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Wilber and the Misunderstanding of Evolution

Posted April 11th, 2010 by Rustin Selvey in Integral Potholes
I dont think this topic has been satisfactorily dealt with, and it is embarassing for the integral movement. I have simply copy-pasted David Christopher Lane's 1996 critique, rather than re-invent the wheel. There are broader issues and ramifications that I will address in future blogs, and I have addressed some in my recent IL post at: My Recent Post on IL
See my personal blog for more articles on this topic including a life map that works Pirsig's Dynamic Quality into the integral framework
Source: http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/books/LaneCritiqueWilberPart2.php

Wilber and the Misunderstanding of Evolution

By David Christopher Lane, 1996 [text added after original post]

Original text at: http://members.tripod.com/~dlane5/wil99.html

In A Brief History of Everything (1996), Wilber writes on pages 22-3 the following about his understanding of current evolutionary theory:
The standard, glib, neo-Darwinian explanation of natural selection—absolutely nobody [my emphasis] believes this anymore. Evolution clearly operates by Darwinian natural selection, but this process simply selects those transformations that have already occurred by mechanisms that absolutely nobody [my emphasis] understands....
Take the standard notion that wings simply evolved from forelegs. It takes perhaps a hundred mutations to produce a functional wing from a leg—a half-wing will not do. A half-wing is no good as a leg and no good as a wing—you can't run and you can't fly. It has no adaptive value whatsoever. In other words, with a half-wing you are dinner. This will work only if these hundred mutations happen all at once in one animal—and also these same mutations must occur simultaneously in another animal of the opposite sex, and then they have somehow find each other, have dinner, a few drinks, mate, and have offspring with real functional wings.
Talk about mind-boggling. This is infinitely, absolutely, utterly, mind-boggling [my emphasis]. Random mutations cannot even begin to explain this. The vast, vast majority of mutations are lethal anyway; how are we going to get a hundred nonlethal mutations happening simultaneously? Or even four or five, for that matter? But once this incredible transformation has occurred, then natural selection will indeed select the better wings from the less workable wings—but the wings themselves? Nobody has a clue [my emphasis]."
For the moment, everybody [my emphasis] has simply agreed to call this "quantum evolution" or "punctuated evolution" or "emergent evolution"—radically novel and emergent and incredibly complex holons come into existence in a huge leap, in a quantum-like fashion—with no evidence whatsoever of intermediate forms [my emphasis]. Dozens or hundreds of simultaneous nonlethal mutations have to happen at the same time in order to survive at all—the wing, for example, or the eyeball.

Wow! I can almost see Charles Darwin turning in his grave, Stephen Jay Gould fainting at a New York Yankees game, Richard Dawkins spitting out his beer at an Oxford Pub, Daniel Dennett shouting, "That's the biggest Sky Hook I have ever seen!," and Pat Robertson praising Jesus saying, "When did Wilber convert to Creationism? He's on our side now. Hey, the New Age is okay!"

Having taught Darwinian evolution (and its various manifestations, including punctuated equilibrium) in grammar school, in high school, in community college, in university, and in doctoral programs, for the past seventeen years I must say that Wilber's take on what evolution is about baffles me.

Not only is Wilber inaccurate about how evolution is presently viewed among working biologists (remember Wilber says "absolutely nobody believes this anymore"—tell that to the two most popular writers on evolution today) but he is just plain wrong in his understanding of the details of how natural selection operates. One can only wonder how well he has read Darwin, or Gould, or Mayr, or Dawkins, or Wilson, or even Russell. None of these individuals would agree with Wilber's assessment. Indeed, they have written extensively against the type of argument Wilber presents. As Dennett points out in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, evolution proceeds by cranes (a nice metaphor to explain that evolution works piecemeal and in an algorithmic process, 1 step, 2 step, 3 step), not by skyhooks (non-algorithmic processes: 1 step, then an airplane, or 1 kiss, 2 kiss, then baby twins!).

Wilber does not seem to understand that the processes of evolution are blind. He wants to have it "open-eyed" as if natural selection all of sudden wakes up when it hears that a "wing has been formed" (better start chugging) or that an "eye has been completed" (let's fine tune now). Natural selection does not "start" when the eye is formed; it works all along without any conscious intention whatsoever.

