A theory of everything.
March 27, 2018 10:54 PM Subscribe
"A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality is a 2000 book by Ken Wilber detailing the author's approach to building a conceptual model of the World that encompasses both its physical and spiritual dimensions, positing a unified ground-of-everything, describing associated physical and mental development and the practical applications of this philosophy to business, education, medicine, ecology, and war. Cloud Atlas’s Theory of Everything. Lana Wachowski, Writer/Director of “The Matrix,” Interviews Ken Wilber about Brief History. The Many Meanings of The Matrix.
You're so full of shit, flabdablet.
posted by flabdablet's sock puppet at 12:11 AM on March 28, 2018 [27 favorites]
posted by flabdablet's sock puppet at 12:11 AM on March 28, 2018 [27 favorites]
Well that escalated quickly.
posted by Beholder at 12:53 AM on March 28, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by Beholder at 12:53 AM on March 28, 2018 [10 favorites]
You've been sitting on that joke for ten years
posted by Merus at 12:54 AM on March 28, 2018 [21 favorites]
posted by Merus at 12:54 AM on March 28, 2018 [21 favorites]
This feels like a 1st tier red exchange, but I'm sure it will evolve naturally.
posted by spaceburglar at 1:09 AM on March 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by spaceburglar at 1:09 AM on March 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
ah, remember Pot? and Kettle? oh, good times
posted by mwhybark at 1:25 AM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by mwhybark at 1:25 AM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
There’s a difference between a theory and a description. For one thing, a theory has wide application but can be briefly stated. I can tell you the theory of evolution in a few sentences, but it illuminates virtually everything in biology and perhaps beyond. Ken Wilber... well, of course I take the risk of doing him an injustice, but not having an open mind sometimes saves you a hell of a lot of time...
posted by Segundus at 1:30 AM on March 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Segundus at 1:30 AM on March 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
...only an integral approach to personal and societal development will get humanity through the difficult times ahead.
sounds a lot like utopia, as in IF everybody changed THEN this theory of mine would work. Which it never does.
posted by Laotic at 2:12 AM on March 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
sounds a lot like utopia, as in IF everybody changed THEN this theory of mine would work. Which it never does.
posted by Laotic at 2:12 AM on March 28, 2018 [3 favorites]
only an integral approach to personal and societal development will get humanity through the difficult times ahead.
Yeah, this is too pessimistic. There are already nearly eight billion of us, we're adaptable as hell, we're all over the planet and there are more of us every year. Only a sustained worldwide effort to knock out all the ecological systems we depend on could wipe us out now.
posted by flabdablet at 2:43 AM on March 28, 2018
Yeah, this is too pessimistic. There are already nearly eight billion of us, we're adaptable as hell, we're all over the planet and there are more of us every year. Only a sustained worldwide effort to knock out all the ecological systems we depend on could wipe us out now.
posted by flabdablet at 2:43 AM on March 28, 2018
I'm not going to pretend I understand any of Ken Wilber's ideas, because learning them properly would probably take quite some time. But going by the brief introduction in the first link, it seems very... Aristotlean.
The impulse to categorize everything in existence according to a grand schema was the overriding obsession of western intellectuals for over 1700 years, starting with Aristotle and not really ending even today. It works in some sciences (like taxonomy, of course), but for the most part that sort of thinking isn't a good way to describe the world around us. Today we divide our models of the universe into thin slices because it's possible to do experiments to confirm or deny theories when the predictions they make are extremely specific. A model that explains everything is going to be tripped up by the incredible complicated mess of reality, unless it's written in such a vague way that it can't be used for any specific predictions or insight.
posted by Kevin Street at 3:04 AM on March 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
The impulse to categorize everything in existence according to a grand schema was the overriding obsession of western intellectuals for over 1700 years, starting with Aristotle and not really ending even today. It works in some sciences (like taxonomy, of course), but for the most part that sort of thinking isn't a good way to describe the world around us. Today we divide our models of the universe into thin slices because it's possible to do experiments to confirm or deny theories when the predictions they make are extremely specific. A model that explains everything is going to be tripped up by the incredible complicated mess of reality, unless it's written in such a vague way that it can't be used for any specific predictions or insight.
posted by Kevin Street at 3:04 AM on March 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
seems kind of like Hegel glazed with New Age vocabulary
posted by thelonius at 3:14 AM on March 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 3:14 AM on March 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
No consideration of TIME CUBE, ergo FALSE!!
posted by briank at 5:22 AM on March 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by briank at 5:22 AM on March 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
The only theory of everything I need is printed on the Dr. Bronner label.
posted by duffell at 5:32 AM on March 28, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by duffell at 5:32 AM on March 28, 2018 [11 favorites]
"“Memes are not rigid levels but flowing waves, with much overlap and interweaving, resulting in a meshwork or dynamic spiral of consciousness unfolding.”
OMG HE SAW IT ALL COMING
if only we hadn't all been born too damn dumb
posted by halation at 6:14 AM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
OMG HE SAW IT ALL COMING
if only we hadn't all been born too damn dumb
posted by halation at 6:14 AM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
Even if every society on earth were established fully at second tier, nonetheless every infant born in every society still has to start at level 1, at beige, at sensorimotor instincts and perceptions, and then must grow and evolve through purple, magic, red and blue myth, orange rationalism, green sensitivity and into yellow and turquoise second tier (on the way to transpersonal).No thanks, I haven't smoked that stuff in years.
