeterminate, 

all-inclusive, dynamic relational process, corresponding with a simple logic of mutual 

inclusion, not as complications from prescriptive definition arising from a simplistic logic 

of mutual exclusion of matter and space 

So, in the spirit of honest scientists, seeking to observe and interpret nature impartially, 

i.e. without prejudice or willful ignorance of evidence, and so ready to sacrifice convenience 

for the sake of truth, we need to recognize and transform those concepts that have arisen as 

artifacts of simplistic definition. We consider that string theory is an example of such an artefact, 

but that it can be transformed into an inclusionally simple and naturally representative 

identity, the superchannel, through transfigural mathematics. 

How long is a piece of string? No matter how seemingly continuous a length might 

appear to be, whether a thread or the drawing of a line by the pencil, and whether it is openended 

or joined up end-to-end in a closed loop, as a length it is finite. This means it excludes 

the zero and infinity of space and so is discontinuous, with a beginning point and an end 

point, even where these coincide in a loop. This is as true of the Planck lengths of string theory 

as it is of a length of string that serves as a bootlace. Nonetheless, the strings of string 

theory pose the whole of physics a fundamental question. This question originates from the 

nature of quarks. Quarks do not come alone. They cannot be separated from one another. As 



a baryon, they are three together and as meson they are two together both of which constitute 

the hadron. There is something disturbing about all this as far as the space-excluding foundations 

of the whole of physics is concerned. 

At the first encounter, general relativity does not appear to exclude space but as soon 

as it is confronted with the question of what it means for a form to flow, it lacks the answer 

because things that move in general relativity remain as detached from space as in Newtonian 

and quantum mechanics. The apple may fall into the receptive curvature of space rather 

than be pulled down directly by a heavier weight as given by Newton but it is still as materially 

detached from its spatial context as a billiard ball rolling around a rubber sheet. 

Quarks do not come alone. They cannot be separated from what includes them. So if 

quarks don’t come alone what happens when an attempt is made to separate them? They pull 

away but still remain together. Imagine two things immersed in a pool of water. If you pull 

them apart, they still remain pooled together by water, as if by glue. Now imagine space serving 

the same role as water. In a way quarks are bringing the discrete atomic outlook into 

question, suggesting that things are not as they appear superficially and that separateness is 

an illusion because the deeper our enquiry reaches, the more we are confronted with the reality 

of forms flowing into one another with space included. One wonders how people like 

Heraclitus and Wordsworth could reach this understanding of the universe, which transcends 

the foundations of classical and modern mathematics and the paradigms of physics without 

any of the costly paraphernalia of modern laboratory science? Actually, in a way they were 

at an advantage because without that paraphernalia and its accompanying mindset they were 

free to enquire simply, as a child might. They could ask themselves questions like ‘what 

would the universe look like if it was purely made of space’ and ‘what would it look like if it 

was pure matter, containing no space’? Between the answers of formless and a dimensionless 

point would come the realization that matter and space can’t be isolated from one a- 

nother, but are instead combined in a cosmic dance of energy flow – dynamically transfiguring 

space! 

To embrace this fundamental truth, however, would mean to abandon the classical outlook, 

remodel the relativity outlook and begin all over again the quantum journey in which 

the discreteness of quantum is replaced by a distinct but not fully definable dynamic form 

that harmonizes within instead of antagonizing its natural, omnipresent source. This is what 

an inclusional and transfigural outlook both requires and offers. If this outlook is brought to 

bear on the quantum world, quarks would no longer be points, which indeed they are not, but 

dynamical forms that by their very nature include some positively responsive aspect within 

some negatively receptive aspect. Here positive and negative are not the antagonistic opposites 

of collision and exclusion, but the reciprocal complementarities of the communion and 

natural inclusion of one in the other. 

This brings us to Heraclitus again. Heraclitus' main teaching concerned the "unity of 

opposites". Unity of opposites entails one thing being made of two sides which contain one 

another in different levels. A day is composed of daytime and night-time in which one is 

contained in the other through the day without exhausting it. Another example is the present, 

which dynamically includes both past and future. We will return to this later when we explore 

the fluid logic numbers of Transfigural Mathematics (TfM) and one of their zero spirals 

called the zeroplines. 

Now to our further exploration of strings:- 

A string, being a discrete length, is of the form: 

38 



In the diagram, point p is the Planck’s mass whose string length is classical counting number 

10 -33 cm. There are two types of strings. These are open string and closed string. These 

string constitute the fundamental, definitive entities of string theory. 

The tenets of string theory are: 

- All “particles” – matter and force-carriers (e.g. electron, quark, and photon) - are 

actually tiny vibrating strings. Like violin notes. 

- String theory naturally lives in 11 dimensions of space-time (!!), which means they 

require all 11 dimensions so that the string has required number of modes of vibra 

tions to produce the matter and messenger particles and yet cancel out all the un 

wanted infinities as well as negative probabilities of existence 

(Sharad Navare - The Eleven Dimensions of Reality) 

Strings and Numbers 

For the tenets of the strings of string theory to hold, zero, infinity and continuity must be 

banned. Perhaps, you ask how can the three of the pillars of mathematics be banned for the 

tenets of a physical theory to apply? This bafflement is the reason we need to explore the 

nature and condition of zero, infinity and continuity as a gateway to the world of strings. 

Zero, infinity and continuity are the fundamental problems of physics. Without solving the 

problems posed by them, the Theory of Nothing which they contain is waiting to show in the 

end that the Theory of Everything if found, is still the beginning of a long journey that may 

alas not lead to the Theory of Nothing that solves all. 

Now we begin with zero. We begin with the question, “What are things made of?” Behind 

this question is another question, “What is the origin of things?” Quantum mechanics 

attempts to answer the first question, whilst relativity and cosmology are expected to answer 

the second question. Quantum mechanics and relativity and the whole of physics for that 

matter deal with infinities that are potential, that is numbers that grow stepwise and which 

relate to one another as greater/less than. What this means is that while the infinities of 

whole counting numbers spread out to the cosmos, the infinities of the fragments called fractions 

of such numbers spread inward. The former is for relativity and cosmology while the 

latter is for the entities of quantum mechanics. Both are what might be called ‘outer infini- 



ties’ because they belong to the world of discrete numbers called integers. What about ‘inner 

infinities’? Inner infinities are found inside the zero which is the taboo zone of physics. 

And it this very zero – the creative potential zero of transfigural mathematics – and not 

the physical zero nor minus zero of temperature but the zero from which everywhere appears 

from and includes nowhere, the very zero which the Greeks fear and call the void and to 

which the particles of physics, including strings, strive to reach but recoil from and stop 

short of, yes that very zero which includes the integers of the external infinities and more 

beyond them - which is the origin. We shall come back to this creative potential zero when 

we get to the fluid logic numbers of Transfigural Mathematics. 

What we set out to show here is how without the challenges posed by zero, infinity and 

continuity, it is not possible for physics to get a Theory of Everything that could lead to the 

Theory of Nothing that is Everywhere. 

With zero, we open the floodgate of challenges to which conventional physics has no 

answer. To the question, what are things made of, conventional physics, through Democritus, 

says things are made of atoms. If things are made of atoms which are wholes in conventional 

thought, what is the whole made of? The conventional answer says the whole is made 

of its parts. And what are the parts made of? The parts are made of parts. Conventional physics 

has pursued this question with the same answer from atom to quarks. But with infinity 

begging it to continue the enquiry, physics reaches quarks and stops short because of the 

limitation placed on it by the definitive paradigm set in its concrete foundations. This process 

of question and answer is like starting with 1 and asking what 1 is made of. It is made of 

its fractional parts. What are the fractional parts made of? The fractional parts are made of 

other fractional parts that lead to the infinitesimals. And what are infinitesimals made of? 

They are made of well, Planck’s length we would say. If infinitesimals are quarks, then 

Planck’s length is the string. 

Atoms are discrete. Like the monad or infinitesimal of calculus, they have no windows 

to the world. Space is excluded from them. They can therefore be arranged in the form of 

1,2,3,…to replicate the counting numbers of conventional mathematics which are also discrete. 

The parts of the atom, like the atom itself, are discrete numbers. For example, proton is 

1, which is its mass, the quality of matter that composes it. 

In all this, physics is avoiding the zero but it is being challenged by the infinite fragmentation 

of the point. Conventional physics can’t answer the questions of zero, infinity and 

continuity, which it needs to address the problems in its foundations because it bans them. 

And so it is that conventional physics is the source of its own problem – like a cat chasing its 

tail, trying to impose closure on the gap that isolates one point from another. 

Physics is really in a fix. The magnitude of the fix is put into words by (William C. 

Gough, The Mysterious Zero/Infinity (in Foundation for Mind-Being Research Editorial, 

2002)): 

Zero is behind all of the big puzzles in physics. In thermodynamics a zero became an 

uncrossable barrier: the coldest temperature possible. In Einstein's theory of general 

relativity, a zero became a black hole, a monstrous star that swallows entire suns and 

can lead us into new worlds. The infinite density of the black hole represents a division 

by zero. The big bang creation from the void is a division by zero. In quantum mechan 

ics, the infinite energy of the vacuum is a division by zero and is responsible for a bi 

zarre source of energy -- a phantom force exerted by nothing at all. Yet dividing by 

zero destroys the fabric of mathematics and the framework of logic -- and threatens to 

undermine the very basis of science. 

40 



We shall show here that zero has been misunderstood completely by mathematics because it 

is not reachable from the space-excluding foundations of classical or modern mathematics. 

Correspondingly, the invention of strings, which cannot attain the zero and whose infinity 

terminates with what are called ‘branes’ (meaning ‘end membranes’) originates from the 

search for a theory of everything, which involves the unification of the four fundamental 

forces of gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong. The problem here is that whereas the 

forces of quantum mechanics are point-like, that of gravity in general relativity is wavelike 

even if what moves inside is point-like. To unify the forces into ‘quantum gravity’ requires a 

complete change in the language of physics. What does this language demand? It is either 

general relativity reduced to quantum mechanics or quantum mechanics reduced to general 

relativity. But either way, since gravity operates in space, something fundamental must happen 

to the point-like outlook. 

Up to the quarks, everything in the nucleus of the atom comprises points interconnected 

by the strong force. But gravity is not point-like, so what should be done, to get quantum 

gravity which unifies electromagnetism, weak and strong forces with gravitation? This 

problem, as it now turns out, gives strings as the solution. A string fits the picture because it 

can generate waves through vibrations. And if the string fits the picture that is necessary to 

make gravity, whose bosonic particle is not graviton, and the quark is no longer a point but is 

now defined by the vibrations of the string that compose it, the ground is prepared for the 

final unification. In all this, it is easy to see the dilemma of physics. All was well with the 

point-like outlook until the need for the unification of the forces arises as a precondition for 

the validity of the theory of everything of physics. What all this means, according to Michael 

Green, (Superstrings, Scientific American, Sept 86) is that quantum gravity demands a radically 

new formulation of the laws of physics at the smallest distance scales; in such a formulation 

the idea that space and time are continuous sets of points would have to be abandoned. 

Even then, the problem is deeper than that. The reason for this is that at the heart of 

the problem is again the zero. Gough puts the matter this way: 

“The biggest challenge to today’s physicists is how to reconcile general relativity and 

quantum mechanics. However, these two pillars of modern science were bound to be 

incompatible. "The universe of general relativity is a smooth rubber sheet. It is con 

tinuous and flowing, never sharp, never pointy. Quantum mechanics, on the other 

hand, describes a jerky and discontinuous universe. What the two theories have in 

common -- and what they clash over -- is zero." "The infinite zero of a black hole -- 

mass crammed into zero space, curving space infinitely -- punches a hole in the 

smooth rubber sheet. The equations of general relativity cannot deal with the sharp 

ness of zero. In a black hole, space and time are meaningless." 

But the space of general relativity is not continuous because it is confined to a curved surface 

that has no depth and so is closed in on itself and finite, which means that it cannot be 

included in what it contains. The occupants of the space of general relativity are hence pointlike 

entities as in quantum mechanics, isolated by their context, not occupied by it. In summary, 

general relativity does not include space in what it contains and quantum mechanics 

excludes space that contains its entities. 

The real difficulty therefore lies in reconciling the extension aspect of the space of 

general relativity with the discrete moving points of quantum mechanics, whilst continuing 

to avoid the issue of zero and infinity. As recognised by Gough (2002): 

"Quantum mechanics has a similar problem, a problem related to the zero-point en 

ergy. The laws of quantum mechanics treat particles such as the electron as points; 


that is, they take up no space at all. The electron is a zero-dimensional object, and its 

very zerolike nature ensures that scientists don't even know the electron's mass or 

charge." But, how could physicists not know something that has been measured? The 

answer lies with zero. According to the rules of quantum mechanics, the zerodimensional 

electron has infinite mass and infinite charge. As with the zero-point 

energy of the quantum vacuum, "scientists learned to ignore the infinite mass and 

charge of the electron. They do this by not going all the way to zero distance from the 

electron when they calculate the electron's true mass and charge; they stop short of 

zero at an arbitrary distance. Once a scientist chooses a suitably close distance, all the 

calculations using the "true" mass and charge agree with one another." This is called 

renormalization.” 

But of course a point includes space, which makes it a dynamic, breathing point or local 

sphere of non-local influence! And so does a string include space, which makes it an inclusion 

of a channel comprising overlapping breathing points – in other words, the 

‘superchannel’. But this inclusion of space cannot be accounted for in any theory or combination 

of theories that trick themselves into banishing infinity by banishing zero. 

Now, let’s wade into nuclear physics to have a feel for how what is said above relates to 

models of atoms. 

A Model of Atom 

As we shall see in what follows, space is seen by the atom as its negation. In the binary outlook 

that produces the atom as an artefact of numerical definition, any negation is the other 

that must be subjugated. This negation is evident in the model of atomic structure shown below: 

Model A. 


Atom, Point and Space 

What the counting numbers of atoms have in common is that they exclude space. They are 

said to be alone. This raises a question. Is it possible for a point to be alone? Of course it is 

not. The point inhabits a place. The place is space. Even if you don’t write it down and you 

42 



figure it out in the head an atom cannot exist without space. In other words, the point is a 

dynamic inclusion of the space that both occupies and surrounds it. 

Classically, the point is isolated from space to stand alone. And of course it is not possible 

for the point or anything in the world to stand alone. Everything inhabits everywhere, 

which inhabits everything as a pool of all in which all are immersed. Nothing is alone in the 

world, not even nothing itself. This is because if you write zero, this zero is an inhabitant of 

space itself. The classical point which is made of the discrete atoms that are also points, is 

local because it excludes everything around including its habitat, space itself, which it denies. 

As 1, this 1 is alone. A stand-alone one does not recognize the existence of the other. 

Now let’s go to transfigural thought. In this thought, the point is returned to its habitat 

with the fundamental difference that it is no longer an isolated, homeless point, which is 

non-existent, but a point that includes its habitat, space, as the habitat includes what inhabits 

it. We have a point which includes the space, its habitat and space which includes what inhabits 

it. This space is the environment E. 

The point as 1 in this thought is not alone. It is a breathing-point which when it 

breathes in, incorporates space by inspiring, and as it breathes out lets go of space by expiring 

via its dynamic bodily boundary. This point expands and contracts by incorporating and 

letting go of the space that is everywhere, within and without it. This makes it a point and a 

line without any contradiction. A breathing-point is a living point that embodies anywhere 

and everywhere from what is within atomic flows to trees to the cosmos. A breathing-point 

is a flow-form. It is a fountain that is like a spring. It does not need any line for the planets, 

which are breathing-points inside the breathing-point, to be where they are. A breathingpoint 

universe expands and contracts and when it contracts, the planets, which also dynamically 

embody the breathing-points of human beings, flowers, trees and all, bring themselves 

and their spaces, along with them into the focal point that is a local sphere of the nonlocal 

space that includes every other breathing-point everywhere. 

A breathing-point includes itself and the space inhabited by its neighbours. This means 

it includes what comes before and after it as what comes before and after it also includes it. 

And what comes before and after it also includes the points, that is, the folds of zero spirals 

and their zero spirals of fluid logic numbers, that come before and after them. What results is 

that since every breathing-point draws everywhere into itself, to be in One point which is 

fluid logic number 1 is to be in All points which are all the fluid logic numbers. This means 

there is infinity which curls inside the One and there is infinity which extends in all. These 

are what transfigurally are called inner and outer infinities. There is also an infinity within 

every local identity, that is, every distinct relational place somewhere that dynamically includes 

and is included by everywhere. This is the ‘relative infinity’ of the local sphere of 

non-local influence or ‘zeroid’ (for zero-identity) that is always distinct as a natural flow 

form but never discrete, defined into absolute, independent singleness. 

Before we continue, we hasten to disabuse the mind of one of the gross misconceptions 

of conventional physics. Light as quanta is said to need no space and as waves it is said 

to spread out to some extent. As we have said, the truth rather than a fact that can be made to 

fit the data, is that light quanta fold space much quicker than the stone that is thrown. A 

thought folds space more than anything in the world because by closing the eyes in one place 

one can reach a distant place faraway in no time at all if only to show that the concept of distance 

is meaningless in a folding universe of flow-form, because any point in the river of 

space flows into other points at the same time as in the same river. 

It is one of the phenomena of the folding space of transfigural mathematics that what 

conventional physics gives as the weight of things is not constant in motion. This is because 

space is being incorporated within and released from flow-forms as they inspire and expire 

in dynamic relationship with their natural neighbourhood. This mutual inclusion changes not 



only the weight but also the size of a thing in motion. It is not different with light which as 

quanta is in transfigural outlook not a solid but flexible folds that are fast. Light can unfold 

very quickly to fold space to itself. In addition to compactness, a fold can also be flexible. 

Flexibility has to do with the degree of compactness of a fold. A compact fold takes longer 

to unfold than a knit fold. 

We go back to the point of classical mathematics and its number. The point is an atom. 

It was called the most indivisible part until it was discovered that this atom still contains 

other tiny particles. The thought of the atom containing other parts which are called particles 

originated from infinitesimals in classical mathematics. 1, which is big and discrete, can be 

broken into parts to become thousands of atoms which can be numbered as 1,2,3,..because 

they are small yet discrete. These parts can still be broken into fractional parts. In the language 

of physics, these parts, ½, 1/3, and others are definite further tiny parts which are 

stand-alone parts. These are called the quantum numbers. They represent the masses of parts 

of an atom which itself was originally regarded as the indivisible part of a thing until its parts 

were discovered. 

It is easier to get to the atom through the point and the number of classical mathematics 

which produces them than through a book of explanation in physics. The quantum 1 has 

all the characteristics of the counting number 1 of classical and modern mathematics. It 

stands for a particle that is a point that has a mass, therefore a point-mass. This 1 can be broken 

into its very smallest part until a stage is reached that it cannot continue. This is the stage 

at which the string comes in. Instead of a particle, a string is now introduced. A string has 

the shortest length or it is the least infinitesimal. This is the very stage in which the string 

replaces the particles as definite vibrations. 

The string has length. This length has a number. Like the infinitesimal of calculus, the 

string fears the zero. Its length tends towards the zero without reaching it, stopping as it were 

as a decimal with thirty-two zeros that ends with 1. The string asks the point-like particle to 

be seen as a vibrating string of the infinitesimal length. Alone it is one-dimensional. This is 

called the open string. Like an Euclidean line, it ends with points which are particles. The 

two ends can loop to become a circle. This is called closed string. 

So having said all this, how does a particle, the component of an atom, which could be 

a photon or quark, transform into a string? We get an answer from Alberto Güijosa: 

“The essential idea behind string theory is this: all of the different 'fundamental ' parti 

cles of the Standard Model are really just different manifestations of one basic object: 

a string. How can that be? Well, we would ordinarily picture an electron, for instance, 

as a point with no internal structure. A point cannot do anything but move. But, if 

string theory is correct, then under an extremely powerful 'microscope' we would real 

ize that the electron is not really a point, but a tiny loop of string. A string can do 

something aside from moving--- it can oscillate in different ways. If it oscillates a cer 

tain way, then from a distance, unable to tell it is really a string, we see an electron. 

But if it oscillates some other way, well, then we call it a photon, or a quark, or a ... 

you get the idea. So, if string theory is correct, the entire world is made of strings!” 

Yes, this is correct for a whole world of virtual reality made up of tiny bits and bytes that 

vibrate on their own, but cannot hold true for a natural world of dynamic relational holes in 

which all is flow! 

The string is fundamentally a point particle. This we shall explore in the next section. 

The string only helps to consolidate the discreteness of the point-mass at the quantum level 

with the addition of the condition that makes the line in Euclidean geometry. If open it has 

two endpoints which is what is required of Euclidean line. When it oscillates is loops back 

44 



on itself and as it oscillates again it breaks. In either event, it still retains its Euclidean property 

of discreteness. Open or closed, a string with its vibrations represents a definite particle 

which as a point is discrete in and cut off from space. This is why as in the quantum setting, 

strings are related by interconnection, as a point-to-point or particle-to-particle contiguous 

relation, which is not the same as the true continuity of natural communion in common 

space. 

Strings, Numbers and Line 

The attempt to unify the four ‘forces’ of physics leads to string theory. Every string is like 

every other string. The vibration of the string is being asked to be seen as waves. This corresponds 

with the demands of general relativity. Vibrations are not point-like but they represent 

the particles. That is, every particle has its own type of vibrations of the strings. This 

also meets the demands of what must apply in quantum mechanics to effect quantum gravity 

in which the four forces are unified. 

But there is apart from zero and infinity, the problem of continuity in string theory. 

The form of the problem is like this. A string is a line. The size of a typical string in string 

theory is the Planck length, that is about 10 -33 centimeters. It doesn’t matter how small, a 

string has length, therefore it is a line. As a line it has ends with points. It is the motion of the 

minutest point that produces the string. Since infinity has to be banned for the string of string 

theory to exist, it must have its endpoints. It is endpoints that tell us that a string is made of 

points after all. To avoid its being capable of further division, the endpoints are replaced by 

‘branes’. Originally the string is one dimension. The brane that ends it and inside which it 

curls is four-dimensional. This brane is said to be the world in which we live. The curled 

parts of the string are the higher dimensions. So our world is a huge particle made of strings. 