Not to sound like a groggy professor, but if Wilber turned in the above quote to me as a college student trying to explain the current view of evolutionary theory, I would give him an "F" and ask to see him in my office. Why? Not because there can't be healthy debates about evolutionary theory, but because Wilber has misrepresented the fundamentals of natural selection. Moreover, his presentation of how evolution is viewed today is so skewed that Wilber has more in common with creationists than evolutionists, even though he is claiming to present the evolutionists' current view.

And to top it off, Wilber's gross exaggerations are downright sophomoric (just look at the capitalizations again and ask yourself: is this how transpersonal psychology should be "grounded"?). It is little wonder that transpersonal psychology has problems. If Wilber cannot accurately portray the underlying pretext of his holonic system, then why should materialists/empiricists believe his trans-rational realm theory?

Well, they shouldn't actually if he can't get the details straight on the one holonic level that we can all see.... But enough of my reprimand, let us have Richard Dawkins himself in his book, [RIVER] OUT OF EDEN (not to be confused with Wilber's other misguided view of evolution, UP FROM EDEN), take Wilber to task (and in so doing prima facie show Wilber that his hyperbole is precisely that: exaggerations that misconstrue the truth).

Keep in mind that Dawkins is addressing creationists, even though the following quote looks like he is responding directly to Wilber's misinformation campaign. (Please also note that I will put my comments via Wilber in brackets.) [Quote from Richard Dawkins' [River] Out of Eden, pages 76-79]

Mention of poor eyes and good eyes brings me to the creationist's [Wilber's?] favorite conundrum. What is the use of half an eye? [Same holds true for Wilber's 'half a wing'] How can natural selection favor an eye that is less than perfect [according to Wilber it can't; according to evolution it easily can]. . . There is a gradient, a continuum, of task for which an eye might be used. I am at present using my eyes for recognizing letters of the alphabet as they appear on the computer screen. You need good, high-acuity eyes to do that. I have reached an age when I no longer read without the aid of glasses, at present quite weakly magnifying ones. . . Here we have yet another continuum—a continuum of age.
Any normal human, however old, has better vision than an insect. There [are] tasks that can be usefully accomplished by people with relatively poor vision, all the way down to the nearly blind. You can play tennis with quite blurry vision. . . There is a continuum of tasks to which an eye might be put, such that for any given quality of eye, from magnificent to terrible, there is a level of task at which a marginal improvement in vision would make all the difference. There is therefore no difficulty in understanding the gradual evolution of the eye, from primitive and crude beginnings, through a smooth continuum of intermediate, to the perfection we seek in a hawk or in a young human.
Thus the creationist's question—"What is the use of half an eye"?—is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 percent better than 49 percent of an eye, which is already better than 48 percent, and the difference is significant. A more ponderous show of weight seems to lie behind the inevitable supplementary: "Speaking as a physicist, I cannot believe there has been enough time for an organ as complicated as the eye to have evolved from nothing. Do you really think that there has been enough time?" Both questions stem from the Argument from Personal Incredulity. Audiences nevertheless appreciate an answer, and I have usually fallen back on the sheer magnitude of geological time. If one pace represents once century, the whole of Anno Domini time is telescoped into a cricket pitch. To reach the origin of multi-cellular animals on the same scale, you'd have to slog all the way from New York to San Francisco.
It now appears that the shattering enormity of geological time is a steamhammer to crack a peanut. Trudging from coast to coast dramatizes the time available for the evolution of an eye. But a recent study by a pair of Swedish scientists, Dan Nilsson and Susanne Pelger, suggests that a ludicrously small fraction of that time would have been plenty. When one says 'the' eye, by the way, one implicitly means the vertebrate eye, but serviceable image-forming eyes have evolved between forty and sixty times, independently from scratch, in many different invertebrate groups....

Sidebar: If you don't like Dawkins ... then read Gould, Dennett, Darwin, or Berra's Evolution and the Myth of Creationism (Stanford University Press, 1990), which say essentially the same thing about evolution. Below is a pertinent quote from Berra which again looks like he is talking directly to Wilber (but he is in fact talking to Biblical Creationists):

Creationists [Wilber again?] frequently make the specious argument that an eye (or ear, wing, lung, etc.) could not have evolved because the intermediate stages would be imperfect and therefore not functional. They miss the point that a structure need not be in a final form to confer an advantage. Some vision is better than none. . . Eyes did not arise suddenly from nothing. They evolved gradually over hundreds of millions of years by incremental improvements over previous models....

