• HOME
• START HERE
• PUBLISHED
• UNPUBLISHED
• OTHER VIEWS
• FRUSTRATIONS
• SUPPORTIVE
• PHILOSOPHY
• HISTORY/ME
• WARTS AND ALL
• CONTACT

The unpublished articles

Unpublished? Yes — but (apart from Clinical Morphostasis) not for the want of trying. They were invariably rejected (ejected). Clinical Morphostasis always needed a lead in article to preceed it. I almost got around to submitting it to Medical Hypotheses but decided, in the end, to hang it on my web site.

It will be a long time — if ever — before I get around to updating, correcting and revising the third and fourth of these articles for publication.

The "Phlogiston" article has been rejected at least seven times. Perhaps this was justified - but my guess is that it was not. So, I would rather leave this here at this web site to become a memorial to the blindness of "normal science" to fundamentally new perspectives. (Nevertheless, it is an annoyance that I cannot cite this work. If there is anyone out there who would be prepared to let it have a place in a citable journal, I would be most grateful for this.)

The Behçet's paper is incomplete and without its references. One of these days I might get around to collating them all.

• Morphostasis and Immunity 1984:

  
  This is the embryonic version (late 1984). I think this still emphasises important points. In particular it emphasises the primacy of innate immunity and it introduces a "danger–like" concept of aggressive T–cell activation. EXTRA NOTES

• Morphostasis and Immunity 1992:

  
  This is the next version that I have in my keeping (a late 1992 version). This pads out more of the rationale for a change and it still contains important points that the published articles do not cover. It is looking pretty secure now – in sharp contrast to its rejection at the time (after being held seven months before a Referee's report was obtained). EXTRA NOTES

• The neurology of Behçet's syndrome:

  
  It is here that the whole of this subsequent study began (see the History section). It was, in particular, the analogy of BS (and other sero-negative arthritides) with adjuvant arthritis, that led to the growth of the morphostasis hypothesis. Whilst I was acting as a registrar in neurology, I came across a patient with Behçet's syndrome and an anterior spinal artery occlusion. That interested me and I developed an interest in this disease. In trying to understand its pathophysiology, I realised that I would need to lean more about immunology. It was not long before Behçet's syndrome took second place to my interest in immunology.
• EXTRA NOTES

• Clinical morphostasis:

  
  Clinical morphostasis. This pads out the "whistle-stop-tour" mentioned in the (published) 1995 Morphostasis and Immunity. EXTRA NOTES

• Flushing out the phlogiston?:

  
  This is the ultimate extension of the morphostasis hypothesis. I wonder how close this will have got to future perceptions. So far, looking through the "retrospectoscope", its track record is continuing to improve. EXTRA NOTES

• The rejection letters:

  
  The rejection letters. These are contained in the Frustrations section but the links are repeated here for they are very relevant.

• Other thoughts on morphostasis and immunity:"

  
  This link leads to various letters and points of interest that pad out the morphostasis concept.

• Entropy:

  
  I initially found entropy an awkward concept to get a good feeling for. Since it is a central player in many of the thoughts concerning a "morphostatic system" (roughly, what conventional bio-medicine describes as the "immune system") I have put together some personal thoughts here. I am sure that card carrying physicists will wince at my interpretations: so anything you read here should only be used as a launch pad for titillating your own imagination and none of it should be treated as remotely authoritative. I'll probably throw in a fair bit of conjecture too. [Note: entropy is the nemesis of order. Entropy is not synonymous with disorder. It only ensures that order will decline unless it is energetically refreshed. Overall, this refreshment causes an overall acceleration of entropy. A pocket of focal low entropy is created at the expense of a disproportionately accelerated entropy away from this focus. Creating and maintaining order is energetically expensive.] Until the HTML files are restructured, here are PDF versions. "Entropy" and "Some observations" .

• Sheer speculation:

  
  Sheer speculation – the wilder side of speculation. Where it just might be leading and what it just might mean. This section is embryonic as yet.

• The danger theory: 21 years later:

  
  This was written and submitted in response to a published article "The danger theory: 20 years later". It was rejected. EXTRA NOTES