And what we call particle, say the string theorists, is the vibration of the string of string theory 

whose other name is superstring. We live in one of the landscapes at the end of strings. 

What this string of string theory does with branes is to ban continuity as it does zero and infinity. 

So while zero and infinity could be two parts of the coin, the coin itself which is in the 

middle, is continuity. The string theory bans them all. The Zeno paradox, which results from 

the nature and condition of ‘natural numbers’, which are in fact artificial counting numbers, 

resurfaces! 

Characteristics of Strings 

A string can split into two. When this happens, new ends which are quark and anti-quark appear. 

This is presented below: 



Quark-anti-Quark popping out of the vacuum. This process is called string breaking (Lund 

model of ‘hadronization’) Quarks and gluons are called partons. Baryons and Mesons are 

called Hadrons. Mesons are intermediate mass particles which are made up of a quarkantiquark 

pair. Three quark combinations are called baryons. Protons and neutrons are 

made each of three quarks. Mesons are bosons, while the baryons are fermions. Mesons 

which consist of particle and antiparticle are unsatable. 

A string begins with quark-antiquark endpoints. As it stretches it cuts into two to become 

two strings with quark-antiquark endpoints. This is open string. When the two ends join in a 

loop, what results is closed string. Even then all this is taking a leap. How does one get that 

far? 

We begin with a logic as the lens for peering into the composition of the string of 

string theory. It all began as an atom, which as a monad, has no window on the world and so 

does not know about the existence of space that inhabits it nor of the others whose presence 

it needs for its identity. Atom is composed of parts, the particles, which, as to be expected, 

are also discrete. These parts, like dividing the line into segments, are also composed of parts 

until the stage of the quarks is reached. As the quarks disappear completely, there is a landscape 

that looks empty. It is from this seemingly empty space that something begins to vibrate 

which shows that the landscape is not empty but that it is a 10-33 point that is a string. 

That is 0.0000……1 point that is a string. Since, as we are told, all was a discrete point up to 

the quark, a string should be made of a cloud of points that are too minute to be experimentally 

accessible. The nature of the vibration of this string determines the kind of particle that 

is detected in the collider. 

Now there is a problem. We did say that quarks cannot be isolated. But two quarks can be 

separated. The question is, what happens when two quarks are separated? 

When two quarks become separated, as happens in particle accelerator collisions, at 

some point it is more energetically favorable for a new quark/anti-quark pair to "pop" 

out of the vacuum, than to allow the quarks to separate further. As a result of this, 

when quarks are produced in particle accelerators, instead of seeing the individual 

quarks in detectors, scientists see "jets" of many color-neutral particles (mesons and 

baryons), clustered together. This process is called hadronization, fragmentation or 

string breaking, and is one of the least understood processes in particle physics. 

(Wikipedia) 

So, quarks cannot be separated afterall! Why is this? As we have said, the point-like outlook 

which is fundamental to things holding together in the whole of physics is crashing at the 

level of quarks and hadron. Things begin to look fluid in their innermost core with the fundamental 

difference that with quarks as endpoints and not reaching the zero they are not continuous 

and so cannot accommodate the phenomena of zero and infinity. So while they behave 

like cells that break and form new ones, the fragmentation of the strings returns physics 

again to the point-like outlook which the phenomena of the quarks are disputing to its very 

foundations. Yes, physics is indeed in a fix. At the heart of the fix of physics is the incompatibility 

of classical and modern mathematics with Nature and the incompleteness of the 

foundations of mathematics, classical, modern and even intuitionistic. 

Before now an attempt has been made to show how small the string of string theory 

really is. Brian Green in his book on String Theory entitled The Elegant Universe says the 

following about strings: 

46 



The strings of string theory are unimaginably small. And when we say "unimaginably," 

we mean it: Your average string, if it exists, is about 10 -33 centimeters long. That's a 

point followed by 32 zeros and then a 1. It's a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a 

billionth of a centimeter. (Physicists stick to metric.) Or think of it this way: if an atom 

were magnified to the size of the solar system, a string would be the size of a tree. Yup, 

real small. 

Peter Tyson gives another example on the size of strings: 

In this feature, we try to give you a vague sense—for that is all that's possible—of just 

how small a string is. Starting at an everyday scale, we travel by powers of 100 down 

into the shadowy world of strings. That is, we begin 10 meters away from an apple, 

then zoom 100 times closer to 10 centimeters away from its skin, then 100 times closer 

again to one millimeter from its skin, and so on, down no fewer than 15 additional 

powers of 100 until we reach the Planck length. Since the Planck length is roughly 17 

orders of magnitude smaller than what physicists can currently detect using their larg 

est particle accelerators (in fact, to see individual strings we would need an accelera 

tor the size of the Milky Way), we have taken a kind of visual poetic licence in imagin 

ing what the world looks like smaller than a quark. We hope you enjoy this journey 

into the infinitesimally itsy-bitsy 

A line is a line however short. And short or long, a line, in Euclidean geometry which non- 

Euclidean geometry leaves undisputed, is bounded by two points that constitute its endings. 

Therefore a string which is the same as Planck’s length is not continuous because it ends 

with points. A line that ends with points is the motion of a point. Such a line is made of discrete 

points. These points are atoms. But just in case we haven’t caught the feel of what has 

been going on before now, we ask again, what are atoms made of and does the string of 

string theory come into all this? In other words, where does it lead when an atom is broken 

into smaller pieces which are forms of higher energy levels? According to Williams and 

Williams: 

Atoms and molecules are what we commonly think of as the building blocks of our uni 

verse. Below that, most of us know that atoms are built of electrons, protons, and neu 

trons. Those of us who are more educated might even know that protons and neutrons 

are built of even smaller components called quarks. We think of these elements as in 

finitesimal points creating physical lines and borders known as the World Line, result 

ing in physical shape and appearance. But what about that which is below quarks? 

What defines the interactions between quarks? 

Let’s try to get the picture of what is happening. The quantum entity is either a wavelike 

packet or a particle. A string does away with this intrinsic doublespeak of quantum mechanics. 

A particle is not wave where it is not a particle per se but a string. For a particle to be a 

string it must behave like a messenger particle, that is, it must be a force. That is, it must be a 

boson. But it must be an elementary particle, that is, a fermion too. And there are more fermions 

than bosons. This means the string must serve as boson and fermion. This is where the 

journey to the attempt of string theory to unify the four forces begins. 

Boson, Fermion and Superstring 

String theory started as the study of hadrons. What are hadrons? 



Hadrons are composed of quarks and gluons. Their interaction is described by Quan 

tum Chromo Dynamics, the theory of the strong force. Hadrons form more complex 

systems, in particular atomic. Under extreme conditions of pressure and temperature 

hadrons may lose their identity and dissolve into a new state of matter similar to the 

primordial matter of the early Universe. (Project “Study of Strongly Interacting 

Matter (acronym: HadronPhysics) of European Research Infrastructures (RI)) 

Specifically string theory started as the study of particles that carry the fundamental forces of 

physics such as photon, electromagnetic, strong, W and Z forces called electroweak forces 

and so on. The force-carrying particles are called bosons. Its name as of that time was Bosonic 

String Theory. But this theory had problems. According to [Leonard Susskind, PHYS- 

ICS WORLD, Superstrings] 

“One of the spectacular discoveries made in this early period was that the mathematic 

cal infinities that occur in quantum field theory are completely absent in string theory. 

However, from the very beginning there were big problems in interpreting hadrons as 

strings. For example, the earliest version of the theory could only accommodate bos 

ons, whereas many hadrons - including the proton and neutron - are fermions” 

Fermions are the fundamental particles such as quarks and leptons. They also include protons 

and neutrons which are made of quarks. The fermionic version of string theory turns out 

to be interesting. This is because “they turned out to have a surprising symmetry called supersymmetry 

that is now totally pervasive in high-energy physics. In supersymmetric theories 

all bosons have a fermionic superpartner and vice versa” [Susskind] 

But why should there be bosonic and fermionic string theories at all? Indeed why are 

they so crucial to the launching of the string project? For the string of string theory to perform 

its duty of unifying physics forces of Nature, it must speak the language of the force 

particle which is boson and that of the elementary particle which is fermion. There is a problem 

here. Boson particle which is force is not like fermion particle which is the elementary 

particle. In other words, proton and neutron which are fermions are not the same as the 

strong force, which holds them together in the nucleus while electron is circling around 

them. In the search for physics theory of everything, the demand is that the idea or concept 

that has to perform the feat should speak the language of boson and fermion. 

It is a tough demand. It is because the point of quantum mechanics has to be transformed 

to behave like a line. In other words fermion and boson must speak a language that 

both of them understand for string to perform its duty of TOE (Theory of Everything) of 

physics. 

In Euclidean Geometry which is at the foundations of atomic theory, a point is not a 

line. This translated into the language of physics means that a fermion is not a boson. For the 

string to speak the language of point and line, that is fermion and boson, it must be a line and 

a point which would mean that fermion and boson must share a relationship that is beyond 

quantum interconnection. To do this would require that the atomic point-like outlook on 

which the whole of physics was originally built be thrown overboard. If this is done, then the 

whole of mathematics has to be revolutionized because there is no language like that in either 

classical or modern mathematics in which a point is a line. 

48 


Boson, Fermion and Supersymmetry 

String theory was only concerned with bosons when it was launched. Bosons, in the paradigm 

that produced it, are gregarious while fermions are loners. Their picture is given by 

[Jan Jolie, Uncovering Supersymmetry (Scientific American, July 2002, pp 71 – 77)]: 

“Fermions are inherently the individualists and loners of the quantum particle world: 

no two fermions occupy the same quantum state…. Bosons, in contrast, are convivial 

copycats and readily gather in identical states. Every boson in a particular state en 

courages more of its species to emulate it.” (p.71) 

All this remains valid until supersymmetry comes in. And what is supersymmetry? To answer 

that question we have to know where physics is coming from. The whole of physics is 

built on symmetries. Supersymmetry takes physics beyond the symmetry of the Standard 

Model. Therefore, to understand the implication of supersymmetry for physics, we need to 

know what symmetry is in its simplest form. But before then, what is symmetry in Nature 

and Geometry? The answer to this question is crucial to understanding the pre-eminence of 

supersymmetry in the physics of superstring and since string theory is at the apex of basic 

research in physics, a sound grasp of the journey from symmetry to supersymmetry is essential. 

Symmetry means balance among the parts of something. Simply put, it means balance. 

What happens to symmetry when it gets into physics through geometry? 

Symmetry is the preservation of form and configuration across 

a point, line or a plane. 

In the butterfly, as we shall see below, there are different kinds of symmetry. There is reflective 

symmetry which could be line or point symmetry. In the line symmetry the body constitutes 

the line that divides both sides into the reflection of the other. In point symmetry, any 

straight cut through the centre divides the organism into mirroring halves. 

Another example of reflective symmetry is an apple cut into two at the middle. The cut is the 

line symmetry while the core is the point symmetry. This means in a butterfly and an apple 

and in so many other things in Nature both line and point symmetries are present. How the 

picture of a thing shows in water when placed at the bank is another example of reflective 

symmetry. There is also rotational symmetry which is radial. A ball is an example. Another 

example is the snowflake below: 



Examples of four basic symmetries could be found in [http://mathforum.org/geometry/rugs 

/symmetry/basic.html] below: 

tr a n sla t io n 

rig id m o tio n w ith r e p e t it io n 

alo n g a l in e 

re fle c t io n 

rig id m o t io n w it h r ep e t it io n 

a c ro ss a lin e (a x is) 

G li d e r e fle c tio n 

rig id m o tio n w ith r e fle c t ed 

re p e t it io n a lo n g a lin e 

ro t a ti o n 

rig id m o t io n w it h r ep e t it io n 

a ro un d a po i nt 

From what we have come to know about symmetry above, the following conclusion can be 

reached. And it is as follows: 

Where there is symmetry three things make one as a couple. 

For example, whether in reflective or rotational or in any other kind of symmetry, a thing 

which becomes two requires something in the middle which could be a line or point as in 

reflective symmetry or other as the examples above. In the case of F above, we have the two 

Fs with space in which the symmetry is taking place. What symmetry is saying is that One 

and Other together with the superspace (mirror or bank of the river which is also a form of 

space within space) between them in which transformation is taking place are One. Symmetry 

is the simplest example of One as Many in Nature. By including space in this picture, 

what we discover is that the cosmos is a huge symmetry. Symmetry therefore shows the internal 

structure of things as being many that is one. This is another example of number as 

plurality. In the examples above, there is One which is the Other with the superspace in between. 

© Shakunle, Lere O.; Rayner, D.M. Alan, 2008 

NEXT EDITION BEGINS WITH ZERO, SYMMETRY AND SUPERSYMMETRY AND 

CONTINUES WITH THE FIRST PHASE OF OUR JOURNEY IN SUPERCHANNEL 

50 


Relativity and Quantum Mechanics - a Collision 

Between Two Space-Excluding Geometries and 

their Resolution in Transfigural Geometry 




email. shakunle@versanet.de 

The apparent incompatibility between quantum 

mechanics and general relativity theory 

has long been a source of vexation and debate. 

Here we suggest that not only is the reason 

for this incompatibility simple, but so 

too is its resolution. The incompatibility arises 

from the reciprocal ways in which the 

localized Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries 

upon which the two theories are 

founded exclude consideration of the absolute 

zero and infinity of non-local space as a 

receptive immaterial omnipresence everywhere. 

Neither of these foundational geometries 

can adequately represent natural e- 

nergy flow in a cosmos without external spatial 

limit. Both, by axiomatic definition, impose 

absolute discontinuity between the informational 

(electromagnetic/ ‘material’) 

and spatial (‘immaterial’) phases of energy 

flow, but in radically different ways. The 

simple solution to their incompatibility is 

therefore to be found in a naturally continuous 

dynamic geometry of fluid flow, in 

which spatial and informational phases are 

mutually inclusive, not mutually exclusive. 

The ‘post-Euclidean’ transfigural geometry 

developed by Shakunle (1994, 2006) is of 

this kind. This geometry is based on the logic 

of ‘the included middle’, ‘inclusionality’, 

whereby material ‘content’ is a dynamic local 

inclusion of non-local spatial context and 

vice versa (Rayner, 2004). 

The framing of nature within an infinitely 

extended cubical box with a fixed centre 

or origin but no outside is the basis for the 

idealistic geometry of Euclid. Here, the infinite 

(i.e. ‘non-local’ in the sense of ‘present 

everywhere’ or ‘omnipresent’, not in the 

Alan D. M. Rayner 

University of Bath 

Bath BA2 7AY, UK 

email: a.d.m.rayner@bath.ac.uk 

quantum entanglement sense of ‘action at a 

distance’) receptive presence of space is definitively 

localized within just three orthogonal, 

width-lacking (i.e. space-excluding) 

structural planes. Through this geometry, 

space, time and structure are conveniently 

homogenized and abstracted from one a- 

nother in a way that enables them to be packaged 

and quantified in independent, uniformly 

linear units. These units can be added, 

subtracted, divided and multiplied as 

whole entities and fractions according to the 

rules of elementary arithmetic. But the convenience 

comes at the expense of paradoxically 

defining infinite space within a fixed 

structure containing isolated objects that can 

only be moved by ‘force’ exerted from somewhere 

ineffable within or beyond their 

discrete limits. Energy flow is effectively 

stalled within an ‘infinite but bounded’ 

structure that dislocates space from matter. 

By contrast, Riemannian and Lobachevskian 

non-Euclidean geometries, the 

former of which is the foundation for general 

relativity, can be described as ‘finite but 

unbounded’ (i.e. without fixed corners). 

These geometries paradoxically exclude 

space from matter – and hence impose discontinuity 

– by completely confining movement 

to a depthless curved surface. Here, as 

Wheeler puts it in his famous phrase, matter 

tells space how to curve and space tells matter 

how to move. But there is no opening for 

their mutual inclusion in a natural communion 

of energy flow. Each is closed off from 

the other, just as they are, but in a different 

way, through the imposition of rectilinear 

co-ordinates. 


Two Space-Excluding Geometries and their Resolution in Transfigural Geometry 

The obvious resolution of the incompatibility 

between three-dimensional ‘infinite but 

bounded’ Euclidean geometry and the ‘finite 

but unbounded geometry’ of a curved surface 

is some kind of synthesis that opens up 

the reciprocal forms of closure imposed by 

each, to yield an ‘infinite and dynamically 

bounded geometry’. Such a geometry would 

neither lack depth nor be linearly constrained, 

and so would include the possibility 

for emergence of an endless, though not 

completely unrestricted, variety of dynamic 

relational ‘flow forms’ as fluid configurations 

of space that only assume linear proportions 

when frozen or crystallized. This 

corresponds with the poetic observation that 

‘in nature everything is distinct, yet nothing 

defined into absolute, independent singleness’ 

(Wordsworth, 1815). 

A limited step towards understanding how 

the mutual inclusion of space and matter in 

energy flow could lead to more realistic, i.e. 

naturally representative, non-linear mathematical 

formulations has been provided by 

the development of fractal geometry and the 

associated ‘strange attractors’ of chaos theory 

(e.g. Mandelbrot, 1977; Gleick, 1988). 

These formulations still originate, however, 

in the subdivision of a prescriptively imposed 

rectilinear and discrete geometrical 

and numerical framework. They begin with 

the localization of initial conditions and 

structural limits instead of allowing local 

form to configure dynamically within a nonlocal 

spatial context (Rayner, 2004). 

A new system of numbers and geometry has, 

however, been developed, called 

‘transfigural mathematics’, which, we think, 

solves the problem of continuity through the 

inclusional logic of dynamically including 

space in matter and vice versa (Shakunle 

2006). Correspondingly, rather than treat 

numerical identities as dimensionless points 

along a discrete line, and so in effect excluding 

both zero and infinity, this mathematics 

envisages numbers as dynamic relational 

neighbourhoods. Here, overlapping local 

informational spheres of non-local spatial 

influence form a truly continuous, 

‘dimension-full line’ or ‘resonant superchannel’ 

(Shakunle and Rayner, 2007; Figure 1) 

in which reciprocal, spiralling inflows and 

outflows are dynamically balanced through 

inner core identities called ‘zeroids’ (from 

zero identities). The zeroids are hence 

equivalent to ‘organisms’ or ‘convection 

cells’ in simultaneously receptive and responsive 

fluid relationship with their immediate 

environmental neighbourhood, and 

through this neighbourhood with all Nature. 

Figure 1. The continuous ‘superchannel’ of transfigural geometry. This channel represents the spatial 

expansion of the discrete, one-dimensional, purely material line comprising contiguous but spatially 

discontinuous and dimensionless numerical point-masses upon which classical and modern 

mathematics are founded. Each discrete point is transformed from a static, lifeless entity to a dynamic, 

breathing identity as a local informational (electromagnetic) sphere of non-local spatial influence, 

known as a ‘zeroid’ (from zero identity). The zeroids reciprocally inspire from and expire to 

their immediate neighbours, creating a double helical energy flow through coupled numerical 

neighbourhoods of three. 

52 


Two Space-Excluding Geometries and their Resolution in Transfigural Geometry 

With this development of transfigural geometry, 

in which the zero and infinity of 

non-local space are brought in from the cold 

outside, we think that not only can a resolution 

be found for the incompatibility between 

relativity and quantum mechanics, but 

also new understandings of thermodynamics 

and evolutionary processes become possible 

(cf. Rayner, 2004). 

REFERENCES 

Gleick, J. (1988) Chaos. London: Heinemann. 

Mandelbrot, B. (1977). The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: Freeman. 

Rayner, A.D.M. (2004). Inclusionality and the role of place, space and dynamic boundaries 

in evolutionary processes. Philosophica, 73, 51-70. 

Shakunle, L.O. (1994) Spiral Geometry. The Principles (with Discourse). Hitit Verlag, Berlin, 

Germany. 

Shakunle, L.O. (2006). Mathematics – Identity, continuity, and equality. Journal of Transfigural 

Mathematics, 1, 65-89. 

Shakunle, L.O. and Rayner, A.D.M. (2007) Superchannel of zero spirals. Journal of Transfigural 

Mathematics, 1, 63-64, 104-105. 

Wheeler, John Archibald : His famous quote as stated in The Restless Universe 

(published by Institute of Physics) and elsewhere. 

Wordsworth, W. (1815) Essay Supplementary to Preface 

„The scientific cognition and the religious cognition (in every religious faith there are cognitive 

elements) are radically different from the methodological point of view. They speak different languages 

and think with the help of different conceptual tools—so different that they are hardly 

reducible to each other. If one tries to ‚synthesize‘ them too hastily, they usually form a logically 

explosive mixture. Any authentic and methodologically valuable synthesis must not ignore these 

differences but rather build on them, and any such synthesis should be done in the personality of 

the religious scientist rather than in the form of ordering porpositions and classifying standpoints 

concerning religion and science. It is obvious, however, that such synthesis must be prepared 

and constantly accompanied by logically organized reflection, thorough analyses, and 

even systematic studies. 

The fact that this synthesis is never accomplished but is always becoming implies that sometimes 

it is more like a symbiosis than like a synthesis. As in the process of life itself, creative tensions 

are unavoidable.“ 

(Michael Heller : Creative Tension. Essays on Science and Religion, p. xi, Preface 


How did you come into the film industry? 

It all started when I was very young; I just 

loved photography especially during my primary 

and secondary school days. What got 

me interested were the pictures and colours. 