Now, no doubt, Gould and Eldredge have postulated a "speedy" version of Darwinian evolution (punctuated equilibrium), but they are not saying what Wilber suggests: that something mystical is going on. Rather, it just happens that if evolution is mostly a slow dance, there occasionally arises moments for some techno hip-hop.... Yet throughout it all the feet are doing the moving, not some trans-rational force....

What makes Wilber's remarks on evolution so egregious is not that he is more or less a closet creationist with Buddhist leanings, but that he so maligns and misrepresents the current state of evolutionary biology, suggesting that he is somehow on top of what is currently going on in the field.

And Wilber does it by exaggeration, by false statements, and by rhetoric license.

Wilber cannot understand half a wing, or part of an eye. Well, those are the very things that Darwin himself talked about in the Origin of Species. Moreover, just read Gould's book on the Panda's Thumb and one will clearly understand the contingencies of nature and how certain parts of the body evolve to be utilized for their advantage (genetic or otherwise).

Although it may seem that this issue of misunderstanding evolution is a small chapter in Wilber's overall work, it is so fundamental to his thinking that it makes one question the entire edifice upon which he has built Spectrum Psychology.

As the cliché says, "God resides in the details."

It is those details which Wilber has consistently messed up.

(Keep also in mind that Wilber is being raked over the coals here not because he disagrees with evolution, but because he misrepresents it and misrepresents the current status of the field. If he doesn't want to believe in Darwinian evolution, or algorithmic evolution, then so be it, but at least be accurate in your appraisal of the discipline. Wilber's illustrates a basic lack of understanding.)

In the terminology that I have been using, Wilber looks for the Super-Context, forgetting in the process that every text has a pretext and every context is grounded in the holonic realm which precedes it. Wilber seems to forget his own theological leanings, suggesting that there has be something "mysterious" going on (that nobody understands) when in fact it is much simpler. Things, as Feynman might say, are made of littler things. Look first to those littler things and every-thing becomes a bit clear. Avoid that and you end up thinking that nobody could possibly make a Pizza. But anybody who cooks know that it takes ingredients, those items which are less (not more, not in addition, not super-tremendous) than the completed project, to make a nice pizza pie. Well, Wilber wants to avoid the ingredients in his transpersonal recipe by postulating a Consciousness First principle. Okay, but then don't use that Context to misread the Pretext of Molecular Evolutionists. Or, as Wilber in his more lucid moments might say (like when he is ripping the new physics = mysticism connection): Don't collapse hierarchies in order to squish in God or the Mysterions.

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The current Scientific view of Evolution?

Posted April 13th, 2010 by Shawn Aune

Evolution, according to the latest science, is far from "blind."

A major source of genetic change has been found.  There IS a mechanism by which the environment is able to make not-so-random changes to the genome in a single generation.

It's called the Epigenome.

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/Obesity-Epigenetics-and-Gene-Regulation-927

This tells me that the people questioning the "randomness" of genetic mutations were right all along.

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Forum

Posted April 12th, 2010 by stefano

As for discussing this stuff on forums, I'd suggest that discussing this on an online forum is a terrible place to do it if there's a wide range of levels of experience and knowledge and professional roles involved. Your post is written from the point of view of an expert or at least, professional in the subject matter, whilst others replying are probably just just laypeople like myself.

So you've immediately got the burden of having to treat fairly dozens of possibly "dumb questions", but you're not allowed to call them dumb for looking bad, as you have no authority here.

So I'm just saying, I keep an open mind -- if you happen not to reply to any of my points, then I don't take it as anything more than, well, you have better ways to spend your time.

I for one continue to remain curious about a subject. There's certainly plenty of books out there, and I would try to find one that wasn't religious but was critical of evolution. I might for example look at reading this: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis 

Why would I want a book that was critical of evolution? Because we already know that evolution is the accepted theory, and we already know the basic idea -- randomness + fitness + time -- so it is more fun to try to hear something on why it might be wrong.