(Maybe my reaction is colored by how TFA chose to quote Wilber, but yeesh.)
posted by Horkus at 6:31 AM on March 28, 2018 [4 favorites]
Neither FALSE nor born dumb but educated stupid.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:54 AM on March 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:54 AM on March 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
More seriously — and I have this beef even with thinkers I have much, much more respect for, like Graham Harman — I sure am tired of putative "theories of everything." Reality's too complicated for that, too involuted.
I strongly suspect that all truths are local, but even if there are some that can be shown to be universally applicable, they're either (a) trivial or (b) not of the type a charlatan like Ken Wilber's going to disclose to us.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:01 AM on March 28, 2018
I strongly suspect that all truths are local, but even if there are some that can be shown to be universally applicable, they're either (a) trivial or (b) not of the type a charlatan like Ken Wilber's going to disclose to us.
posted by adamgreenfield at 7:01 AM on March 28, 2018
charlatan
Oh, I think he's perfectly sincere.
Kant: "For human reason, without being moved by the mere vanity of knowing it all, inexorably pushes on, driven by its own need to such questions that cannot be answered by any experiential use of reason and of principles borrowed from such use; and this a certain sort of metaphysics has actually been present in all human beings as soon as reason has extended itself to speculation in them, and it will also always remain there".
posted by thelonius at 7:25 AM on March 28, 2018
Oh, I think he's perfectly sincere.
Kant: "For human reason, without being moved by the mere vanity of knowing it all, inexorably pushes on, driven by its own need to such questions that cannot be answered by any experiential use of reason and of principles borrowed from such use; and this a certain sort of metaphysics has actually been present in all human beings as soon as reason has extended itself to speculation in them, and it will also always remain there".
posted by thelonius at 7:25 AM on March 28, 2018
seems kind of like Hegel glazed with New Age vocabulary...
Dialectally frittering away our meditative attentions, John Q. Harshbuzz ?
posted by y2karl at 8:24 AM on March 28, 2018
Dialectally frittering away our meditative attentions, John Q. Harshbuzz ?
posted by y2karl at 8:24 AM on March 28, 2018
"I strongly suspect that all truths are local, but even if there are some that can be shown to be universally applicable, they're either (a) trivial or (b) not of the type a charlatan like Ken Wilber's going to disclose to us."
I think there is such a thing as universal truth, but an accurate theory of everything wouldn't organize all knowledge in a pretty pattern like a crystal of Vitamin C. For example, the simplest organizing principle is chronological - but if we tried to list every event that ever happened in order, the list would start very simply with the Big Bang but quickly grow out of control into a tangled web of cause and effect that's too complex for any single human mind to comprehend. And that's before we even get to human history and culture and all that other stuff! It's when we try to organize everything neatly that truths seem trivial, because a neat organizing principle can't accurately capture reality.
posted by Kevin Street at 10:19 AM on March 28, 2018
I think there is such a thing as universal truth, but an accurate theory of everything wouldn't organize all knowledge in a pretty pattern like a crystal of Vitamin C. For example, the simplest organizing principle is chronological - but if we tried to list every event that ever happened in order, the list would start very simply with the Big Bang but quickly grow out of control into a tangled web of cause and effect that's too complex for any single human mind to comprehend. And that's before we even get to human history and culture and all that other stuff! It's when we try to organize everything neatly that truths seem trivial, because a neat organizing principle can't accurately capture reality.
posted by Kevin Street at 10:19 AM on March 28, 2018
I wrote a comment and deleted it, wondering if I was the only one who was reminded of TimeCube. I'm glad I'm not.
Theories that claim to explain everything about people and society are indistinguishable from mental illness.
posted by fuzz at 11:06 AM on March 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
Theories that claim to explain everything about people and society are indistinguishable from mental illness.
posted by fuzz at 11:06 AM on March 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
Theories that claim to explain everything about people and society are indistinguishable from mental illness.
I wish I could favorite that more than once.
posted by corvikate at 11:50 AM on March 28, 2018
I wish I could favorite that more than once.
posted by corvikate at 11:50 AM on March 28, 2018
I do not doubt his sincerity or his aims, but this type of drive to taxonomise things in this sort of internally consistent and self similar fashion can't even be done successfully with bread/food manifolds yet, let alone the entirety of everything.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:29 PM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:29 PM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'd be curious to see a critique of him from someone who doesn't dismiss all speculative philosophy out of hand as some kind of defective or failed effort to do science. What makes, say, Whitehead, a serious philosopher, but not Wilber?
posted by thelonius at 3:02 AM on March 29, 2018
posted by thelonius at 3:02 AM on March 29, 2018
I'm sure they're both completely serious. But Whitehead is far more entertaining, the more so for watching him tie himself in knots about God.
posted by flabdablet at 4:49 AM on March 29, 2018
posted by flabdablet at 4:49 AM on March 29, 2018
Well, I meant, taken seriously by academia, or at least, some academia (you probably couldn't do a dissertation on Whitehead at Harvard today, could you?)
posted by thelonius at 5:27 AM on March 29, 2018
posted by thelonius at 5:27 AM on March 29, 2018
You [Wilbur] introduced the first fairly fleshed-out version of what has become known as modern Integral Theory (or Integral Metatheory), which has now become one of the most widely adopted philosophies in the modern and postmodern world.
Citation needed.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 2:24 PM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
Citation needed.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 2:24 PM on March 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
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posted by flabdablet at 12:10 AM on March 28, 2018