This interest continued 

until later 

in my life that I 

did and I am still 

doing something 

that I had always 

loved to do. I get 

paid for doing 

what I love doing 

and part of my 

work is to train 

people which to 

me is the joy in 

it. All through 

my over 30 years 

in the industry, it 

has given me the 

capacity to learn 

at different stages because the technology 

keeps changing all the time. When we 

started we were shooting on film, black and 

I n t e r v i e w s 

by 

Ahaoma Kanu 

National Daily Newspaper 

Lagos, NIGERIA 

hailmary_23@yahoo.com 

Tunde Kelani … Nollywood movies don’t make 

international film festivals, so what? 

He ranks among the best film makers the continent has ever produced. From his early 

days as a student of the London Film Institute when the methods of movie production 

was challenging to now when the technology has made things a lot easier, Tunde Kelani 

has seen it all. In this chat with AHAOMA KANU, he talks about the challenges, the 

early years, the changing trends and the fact that Nollywood should be proud of the 

achievements they have recorded. 

54 

Tunde Kelani directing on set 

white with optical sound, then magnetic 

sound before colour came; then the colour 

television, the analogue video system started 

before the digital age where you High Definition 

(HD) videos and all that. It is an ongoing 

education for 

life and has been 

such as experience 

for me. 

Looking at the 

transformation 

as it goes, how 

challenging was 

it for your and 

how did you adjust? 

Well for me it 

was only logical; 

there was a 

time I had 

thought it was 

the same. You 

could almost say 

the same for the analogue telecommunication 

age we all witnessed in Nigeria; 

Continued on page 56 


Kate Henshaw-Nutall … I don’t want Hollywood 

Since she starred as Omono in the Nollywood movie, When the Sun Sets, she became a 

household name in the industry and has since brought quality entertainment into the 

homes of many through her deft acting skills and performances. But despite the usual 

inclination to Hollywood as a standard for rating Nollywood, Kate Henshaw Nuttal, in 

this chat with AHAOMA KANU, says that she does not follow that school of thought 

but instead believes in the potentials of Nollywood. 

It seems you are leaving Nollywood for the 

corporate sector? 

No, I am not leaving Nollywood; I am an 

actor. I am versatile; I do singing, I can be 

an MC, dance and act. They are all in the 

same category. 

Are you working towards an album like 

some of your colleagues did? 

No! I am not doing any such thing and I am 

not thinking towards 

that direction. Don’t expect 

that from me 

though I can do collaborations. 

You have also been involved 

in charity; which 

charity or NGO are you 

working with? 

Well, there is none for 

none in particular; I just 

get invitations to come 

to orphanages or visit 

homeless children. I will 

consolidate on my charity 

works very soon. 

Kate Henshaw has become 

a brand of sort; 

are you thinking about 

exploiting or consolidating 

that as well? 

I am working on something; I am going to 

launch a product hopefully next year. 

Have you thought about hosting your own 

talk show since you have the flare for it? 

I know. People have been telling me to do 

talk shows; someone even told me that I 

could become the next Oprah but I don’t 

want to become the next anybody. I want to 

be the next Kate; the only Kate. I don’t 

know; there are so many opportunities out 

there but I would need time and wisdom to 

Kate Henshaw-Nuttall 

harness everything. You know, I am a perfectionist 

and it’s either you do something 

well or you don’t at all. 

You have been asked this question over 

again but it keeps coming up; how and 

when did you come into Nollywood? 

The late J.T West of blessed memory took 

me to my first audition; it was like an accident 

that was how it started. 

Did you ever practise 

Medical Lab. Sciences 

you studied at the university? 

Not at all, not even for 

one single day. Before I 

graduated, I had shot my 

first film. So when I 

graduated, I started filming. 

Do you have any regrets 

leaving the medical profession? 

Not really because I use 

it in my films; if I need 

to play the role of a Lab 

Scientist or something, I 

can always give them 

information on the subject. 

At what point in life did you discover your 

passion for the arts? 

From a young age; I have a very photographic 

memory and I watch a lot of TV. I 

remember a lot of jingles and was always 

glued to the television. 

When did you start acting professionally? 

In 1993 but before then I had been modelling 

and shot my first T.V commercial in 

1990. I also had done calendar jobs as well 

as ushering. 



efore it used to be the dial telephone but 

today we have GSM. Who would have 

thought that some bright people in the world 

can invent a mobile telephone that everybody 

would have access to? It is more or less 

the same thing in our line. The Nigerian 

economy more or less collapsed when we 

were shooting on celluloid and everybody 

thought it was an advantage because the 

benefit of the new technology is that it empowered 

us now; we have fair access to 

means of production. During the time we 

were shooting on celluloid, everything was 

imported from abroad and it involved a lot 

of process because after shooting the film, 

you have to take it abroad. But now, anybody 

can have a personal computer and install 

the software and start making film. On 

one hand, we have seemed to have benefited 

from the democratization of the means of 

production and this has contributed to the 

surge of productions especially in the Nigerian 

film industry. 

Back in the late 20’s and early 80’s, there 

seemed to be so much Nigerian soaps that 

were really popular but today there is an 

overflow of Mexican soaps; what do you 

think contributed to this? 

As a matter of fact; the Nigerian private independent 

production is on the increase 

starting with Wale Adenuga’s Super Story; 

there are quite a number of good programs 

that have given these cheap Mexican soaps a 

run for their money; it will just take a matter 

of time and those foreign soaps will find no 

space in Nigeria. There is just not enough 

good Nigerian productions going round otherwise 

those foreign soaps will have no 

space on our television because of the popularity 

of our production and even the quality 

of our production. The Nigerian audience is 

so supportive of our local content that they 

recognize that ours has more values than 

those Mexican dumps. As far as I am concerned. 

I think that young people are coming 

into the industry and they are beginning to 

Nigerian Film Industry and Nollywood Films 



(Continued from page 54) 

produce a lot more. 

Looking at when Nollywood started and 

today, with all the achievements; do you 

think we have gotten there as such? 

No, this is part of a journey that is still on. 

They like to compare us with Hollywood but 

don’t forget that the American industry is 

over a 100 years old while the main active 

and popular Nollywood is under 20 years. 

There is still a long long way to go. So if we 

get our acts together, chances are that we 

might become the best in the world. 

Taking you down memory lane, there were 

films like; Bisi, Daughter of the River 

which was a great movie and it was shot in 

the 70’s, now so many years after Nollywood 

started with even better quality movies 

but what we have today cannot measure 

up to those early years why is so? 

I don’t agree with you, I think the quality is 

beginning to improve. Don’t forget that Bisi, 

Daughter of the River gulped so much 

money and was produced abroad by foreign 

technicians working together with some Nigerian 

crew. But the landscape has changed 

completely. Before, it was quite an experience 

as you must go to the Cinema to watch 

Bisi, Daughter of the River but now things 

are changing; just last month, I got a proposal 

letter from T-Mobile in England offering 

to put my T-Mobile phone on television 

broadcast. i.e. regular television broadcast 

can be viewed on your mobile phone. What 

it means is that you can watch movies on 

your phone unlike then when you had to go 

to the cinema to watch movies like Bisi, 

Daughter of the River at an appointed time 

with other people but today, you can sit 

down in your house and watch the Nigeria – 

Ghana match on your phone and films are 

probably going to work that way. So this is 

technological age and things are changing. 

Has Nollywood what it takes to get there? 

Let’s get this clear; Nollywood is a component 

of the Nigeria film industry; I don’t belong 

to it. I am a film maker; an independent 

56 



are not been told enough by Nollywood? 

Our stories are being told but there is a preference 

by the audience and that is why those 

other stories are selling. If the taste of the 

audience as the consumer changes, you 

would see something that is different. If 

somebody invests in a business and he is 

getting returns on the business over and over 

again, then there will be little or no room for 

change. Nobody is an expert on the taste of 

the audience; you can’t say this is audience 

taste and besides, these guys will tell you, 

‘we are business men and this is what the 

audience wants which we are providing in 

the market.’ 

But a times this could be taken to the extreme 

for instance we had Women’s Cot 

which was successful, we then had Men’s 

Cot, Sisters Cot and now there is Boy’s Cot 

in the market exploiting the same storyline, 

don’t you think this trend is killing creativity? 

At least the consumer has the choice of not 

to buy. These are parts of decisions that 

should fall into the consumer’s association. 

The people who are doing this works approach 

it from a business point of view and 

don’t see it from the creativity perspective. 

They have an objective of making profit; 

they are not concerned if the industry is 

jeopardized by their acts. As far as they are 

concerned, they are making money and more 

films for more money and people keep buyl-r: 

TK‘s friend, A TK‘s Actor, Tunde Kelani, Ahaoma Kanu 

film maker. Although the Nigeria film industry 

is popularly referred to as Nollywood, 

there are other people doing things that are 

not necessarily done the Nollywood way. 

The kind of cultural things I am involved in 

does not fit into Nollywood. The fact that I 

work for cinema does not really qualify me 

for Nollywood because I don’t just produce 

for VCD and TV relief. I target my work 

first of all for the Cinema screen because I 

am a passionate film maker. Nollywood is in 

fact, the greatest thing that would have happened 

to us because it has now put Nigeria 

on the map as people who are very productive 

and took their destiny in their own 

hands and made something out of it. But in 

answer to your question, why not? We have 

the potentials and we have gotten to the 

height we are today with such low level 

equipments. Imagine if they had Nollywood 

filmmakers have access to the kind of cameras 

used in Nollywood? 

It is assumed that Nollywood in terms of 

volume is the third in the world, but in 

terms of remuneration for the practitioners 

does it measure up? 

No, they just say we are the third largest in 

terms of quantity but come to think of it, Nigeria 

is lucky to have had such an experience 

because there are countries that make 

nothing. Now Nigerians are seen despite the 

lack of resources, despite the lack of infrastructures, 

they have made headway that 

every African country is 

looking at the example set 

by Nigeria and wondering if 

this could happen in their 

own country. The remunerations 

for the practitioners 

I will say is at a far distance 

from what our counterparts 

in western countries 

get but we will get there. 

Some of the storylines we 

see in our movies stereotype 

that there seems to be 

a sort of repetition despite 

the fact that Nigeria has a 

rich cultural heritage why 

is that our cultural stories 


films for more money and people keep buying. 

Will it then by right to say that money concentration 

has taken over professionalism? 

I am not saying that but I recognize that people 

have freedom of expression. People 

have the right to tell the producers to explore 

other avenues. 

Another missing aspect in our movies is in 

the area of doing personality movies, not 

much is done on some of our heroes like is 

obtainable elsewhere, can this be done? 

It depends on who? As for me, I am doing a 

project that has connections between cinema 

and literature. You should be aware that a 

reasonable number of the films that I have 

made are adaptations from existing literary 

resource and then fiction. In other words, I 

have learnt to recognize and celebrate the 

importance of literature and cinema. 

For instance, I have worked on Akin Olusola’s 

Kosegbe; Oleku and Adebayo Faleti’s 

Thunder Bolt. Also I have done Adebayo 

Adebowale; The Narrow Path. Those are my 

areas so I believe that when the time comes, 

there are people who may have that tendency 

to do it. 

Why do you think it is not done now? 

It is a question of expressing yourself; there 

are people that like biography. So will you 

ask why not doing biographies? It depends 

on what you want to do, there is nothing 

compelling there. You have to have the passion 

for it. It has to do with different stages 

of development. 

Don’t you think that there should be a kind 

of transmission of some reality in our movies, 

for instance there was the Civil war of 

the late 60’s, we had a day in our history we 

now refer to as June 12 and etc, why is it 

that our producers are not doing movies 

that tell the other side of our country, the 

real side? 

I don’t believe that our producers are not 

doing so much. There are people like Eddie 

Ughomeh who has done The President; 

something has been done on the Aba 

Women Riot and so on. You cannot just 

compare and say why are we not doing this 

and that. The important thing here is that we 

58 


are doing it and some other African countries 

have not even started. We are already 

on the way. 

So should we at this point give ourselves a 

pat on the back? 

Well, we can give ourselves anything on the 

back but the important thing is that we are 

on course. Come to think of it, Nigeria has 

become a benchmark and reference point in 

the development of African Cinema. 

Looking at Hollywood and premiers, it is 

an avenue that generates the stakeholders 

with revenue through cinema and to an extent 

promotes the Cinema, can’t that trend 

be replicated here? 

There are no basis for comparison between 

us and Hollywood; Hollywood is a monstrous 

more than 100 years industrial giant 

and they have the money and the budget to 

play with. An average Hollywood movie 

costs about $60m. Where are you going to 

get N6m to make films in Nigeria? We are 

different, we are a developing nation that 

lost all our cinema infrastructures; we are 

trying to reestablish ourselves through democracy, 

and lots more. There are priorities 

like Energy, Health, and Education. So we 

have to take our time. So we don’t need to 

compare ourselves with developed countries 

who have these things in place. Let us take 

our time and one day, we will be there. Nigeria 

has now been citied as an example 

when it comes to African Cinema. We are 

cited as a success story. We have everything 

going for us; our audience, rich cultural heritage 

and the technology. As far as I am concerned, 

our rate of development will be 

faster. 

You just mentioned Nigeria being a reference 

point when talking about African Cinema, 

but for some time now, Hollywood has 

come to Africa in terms of shooting movies 

in the African soil but Nigeria is being excluded 

in the line up of countries Hollywood 

used as locations, why is that? 

Nigeria has hosted Hollywood. Nigeria has 

hosted the biggest international productions 

here. Mr. Johnson starring Pierce Brosman 


Continued on page 67

So what made you go for a science related 

course at the university? 

I wanted to be a doctor; my parents wanted 

me to be on but when the matriculation 

exam didn’t work, I had to go for a related 

discipline. That was how I landed at Medical 

Laboratory Sciences. 

How did your parents feel that their daughter 

was deviating from the plans they had 

for her? 

My Mum was very supportive but my Dad 

was very angry initially but when a lot of 

people kept enquiring if that was his daughter, 

he relaxed and replied 

proudly, “That’s a 

Henshaw for you, my 

daughter.” 

Your big break came in 

when in Sun Sets you 

played a lead role; what 

transformation(s) did 

you pass through after 

that movie since you 

were no longer the ordinary 

Kate Henshaw? 

It took a while for me to 

get used to being called 

Omono which was the 

name of the character I 

acted, instead of Kate I 

was called Omono. At 

first I kept trying to introduce 

myself as Kate. I 

didn’t know anything about handling that 

aspect of acting; I was just too happy to be 

part of the production. 

Following you progresses since then, you 

have been handling the fame all right, with 

the exception of the incident in Doctors’ 

Quarters, you have had a much disciplined 

record; how do you manage the fame? 

When I first started, I wasn’t sure of the kind 

of person I was getting to be personally and 

publicly. I didn’t know how to manage the 

fame then but after years of experience and 

after having things written about me by the 

press both good and bad, I now know what 


Kate Henshaw-Nutall … I don’t want Hollywood 


Kate Henshaw-Nuttall showing 

her lovely bangles like saying, like it? 

to do at the right time. I don’t lose myself to 

please them anyway; I try to be myself. 

You were watching the soaps Checkmates 

some years before your first role in a movie 

and you had to star along Bob Manuel 

Udokwu. Was working with somebody you 

had been watching scary for you at that initial 

point? 

It was not scary; I was only praying that I 

would feel free and not let them down. They 

were all very helpful to me though and very 

nice. Kanayo O Kanayo, Late Martins who 

played my father, Sandra Achums, Bob and 

JT also. 

Here you were doing 

your first movie and you 

had a lead role which 

involved a love scene; 

how did you cope? 

It was a struggle anyway; 

the role did not come to 

me easily. The director 

insisted that I should be 

given the lead role. 

Ifeanyi Anyakora, he 

was very helpful to me 

and whenever we wanted 

to do the love role, he 

would chase everybody 

away. Bob and I were 

quiet close so I felt comfortable 

doing that with 

him; he made me feel 

very at ease. 

Among all the movies you have starred in, 

which is your favourite and why? 

I don’t have any favourite. I like When The 

Sun Sets which was my first; I love Cries Of 

Womanhood and Stronger Than Pain which 

is the latest release with Nkem Owoh. 

Now looking at when Nollywood started 

and now, do you think it has gotten to the 

standards it ought to have reached? 

Hollywood is over a hundred years and we 

are just over a decade old; we are still babies 

in this thing. I went to the cinema with Stella 

Damascus to see a movie and we were look- 


ing at the technology, the lightning, the 

scenes, effects and all that, we just told ourselves 

that we are way way back in this 

game. I don’t want us to meet up with Hollywood, 

I want us to consolidate on what we 

have; let us treat our African stories. Let us 

leave the love stories and do something 

about Queen Amina, Moremi and movies 

that has to do with Africa. 

So you don’t think we have gotten there 

yet? 

We are trying but we still need to do a lot. 

The stories are being reversed; it might be 

another title but still the same content; girl 

loves boy, parents don’t like him and one 

way the manage to run away or things turn 

out right you know. It’s like there are no 

imaginative minds anymore; creativity is 

lacking in Nollywood. We have barely 

scratched the surface. 

As it were, Nollywood movies have not been 

able to leave the sitting rooms and bedrooms 

to large screen cinemas… 

They have, Teco Benson’s film is being 

shown at Nu Metro; he has one or two films 

there. 

But Nollywood have not been able to show 

on large screens in many parts of the country, 

other African countries, Europe and 

the rest of the world unlike Hollywood and 

Bollywood movies. What do you think is the 

problem? 

That is the selling point; that you can afford 

to buy and watch Nollywood movies in the 

comfort of your own home makes us unique. 

People are still not comfortable with this cinema 

culture here in Nigeria; how many of 

them can afford to come to these cinemas on 

the island where these cinemas are and go 

back home at night when there are robbers 

everywhere. We used to have cinemas at 

Apapa, Ogba, Ikeja and Agege but many of 

them are no longer functioning. 

People pay to watch some African films in 

Europe and the US; can’t our films be 

given that preference? 

You can’t compare that to watching home 

videos in homes; people would not leave 

their homes, carry their children or family to 

go watch an African movie in Europe. It is 


just a few people that have interest in the 

film and just wants to see what it is all about 

that can do that. They may have some kind 

of interest either professional or personal. 

But can having our movies hit the big 

screen internationally achievable? 

Yes of course and we can do it. 

How can we make that happen? 

We need the government assistance; there 

are a whole lot of things involved and a 

whole lot of things are not being favourable 

to the marketers and producers. The conditions 

under which equipments are brought 

are too stiff; there are a lot of red tapes and 

also, the conditions under which you even 

shoot are not conducive. They are facing a 

whole lot of obstacles before they can even 

bring out the film. There are a lot of factors 

that contribute to this. There is no steady 

electricity so you need to run your generator 

the whole day and night as the case may be 

and that leads to a lot of production cost. 

Like you said earlier, most of Nollywood 

storylines are based on love, rituals, corruption 

and so on, there seems to be a recycling 

going on. Don’t you actors have an 

issue with this trend? 

Foe me, It was a conscious effort I chose to 

do a certain number of movies over the 

years; I have done seven or maybe ten at 

most. As for me, each story has to have a 

different meaning that will not make me 

keep feeling that I have done something 

along that line before. If there is a similarity, 

there has to be a twist somehow. It’s the 

same old thing, once they see that you can 

cry in a film then you will end up doing all 

the crying of your life in subsequent movies. 

I love Stronger then Pain very much; it’s a 

movie I starred in. I had never played that 

kind of character before and it was very 

challenging; I found it very hard to get into 

the character because it wasn’t the kind of 

life I was used to and that is the kind of challenge 

I welcome. 

Looking at Nigeria’s historical background, 

we have a lot of stories to tell and 

Nollywood is a very nice medium to be 

telling these stories; are we telling them 

enough? 

60 


No we are not. I am looking forward to the 

film shot by Uche; it’s an adaptation of Elechi 

Amadi’s novel The Concubine. That’s a 

book we all read in school like Eze Goes to 

School, Chike and the River and all these 

sorts of books. You know all these kinds of 

African stories that people can identify and 

with and not all these modernized western 

thing we struggle to do. I am looking forward 

to The Concubine so much and I hope 

to see more of films that will explore our 

traditions and African heritage. That is what 

we need to put into films. 

Another missing aspect in Nollywood is the 

absence of personality movies about great 

individuals; we have seen movies like, Nelson 

Mandela, Martin Luther King, Ray 

Charles, all great punctuated by Idi Amin 

and so on; why is it that nothing has been 

done by Nollywood about Nnamdi Azikiwe, 

Obafemi Awolowo, Bishop Ajayi Crowther, 

Dele Giwa, MKO Abiola etc? 

I don’t know why they are not thinking in 

that direction but when you are shooting a 

film in Nigeria, they are not going to give 

you time to get old or loose weight or get 

fat; when Wills Smith did Ali, he put on so 

much weight. He trained for maybe a year or 

so and had to get into the right size. It is not 

so in Nigeria, nobody will give you that 

time. It is either they get someone to do one 

scene and another person to take over when 

maybe the character is older or so due to the 

fact that there is no money for such expenses. 

We have not finished doing our African 

stories not to talk of personality stories. 

There are also no children movies done by 

Nollywood knowing that majority of TV 

addicts are children? 

Yes there are no children friendly movies 

and I don’t know why. There was a film or 

short story on children but we don’t have 

any child friendly category films in Nollywood. 

The issue of shooting on celluloid keeps 

coming up when it comes to Nollywood and 

standards; is this really the reason we have 

not yet gotten there? 

Well, I am of the opinion that shooting on 

celluloid is not the issue though I am not 


really versed in the technicalities; I just believe 

it is this western mentality. I have 

heard that HD is very good and fantastic. 

The guy who shot Star Wars did it on HD 

and the film sold out many copies and nobody 

complained about the quality. So celluloid 

may be good yes but it is quite expensive. 

It all gets down to having the funds. 

Many stakeholders in the industry are worried 

with the trend in Nollywood where a 

movie is shot within a few days brings 

about conflict between arts and commerce. 

Don’t you think this is also among the factors 

undermining our movies? 

It is all about working within your cost; if 

you have money you stay longer on set but if 

you don’t have money then you work within 

5-6 days where everybody shoots and goes. 