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[Comment Deleted]

Posted April 12th, 2010 by admin
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So just because people believe Dawkins, doesn't mean they are being...

Posted April 12th, 2010 by stefano

 

Amber is a structure, not a content. Amber is just conformist group belief. The belief could be anything. An amber person could believe Dawkins because their daddy told them to believe it and they want to conform to the group.

Meanwhile someone who is orange could be questioning Dawkins simply out of curiosity, skepticism, and just lack of sufficient knowledge (you don't know what you don't know until you ask awkward questions).

So what matters isn't whether someone is questioning Dawkins -- the essence of the Enlightenment is "think for yourself!" -- what matters is if they are questioning because they are trying to think for themselves (orange), or merely "questioning" because they are amber and can't tolerate any other belief.

So we have to be careful not to make Dawkins into a dogma by calling people who question it amber -- if people do that then we risk making it an area where people don't question -- which is exactly what amber is.

If we want to encourage orange, we need to encourage people to question. Nobody's got perfect knowledge.

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Science

Posted April 12th, 2010 by stefano

 

Let's ignore god altogether. I'm more atheist than anything. I'm glad you're a Prof in the subject, and just to introduce myself, I'm just a layman. I am just curious about evolution itself as a piece of science, I don't think it has anything to do with god.

 

Problem is this:

If something other than random mutations was causing new biological forms to appear, how would we know?

One way to disprove evolution-by-random-steps would be to find an example of something new which happened without going through all the in-between steps. However, when people produce what they believe to be examples of this, evolutionists claim that the in-between steps must have existed. In other words, they call upon non existent evidence to support their case. This begins to fail common sense.

When faced with a hypothesis which relies on non-discovered evidence, the simplest answer/hypothesis is to say that "we don't know".

Remember, we're not talking about whether we can rely on the theory of gravity because we haven't been to the edge of the universe to see whether gravity works the same way 15 billion light years over there. For practical purposes, our theory works for where we use it.

But evolution doesn't come close to that -- we are faced with giant biological structures for which we're missing lots and lots of these supposed intermediary steps. What is the most complex form for which we have continuous intermediary steps?

Take this opportunity to convince me because I am actually open to being taught one way or the other.

 

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And the question is.....

Posted April 11th, 2010 by Billy Guilfoyle

My question is, how do we know that evolution hasn't been conscious of itself the whole time? All of the results which we view and study, enjoy and observe, are quite complex and original, which for some reason the human mind is geared toward enjoying. I like science. And I like philosophy. And I like poetry. And I think there may be more to the picture than any Wilber, Selvey, or Guilfoyle has any clue about. And how uncomfortable does that make us, to admit that? It's all a mystery, which is why every biologist, including Darwin, began to wonder. The mystery is the beginning of the wonder, and the two dance hand in hand. And there will always be room for questioning, which is what makes science super sweet, in my opinion. Science can't ever become as the Catholic church throughout history, and simply take control of the world, rape and pillage, burn women at the stakes, molest little boys. Because science, as far as I've seen, is perfectly wiling to say, "You know what, I have no fucking clue, but it appears to be this way, here's the evidence, and it's open to argument with enough sufficient evidence. 

I don't believe that the Ambers are reading Wilber. I don't believe the creationists are reading him and about to use his work as evidence for their argument. This would be a big issue for them. He talks about creationists and all dogmatically inclined as being separate and apart from the mainstream influence of the leading edge of evolution, which of course would be where the most up to date knowledge is, which of course is in the cities, science labs, and minds of those who have experienced a shit ton, not the agrarian, red states, which are red because their embarrassed, in my opinion. But that's a projection. 

In truth, I taught English in Turkey at two schools for a year, and yet I had no clue about what I was teaching. I didn't know the freaking grammar. I dropped out in the ninth grade. But I would study the night before, trust that the guys and gals who put the workbooks together were right, and then the next day I'd instruct in the same way. But who is to say that something is THE correct way? Perhaps slang is the actual correct way to speak. Who knows? We can say, "Well, the majority say that proper complete sentences is the way to speak, without any slang." But who cares what others think? Just because a bunch of Nazis think it's cool to gas a family or a hundred thousand doesn't mean it's right. And just because a majority of men have been taught to ignore their feminine sides doesn't mean that gay people shouldn't get married. We're in the midst of what we've always been in the midst of, which is being tired of things being simply as they are, and wanting to try something new. Which, I'm sorry to have to say this, appears to be the very same impulse that has spawned so many creative aspects that have arisen out of biological nature. Our social environment leads us to want to change it. And biology has changed the physical environment for billions of years. Where do you, Rustin, see the difference in these tendencies, the difference between you trying to change others or the world and biological processes doing the same? I don't personally see a difference. And I am willing to admit that there may be one. But where is it?