Another thing that pains me is that we don’t 

have a library history; where can you get all 

these old films like Living In Bondage, 

Nneka The Pretty Serpent and all those good 

old movies, no where. But I can go on the 

internet and get where I can find Sounds of 

Music, The King and I and others. Even 

right now, I don’t know where I can locate 

my films. It is very disturbing. There is nothing 

in the area of merchandizing; you see 

some of Hollywood films like Shrek promoting 

their films on little items like handkerchiefs, 

wrist watches, t-shirts and what have 

you but we don’t have that strategy here. 

Why can’t someone like Andy Best package 

his first three movies and package it. People 

want to remember the good old days. 

Despite the volume of works churned out by 

Nollywood, it still has not made it to many 

international film festivals. Why? 

It is either the people are afraid to put their 

films in or they do not know about the film 

festivals or that it simply doesn’t meet the 

standards. There are standards you have to 

meet; your audio output has to be clear; your 

storyline has to be clear and the film has to 

be in one part, not part one, two, and three 

and so on. It is just greed on the side of some 

people to divide one film into many parts. 

No panel will have the patience to sit down 

and start watching one film run for such long 

hours. 


Hollywood has come to Africa in movies 

done recently like Blood Diamonds, Last 

King of Scotland, Bamako and so on and 

these films were actually shot on African 

soil. Despite the position Nollywood occupies 

in the continent, Nigeria has not be 

chosen for a location shoot. What is the 

problem with our locations? 

It is our atmosphere; it is not conducive and 

the government is not making it easier. The 

people that are coming to shoot their films 

need round the clock security and they may 

need to pay for that security. I remember 

when we did Game of Life with Nick Moran; 

we went to either Ajegunle or Ebutte Metta 

to shoot and Area Boys gathered them and 

almost seized their cameras. It happens all 

the time in the East, Lagos and elsewhere. 

So if you had that kind of experience, will 

you want to come back and shoot again? 

Should we need police protection to come 

and shoot a film that will bring up the image 

of your country? When you watch American 

films, you see their flag flying from the 

opening of the curtain to the closing; they 

are very proud of their country and what 

they have. We have to make the place movie 

friendly; for now it is only Abuja and Asaba 

that you can go and shoot without harassment. 

Then what is the partnership between Nollywood 

and Hollywood right now? 

I don’t know if there is any partnership 

maybe there is in a minor way because there 

was a film shot last year that had a few Hollywood 

actors who had done some supportive 

roles with big Hollywood A-list actors 

and they are Nigerians. I am looking forward 

to that film coming out. 

With the exception of Olu Jacobs, Richard 

Mofe Damijo, Chiwetel Ejiofor and most 

recently Ene Oloja, Nollywood actors don’t 

get supportive roles or other wise in any 

category of Hollywood films; is it that we 

are not good enough or there a conspiracy 

out there? 

We don’t have to go to Hollywood to make a 

statement; we are popular here. If we need to 

do anything in Hollywood then we have to 

queue in line. We are big here and they are 

62 


big there. If they come here, people here will 

recognize Nigerian actors more than they 

will do them. Yes they are the standards but 

c’mon, we cannot be looking up to them’ we 

have to create our own. That is why I support 

AMAA wholly because it is our own; I 

don’t care if there are hitches here or there 

but for the fact that it is ours. And people 

come out in droves and it is carried along 

well. That is our own and that is what we 

should be doing so that those in Hollywood 

will get interested and ask what is really 

happening there? 

The Nigerian image has been badly dented 

by the militancy in the Niger Delta region 

that many see as a trouble spot, can’t Nollywood 

tell these stories better and or is there 

a conspiracy of silence on that very delicate 

issue? 

I have no idea. Even people in the Niger 

Delta are not working towards that direction 

or maybe someone is not working or something, 

You never can tell what is been done 

as we speak. I empathise with them and support 

the way they are going about the struggle 

because I believe everybody has the right 

to fight for what they believe in. 

In your opinion, do you think that the government 

partnership with Nollywood is adequate? 

I don’t think so. I don’t agree with the fact 

that you have to carry people abroad to go 

and do a premiere when we have not yet 

sorted ourselves out here. The government 

should make funds available; make things 

amenable to the people so that they can have 

access to it then we can start talking. Taking 

them to London is not what is needed; the 

Londoners just want to see the stars and 

that’s it; what really comes out of it. Nothing. 

How will you rate the participation of the 

corporate sector in the uplifting of Nollywood? 

It is coming in trickles and we are happy because 

we were not even thinking about that 

10 years ago; nobody would have believed 

in your potential to generate funds. Now 


Continued on page 68

Can you give of a brief insight on how your 

journey to acting and the arts started, going 

from way back in the days? 

My getting into acting dates back to when I 

was growing up, I was privileged to belong 

to a lot of association as a kid. I left secondary 

school in 1979 and worked for two 

years before proceeding to Christ the King’s 

College (CKC) Onitsha where I repeated my 

SSCE; I was in the dramatic society while 

there. I later joined the 

Writers Club while at the 

Institute of Management 

and Technology (IMT) 

Enugu in 1981 where I 

did my A’ Levels. I took 

part in Son of Partition 

and Child of Circumstances 

which are the two 

plays written by Dr 

Omayo Madukwe, who 

sustained my interest in 

acting dating while I was 

still in secondary education; 

he was a youth corper 

in my school then noticed 

my interest in theatre. 

I would say he discovered me. It was 

part of the subjects that he taught me that we 

did some of those plays and by divine intervention, 

we met again during my A’ level 

days at IMT; he was my HOD. He sustained 

and maintained my interest and it was a real 

reunion when we met again. He wrote the 

two novels which we presented during our 

convocation and we took the presentations to 

television station like NTA and Anambra 

Broadcasting Service (ABS). From then we 

were on television. The likes Kanayo O 


Ejike Asiegbu … Hollywood is sabotaging Nollywood 

He is called the Godfather and has been in the picture for so long in different forms; 

today he is the good chief that rules with wisdom and tomorrow he is looking for a sacrifice 

to perform for some evil deeds. It is no doubt that Actor’s Guild Of Nigeria 

(AGN) president, Ejike Asiegbu has paid his dues in the industry. In this chat with 

AHAOMA KANU, he goes retrospect to the days when it used to be soap operas and 

also explained the reason the West will never see anything good in Nollywood to make 

them win the desired awards they ought to have won. 

Ejike Asiegbu 

Kanayo and Nkem Owoh were already 

known because we did a lot of production in 

those days like Beyond the Rain, which was 

produced and directed by Uzor Amadi. We 

worked with Francis Odeka, Nkem Owoh 

and Amaka Igwe were writing for television 

stations especially ABS. We were 

known because of the soap operas of those 

days which we took part in at NTA which 

had a lot of impact. Beyond the Rain by 

Uzor Amadi had a theme 

which talked Voodooism 

and occultism which some 

of these big men indulged 

in and also the zeal and 

desire of some people to 

become rich no matter 

what were the massage we 

tried to portray in the 

movie. While I finished 

my A’ level I had my admission 

to start my OND 

marketing from there I 

gained admission in Uniport 

and while I was in 

Enugu I was also among 

the Cast and Crew of New 

Masquerade the likes of Chief Zebrudaya 

and the late Jegede who I happened to work 

with I played the role of his brother a Professor. 

The director of Bassey and Company 

Kingsley Obiwabu actually gave us the experience 

and we have very good working 

relationship. In those days we were paid N1 

or one pound and it meant nothing. We made 

sure people enjoyed us. 

Being somebody that had passion for Art 

did you ever consider writing or going into 

literary art? 


Yes, because when we were in the university 

at the diploma level we were taught everything 

such as script writing, stage management, 

production management, directing, 

and all; I had to specialize in a particular 

area. We passed through all those stages; we 

told stories, wrote scripts and we staged 

managed production; we acted and directed 

ourselves but had to specialize in a particular 

area. I had to major in Acting for my certificate 

diploma but for my degree, I majored in 

Directing because I loved directing as well. 

Because with all sense of responsibility I 

know that I am a good actor and for the fact 

that I started acting early I knew that I was 

popular and mature I was popular because of 

soap operas like New Masquerade, Bassey 

and Company, Beyond The Rain and so 

many others. I was popular before I gained 

admission into the University to study Theatre 

Arts. While doing my university programme, 

I found that I was already an amateur 

professional before I got into the institution. 

I believe in finesse, I believe in the kinetic 

of acting or directing. I thank God that 

I started from the scratch to come into the 

direct professional ethics and can say with 

all sense of humility to say I have been an 

authority in drama and when it comes to 

such areas, I will be among the best anytime 

any day. 

Looking at your experience way back when 

you started and with the couple of actors, 

writers and directors you have mentioned, 

one will now start feeling that we have all 

these good guys yet Nollywood just started 

some few years back, what do you think 

contributed to this lateness? 

I will say that the lateness in terms of starting 

was due to the fact that we were in an era 

of soap opera and even though we talked 

about doing works on celluloid, people could 

not afford it. Apart from people like Ogunde 

and the days of Alarijo Travelling Theatre 

where people were going from one state to 

another to watch shows particularly in the 

south west of Nigeria. People like the Amatas 

in the early 60 are whose father actually 

shot on celluloid; an achievement that people 

seem to have forgotten about. I am aware 


that people like Uba, Ogunde and also Uncle 

Eddy Ugboma have done one or two on celluloid. 

But because it involves a lot of 

money some of them were able to achieve 

what they wanted to achieve. NTA was more 

popular and they knew that shooting on celluloid 

involved so much money which was 

difficult to get during our own time. I must 

give kudos to NTA because if you check the 

history of those people who are now working 

in other television houses, they have one 

thing or the other to do with NTA; some of 

us had our training from NTA it has also 

helped us at one stage or the other in our 

production and professional system. You can 

imagine some of the experience some of us 

had before we got to the University to professionalize 

it; it was the bomb! We knew 

everything because training as an amateur 

was different from training as a professional. 

We were already trained and we were ready 

because we were few then. There is something 

unique about those of us that started 

from time. I would say we were well into 

soap opera, that was why Nollywood came 

late. 

Looking at the quality of Nollywood movies 

when it started taking for instance the 

movie Living In Bondage, it was professional 

but all of a sudden the quality started 

going down, how did it happen? 

I do not really agree maybe you can pick one 

or two movies then that were lucky to be 

good in terms of professionalism; the type of 

stories being told then and now are different; 

the ones told now are more professional than 

some of the films of yesteryears. I will give 

you an example; Living in Bondage was not 

professional because it was done through 

people who were nearly doing propagation. 

It was an unconventional style; they were no 

scripts that were read, it was during rehearsals 

that they thought of ideas and suggesting 

certain things that made the producers to single 

some things out. It was after that that 

people now appreciated them. 

Are you now saying that there was no script 

for Living in Bondage? 

It was merely written after they had finished 

rehearsals because there were suggestions 

64 


that were looked into, I can tell you because 

I attended a couple of audition and even after, 

most of the things they did were improvised 

for. For example they kept doing trial 

and error like setting the scene like you are a 

boy and the next person is a girl, you walk in 

and you meet your girlfriend with another 

man, what will you do? People were creating 

ideas and taking the plays again and again. It 

was later that we now tried to make it more 

professional by maintaining the same line or 

using another word which is not like the major 

one where there must be a script writer 

and after writing, people will sit down, read 

it, criticize it and exploit it and go back 

again and all that. 

You guys as the 

p r o f e s s i o n a l s 

started Nollywood, 

how did all 

these guys that 

were doing unc 

o n v e n t i o n a l 

come in? 

I would rather say 

that it was the 

presence of some 

of us that made 

the film successful. 

Some of my 

colleagues were 

already there such 

as Kanayo O Kanayo who was working, 

Okechukwu Ogujiofor, they were the ones 

having more understanding than any other 

actor who were improvising because they 

were more professional and it made their 

inputs more appreciated to the other people. 

Bob Manuel of Living In Bondage was already 

a graduate of Theatre Arts and he 

made his input by bringing his professional 

experience along side Ngozi Nwosu also had 

professional experience. So it became easier 

so that was part of their success in Living In 

Bondage. It was shot with a professional 

camera and we will give credit to the producer 

Kenneth Nnebue who hired the equipment 

and gave his time. 

As the one of the founding fathers of Nollywood 

what were the challenges you guys 


faced? 

As one of the founding fathers, one of the 

problems that we had was the fact that in 

those days there was no money; nobody was 

investing but one thing present was the determination. 

Everybody wanted to make a 

living. Even when someone showed interest 

there was no money to be paid. We were 

miserly being paid. But for Nneka The Pretty 

Serpent (part 2), it was my friend KOK who 

forced me to do it for them and I did it free 

of charge. What I only charged them was 

N5000 for my transport so at the end of the 

day my conviction was to respect my colleague 

who wanted me and also to show 

them that beyond 

what anyone had 

said about me, I 

knew I was good 

and could deliver 

so I offered to do 

it free of charge 

except my feeding 

allowance 

and transportation 

through out 

the course of that 

production and 

that was what 

happened. 

Ejike Asiegbu with friends 

How did you 

guys feel when 

Living in Bondage came out and it was a 

sell out? 

For me, it was not new because I was already 

a professional. 

When you guys found out that people appreciated 

bearing in mind that you guys 

have been there and ought to have been the 

people that should have pioneered the project 

later called Nollywood? 

When it came out we said “that is how it is 

supposed to be,” we knew we could do it. 

The fact that Kenneth Nnebue took the bull 

by the horn to invest his money is a feat I 

will give him credit because it is not easy to 

take such a risk and today we will never forget 

Kenneth Nnebue for everything that he 

has done. it was not easy for him to have 

done that. 


Looking at Nollywood, we have not really 

been able to see some of these movies in 

large screen, in cinema houses it is always 

hung in the shelves of houses, why have we 

not been able to get to that standard? 

There are certain prerequisite needed in 

large screen. It is either you are shooting in 

Cine or in the new equipment that can be 

blown up to Cine and a lot of people have 

taken that advantage now. For example, last 

year we were at a festival and we cried for 

the need for us to have Cine. Let the government 

support us and with corporate body we 

can get our own cine. Before, we used to 

have cinema culture but because of crime we 

do not have any more it is just now that Ben 

Bruce brought them. Most of the cinemas we 

used to have are no more because of our environment; 

there is lack of creativity in our 

society. Apart from NTA and some of those 

dramas, some people got hooked up to European 

cultures if not for Nollywood that was 

able to show people our prospect even 

though we were not given a chance. But we 

have a lot of people who are culture icon and 

cultural writers like Ambassador Segun Olusola. 

But with time so many things began to 

happen and it brought up the interest of the 

viewers. People do not want to go to the 

cinemas because of crime and there were no 

many of them. People prefer to buy the tape 

and watch at home. The media also helped in 

creating awareness because without them, 

Nigerians would not have heard of Nollywood; 

they wrote positive things about Nollywood 

and with time, a lot of people began 

to appreciate Nollywood movies than European 

movies. The only thing that they complained 

of was the repetition of story lines 

and the need to discover new talents. Thanks 

to Soludo and the past government who 

made sure that more banks began to take interest 

in the area of projecting Nigeria. The 

government did it because they were embarrassed 

at the level of their ignorance when 

they travelled out and it dawned on them 

that Nollywood was another aspect of tourism 

particularly when the country had a bad 

image. So Nollywood has been able to put 

Nigeria on the global map. During the last 


World Cup and Nations Cup, spectators had 

banners that Nigerians movies are good; that 

was the statement from other countries that 

reminded our leaders that we are now being 

appreciated all over the world. Even our 

people in the Diaspora appreciated us 

through these Nollywood stories that reflected 

the lives of our people over there. 

In answer to that question of why we are 

not at the centre stage of being mentioned in 

awards like Oscar is that when we make 

movies on celluloid, it will correct some of 

those things that have been criticized like the 

generator noise and language but we must 

understand that we have our culture; we are 

more of a dialogue driven people than most 

of the films we watch in Europe. Everyone 

have their own style it is a deliberate policy 

by Europeans that they do not want to see 

anything good come out by Africans they 

know that when we come in it is going to be 

difficult for them because people will begin 

to appreciate us more so the best thing to do 

is to run us down and try to raise standard 

and we say no to that. Look at other African 

countries, how many of them are shooting 

the way we are shooting? But Nollywood 

has become a phenomenon that even Ghana 

who started before us are nowhere near us. 

We are now better than them but we are 

happy that we have a lot of people who have 

done well and these are some of the things 

that I think that we need to fasten up. Teco 

Benson just blew up on his thing, we also 

have Jeta Amata through the collaboration of 

the former governor of Cross River State 

Donald Duke, and they got something. 

Thank God things are getting better; we will 

continue to use films culturally exploit this 

country to ensure that things are fine. 

Nollywood seems to dwell on the same story 

line, why can’t legendary and historical stories 

like Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi 

Azikiwe or issues on the Nigeria-Biafran 

war be done into movies? 

Queen Amina has been done but some of 

these are not successful. We can do that for a 

would-be prospective producer or writer. 


66 


and Bruce Beresford; they were here in the 

90’s. The film Soweto was filmed here on 

this soil; Ogunde brought the British crew 

here. Let us realize what has happened to us 

in that regard, our discontinuity in political 

stability, military dictatorship and so on disturbed 

us a lot. What we should be focusing 

now is how to convince these people that we 

are ready. One big problem that is starring us 

in the face is power; electricity. It is the basic 

infrastructure. We need to solve our 

problem and then things will fall in. 

You have been 

behind the Cinema 

and have 

seen a lot of stars 

rise and fall; as a 

p r o f e s s i o n a l , 

what will you say 

is the do and 

don’t for an upcoming 

act? 

First of all, try 

and go to school; 

there is nothing 

like a good 

rounded education 

today and 

then you can 

build a career on that. Secondly, young people 

are attracted by the glamour of reality 

shows which is a distraction. To be really 

successful and talented, you have to be ready 

to serve and work for it; there is no quick 

money. Look at the task now and keep your 

eyes on the future. The crop of successful 

acts is people that have put in their best in 

terms of creativity, passions, hard work; they 

aspired. These are the qualities that add up to 

make someone successful. 

Does it bother you that many of our actors 

and actress do not get international roles in 

Hollywood; with the exception of Olu Jacobs, 

Ene Oloja and a few others none have 

had that international experience? 

Some of the names you mentioned have 





been on the scene for a very long time, Olu 

Jacobs was in England and studied there and 

had worked with the best directors in the 

world. But Olu Jacobs didn’t first happen 

over night; when I was in the London Film 

School in 1977/1978, I actually convinced 

him to take part in my final graduation film 

in 1978. He was an actor then and we had 

the good fortune of being in the London 

Film School and as such, attracted actors for 

student production. 

What I mean sir is looking at now, agreed 

that Olu Jacobs 

was there but 

now we don’t 

have them 

much. 

Gradually, we 

will get there. 

Nollywood is a 

recent phenomenon 

and 

even some Nollywood 

practitioners, 

actors 

have been invited 

to Hollywood, 

New 

York etc. Why 

are we in a hurry? I think it’s bound to happen. 

I think I can predict that Nigeria is on 

its way and we will actually hold the stage 

one day. 

Looking at the volume of movies done in 

Nollywood, one would be surprised to find 

out that they don’t usually make major film 

festivals in the world; what do you think is 

wrong here? 

I don’t think it is important; as far as I am 

concerned, my primary concern is for my 

audience. I think an artiste can easily be distracted 

if he says that my work has to be so 

or so standard. I think that for me, the story I 

tell is far more relevant in my environment 

and for my own audience than any other and 

it will be of the good quality and standard to 

Tunde Kelani with a young fan 


Tunde Kelani 


Kate Henshaw-Nuttall 


attract attention outside. I think any artiste 

will be kidding himself if you neglect your 

home base and your own audience. What we 

need to do is to consistently keep improving 

on the quality of your work, you will get 

there. 

Sir, you have been in the industry for over 

30 years and still counting, you have made 

a name. Will you say you are fulfilled? 

I am challenged because every day, every 

new month is an innovation in my career. As 

a matter of fact, it is now I am happier because 

the technology for me to work as a 

filmmaker is within my grasp. Then when 

we started, the technology was not good 

enough; we were working with the analogue 

system which was a horrible way for us to be 

working, but now you can have assess to low 

level digital technology. Interestingly 

enough, most of our work has gone into IT 

and is not based on media technology. This 

is an exciting time when you talk about the 

digital media. So I feel excited all over 

again. 

Let’s look at the name you have; you are 

one of the best filmmaker’s in Nigeria, can 

that be reconciled financially? 

You know that the greatest problem we have 

is funding. Even this present project I am 

doing now is now stretching because you 

know the nature of our work is now just getting 

recognition in the corporate circle. I 

know that will change for good because 

when people see what we are doing they are 

bound to take us seriously. 

Will you say you have made money from 

film making? 

Look, I have invested everything I have just 

to continue making films, on the material 

side, there is nothing to show for that but 

again when you think about what I have 

done in training many people in the industry 

thtat’s to me is a source of great wealth. I 

will say that I may not have money but I 

have made wealth in filmmaking. 

banks like Zenith Bank sponsoring films; we 

have Eco Bank who has sponsored four Nollywood 

films and so forth. It is coming 

gradually and when they see that we have 

something that will be beneficial to them, 

more we come in. 

There is this trend of too many unskilled 

hands in the industry with regards to production 

who contribute to a great extent to 

the low quality in Nollywood movies. Does 

this not worry you? 

Of course! There are two things involved; it 

is either you have it or you don’t. If you 

don’t have it, you go and learn and if you 

have it, it may be natural. You have to go 

and learn and make yourself better. The 

good thing about this is that these people 

learn on the job so their first and second 

work might not be that fantastic so by the 

time they collaborate and work under one or 

two people that have done all that theories 

practicalize with them, join hands with them 

it gets better. 

Are the actors and actresses being paid 

enough? 

You call me and say you want to pay me 1 

million for a film you now cut it to part 

1,2,3,4 that means you are paying me N250 

thousand per film. When you finish you now 

give it to African Magic to show as many 

times as they like, its not enough instead let 

them be paying us 10/20 million anything 

you want to do with the film you do it. We 

are not getting royalties this is the kind of 

fling that should be coming to it. 

What is your dream for Nollywood? 

Let’s do our African thing, let do stories that 

relate to African not just Nigeria but Africa 

because the white men can’t do that, we 

have it we are in if so we can tell. Our own 

stories better than telling their own stories, 

they can’t tell our stories better than we do. 

68 



Ejike Asiegbu … Hollywood is sabotaging Nollywood 


There are so many things that a writer is supposed 

to do; he has to be imaginative and 

creative. I quite agree with you that there is 

need for us to do a lot of stories, domestic 

issues should be treated, children drama that 

can make a very good viewing. We are 

aware that there are political histories that 

can be written, we encourage that, we welcome 

that because the big banks are coming 

and may tell us to try it and they will foot 

the bill. New things are beginning to happen. 

I can assure you that we have some of the 

most brilliant writers of our time who have 

written some of those stories but who are not 

yet lucky to have sponsors but I thank God 

for the banks who now know the enormous 

image of this country. We will not only entertain 

but get a box office which is the ultimate. 

Most Nollywood movies appear to have 

been produced in a hurry and as such, 

there are so many negligible mistakes and a 

certain level of unprofessionalism, do you 

agree that this trend create a conflict between 

commerce and expertise which leads 

to mediocrity? 

Movies are not shot in five days; we are not 

Europe because a lot of issues are involved. 

When we say five days, is it from preproduction 

to post production? Or is it from 

after pre-production and planning? After you 

have confirmed everything that you have set 

out your cast of course you can shoot the 

video within five days. It depends on the 

kind of story, if it is a documentary then it 

can be a Docu-drama which can take you 

about 40 to 30 minutes if you have confirmed 

your location, done your production 

plan and have invited your artists and they 

have read their scripts, rehearsed. You can 

your date for shooting, confirm your location 

and the actors come to shoot; of course 

you can achieve it under five days. I quite 

agree that in all that we do we must discover 

in everything we are doing; anyone who 

wants to invest money in film making must 

create time, must create a working relationship 

between the producers and actors because 

everything involved in production 

must have understanding. We have said it to 

our selves that there is need for us to make it 

more professional, have more stories, plan 

well so that what we are showing to the outside 

world becomes more professional so 

that people will appreciate us. 

Do you agree this development is affecting 

the qualities of the movies? 

Of course it will; we are working on it. We 

accept those criticisms. But then, producers 

should be able to get the best cameras and do 

the work well and also pay the actors well so 

that the era of having 13 to 15 plays by one 

actor will be difficult. It is not a hidden fact 

that making your movie win an Oscar Award 

is entirely a political issue. 

Looking at Totsi, the movie that won South 

Africa an award in the Oscar, they had good 

pictures, shot on celluloid but I can assure 

you that there are better actors in Nigeria 

that will do more than some of their actors; 

another fact is the amount that was involved 

in the film to make it get that award. 

For some time now Hollywood has come to 

Africa, talking about Blood Diamonds and 

some films they have been shooting but 

don’t you get worried that Nigeria has 

never been taken as a location. 

You see Nigeria will never be chosen because 

of the issues in our country, today you 

hear kidnapping and tomorrow you hear 419 

and CNN is not doing well enough because 

they are always ready to run down our country. 

It is high time that Nigerians made the 

country good and preserve the country. We 

should preserve our tourism potential areas 

like our game reserve, TINAPA is a good 

example, we need more by each state governor. 

What partnership has Hollywood and Nollywood? 

I have had of some of my colleagues who 

have been invited to shoot movies although I 

have not been invited in any one I have also 

heard of some of those in the US who have 


come here but I have not seen those jobs 

come out. A lot of our colleagues like 

Stephanie Okereke, Amaka Igwe there are 

lots of prospects, there are lots of things happening. 

Are you thinking of going into politics? 

I have been a political animal. I believe in 

maintaining and sustaining in the dignity of 

human being. I do believe that I am not yet 

done with service because service is the best 

work of man according to the Greek. I believe 

that the society has a legacy, a legacy 

that can help to propagate discipline, which 

has love and great understanding of the feeling 

of the masses. I believe in the leadership 

that would help to create an opening, a window 

of opportunity and hope through deliberate 

policies that will help to provide to the 

best minimum and reduce poverty that 

would make people wake up and rise and 

say yes I think I can do it. These are few 

things in terms of politics that I am looking 

out for tomorrow that is a policy for me that 

I want to achieve where I can stand in a position 

to help to outweigh, to bring down 

some of the poverty level of not only my 

people but also my country Nigeria. 

Are you fulfilled in your career? 

Of course, definitely I am more than fulfilled 

in my career as an actor and also as a career 

person who is there to serve. I believe in service 

a lot either way, acting is part of service 

because we are the mirror of the society. 

If you had not been an actor what else 

would you have been? 

I have always believed that through change 

you can help to propagate and move the people. 

I am a member of the Human Right Organization; 

I have been trying to do things 

that can help the people to give them hope. 

Looking at your words which one stands 

out? 

I do not know and I cannot tell because for 

me as a professional in each job I put the 

seriousness which amounts to work that can 

help make that job professional. So I have 

had quite a lot of input in terms of professionalism 

in my work. I do not judge myself 

I put on my best but it is left for the masses 

to say that I am good. 


Any advise for up coming actors. 

Hard work, know your vision, be focused, be 

deliberate, be humble, be determined and as 

long as you have the fear of God then the 

rest is history. 

What turns you off? 

I hate lies, I hate traitors, people that want to 

show off piss me off because every human 

being is a component of God’s creation and 

we must respect every body who you come 

across in respective of how old or how small 

he may be. 

How long will you be acting? 

I believe that through my work I have been 

able to affect lives, it is difficult for me to 

tell you now because I still have more to offer 

I am too young to leave my workin the 

course of my service to my profession and in 

the course of my service to my country. 

Are you into other business? 

I have my own registered company it is 

called Forever Communications apart from 

being the CEO and I also run Project Drama 

Foundation which is an NGO my wife is 

also managing the Forever Communication 

we are into adverts, contracts and delivering 

of services. 

What is your motto in life? 

To thyself be true. 

************************************ 

AHAOMA KANU is a journalist with National 

Daily Newspaper in Lagos, Nigeria. Gifted with 

power of communication with a strong passion for 

parts, Ahaoma is working with the Arts section of 

the newspaper. He is also a writer with his first 

novel, A Season of the Sun that is based on Nigeria-Biafra 

war on the verge of publication. He has 

also written short stories and poems along with 

plays for creating awareness for HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. 

Ahaoma Kanu is also the Media and Publicity 

Cordinator for the Down Syndrome Association of 

Nigeria (DSAN) where he helps in raising the 

awareness of Down Syndrome in Nigeria and in 

the West African sub-region. He also organizes 

fund raising campaigns to help children with heart 

defects get corrective heart surgery. 

He also takes a keen interest in writing about human 

rights abuses and other forms of injustice to 

people around the world. 

70 


Reading as anticipatory formation of meaning: 

Eye-movement characteristics and fixation-speech 

intervals when articulating different types of text 

Timo Jarvilehto, Veli-Matti Nurkkala, 

Kyösti Koskela, Elina Holappa, Heidi Vierela 

Faculty of Education and Kajaani University Consortium, 

University of Oulu, FINLAND 

Abstract 

Eye movement characteristics and duration of reading were studied when subjects were reading 

aloud from 1) normal text; 2) scrambled text with letters within the word mixed; and 3) 

continuous text with spaces between the words omitted. Fixation-speech interval (i.e. the interval 

between the first fixation to a word and the start of speech) was also measured. The results 

did not support the standard linear information processing model of reading, where reading of 

the scrambled text should be associated with changes in the eye movement pattern and slower 

reading as compared with normal or continuous text. Instead, the most conspicuous changes in 

relation to normal reading were associated with continuous text. Fixation-speech interval 

ranged from 200 ms to several seconds, being shortest with the normal text. The results support 

the theory of reading aloud as an anticipatory and continuous process of meaning generation, 

in which visual fixation confirms and culminates rather than initiates the process. 

Keywords: Reading – Organism-environment 

system – Fixation-speech interval - Anticipation 

Reading aloud provides a superb opportunity 

for experimental investigation of perceptual 

processes that involve both the reception of 

and response to a source of visual information 

via its meaningful recognition. The 

types of models used to account for such 

processes depend fundamentally on underlying 

premises concerning the relationship between 

the observer and the observed. These 

premises give rise to different, testable predictions 

regarding the correspondence between 

different presentations of visual information 

and observable response. 

Based on the assumed discontinuity 

between an observer and his/her environment 

as separate objective systems, reading 

is usually considered to involve the one-way 

transmission from outside to inside of visual 

information stored in written text. Although 

there is some dispute, the most common 

models (see, e.g., Rayner, 1998) start with 

the fixation of the eyes on the word followed 

by information transmission for further processing, 

in which visual or phonological 

codes (or both) may be used in the identification 

of the word and its meaning. When 

reading aloud, the perceptual part of the 

process is followed by the selection of motor 

programs and realization of speech. 

This conceptualization follows the 

general cognitive model of perception and 

motor action as linear/parallel information 

processing in the nervous system. Even if 

there are some differences in respect to questions 

concerning whether reading is based on 

transmission of single letters, syllables or 

whole words, or on dual route or interactive 

models (see, e.g., Altmann, 2001), the cornerstone 

in all such theories is that the most 

important events follow the presentation of 

the stimulus or fixation to the word. Word 

recognition is then based on objective com- 


71

parison of incoming information with representations 

stored in an inner lexicon. Results 

from experiments on sequential activations 

of the brain with words, obtained by brainimaging 

methods (EEG or MEG), seem to 

support these psychological models 

(Parviainen et al., 2006). 

Several theoretical approaches, however, 

emerging first at the end of the 19th 

century (Bain, 1855; Dewey, 1896) and 

spanning over the last century (see e.g. v. 

Uexküll and Kriszat, 1932; Gibson, 1979; 

Järvilehto, 1999), challenge the linear information 

processing model. Järvilehto (1999) 

maintained, through the theory of organismenvironment 

system (Jarvilehto, 1998) and 

experimental findings in animal and human 

experiments, that “[p]erception is not a linear 

process proceeding from the stimulus to 

the percept, but, rather, a circle involving 

both the sensory and motor organs as well as 

the events in the environment” (p. 97). A 

perceptual process does not start with the 

stimulus as an isolated object or ‘unit of information’, 

rather the placement of the 

stimulus in environmental context, like the 

last piece in a jigsaw puzzle, culminates the 

process. The piece fits because the arrangement 

of its neighbourhood leaves a receptive, 

locally configured hole for its accommodation. 

In the same way, a stimulus is 

recognizable as such only if there is room 

for its inclusion, and it is as small in relation 

to percept as the last piece is to the jigsaw 

puzzle (and cosmos that includes the puzzle). 

It is an inclusion of the dynamic reconfiguration 

of the organism-environment system 

that enables incorporation of new 

knowledge. 

The non-linear interpretation of formation 

of meaning within the context of a dynamic 

relational, fluid neighbourhood corresponds 

with the recent development of concepts 

of ‘inclusionality’ and ‘natural inclusion’ 

(Rayner 2003), based on deeply non- 

Euclidean geometry and relativity theory. 

These concepts resolve the dichotomy between 

‘material’ (‘informational’) and 

‘immaterial’ (‘spatial’) presence – and hence 

also between ‘organism’ and ‘environment’ 

Reading as Generation of Meaning 

– by recognizing that these are mutually inclusive. 

Hence informational content cannot 

be singled out from spatial context and a 

‘stimulus’ cannot be meaningfully recognized 

as a ‘thing in itself’ but only as a resonant 

dynamic inclusion of natural neighbourhood. 

When applied to the study of reading 

such an interpretation leads to the hypothesis 

that the written words do not act as stimuli to 

be analyzed and interpreted by the brain in a 

linear fashion as words and sentences, but 

the words act rather as tools in the continuous 

search for the meaning conveyed by the 

writer of the text. This means that many of 

the processes assumed to start with the fixation 

of the eyes on a word are already active 

before stimulus presentation. The written 

text is then simply included in the anticipatory 

organization leading to the formation of 

personal meaning or to the spoken word 

when reading aloud. 

Although fixation is generally regarded 

as the starting point for information 

transfer from the written word other kinds of 

explanation have existed for some while. 

Goodman (1969) proposed, on the basis of 

miscue analysis of oral reading, that the 

process should be described more as a 

“guessing game” than veridical information 

transfer. More recently, McDonald and 

Shillock (2003) suggested that “the remarkable 

efficiency of reading is due, at least in 

part, to the on-line formation of predictions 

about upcoming words. The statistical properties 

of the linguistic environment offer a 

viable source for these predictions.” (p. 651). 

Also Levy (2007) stressed the importance of 

expectation for comprehension in his theory 

of resource-allocation processing difficulty, 

and Kotchoubey (2006), when criticizing the 

traditional information processing model, 

suggested that in reading especially anticipatory 

processes are much more important than 

the stimulus related events. Moreover, Federmeier 

(2007) concluded, on the basis of 

recording event related potentials to expected 

and unexpected words (N400), that 

“the brain seems to deal with the speed and 

complexity of language processing by 

72 


‘‘thinking ahead’’, by generating information 

about likely upcoming stimuli and preparing 

ahead of time, at multiple levels, to 

process them.” (p. 502). Reading is a special 

skill, carried out with a remarkable speed, 

and it is well known that anticipation plays a 

significant role in practicing all skills with 

marked temporal demands (see, e.g., Abernethy, 

2001). 

The possible significance of anticipation 

is also suggested by the relative ease 

with which words with transposed letters are 

read (Rayner et al., 2006). However, Rayner 

et al. (2006) also found that there is a cost 

when the order of letters in the word is 

changed: reading rate decreases and the 

number of fixations increases, supporting the 

mainstream processing model. In the present 

work, we examined in more detail the effect 

of letter transposition, but in addition to the 

scrambled text we also used two kinds of 

controls: normal text and normal text without 

spaces between the words. Furthermore, 

in addition to recording usual eye movement 

parameters, we used a new technique for 

measuring reading efficiency, the fixationspeech 

interval, i.e. the interval between the 

first fixation to a word and the start of 

speech when reading aloud. We considered 

that the main differences in the measured 

parameters for different text types would be 

found between the normal and the scrambled 

text if the linear processing hypothesis is accurate. 

METHODS 

Subjects. The subjects were 30 students with 

normal reading skills (15 female, 15 male; 

age range 19-40). The Ss had no diagnosed 

visual defects. 

Experimental situation. The S was seated 60 

cm in front of a display screen (30,4 x 40,5 

cm; refresh rate 150 Hz), on which Finnish 

text was presented ( 6-7 lines per screen; 

size of letters 0.7-0.9 cm). One trial consisted 

of reading aloud with normal reading 

speed one screen of text, the number of letters 

in the text being approximately constant 


over the trials. The first two trials consisted 

of normal text; the next two trials of text in 

which the letters were scrambled (for about 

50% of the words only the beginning and the 

end was correct: e.g., the sujbect had to raed 

tihs knid of wodrs). In the 5th and the 6th 

trial the text was continuous, the words being 

written together without spaces (e.g., 

thesubjecthadtoreadthiskindoftext). The different 

types of text were presented twice, the 

whole experiment consisting of 12 trials. 

The content of each text screen was different, 

making up as a whole a fairy tale about 

sheep and mountain goats. After the experiment 

the S was asked about the content of 

the story. 

Recording methods. Eye movements were 

recorded with an EyeLinkII (SR Research) 

tracker using pupil tracking (accuracy of 

sampling 2 ms; noise < 0.1 degrees of visual 

angle). Before the start of the experiment the 

recording system was calibrated. Drift correction 

was carried out in the beginning of 

each trial. Additionally, in order to obtain 

fixation records synchronous with the reading, 

eye movements were recorded during 

the experiment from the computer screen 

synchronously with the speech of the subject 

by a digital video camera. 

Data analysis. Eye movement parameters 

were analyzed by DataViewer (SR Research) 

which produced trial reports containing 

the duration of the trial, total number of 

fixations, average fixation duration, and average 

saccade amplitude for each trial. The 

interval between the first fixation to a word 

and the start of the voice signal was measured 

on the computer screen with a video 

editing program which showed synchronously 

the text frames with the eye movement 

record and the speech signal (accuracy 

40 ms). This kind of analysis was carried 

out for 13 Ss (8 female; 5 male) for which 

unequivocal data were obtained. For testing 

of effects one-way analysis of variance 

(ANOVA) was used with Scheffe-test for 

paired comparisons (or t-test in one case). 

RESULTS 


Table I 


The questioning of the subjects after the experiments 

indicated that they had understood 

the main ideas of the fairy tale. There were 

no systematic differences in the examined 

parameters with the repetition of the trials, 

and in the following the trials have been 

combined in three groups (normal, scrambled 

and continuous text). 

The S had generally no difficulties in 

reading the scrambled text, whereas considerable 

difficulties were experienced when 

reading the continuous text. With the continuous 

text the reading slowed down, and 

the normal reading rhythm was lost. When 

duration of reading (Table I) was compared 

across the trials, the reading of the scrambled 

text took somewhat longer than the 

reading of the normal text (increase about 10 

%, on the average). However, with the continuous 

text the duration of reading increased 

by 46%, on the average, in comparison 

to the normal text. The effect of trial on 

reading duration was significant at p< .001 

(F(2, 357) = 108.03). 

Eye movement parameters 

Significant effect of the type of the text was 

obtained for saccade amplitude, number of 

fixations and fixation duration (Table I; for 

all effects, p < .001; F(2, 357) = 7.04; F(2, 

357) = 88.17; F(2,357) = 13.44; respectively). 

Post hoc comparisons (Scheffe) 

showed no significant differences in saccade 

amplitudes and number of fixations between 

the normal and scrambled text, whereas significant 

difference was found in the fixation 

duration. For the continuous text, the saccade 

amplitude was lower, the number of 

fixations higher, and the fixation duration 

longer than in the two other situations (in all 

comparisons p < .01, Scheffe). 

Average duration of reading (s), saccade amplitude (degrees of visual angle), number of fixations, 

and fixation duration (ms) for trials with different text types (number of Ss = 30). 

S.D. = standard deviation of mean; n = number of trials. 

Fixation-speech interval 

Fig. 1 (next page) shows the distribution of fixation-speech intervals of 13 Ss. The interval 

varied from less than 200 ms to several seconds. Fixation-speech intervals over 3000 ms 

(0.002 % of all intervals) were regarded as mistakes and omitted from the analysis. 

There was a significant effect of the type of text on the fixation-speech interval (Fig.2), 

the interval increasing from normal to scrambled text and being longest with the continuous 

text (p


Fig. 1. Distribution of fixation-speech intervals of 13 Ss when reading different types of text. 

There was a significant difference between the fixation-speech intervals when their dependence 

on the location of the word on the text line was examined (p


Fig. 2. Fixation-speech interval for single words as a function of text type (normal, scrambled, 

continuous). Data averaged over 13 Ss. Types of words embedded in normal, 

scrambled and continuous texts indicated on the right. Standard error of the mean shown 

by bars. 

Several intriguing results were obtained in 

the present study, which bring into question 

the adequacy of simple linear models to explicate 

the reading process. First, we found 

the main differences in eye movement parameters 

and fixation-speech intervals to lie 

between the continuous text and the two 

other text types. This supports the conception 

that for more efficient reading a spatially 

distinguished word is more important 

than the order of letters within the word. 

Such results are also at variance with a simple 

model of reading as a linear processing 

of orthographic features of the text. 

Second, the fixation-speech interval was in 

many cases so short (even about 200 ms 

which is of the same order of magnitude as 

76 

the simple visual reaction time) that it is difficult 

to understand how the nervous system 

could manage in carrying out such a number 

of “inner” operations as presupposed in the 

traditional theories of reading. It is possible 

to interpret this finding being based simply 

on guessing from the text context, but then 

we have the problem how such “guessing” 

could be accomplished on the neural level. 

“Guessing” means that the word is formulated 

before looking at it, i.e. that there is an 

anticipatory process going on in the nervous 

system that can to a large extent be completed 

before the subject knows the exact 

content of the word. The short fixationspeech 

interval could also be explained by 

supposing that the processing of the wordcontinued 

next page → 



Fig. 3. Fixation-speech interval as a function of the location of the word in the text line for 

different text types. Data averaged over 13 Ss. Standard error of the mean indicated by 

bars. 

starts peripherally before the actual fixation. 

This explanation is, however, at variance 

with the finding that fixation-speech intervals 

were longest in the middle of the text 

line, and shortest in its beginning where the 

possibility of the use of peripheral vision is 

negligible. 

Third, the longer fixation-speech interval 

with scrambled text as compared with the 

normal one seems to confirm the conclusion 

of Rayner et al. (2006) that in spite of the 

relative ease of reading it, there is a cost 

when the letters in the word are transposed. 

However, there were several subjects for 

whom no difference was found, and the 

similar fixation-speech interval within the 

scrambled text trial indicates that the longer 

interval is not due to the transposition of the 

letters, but rather to different task demands. 

The mixture of normal and scrambled words 

seems also to influence the reading of the 

normal words. The different task demands 

may be reflected also in the longer duration 

of reading as well as in the higher number of 

fixations. 

If the linear model is not accurate in 

explaining the results we may consider the 

role of anticipation. There are, however, two 

very different ways of understanding the nature 

of anticipation, depending upon whether 

the perceptual system is assumed to be a linear 

transmission system or inclusionally 

nonlinear organism-environment system 

(Järvilehto, 1998; Rayner 2003). 

Anticipation is not a concept frequently 

used in the linear information processing 

model. Where it is used, it is thought 

of as a process of waiting for the presentation 

of the stimulus, either as activation of an 

inner nervous model with which the incoming 

stimulus may be compared (see e.g. 