Awareness is the creative space in which it all arises in the first place. It's all happening within this awareness. It is coming out of it. And once it has past, and the awareness has new things to be aware of, there is still only awareness that remains as always, while other things are not around within awareness any longer. And where did they go? There right here, when awareness is aware of them once again. Science tends to ignore psychology. But there is this inner world that is and has always been aware of what occurs. Being is enjoyable. But enjoyable for who? And what if we discovered our selves, our real selves, to be the watcher of every dance that has ever occured on the only stage known as awareness, consciousness, existence, or whatever you prefer call it? 

We act tough, we boast of our experience, we try and prove ourselves continually, we try and paint a picture of ourselves in the minds of others. But why? Isn't it an innate already present insecurity? And what ever would we be insecure about? Why would we have to feel ourselves perceived as "someone" who knows, unless we already knew inside that we don't know shit, and we are totally not okay with that fact? 

Darwin was a cool fellow, very curious, but he was working in a time of great racism, speciesism in fact. And the gentlemen was no saint, as you are well aware. And the social background of all of these past scientists and philosophers needs to be taken into account. The Bible was written back when it was cool to sell your daughter into slavery to make some extra cash. Just that fact alone says, "Let's go ahead and question it." I can imagine two thousand years from now a guy digs up an old copy of a DVD of 'The Matrix,' and all of the sudden people start believing in this guy, Neo, who is "The One," and who will come and save the day. But it's all bullshit. Even Jesus was just a regular dude who only said some basic truths: "Be nice to each other. Do unto others as you'd have done to you. Love thy neighbor as thyself." The guy never said a think about Hell, and how could he when the idea of Hell had not been created yet and had to wait two hundred years after the teacher Jesus' death to be written by a psychopath named John on the Greek island of Patmos, a guy who would see all of his own enemies burning for an eternity in Hell fire while he sat serenely in Heaven watching the whole thing below in enjoyment sipping tea. 

When we talk about some life form evolving for "their advantage," we must ask ourselves, "What is aware of what is advantageous? What is choosing? And it's obviously not the mind of the animal, because single celled organisms have not yet developed or evolved to have a mind. So is the environment and the organism and the space in which it all sits one, is the question? And it's something worth considering, because all meditative experience says "Yes," to this one. It's not the biological body that is the sole decider of its own evolution or that of the species. And it's not the environment either. It's both. And maybe there is far more than just these perceivable two going on. Either way, it's pretty fucking awesome. 

Personally, my mind is not on the activity of my cells or the atoms which construct them as I proceed to do my work and accept my paycheck, go to the grocery store and then cook a meal and eat. This process of survival and self caretaking doesn't require me to consider the details of the basic building blocks which make it all possible. My own wonder at these things is satiated to a great degree by reading and studying molecular make up and neurochemistry, physics and atomic reality. But that isn't really something that is imperative in my practical everyday life. I think that God isn't just in the details, but the astounding nature of existence is really in the practice of simply being and seeing what an awesome conundrum such a thing truly is. I can wipe my ass. That's fucking amazing. And the fact that I digest and excrete is mind-blowing. Monkeys and ants probably do not trip out about these things as much as I do. But I can't say for sure. 

The truth is in the happiness pudding. And all of my teachers, as well as myself, are over a lot of the old bull. We got over it by self inquiry. And this allowed for all clinging to ideas to fall away. Whereas the mythologically oriented religious people have to cling to their old and outdated ideas in order to have some sort of security blanket of comfort. But for my Zen master, and myself, we see the clinging mind, are free of it, and sit watching the wheels go round and round. We really love to watch them go. We're no longer sitting on the merry go round. We just had to let it go. 