Rosen, 1985) or as a preparatory facilitation 

of nervous elements for more efficient processing 

of the stimulus in future. 


In contrast, in organism-environment 

system theory (Järvilehto, 1998) anticipation 

is not a separate factor influencing nervous 

processing, but arises in the course of activity 

as an intrinsic result-oriented quality of 

the organism-environment system, determining 

the outline of the prospective acts and 

the features of the environment that can be 

joined to the system by senses (see Järvilehto, 

1999) in the achievement of result of 

behavior (e.g. a spoken word). As an anticipative, 

living organization, the organismenvironment 

system is hence not waiting to 

be activated by specific stimuli, but it is the 

anticipatory organization that determines the 

environmental elements that can be used in 

the process of achievement of results. 

Hence, anticipatory organization determines 

the environmental constituents that can be 

included for realization of the actions of the 

subject. Anticipation means that before the 

execution of any task, a system is dynamically 

primed for certain results to incorporate 

key environmental events that ‘release’ 

the possibility for expression of appropriate 

behavior. When applied to the reading process 

this formulation entails that many of the 

processes, usually assumed to be possible 

only after the stimulus presentation occur 

before anything happens in the experiment. 

The main problem in the traditional 

linear and hierarchical processing model of 

reading is that it conflates psychological and 

neurophysiologic concepts. The psychological 

task analysis aims at describing the sequence 

of operations necessary for the accomplishment 

of the task. Such an analysis, 

however, tells nothing of the temporal order 

of the realization of different task components 

by the nervous system. In most models 

these psychological operations are presented 

as boxes following the presentation of 

the stimulus and its peripheral processing. It 

is implied that the events in the nervous system 

occur in the same order, but this is a 

non-sequitur. The temporal order of the psychological 

operations may be different from 

that of the neural processes following the 


stimulation of the receptors. When reading, 

the S has not to wait for events in the environment, 

but the knowledge of the structure 

of the task makes possible a variety of anticipatory 

neural processes vital to the task 

before it begins, which are incorporated into 

its accomplishment. Already before any 

stimulus is presented by the experimenter, a 

set of systems is formed that is only completed 

by the presented experimental material. 

Hence, when starting, the reader is not 

an empty bag to be filled with the information 

from the text, but is actively searching 

what the writer has to say. 

On the basis of the present results the 

process of reading could be described as follows. 

The task of the subject is to read the 

text in order to understand its meaning. The 

subject is therefore engaged in this task by 

trying to figure out what the writer of the 

text is going to say. This means that he has 

to produce the text himself, and the fixations 

act only as control variables which modulate 

the process of meaning generation and confirm 

the anticipatory organization. The fixations 

do not feed the content of the words 

into a “speech processor”, but rather they 

confirm the continuous process of formation 

of meaning and control the production of 

speech created by the subject. If fixations 

just modulate the ongoing speech process, 

then it is understandable why fixationspeech 

interval may be as short as simple 

reaction time. 

The present results do not, of course, 

completely exclude the possibility of a linear 

processing explanation, especially if some 

ad hoc hypotheses are added regarding the 

processing capabilities of the nervous system. 

But it should be stressed that, in the organism-environment 

system theory, the results 

can be explained without any ad hoc 

hypotheses as anticipation is one of its cornerstones. 

Hence the results are not 

“explained away”, but are consistent with 

predictions from the organism-environment 

system theory. 

Acknowledgement. We thank Dr. Alan Rayner for help in preparation of the manuscript. 

78 



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80

Toll-like Receptors and Prion Disease: Relevance 

to Pathology and Novel Therapy 

[PART II. CONTINUATION OF PART I IN PREVIOUS EDITION] 

Okom Nkili F.C. Ofodile 

Center for Cardiovascular Research (CCR) 

Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology 

AG: THEURING, Charite 10115 Berlin, GERMANY 

email: ofodile120@yahoo.co.uk 

CONCLUSIONS 

The recent advances in our understanding of 

Toll-like receptor functions in the innate immune 

response shed new light on how immunoinflammatory 

responses are initiated 

and mediated within the central nervous system.. 

It has been increasingly recognized 

that Toll-like receptors (TLRs) play a major 

role in innate immunity to recognize specific 

molecular patterns derived from pathogens 

including lipids, protein, DNA, RNA, and 

also recognize endogenous ligands and small 

molecular synthetic compounds. These observations 

that TLRs are also able to sense 

endogenous ligands such as heat shock proteins 

[49], surfacted protein A [240] and 

hyaluronan [80] buttresses the concept of 

“danger theory” of immune activation [241, 

242], which holds that the induction of immunity 

requires stimulation of cells by not 

only non-self derived ligands but also the socalled 

“endogenous danger signals” constituting 

factors released by dead or dying cells 

as a result of tissue damage, for instance. 

Now; quite irrespective of the evidence compellingly 

implicating pathogenic microorganisms 

in driving TSE disease. For instance, 

microglial activation and inflammatory 

mediators are detected in plaques in 

TSE patients as previously described [179, 

180, 182, 183], and in Alzheimer’s disease 

patients [ 243] in CNS inflammation. It is 

thus conceivable that “endogenous danger 

signal” exposed in the damage incurred in 

the brain during the progression of the disease, 

could stimulate viable glia cells 

through TLRs, thereby initiating inflammatory 

responses. These events could well be 

extrapolated to the orchestrated network of 

events intimately involved in the pathogenesis 

of TSE diseases. For instance, heparan 

sulfate, a products of the degradation of 

heparan sulfate proteoglycan, suggested by a 

plethora of data to be intimately implicated 

in TSE pathogenesis [244, 245,246], can induce 

the maturation of DCs through the 

TLR4, as well, [79, 80]. The maturation of 

DCs is an immunologically important process 

by which the dendritic cells acquire an 

ability to present antigens and to induce cellular 

response efficiently. Furthermore, 

given that Drosophila Toll was originally 

identified as essential molecule for embryonic 

patterning in Drosophila [247] subsequently 

shown to be of key importance in 

antifungal immunity by Lemaitre B. et al. 

[72], and the Toll-like receptors are the 

mammalian homologue of the Drosophila 

Toll receptor [248], it is conceivable that 

certain members of the TLR family expressed 

on glia cells may be implicated in 

both the physiological and pathophysiological 

functions in the brain. To this end, importantly, 

a huge body of scientific data has 

compellingly implicated prion protein in embyronic 

development [249; 250; 251]. 

Therefore, it seems very difficult, if not almost 

impossible, to exclude the involvement 

of TLR receptors in the development and 

resolution of pathology of a wide range of 

neurodegeneratíve diseases including that of 

TSE diseases. 


Toll-like Receptors and Prion Disaease—Relevance to Pathology and Novel Therapy 

The ability of TLR-activated APC to 

activate CD4+ T cells and shape a TH 1- 

associated immune response has been well 

described elsewhere [252; 253]. In this respect, 

as previously described, TLRs activate 

multiple steps in the inflammatory reactions 

to eliminate the invading pathogens and subsequently 

coordinate the systemic defenses, 

which involves the modulation of multiple 

dendritic cell functions and the activation of 

signals that are of critical importance in initiation 

of adaptive immune responses. This 

unequivocally points to a protective function 

for the innate immune system. On the 

other hands, when the innate immune system, 

or a component of the innate immune 

system, is inappropriately stimulated, the 

immune responses driven by this inappropriate 

activation may lead to severe consequences. 

To this end, excessive TLR signaling 

caused by microbial infection and/or 

other challenges can lead to detrimental inflammation, 

tissue /cell damage, and occasionally 

to death. Now, CpG-containing oligodeoxynucleotides 

(CpG-ODN) are known 

as strong stimulators of innate immunity by 

mimicking the effects of bacterial DNA. 

Thus, CpG-ODNs, as previously described, 

are recognized by Toll-like receptor 9 

(TLR9). They can act as immune adjuvants, 

accelerating and boosting antigen-specific 

antibody responses by up to 500-fold. CpG 

motifs promote the production of T-helper 1 

and pro-inflammatory cytokines and induce 

the maturation/activation of professional antigen-presenting 

cells including macrophage 

and dendritic cells. The therapeutic importance 

of these products are now being studied, 

and tested in a wide range of pathological 

conditions [254; 255; 256; 257; 258] including 

prion disease. Importantly, employloyment 

of this agent in the management of 

TSE disease by Hans Kretzschmar and coworkers 

[154] led to a protective effect on 

mice infected with scrapie agent, consistent 

with the well-established ability of the innate 

immune system to confer protection to cells. 

Interestingly, further studies carried out to 

replicate the efficacy CpG-ODN on the 

prion disease [259] in a different laboratory 

by Heikenwalder and associates surprisingly 

yielded disastrous results. These observations 

[259], however, may not be easy to explain, 

for very few studies are presently 

available on this subject with regard to prion 

diseases. Nevertheless, CpG-ODN employment 

as was documented by Heikenwalder 

and associates [259] apparently led to negative 

clinical outcome, because, very probably, 

the immune system in the brain of the 

concerned TSE-infected models must have 

been already over- stimulated. Therefore, 

judging from the results obtained by concerned 

colleagues [259], it might be reasonable 

to conclude that repeated application of 

the concerned agent to the infected models, 

whereby the infectious dosis, apparently, 

might not have been necessarily low enough, 

could almost impossibly lead to a positive 

result. Prion protein has now been realized 

to have the ability to induce the production 

of antibodies [98, 113] and autoantibodies 

[260], and the presence of PrPSc (or PrPres), 

has been implicated in the activation of 

complement system as well. In this respect, 

PrPres can activate the complement system, 

leading to production of membrane attack 

complex (MAC) among other complement 

proteins [41]. Now, as it can be the case in 

disease state, the complement system could 

be inappropriately stimulated in the process 

of prion disease progression, and overstimulation 

of the complement leading to 

sustained inappropriate production of the 

membrane attack complex (MAC) in TSE 

pathogenesis. This, in turn, can initiate and 

sustain the process of autodestruction of 

neuronal cells and viable tissues by host defense 

system, as previously described in the 

cases of Alzheimer`s disease and Amyotrophic 

lateral sclerosis [141, 142], and, very 

recently, in the case of CJD by Budka and 

associates [41]. Furthermore, the mere fact 

that the presence of PrPres could result to 

production of autoantibodies; that the structure 

of microglia (the potent professional 

APCs in the CNS) could be impaired in 

TSEs pathogenesis, leading to dysfunction 

of APCs; and the homeostasis of the glutamatergic 

system could be significantly per- 

82 



turbed in TSE pathogenesis [261]. All these 

events possess the ability to elicit production 

of autoantibodies in the brain, which could 

invariably lead to a situation, where “Horror 

autotoxicus” becomes commonplace. These 

notions, therefore, strongly indicate that administration 

of CpG-ODN, under certain 

conditions, could also result or lead to premature 

hyperimmunity of autoimmunity, 

Horror autotoxicus = autoimmune reaction.”Horror 

autotoxicus,” a Latin expression, 

coined by Paul Ehrlich at the turn of 

the last century to describe autoimmunity to 

self, or the attack of “self” by immune system, 

which ultimately results to autoimmune 

condition. For instance, dysfunction of glutamatergic 

system could lead to overexpression 

of glutamate receptors, which can 

in turn lead to production of physiologically 

active autoantibodies [262]. These autoantibodies 

could be directed towards excitatory 

ionotropic glutamate receptors in the brain. 

Hence, it should be anticipated that appropriate 

employment of an agent 

(pharmaceutical agent), in most cases, result 

to amelioration of the concerned disease 

state or condition with minimal side-effect. 

The aforementioned consideration seems to 

be consistent with appropriate employment 

of CpG-ODN agents. Support for this notion 

is evidenced by the work of Zimmermann et 

al. [263] and that of Schetter and associaste 

[198]. Additionally, and importantly, this 

notion has been very recently strengthened 

in the case of prion disease by Kretzschmar 

and co-workers [154], who demonstrated 

positive clinical outcome as a result of CpG- 

ODN agent employment. The above observations 

further strengthen the concept that 

innate immunity may be an important player 

in TSE pathology, and that TLRs are crucial 

receptors for the activation of innate immune 

mechanisms, and therefore; points to a critical 

role for TLRs in the pathology and therapy 

of a wide range of diseases including 

prion diseases. The above considerations 

strongly argue that the previous report [259] 

should not necessarily represent a negation 

of the well-established protective properties 

of the innate immune system, nor the efficacy 

of CpG-ODN in the management of 

diseases including TSE diseases. Nevertheless, 

it is of importance to point out that 

standard conditions for effective administration 

of CpG- ODN as therapeutic agent have 

yet to be fully determined. The aforementioned 

conflicting observations underscore 

urgent need for increased studies in this direction. 

To this end, as recently suggested in 

a closely -related case by McGeer and 

McGeer [264], such studies could lead to 

less severe consequences, if two major situations 

are put into consideration,:1) if the 

problems of autoimmune reaction were substantially 

and generally put under control, 2) 

if appropriate measures are taken to substantially 

or almost completely prevent specifically 

the over-reactivity of the complement. 

Moreover, importantly, the recent discovery 

disclosing that concerted actions of tumor 

necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNFR1)-and 

TLR are implicated in the process of neuroinvasion 

in a neuropathological condition 

[174] may imply that antagonists of TNFR1- 

and TLR, as well as inhibitors of their intracellular 

signaling pathways might be effective 

anti-neuroinvasion agents for the management 

of a plethora of neurological diseases, 

where the process of neuroinvasion 

plays a central role in the disease process. 

Whilst neuroinvasion is undoubtedly a complex 

process that may include other mechanisms, 

these findings by Wang et al. [174] 

provide important insights into the signaling 

pathways and processes that result in neuroinvasion. 

It should, however, not be ruled 

out, that these observations [174] may bear 

enormous relevance to TSE pathology, and 

may hold good promise for novel therapies 

for a plethora of devastating neurodegenerative 

diseases including TSE diseases.Therefore, 

the mere fact that there are 

currently no preventive measures nor longterm 

treatment modalities for TSEs, underscores 

the urgent need for further investigations 

into this particular finding.. 

Human Toll-like receptors are transmembrane 

signal-transducing receptor proteins 

with an extracellular leucine-rich repeat 

domain and intracellular domain homolo- 



gous to the IL-receptor. TLRs act as key receptors 

responsible not only for the detection 

of a variety of micobial cell-wall components 

and bacterial DNA, ds-RNA, endogenous 

m-RNA, endogeneous proteinaceous 

molecules, extracellular matrix breakdown 

particules, but also for the initiation and mediation 

of signal transduction events eventually 

leading to the production of various proinflammatory 

mediators. There is no longer 

any doubt that TLRs are capable of sensing 

microbial organisms ranging from protozoa 

[235] to bacteria, fungus and viruses. Therefore; 

the above observations strongly 

strengthen the notion that Toll-like receptors 

may play an important role in the development 

and resolution of TSE disease pathology. 

The message is simple; the innate immune 

system is a complex body. What 

started originally as the study of fruit flies 

and caterpillars has become the basis of our 

hopes for new cures for diseases as lethal as 

cerebral malaria, sepsis, and systemic lupus 

erythematosus, and possibly, Creutzfeldt- 

Jakob diseases, as well. Hence, enhanced 

understanding of the Toll-like receptor biology 

, the nature of their various ligands, and 

the molecular underpinnings responsible for 

their biochemical effects will allow a model 

to be constructed in which the type of immune 

response to any type of infection associated 

with prion disease, for instance, could 

be viewed as a function of many different 

determinants, including the transmembrane 

protein, TLRs, the form and the nature of the 

microbe and the cytokine microenvironments. 

Knowledge gained from these studies, 

could be employed in targeting appropriately 

the pathways associated with TLR signal-transducing 

activities for either inhibition 

or augmentation, thereby opening novel 

avenues in future approaches to TSE disease 

therapy and other various pathological conditions. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

The author; Dr. Ofodile, is exceedingly grateful to Obiamaka, Ekene and Ifeanyi (my Queens) for 

their love, support, and understanding. 

The author, also, greatly acknowledged immense collegial assistance given to him by Franz Theuring, 

PhD. during the preparation of this manuscript. 

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Skeptics who declared discoveries and inventions impossible 

The Myth of the Modern World 

Scientific rationalists are fond of pointing out that the modern world is primarily a scientific and technological 

world. It's all very well being a romantic and a dreamer who complains about the environment and about pollution, 

but where would you be without a car to drive you to your office, without your mobile phone to call 

home, or without your personal computer? [For answer to this, refer Limits of Rationality, p.110, this edition) 

Who do you have to thank for these bounties? Why, science of course. And who do we have most fear? 

Naturally, it's the crackpots and weirdos who dabble in taboo subjects. 

This view of the world was articulated by astronomy professor and "skeptic" the late Carl Sagan who 

wrote; 

"We've arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements profoundly depend on 

science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and 

technology. This is a prescription for disaster." 

Sagan gloomily concludes, "The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The 

demons begin to stir." 

Most recently the same myth was dusted off and given an airing in the May/June 1999 issue of Skeptical 

Enquirer, the magazine of CSICOP, by Matt Nisbet, who wrote; 

" . . . The great achievements of science and technology we enjoy today owe much to the traditions 

of the Enlightenment….The scientific invention of cinema and television merged music, drama, visual 

setting, and narrative into an assault on the senses and emotions of mass audiences worldwide. 

Culture and society were forever changed. . . ." 

This myth has been recycled so often that almost no-one questions it. But what are the real facts? We live in a 

technical and scientific age right enough, but who created it? The white-coated guardians of science, protecting 

the guttering flame of hard-won knowledge from the gathering demons of new-age irrationality, as Sagan 

and Nisbet seem to think? 

Luckily, this is not a question that we have to speculate about philosophically -- it is one that has a concrete, 

quantifiable answer. 

How often, in the past 100 years, has publicly-funded institutional scientific research of the type conducted 

by Professor Sagan and his fellow members of CSICOP, resulted in major scientific and technical innovations? 

And how often have such discoveries come from the 'crackpot' loner in his 'skunk works', derided and 

ostracised by the likes of CSICOP? Even a superficial review shows an overwhelming trend in favor of the 

latter. 

Bell and the telephone; Parsons, Tesla and the Turbine; Edison and the electric light, and recorded 

sound; Marconi, Tesla and radio; the Wright Brothers and flight; Carl Benz and the automobile; The Lumiere 

brothers and cinema; Otto Mergenthaler and the Linotype machine; Armon Strowger and the automatic telephone 

exchange; George Eastman and celluloid photographic film; Fritz Haber, the historian who taught himself 

chemistry and fixed atmospheric nitrogen; Pollen and automatic fire control; Farnsworth, Baird and television; 

Farnsworth and nuclear fusion; Whittle and the jet engine; Chester Carlson and Xerography; Eckert and 

Mauchly and the commercial computer; Edwin Land and Polaroid Photography; Christopher Cockerell, the 

electronics engineer who invented the hovercraft. 

Even where the innovator belongs to a recognised institution he or she is often a loner who achieves 

success by swimming against the currents of orthodoxy, like Alan Turing and the first computers, or even Watson 

and Crick who had been told to drop their study of DNA but continued it as 'bootleg' research. 

Of course, one can also compile a long and distinguished list of discoveries in institutional science, especially 

from the great universities like Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Princeton, and especially in important 

basic fields like atomic physics and astronomy. But, somehow, it is difficult to draw up a list that carries 

quite the same diversity, the same romantic air of excitement and innovation and one that has so obviously 

influenced every single aspect of twentieth century life so fundamentally. 

Anyone who switches on the electric light, switches on the television, makes a phone call, watches a 

film, plays a record, takes a photograph, uses a personal computer, drives a car, or boards an aircraft has the 

lone eccentric to thank, not institutional science. 

These things were arranged not by guardians of the flame like Carl Sagan, but in most cases, despite 

scientists who think as Sagan thought. 

[Source: http://www.alternativescience.com/skeptics.htm] 

94 


The Dancer 

Sketches by Susanne Pikullik-Bastian 


Alan Rayner 

In Spiral Inclusion 

How hard it is to be soft 

Like a copper screw 

In a culture of steel nails 

Managed by hammerheads 

Dead-eyed sharks 

Whose only recourse 

To keep you on a straight and narrow course 

Is to hammer you on the head 

In short, sharp shocks 

That rip the fabric of your inclusion 

Into shreds 

All for the sake of a quick fix 

At their convenience 

Which cannot acknowledge 

What you bring 

By way of conductivity and connectivity 

In a natural communion 

From everywhere into somewhere 

An ingrowing spiral 

From a slot receptive to turning 

Around and around 

Pooling together 

What should never be split 

By an arrow of time 

That punches a hole 

To admit the whole 

That calls itself One 

Alone without neighbouring 

To slip in and slip out 

In the short term 

Without holding together 

In the long run 

94 


Oshogbo, Lagos – Nigeria 

Tropical Dreams 

By 

Lere Shakunle 

Excerpt from Behind The Eyes, a novel about three people, one from Venezuela, 

one from Nigeria, both young men and the other, a young girl, from 

Thailand who, having made their marks in their countries of origin, leave same 

for various reasons and find themselves in Europe. Not to seek political asylum 

for beating the cat or the bat – what again to beat that cannot shout, stop yarning 

this cock-and-bull story -- of the President of their countries, such stories, 

but as people with romantic backgrounds right from home. Their paths converge 

first in Berlin and all eventually in London. In this chapter, we are with 

Sola who was born in Cameroon to a Nigerian father and a Cameroonian 

mother. He is visiting Nigeria for the first time to participate in the famous 

Oshun of Oshogbo Festival. A dream. And then the invitation from Domingo in 

Venezuela! 

For a man from Yaounde where the hurly-burly of jammed programmes produces how do 

you do with no answers, how is your wife with my brother is well, sorry I am in hurry, 

where business cards litter the floor of a lift in the hurry by a director to keep an appointment 

with another who has an appointment with another who has to pick the children from the 

kindergarten, where discos are filled in the night, summer and winter and where whether you 

like it or not the neon lights are there to welcome you in the night to the city with buses 

hooting and cabs hurrying and children shedding tears for missing the bus to the school for 

fear of cudgelling or punishment, a situation which would have been prevented had mama 

and papa not attended late-night parties here in Yaounde as it is Lagos, there in Lagos as it is 

Abidjan -- parents who have great dreams for their children all the same, yes they should 

make it to college even if they have to go hungry, whatever the storm they should see the 

walls of the university which their estate in life possibly denied them, Africa, a prototype of 

humanity with its diversity of language and culture, from Tunis to Johannesburg, indeed 

from Safari to Yankari, the sun shines everywhere in a continent with the will to progress 

through self-determination and so for a man from Yaounde we said, Oshogbo, the Nigerian 

town of famous artists is a holiday resort until you begin to know the town. 

Oshogbo, a town with the feather of fame on its cap through its great artists, was preparing 

for Golden Anniversary of Oshun Festival. This anniversary involves, among other 

things which we shall have the opportunity of visiting together, the Lifetime Experience Initiation 

in which new artists are presented before Oshun to be inspired as they have never before 

by the Muse. 

The town was arocking with festive mood. The motor-parks were busy. Some of the 

toughs could be seen with their shirts thrown at the young kids who would help them pull the 

legs of recalcitrant passengers, shout reasoning out of those still calculating which lorry to 

take. “Here Madam. Mr. Chief. Oloye. Baba ke...” All kinds of titles were pouring out from 



the toughs with the kids turning them into sing-song. The street leading to the open market - 

there are many around - was a scene itself. Arewa Beauty Saloon (ABS), according to Sola’s 

host, Chief Morayo Oshungbemi, happened to be the oldest in Oshogbo and, to the best of 

his knowledge, in the world. Sola said he found it all very fascinating. Could they drop in at 

the shop? 

“Yes, why not?” 

The line of women waiting to plait their hair was as long as the road that takes you from 

Cairo to Cape Town, if you know what I mean. The owner of the shop, Ireti Odunayo alias 

Mama ke was all worry and hurry as Chief Oshungbemi entered with Sola. 

“Chief! You come into my shop like that!” she was kneeling down before him with her two 

hands clasped together to form a fist which she placed before her forehead as a sign of respect. 

Chief Oshungbemi waved his horse-tail in blessing. 

“Stand up, my wife.” Of course she was not his wife. Really, with her age, still struggling to 

hit thirty, she could be his eldest daughter. But in this part of the world, as a man you can 

call a woman your wife if your like her husband very much. There was no romantic attachment 

to it as far as the woman is concerned but a way to show that you are as responsible to 

her as her husband. To a point. And that is to the point that you don’t share a bed with her. 

Women in this part of the world love it if you can come close to their families to the extent 

of calling them your wives and their children your children. It is an unwritten trust that binds 

you to them. Chief Oshungbemi introduced his visitor as one of the hair-dressers who 

worked for Odunayo came with two chairs for them. 

“This is Mr Sola Ariyo, our guest from Cameroon.” 

Sola interrupted, “Just call me Sola.” 

“Okay, call me simply Chief..” 

Mama ke was still looking into the eyes of Chief which was to mean that she was still waiting 

for further explanation. 

“Sola’s father is a Nigerian, the mother a Cameroonian.” 

Silence that said, “Okay, that’s beautiful. But what does he want here at this time of the 

year? Do you invite him for the Golden Year of Oshun?” 

“By the way, Sola is an artist” Chief added. 

“You mean he creates. Like what our artists do here?” 

Chief said no, that was not the case with him. “He did Arts and Design...” 

“That does not make him an artist, Chief! I mean I spent five years behind the walls of the 

college too. It is like calling somebody who did literature a novelist. Somebody who does 

literature may teach a course based on the world of the work of a novelist. The same holds 

for somebody who does art. He is not an artist but can train people in arts...” 

Chief Oshungbemi cut in. “It depends. It depends on where he attends trade or professional 

school or university. I mean, cut it off. Look at Wole Soyinka. He is a novelist as well as a 

lecturer...” 

“But he did not do literature to become a novelist. Writers, like mathematicians, philosophers, 

poets, musicians are born not made Sir...” 

“Hair dressers too..” 

Distance suddenly disappeared between them. They came together in each other’s arms, one 

feeling the warmth of the nest in the arms of the Chief, the other feeling the firmness of the 

breasts in the arms of Odunayo. They disengaged with a bit of ceremony. 

“What can I offer you?” 

“Some cups of palmwine, Onitemi.” 

Of course Sola could speak and understand Yoruba. He had been listening to the story which 

the woman whose hair was being plaited was telling the girl doing her hair. Her chair was 

the closest to theirs. As he listened more attentively, he discovered that there were as many 

98 



interesting stories as the women plaiting their hair. One was even telling the girl about how 

her husband did it on the bed. 

“He can’t wait. He simply pushes me into the bed and does his thing..” 

The girl shook her head. “That is egotistical, right?” 

“It is. I have always told him that it is not for him alone.” 

The hair-dresser hit on a solution. “You just cross your legs. I have done it before...” 

“How did you come to that?” 

They both laughed. 

Odunayo interrupted with, “It is taking too long to finish. So many people are still waiting.” 

That veered the discussion to the festival that brought so many women to her shop on this 

day. 

“He is from Cameroon,” continued the woman. 

“Our guest is in Oshogbo for the Golden Year of Oshun.” The hair-dresser shook her head in 

the direction of Sola. The woman looked at him from under the heavy hairfall on her forehead. 

If Sola had looked in her direction, he wouldn’t have even known that she was looking 

at him. There is a method of seeing you don’t see in this part of the world that you don’t 

need to look before you see. It would take Sola some time to get a feel for seeing without 

looking. In the part for the world where he grew up, Cameroon, people look to see. Not so in 

this part of the world. People see without looking. 

“Will you be coming to the palace tomorrow? I mean for the opening ceremony by Ataoja? 

The Chiefs will be there. Including..” said the woman without the need to look in the direction 

of Chief Oshungbemi. 

Just then Chief Morayo Oshungbemi became interested in the two women. He knew how the 

conversation between the two women would continue now that they had landed at his port. 

They would travel with him to his house to visit his family. They would ask each of his four 

wives about how he treated them, whether he gave them what they wanted, how many times 

did he wake up in the night, did he care for the children, why was his first son not in 

Oshogbo for the festival, why couldn’t he travel home from Manchester where he was studying 

for an important occasion like this and as they were going to leave because his wives 

were not cooperating, the son would come out from the posh building he got for him and his 

friends. 

“Hello, it is my pleasure to introduce my friends to you..” 

The woman and the hair-dresser would look at each other in disbelief. Here before them 

were people from Europe... 

“Some of them are from Europe, some from United Srtates. For example, my wife Karin is 

from England. We are both at Manchester University. And here is her lecturer, Lizzy in 

Yoruba!” 

“In Yoruba. Lizzy is a Briton too.” the woman would say. 

“She has written books in Yoruba. In fact one German girl who is writing her doctorate on 

the role of Obas in Nigeria, Heike - she is here too - is doing her course with her..” 

“Lizzy, we love you.” And the women would turn their attention to another woman who had 

been looking at them all the time. 

“She is from Winsconsin!” 

“Winsconsin? Where is that?” 

“In the United States of course. We have guests from University of Winsconsin in United 

States here. We also have from Manchester University in UK and also from Bayreuth University 

in Germany for the Golden Year of Oshun Festival....” 

At that point Chief Oshungbemi would thank them for their visit. He would tell them that he 

would like his guests to be left alone. They would meet again at the opening ceremony or 

during the seven-day celebration of Golden Year of Oshun Festival. And they would walk to 



the door with Chief Oshungbemi following them to Arewa Beauty Saloon of Odunayo. And 

here they are again! 

“We want to leave. I have to show my guest a bit more of the town before the festival begins 

tomorrow.” Chief Odunayo was at the door with the woman and her hair-dresser smiling at 

him. 

“Come again, Sir.” said the girl to Sola. 

He didn’t know what to say. He simply smiled at her. 

“Thanks for coming, Chief. My thanks to you too, Mr Ariyo..” Odun knelt down again to be 

blessed by the man in charge of Oshun Shrine of Oshogbo. 

They were at the front of the city library now. Sola was watching two boys kicking an orange 

as football. Then he remembered something. 

“According to the programme for the opening ceremony, there is going to be a theatre piece 

about the Oyo and Ijesha battle.” 

The Chief said yes. Sola didn’t need to borrow a book from the library. He had a rich collection 

of books on Yoruba culture, history, empire and Obas in his library at home. He would 

lend him one so he could read about the Oyo-Ijesha battle before watching the play at Oba’s 

palace the following day. Just then the orange which had been battered by the boots of the 

boys around the bend and on the straight complained with juice oozing out of a small opening. 

One of the boys complained. 

“You kick it to burst, you fool!” 

The other responded by packing the accuser from the ground even as he searched for where 

to throw him. Too fast for one but too late for the other. The boy extricated himself from the 

hold, bent down, waiting for the other to charge. Face to face with distance between them 

thinning with threat, they began to send curses at each other’s parents when, on seeing Chief 

Oshungbemi coming their way, they disappeared. 

He was very popular in Oshogbo, Chief Morayo Oshungbemi. This you could notice from 

the number of people who had waved at him, came and prostrated before him, old and young 

with caps thrown to the wind or left to look for safe abode on the ground, knelt before him, 

as women, old and young, with either their headties placed on his shoulder or placed on his 

foot, all as a respect to a man whose lineage was a road to their Ancestors, the founders of a 

town that has become the covergence of Yoruba artists in Nigeria. 

One old woman with an ageless carriage, came to block their way at one point. She was accompanied 

by an Akewi. Dancing without music but with every step responding to a music 

which she alone could hear, she began to trace the lineage of Chief Morayo Ogungbemi 

from the great warrior to the man whose dream has brought the artistic talents of the world to 

Oshogbo to worship at its shrine, first time in her lifetime and last time in her lifetime but 

forever part of the life of Oshogbo and a golden chapter in her life, yes this man, you Omorayo, 

mo ri ayo, omo layo mi, ayo wale, O gbayo de bi, Omo Oshun gbemi. 

Then, as if on special arrangement with drummers at the far end of the town, the master 

drummer beat and then, from another side of the town, the shekere men shook the cowries of 

their shekere even as close by, some three houses to the place where they were standing, 

with the old woman still sing-songing the gallantry, the courage and the dreams of the great 

grandparents of Chief Morayo Oshungbemi, the sounds of drums reached them conjuring a 

scene of colourful handkerchiefs,, headties, flowing garments, wrappers, flowing and flying 

in the air, with women challenging the men to dancing competition even as the children 

clapped joyously in reverence on the sideline. Chief Morayo shook his heavy flowing garment. 

He didn’t have to move. He was dancing already. 

Grandeur married Pegeantry and produced a daughter called Golden Year of Oshun Festival 

or the Golden Year of Ibo-Oshun (Oshun-worship). Yes the golden festival of Oshun, the 

beautiful goddess, has begun indeed. 

100 



*** 

Lagos was just waking up when the plane of Sola touched down from Yaounde. He wouldn’t 

know how many times he had been here before except that this time was different. He was 

here to stay. And also different this time. He was visiting the hometown of his father the first 

time ever. Ikire, a twin town of Apomu, is some two hundred kilometers away. He wanted to 

stay for three days in Lagos before leaving for Ikire and from there to Oshogbo for the 

Golden Year of Oshun Festival. 

Actually, for what reason he could not explain, Sola had prayed for greetings from the sun 

on touchdown. The hostess was very friendly. And as she collected his tray of food and 

drinks she flashed him a smile that kept his head swirling with all kinds of conjectures. For 

example, how does her boyfriend cope with his bird on the air all the time? How does she 

cope with changing weather? Does she or do they ever make lasting friendship of passengers 

at all? Is the smile romantic, professional or matter of course? 

“It is going to be a nice weather today they said?” He braved an inroad into her head or 

heart, anywhere that could bring those smiling lips to say something, anything. 

“Never rely on the weather?” That was her reply! Sola took that as food for thought about 

her smile. Don’t term my smile as an invitation. Hurry back to your own world, O ye passenger, 

where things were never like the weather. Which Sola did by closing his eyes. Time to 

dream and uplift the spirit. Time to go back to Cameroon, the Past whose presence in the 

Present was still more intense than the Future it also contained. Welcome to Yaounde University 

again. To the lecture room. The students are arriving. Arts and design students. It is 

always a ceremony when they have their lectures. The entire university knows who is doing 

arts and design. If you miss the dress that singles them out you cannot miss the carriage, the 

way of walking or of speaking which shows that you are speaking with an artist-designer. At 

first they are coming in like drops. One person would sink in a seat close to the window, fix 

his eyes on the horizon and smile. The guy close to him is a friend of Sola. He normally 

comes wearing purple or indigo, as his moods inform him he says but today he comes in an 

African dress with a cap that is bent to curtail its rising to the meet the sun. He is smiling at 

Sola now with one corner of his eyes fixed on a girl. Or is he looking past him? It is not easy 

to fix what the eyes take in, whatever the optical experts may say. In the final analysis it is 

not the eyes that see but the mind that chooses. So his friend might be looking at him without 

ever seeing him. He waves back all the same. No answer. 

“Ndem, how is life?” Ndem whose eyes are fixed on his seat with part of their view divided 

by the girl has not really seen him. 

“Ndem!” Just then he comes to and smiles. By this time the students are streaming in. Some 

come with huge canvasses. Some are loaded with books. One student comes with a table 

packed with brush and drawing papers. Another comes with a container filled with African 

carvings like he was coming for sculpture or something that shares that name. One fellow 

comes in the dress of a chief! He has a big, indeed voluminous flowing garment the kind that 

Sola had seen when he travelled to his father’s hometown, therefore his hometown too, Ikire. 

His father is also a chief of Ikire. He is Chief Dayo Ariyo, Otun of Ikire. He was even at that 

time contesting for Are Anakakanfo of the Yoruba. That’s another story to itself. Let’s stay 

in the lecture room for arts and design. The title that draws the entire population of students 

of Arts and Design to the lecture room today is “Do We Need a Theory of Arts at all?” As 

part of the lecture, say the lecture notes in the syllabus, African Arts shall be visited and explored 

in terms of its theoretical, artistic and cultural richness. It is a lecture on arts and design 

we say. One of the students comes in with dresses from different parts of the world. It is 

quite a load and you can see that he is sweating. He begs one of the girls for help. 



“Eh, help!” 

The girl looks at him and laughs. “It is your load. You have to carry it!” That brings some 

jeers from the lecture room. But the person carrying the load couldn’t fix that. He was panting 

under the load and waiting for the girl to change her mind. He also surmises that where 

the girl refuses flatly, the other around would be reasonable to help without the need to ask 

for it. And so he continues waiting. 

“Are you all daft or what?” He lashes at those who are busy, with heads facing the board or 

marking time on the roof, unaware of his predicament. There is no answer to the ire of 

course. 

“Have you all lost your heads or what?” He shakes to free himself of the load. No, an idea 

occurs to him. He rushes at one of the students and crashes on him. Both of them fall on a 

group of students who were discussing something about arts who also fall on the table that 

overturns the buckets of water and cups of brushes on the floor of the lecture room. Sola 

was all the while concentrating on three students. He has to do that because these three students 

epitomize the atmosphere in the lecture room. One of the students is a girl called Slippery 

by the boys. Whatever that means, you would say. But if you know the stories that surround 

dating in the campus, you can put a lot of pieces together which could be used as inroad 

to the rules of the game of courtship, winship, losership, dodgership, the last that involves 

about-turn at the point of congratulations, I have the bird in my nest or alas but the 

wind prevents the butterfly from keeping her appointment when the weather is bright with 

the composure of the part of the river under the umbrella of a huge tree, reposeful, inwardtuning, 

calm. And then you are angry with yourself for falling prey to your own weakness. 

Why should you rely on appointment with such a slippery girl? Slippery, I shall never wait 

for you again! Peace, you are not the only one in your camp. Nor will you be the last victim. 

Now it is up to you, ‘Hooker’ to get that butterfly, to keep her gait steady, bring her into the 

domitory, anywhere if only to show what it means to be a hooker. That’s the name of the 

student who sits at the remote corner of the lecture room on this day. As promising of greatness 

in arts as the girl, he comes along with his own chair to the lecture room today. Why? 

He wants to sit alone, we later got to know. He wants to be alone with the Muse, he tries to 

be philosophical about the fact that he failed to get Slippery - not yet, he consoles himself - 

and would like to abstain from the hooking game now that there is something serious to talk 

about, something that is going to decide the future of every final-year student of arts and design. 

It is a compulsory subject, they were told by the lecturer with a notice pasted at the 

Biya, uhm, Hall by the Examination Board to the same effect. The boy, a small-sized person 

who likes to carry his chest forward to inflate his size, is lost in the heavy dress he decides to 

put on. But just in case you are searching for the head, there is a colourful cap which he designs 

by himself. By looking around, I could see at least ten of the students having the same 

cap on their heads. In the university campus, you can meet a sea of them at every corner. In 

fact the guy made his name with his cap which was originally called Tropical. Later it became 

Oriade Tropical. Oriade was a name imported from Nigeria. It means the head that 

wears a crown. This is the name that eventually sticks. That’s how the boy who confesses 

that for him life is simply boring, colourless, sahara-dry, kalahari-barren, wormwood, impossible, 

forget-it without the girls, became popular in the university. There is one and only one 

Oriade Tropical. And that’s the student who sits alone in his own corner today as protest 

against the girls not playing game anymore. 

Slippery has another name though. Citadel. Full name, Citadel of Creations. But don’t forget 

to add Slippery, some of the boys would remind you. Say what you like, this girl is gifted. 

To her lecture room is boredom and the lecturers, the bores. The other day I, Sola, caught the 

wind of her discussion with one of her friends on the campus. 

“And they will talk and talk and talk...” she complained. 

102 



“You mean the lecturers or the market women?” The friend wanted to know. 

“Market women engage you in discussion. They want and love participation. They will tell 

you it costs a fortune if you want to go home with the seed of maize. They want you to prove 

that that price is inflated. You do that by bringing the fortune into a farthing. If it is okay, 

then you go home with it otherwise they wish good day as you turn the bend. Not so with 

our lecturers....” 

“You mean you can’t say a word?” The two friends were lying on the grass, shoulder to 

shoulder. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. For whatever reason, I don’t know. Beautiful figures. 

Yes, as I was saying before that interruption, the friend of Citadel - the name originated 

from Citadel of Creations really; the girl, still a student, had had two arts exhibitions in 

Cameroon; she is fondly called Citadeli or CoC by friends -- wanted to know whether the 

order to be mute by the lecturers was general or was it only the phenomenon of the arts and 

design department? 

“I would say it is general here. It is what they call system of education. You can say what 

you like. You can fume how you will. The lecturer has the last word in the university. They 

come with set rules, set ideas, set dogmas, set ideologies if you like. It is like a communist 

state and the lecturers are the interpreters of the state apparata of the communist state. The 

control is subtle but it is there all the same. Just dare any idea that is novel, forge a path that 

is different, tell them that those intellectual superstars whose works they are interpreting 

want their works to be developed and that you can’t do this without discussing them, sometimes 

critically too so you may get into the secrets behind those brilliant ideas, that you are 

here to join the noble group too, yes here to become an intellectual superstar too and once 

you dare, forge or show your dream for being here, you get the door open before you and 

closed after you. Worse than communist regime, what is going on behind the walls of our 

universities...” 

“Citadeli, I can understand. Even worse if you are a girl, I would say. I am speaking from 

experience...” 

“Bores all....” CoC hastens to say that she was not generalising. She knows at least two lecturers 

in her department who are really not lashing you with the cudgel of their looks waiting 

for the examinations to pull the rafters down on your head. That was two weeks ago now. As 

I was still trying to recapture the scene, Citadeli overcomes Slippery - or was it a battle going 

on? She moves close to Oriade Tropical. She smiles. Yes Slippery smiles at Hooker! 

They both hold each other in arms. The lonely chair was gone; thrown behind the lecture 

room. Wonders will never end, I told myself. Three days after that miracle I got to know 

from a friend of mine that the simple explanation for it was contained in Slippery’s confession. 

“I was hunting for talents, that’s all!” So, so. The next person could be taken for a student 

but for his authoritative demeanour. He is our lecturer, standing over there like the pastor 

in the pulpit. He doesn’t say a word. We are here to listen to his words of wisdom, that‘s 

what his facial expression is telling us. You are calming us down with your look. Good, but 

you are teaching Arts and Design and what do you put on? Coat and tie! Psh! I can just come 

forward there and put on one of the dresses which a female student has brought in for - everybody! 

Florence goes to the front, there, where the lecturer is pacing up and down to begin 

with her decoration. She begins with the lecturer’s table and continues with the seats only to 

be joined by some of the students. I have to stand up now. Have to join her too. She is doing 

a wonderful thing. Look, within ten minutes the classroom has been transformed into a design 

shop and studio commingled. She bows before the lecturer who pretends not to have 

seen a thing but for a smile that parted his lips in half self-mockery. 

“We can now begin Sir. Charity begins at home, they say?” said Florence. 

The lecturer laughs. “Whatever that means!” He excuses himself and comes back in what? In 

African dress, of course! I withdraw Sir. I withdraw my accusation. 



“Today we are here to tackle the question, ‘Do we need a theory of art at all’?” The lecturer 

fixes his eyes on Oriade Tropical who looks in the direction of Citadeli and smiles together 

with her. The lecturer continues by reading pranks into their smiles. Maybe. I wouldn’t 

know. What I know is that you can’t discuss anything new with this lecturer, sorry with Mr. 

Felix Etien. Hush! Mr Etien is speaking. 

“Do we need a theory of art at all.....” He wants to continue when Oriade Tropical raises his 

hand. Mr Etien continues all the same. “This question is not only pertinent to arts but also to 

science. For example, engineers used to construct their machines before we got the basic science 

with its theories. However, basic science changed how we do engineering completely. 

It is no longer a matter of accident, how you build your machines, but that of principle. Creative 

ideas still flow our way as they used to be but this time they come as mathematical, scientific, 

artistic or literary ideas...” 

“Are you sure that creative imagination works with such set standards?” That’s Tropical 

braving it this time. He doesn’t wait for the lecturer to ask him to talk. He simply stands up, 

says his thing, sits down and waits for the answer. Mr Etien scratches his head. 

“Agreed, creativity does not work with set ideas since it produces ideas, I would say that the 

creative imagination normally knows what it wants....” 

“But new ideas result from a confluence of imaginations.” That’s Citadel dropping a pebble 

in the quiet pool of our lecturer again. I wonder why they choose to sit together today of all 

days. “That’s why when a new idea comes, it doesn’t matter in whatever field, it normally 

applies to matters beyond its field of origin. That’s a proof that creativity can’t, doesn’t work 

with set rules...” 

“Agreed, creativity needs freedom, indeed it is the seat of freedom. All the same basic science 

with its theories changes the landscape of science. Look at high-tech. Behind it is basic 

science. Quantum mechanics and semiconductor technology to transistor. Optics, biotechnoly, 

indeed in any technology that we may have, you find the stamp of basic science on 

it.....” 

“But the foundations, Sir...” Citadel again. 

“That’s another problem. And it is a problem indeed. But we are here to talk arts and design.” 

Mr Etien takes a sip of cold water even as his eyes rove the lecture room until they 

settles on the works of arts by African artists on the board. He brings them for this lectures 

today. “Yes, where are we now?” 

“To leave the foundations alone..” I have to remind him. 

“Thank you Sola. Based on what we learn from basic science and technology, I would say an 

artist needs a theory of art even though she may not be working with one when he gets her or 

his ideas....” 

“Would you say Picasso begins with a definite theory, Sir..” 

“Not really. But we can say that he started becoming a great artist through cubism. And cubism 

is a theory of art as impressionism, expressionism, dada and others....” 

Citadel again. Me too. Tropical also. Three hands at a time. Mr Etien permits one person to 

speak. Citadel as to the expected. Oh, the girls! Tropical exchanges glances with me like 

saying, well, it is our destiny that we are boys. “Some historians of arts say cubism is from 

Africa. I would say not cubism a la Picasso. By the way, I am not so much for cubism because 

nothing seems to flow into each other in cubist art. It is like integration in calculus. 

You solve one and then solve the other. Or like the infinitesimals. Or like piling the monads 

on one another. African arts are not based on differential and integral calculus but on coextensiveness. 

You can see a mother carrying her child in the colour of the green forest that 

envelopes her and the child on the road to or from the river which is also present in the work. 

Like this one there...” she points at one of the clippings on the board. Mr Etien says the purpose 

of the course is to find a theory for African arts. 

104 



“It is true that most artists in Africa do their paintings without any knowledge of any theory 

of arts for that matter. But as soon as you begin to study these works, you discover that there 

is an underlying theory behind it. It is like the novelists too. Most writers have no idea about 

theories of literature. Those who have the theories cannot, in most cases, write. It is the best 

you can get where somebody who has a theory can also write. But these qualities don’t always 

come together. I am a lecturer of arts but I am not an artist either. You are, most of you 

students of arts and design. Some of you have even had arts exhibition here. I do attend all of 

them. I am sure that you are motivated by something inside you, indeed by creativity. That is 

true. What is also true is that by the time one puts the works of an artist or writer together, 

one discovers a thread that runs through the works. This thread is the secret of the underlying 

theory of the works....” 

“Eh, I never thought of ever coming together with you....” 

Smiling 

“As you brought me the tray, I was just dreaming of holding you in my arms...” 

Smiling really broadly, “Oh what goes inside the heads of men about women..I thought you 

were thinking of cheese or things like that. By the way, some passengers even request African 

dishes. One wanted Eba from me...” 

“Eba on the plane?” 

“Why not? It should be possible to have African dishes on board too. The passenger said he 

couldn’t stuff the leaves in his throat” 

“Leaves. Delicious salad, not leaves..” 

“To him they are leaves. By the way, are you an artist? 

“I am an arist who makes arts...” 

“Born artist, like Picasso. Like Oshogbo artists. Rare....” 

“Have you a studio? I would like to pose for an artist. Would like to see the beauty of my 

contour. I become air hostess, well. It is not my choice. My mother chose this line for me.” 

Sola smiled in his sleep, still dreaming. “Case of my mother, myself. Okay here is the address 

of my studio in Lagos. I would like to have you on my list. Oh"” 

Sola was holding her in his arms when he opened his eyes a bit. He looked around. The hostess 

was nowhere to be seen. He closed his eyes again only to hear Mr Etien voice in the lecture 

room. He had not even lost the thread of his lecture. 

Mr Etien continued, “Thus while some artists or writers don’t work according to theories, 

they create new theories with their works. On the other hand, most begin with theories and 

from there get their own new theories of arts or writing. So, in that sense, I would say that 

there are three ways to the new. You respond to something deep in you without being influenced 

by anything or anybody in the world. This is the way of revelation. You respond to 

what is there and from there you go your own way to get something that is completely new. 

This is the way of invention. Or you respond to what is there and from it get something that 

is new. This is the way of discovery. It is true for the arts as it is for the sciences. This is the 

message we got from mathematics. Our study of African artists and their works shall be 

based on these three roads to making a new world. Time for break. Thank you. And before...” 

“Fasten your belts, please!” Sola was back inside the plane. Within the next few minutes 

their plane taxied to a stop at Muritala Mohammed Airport in Lagos. 

Welcome to Nigeria. 

*** 

[WATCH FOR THE CONTINUATION IN THE NEXT EDITION. THANKS] 


Dear Editor, 

Interview with Chief Areoye Oyebola on his book, Black Man’s Dilemma 

Concerning Vol,1.No.2.2007 

Since I have come in contact with Lere Shakunle’s works, be it the invention of Transfigural 

Mathematics (TfM), the founding of The Matran School, his novel „ Return to Heartland“ or 

his Journal which is the reason for this letter, I do admire how he tries to pursue a broad vision 

for a globally mutual understanding by building bridges between people and people 

through exchange of scientific knowledge and cultural understanding and also through new 

ideas that may serve mankind and its environment for good. 

But today I must express my deep concern about the interview Lere Shakunle had with Chief 

Areoye Oyebola, author of the book „ Black Man`s Dielmma“, in the Journal of Transfigural 

Mathematics, Vol.1.No.2.2007 

I have just started reading my copy of the book, Black Man’s Dilemma, which I bought from 

him. 

Many of the author’s opinions could very well be understood. They were informed by 

his many years of battling experiences for change in Nigeria, his native country which is 

where Lere Shakunle also comes from. The courage to call the reasons for the misery in Nigeria 

and in many black African countries by name I very much appreciate as much as the 

strong moral character that made Chief Oyebola stay out of dirty politics inspite of his intellectual 

capability that could have brought him into great power. 

However, I cannot agree with the line of thought he unfolds to the reader for a change 

to the better as this relates to comparing countries of Africa with and asking them to emulate 

the highly technological advanced countries of Europe, the Americas and Asia, especially 

China, all in terms of technology, the arts and their political systems. 

He calls upon the African elites to put all their effort in creating something along the 

line of Europe, the Americas and Asia. In politics, he takes as his good leaders Nelson Mandela, 

Mahatma Ghandhi and surprisingly puts the mass murderer Mao Tsetung in the same 

range with them without differentiating the specific historical situations that brought them up 

nor showing the heroic mindsets of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandhi compared with 

that of Mao Testung. I can’t also understand why he closed his eyes to the prize mankind 

has paid and continues to pay for the attack on the biological systems of our beautiful planet 

through the acquisition of technology. 

Having said that, I have to hasten back to the political change he calls for in his book. 

If he had more deliberately studied the strategy of Ghandhi he would have quickly found 

out that his actions on change were rooted in a pacifist philosophy. While Ghandhi and Mandela 

used their mental ability for a peaceful change that included forgiving and opening 

doors for mutual understanding Mao used the same ability merely for his ego. Mao shamelessly 

built up his importance on the corpse of over 40 million victims of his ideology of a 

new and better society. 

While saluting Chief Oyebola for boldly and grandly pointing out the insane leaders in 

Africa and presented the catalogue of their abuse of power, I submit that a change along the 

revolutions a la Mao Tsetung is not what Africa needs. It will bring forth new egoistical 

leaders and unlease politics of terror. 

I could imagine another vision for Africa participating in the progress of mankind that 

really would serve our ONE WORLD. It is this: 

106 


Rather than competing with the West on the insane race of gigantic projects, Africa should 

try a real courageous path for a long term healing and true self-determination process. 

How? By keeping all natural resources of Africa to Africans, developing a new form of national 

and continental awareness that transcends tribe and religion and also by saying good 

bye to a political ideology mainly based on a materialistic philosophy like the one of Mao. 

Susanne Pikullik-Bastian 

Bremen, Germany 

Editor’s Note: 

While not trying to defend Chief Areoye Oyebola, my feeling is that his mention of Mao 

Tsetung along with Mahatma Ghandhi and Nelson Mandela may have to do with his realisation 

that the black African countries to which he addressed his book need to stand up now 

and be counted. I don’t support how Mao Tsetung goes about building modern China which, 

as you rightly pointed out Susanne, required the elimination of millions of people. Even the 

single life of an innocent person that is terminated by a revolution is enough to discredit it 

and make it go down in history as brutal. All the same, I shall pass this letter across to 

Chief Oyebola to defend his choice, among the good and the great names in political leadership 

he mentioned in his book, of Mao Tsetung as a member of the noble club. 

REPLY BY CHIEF AREOYE OYEBOLA TO SUSANNE PIKULLIK-BASTIAN 

Dear Mrs Susanne Pikullik-Bastian, 

Letters to the Editor 

Many Thanks for your interest in the interview with me in the Journal of Transfigural 

Mathematics on my book, BLACK MAN’S DILEMMA by Lere Shakunle. I got to know 

from Lere that you also bought a copy of the same book. Yes, this is an interesting feedback 

to say the least. I am saying this because since the book was launched – it has become an alltime 

bestseller in Nigeria – nobody has ever singled Mao Tsetung as not deservering the 

honour I tried to give him in history. And you did give a reason which I am not here to contend. 

What I want to do in what follows is to give my reasons for choosing Mao Tsetung as 

one of those from whom African political elites could learn. 

Before I go into all this, permit me to say that I am not a Maoist nor a communist and 

that my choice is informed by what Mao achieved for China within the shortest time ever in 

history. I presented him as a symbol of commitment to the cause of progress for his people, 

yes as a man who dedicated his life to liberating his people from the economic backwardness 

to politics of self-determination that launched them on the path to economic self-reliance. I 

am not saying that Black African countries should replicate the political ideology of Mao 

Tsetung but that they should be ready for self-sacrifice, yes should be ready to go barefooted 

if need be in the struggle to make their people see the sun. 

The question is what do Mao Tsetung, Mahatma Ghandhi, Julius Nyerere, Kwame 

Nkrumah, Ahmed Sekou Touse and Nelson Mandela have in common and in which way are 

they different and from what should Black Africans make their choice? In this world, the 

spirit of survival, as Kenny Rogers says in one of his songs, is to know what to chew and 

what to throw away. It is not different when it comes to choosing to learn from the right 

models in history without imitating them while pushing others to the sideline that have nothing 

to offer. Courage, determination, vision, sense of direction, sacrifice and other noble 

qualities that you can find in the world book of special qualities are what Mahatma Ghandhi, 

Nelson Mandela and Mao Tsetung, Ho Chi Minh, Winston Churchill, Lee Kuan Yew have in 

common. What they don’t have in common is the very reason for your letter. This I can un- 



derstand. The problem however is that we are human beings and the angels are yet unborn. 

The most glorious among us, I mean those who are sacrificing everything for the good of all 

that they believe in also have their own personal struggles. And in spite of their human frailties, 

they are our road to the angels. Mao may not be one of them because of the millions that 

were killed during the Cultural Revolution, but he does not belong to the desperadoes who 

loot the treasury to enrich themselves, no, he does convert national resources to personal 

property and so, for this reason, he is not a devil’s advocate either. 

Permit me to briefly revist the history of modern China as part of my defence for including 

Mao Tsetung in my list of those whose life of sacrifice and dedication to the upliftment 

of their people from the morass of poverty to the glory of self-sufficiency on the wings 

of their dream is worth our salute. 

Unlike Stalin, the mass liquidator, Mao Testung, I came to see was not directly involved 

in mass murder. His Red Army which is the product of his Cultural Revolution 

hunted down those whom they felt were opposed to the communist manifesto a la revolution. 

OK, the millions whose lives were terminated as a result of the revolution which he launched 

couldn’t have lost their lives if the revolution had not unleased on them an army and officials 

who fed on croniness and craziness. And Mao could have stopped it because he could. And 

so, why he could be held responsible for those who died of hunger or disease or in the hands 

of Red Army as a result of the revolution one should not forget that Mao, right from the time 

he bade goodbye to schooling, had devoted his life to the singular cause of change. It is a 

miracle that he did not die in the Sino-Japanese wars, did not die during the internal war between 

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Guomindang militia, the Nationalist People’s 

Party during which wars and upheavals he lost his brothers and did not get swept away by 

the gale of revolution which he initiated and fought to keep alive and which same revolution 

transported China from an agricultural society to an industrial self-reliant economy. 

There is no way one can present Mao Tsetung as an angel because of the loss of life 

in millions as a result of his Cultural Revolution, but juxtaposed with his achievements and 

the fact that he was not a pragmatist but somebody who was committed to the dream and action 

of liberating his country from the throes of poverty even if that had to cost him his life, 

one could say that he did not dine with the devil either. 

That Mao’s struggles, including his cultural revolution, led to the total enrichment of 

the lives of millions of Chinese who form the largest proportion of the world’s population, 

must be considered in relation to the lives lost in Mao’s desperate bid to preserve the gains 

of Chinese revolution. Afterall, the Bolsheviks revolution in Russia led to the loss of lives of 

many Kularks during Russia’s agricultural revolution. But, eventually, Russia’s total planning 

and considerable regimentation led to the emergence of USSR which had earlier been 

regarded as a semi-colonial appendage of Western Europe, as a world superpower within a 

few decades. 

My citing his name has everything to do with his Thought famously called The Mao 

Thought which galvanized the entire China to the march of liberation that transformed the 

country from dependence on hoes and cultlasses to tractors and the click-clack of machines 

in the factory within a very, very short time. And on those occasions when China would 

have surrendered in shame to what a coward would have interpreted as her destiny, Mao has 

always found an answer to the dictates of such a destiny. His solution to the Sino-Japanese 

war which instilled courage in his people were his words below: 

“The enemy advances; we retreat. The enemy camps; we harass. The enemy tires; we 

attack. The enemy retreats; we pursue." 

Now, there is something to learn from Mao’s response to the Sino-Japanese war, the next 

108 


time around. At the urging of the Soviet Union, the CCP joins the Guomindang in a second 

united front against the Japanese. Mao sees the alliance as an excellent opportunity for the 

development of the party. His answer: 

"Our determined policy is 70% self-development, 20% compromise, 

and 10% fight the Japanese.” 

How much are Black African countries devoting to self-development, I ask myself. In Black 

African countries 70% of national resources which Mao used to develop China goes into private 

pockets and into paying salaries of presidents, ministers, under-ministers, and in Nigeria, 

senators in how many house now, secretaries, under-secretaries, assistants on media, 

transportation, education, youths, women and - you can add your list and I assure you, whatever 

you add belongs - and more than I can list here. 

What I wanted to add is that in her time of great ordeal, Mao Tsetung had always 

opened another road, even where all seemed to be closed or blocked, for China to use to 

march forward. 

I agree with you that the revolution took millions of lives for which Mao Tsetung as 

the leader could be held responsible. But I also say that without him, there wouldn’t have 

been a modern China not to talk of a China that is now becoming an economic power. What 

China is today, she owes to the sacrifice, determination, dream and dedication of Mao 

Tsetung. What is stopping Black Africans, apart for Nelson Mandela of our love, from producing 

leaders of thought and action in areas that bring honour and glory to their countries 

such as exemplary intellectual pursuits that should bring forth inventions and discoveries, 

visonary political leadership that takes pride in serving the people and business engagement 

all of which when combined should open the door of opportunities for their people and attract 

the young ones to stay at home instead of losing their lives in the caravan across the 

Sahara and ramshackle boat across the sea. 

Every revolution has its casualties, sometimes large. And this explains why the most 

stupendous guerrilla operation in history and the march that led to the liberation of China in 

1949 resulted in loss of lives. Similarly, cultural revolution which principally aimed at forestalling 

the betrayal of original revolution victory led to the loss of many lives. There is no 

basis for comparison whatsoever with Adolf Hitler’s paranoid madness of intense hatred for 

a section of humanity with Mao Tsetung’s intense patriotism whose sole aim was to liberate 

his people from centuries of deprivation and dehumanization. 

Thank you also for your suggestion on what Black African countries could do to render 

Make Poverty History, the shame of a continent that is so gloriously endowed with gifted 

and intelligent human resources and immense natural resources, absolutely unnecessary in 

the first place. There is a lot of sense in your suggestion. Africans can choose to keep their 

resources to themselves. They can create a common market for their goods. They can form 

continental and sub-regional economic communities. But they will not succeed without first 

and foremost stopping their propensity for conspicuous consumption. They should start by 

pacing embargo on luxury goods which are increasing their debts and should engage in constructing 

simple machines that could meet their needs. And they can do more. Indeed they 

have to do more. And now is the acceptable time. That’s what motivated my research for and 

the writing of the book, Black Man’s Dilemma. 

Yours Sincerely, 

Chief Areoye Oyebola, 

Ibadan, Nigeria. 



YOU MISSED THIS! DID YOU? 

Well even if you did, it‘s not too late to catch on 

the changes in the structure of the Editorial Executive 

of the journal. And that have indeed been 

changes. All you need do here now is go back to 

Editorial Executive page. There you will find 

that the new Coordinating Editor of Journal of 

Transfigural Mathematics (JTfM), that‘s this 

journal, is Dr Alan D.M.Rayner of the University 

of Bath, UK. The Project Evaluation Editor is 

Professor Timo Jarvilehto of University of Oulu, 

Finland. Ioulia Fenton, UK is the Contributed 

Papers Editor. The Artsworld Editor is Laura 

Batson, Canada. We also have Susanne Pikullik- 

Bastian, Germany, as the Frontpage and Cartoons 

Editor. Would you like me to say something 

about these wonderful people by way of 

introduction? If you say yes, I can. But then you 

should be prepared for an encyclopaedia. To a- 

void flooding your library with volumes about 

great achievements, solid character, fine personality, 

high sense of responsibility and other 

noble qualities such as love, fellow-feeling and 

others like them, permit me to refer you to 

google search engine where you will get links 

about these people and other members of the 

Editorial Executive of JTfM. Join me in welcoming 

them to our august fold. 

NEXT EDITION 

In the next edition, the work on superchannel 

continues with the second part. If things work as 

planned, there is going to be a ViewPoint interview 

on science and theology with the winner of 

Templeton Foundation Prize. For sure there is 

going to be a summary of the book, Creative 

Tension. And of course, we shall wade into why 

the insolubles of mathematics end up showing 

how the foundations of mathematics are incomplete 

and how they usually end up bringing 

new mathematics to the world. There you will 

get to know Grigory Perelman, the man who 

proved the famous Poincaré Conjecture. We 

shall say goodbye to Nigeria‘s Chike Obi, a renowned 

mathematician who passed to the other 

side of the bridge. And of course, there are also 

sections for research, literature and arts bringing 

to you, fresh from the garden of Muse, that 

which educates, informs, entertains and inspires. 

What holds humans beings, nature and the world 

together is beyond rationality. It is just a word. 

And the word is love. Rationality is about rational 

choice, rational decision, rational way of 

speaking, sitting, joking, comporting and even 

laughing. Rationality lives in the same house 

with spontaneity. When they meet, rationality 

turns the other face, the other cheek. It is not rational 

to greet from the well of your heart because 

in rationality everything has to be justified, 

defended and debated. The heart opens up to a 

smile. Rationality, which lives in the cold room 

of either One or the Other of One against Other 

of rational choice that perches on self-interest 

and goal seeking and gold defending, of wall 

building, does not know about the flow of love. 

Rationality singles out, fences off, shuts out. It 

singles out what belongs together. It fences off 

the flow that is natural. It shuts out what 

confronts it with its limitations. Rationality is 

comfortable with self-deception of being in 

control of what is beyond the limit of human 

understanding. Why do we have to spend billions 

on security when love alone can solve all 

this so we can save the money to feed those in 

need of daily bread? Rationality cannot understand 

because there is nothing like love, fellow-feeling 

and empathy in its ego world of trip. 

Rationality is about right or wrong. It is about 

true or false. It is about a world divided against 

itself which division fulfils the dream of split 

self. Rationality talks about logic, ist otherexclusive 

logic. What is the gain from a logic 

that tears apart, asunder, confronts and collides? 

And why is it so difficult for rationality to accept 

that when it comes to things that hold the world 

together as a family, that gives us a healthy environment, 

indeed qualities in which our shared 

humanity finds ist otherness in nature and every 

person in the other person, it has nothing to say 

because all this belong to dimensions that transcend 

those within which it finds its reductionist 

expression? True, rationality has done and continues 

to do a lot—it is not the case that great 

inventions and discoveries come through rationality; 

indeed, as Poincaré pointed out, it is intuition 

and not logic that invents; no amount of logic 

and logical thinking will produce fluid logic 

numbers—but it will be good for all if rationality 

can accept its limits, its weakness, its faults. 

110

JTfM Vol 1 No 1 2008 - ONLINE EDITION - Inclusionality Research

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