 

 

 

 

 

--

 World Peace Is Inevitable,     

Billy     everyoneisgoingconscious@gmail.com

 

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Common critique

Posted April 11th, 2010 by Brian OConnell

 Your posting a common critique of Ken's work. One big problem. Dialectics sees process in a gradual and continual evolution when nature shows over and over there are quantum leaps of reorginization that do not follow continuos parameters but discontinuous emergent reorganization. Like on the physiosphere level a photon happen instantaniously coming out of an atom. So what is it that brings in novel emergent reoganization? A component(holon) can be organized from a higher component(holon), and if we take this all the way up then there is the realization that the only "thing" that can organize parts(holons), itself can not be a part(holon) and thus void or empty of all qualities and quantities. Of course the only"thing" that can unify any thing in time, "itself" can not be in time. Thus realization and not reason on its own can lead to understanding of being, relation and adaptation or the empathetical, analogical, and analytical. So the critics lend themselves to a lack of understanding there own limits of reason that they use to critique. And it is those limits that discontinuous leaps of emergent input take place. Where is the input coming from? not (just a boundary inherent model) that the critics can not see in there reasoning.

Thus states of consciousness are a tool for exploring the Kosmos and not just the external eyes of the scientists. How compentent are scientists at higher states? most barely allow states to be acknowledged for how we perceive an event. And there is the problem. Humans not knowing the state of there perception. Thus the spectrum, that if not penatrated to higher realizations leads the intelligent, but blind as far as ones ultimate source, to make critics on a work they can not really get into because the level of embodiment is stuck at modern, post-modern and below.

With your focus on reason , I was wondering how you receive an old post I made Here 

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Submit a chapter abstract

Posted April 14th, 2010 by Sean Esbjorn-Hargens

Hey Rustin,

I want to encourage you to consider submitting a chapter abstract for the book I'm doing: True But Partial: Essential Critiques of Integral Theory. Your views on Wilber's view of evolution are important and I sense you have the academic background to do this critique justice - in a hard hitting but constructive way - pointing to how Integral Theory can upgrade its views on evolution. If you haven't seen the call for papers you can find it here: http://www.integralworld.net/hargens3.html 

or email me at shargens@integralinstitute.

Sean

--

 

 

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the eyes have it

Posted April 17th, 2010 by Richard Layman

Years ago when I originally read Wilber's comments on evolution in Brief History I was happy that they reinforced my own naive skepticism about evolution. Since then I have encountered compelling evidence for the selective advantage of intermediate eye forms and a mere 15 minutes of googling just convinced me that there is equally compelling evidence for the natural evolution of wings and camouflage.

So Wilber was dead wrong. That's entirely forgivable, as was my own ignorance so many years ago. What's not forgivable in Wilber, or anybody in his intellectual entourage, is to remain stubbornly ignorant in the face of empirical evidence.

Wilber seems to have staked his reputation on a defense of something called spirit and in my opinion it has ruined him, no matter how brilliant his other contributions to philosophical inquiry.

If there were empirical evidence for spirit I'd be all over it because I've invested a lot of time considering spirit and other supernatural explanations for strange phenomena and exotic states of consciousness. Heaven knows we spent a good deal of time and money trying to turn up something supernatural or spiritual in parapsychology research, and so far the results have been pretty disappointing compared to, say, cognitive neuroscience.

By all means, let's all keep open minds, but let's not fail to see what side the bread is buttered on: the scientific method.

Richard

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the eyes have it

Posted April 17th, 2010 by Richard Layman

Years ago when I originally read Wilber's comments on evolution in Brief History I was happy that they reinforced my own naive skepticism about evolution. Since then I have encountered compelling evidence for the selective advantage of intermediate eye forms and a mere 15 minutes of googling just convinced me that there is equally compelling evidence for the natural evolution of wings and camouflage.

So Wilber was dead wrong. That's entirely forgivable, as was my own ignorance so many years ago. What's not forgivable in Wilber, or anybody in his intellectual entourage, is to remain stubbornly ignorant in the face of empirical evidence.

Wilber seems to have staked his reputation on a defense of something called spirit and in my opinion it has ruined him, no matter how brilliant his other contributions to philosophical inquiry.

If there were empirical evidence for spirit I'd be all over it because I've invested a lot of time considering spirit and other supernatural explanations for strange phenomena and exotic states of consciousness. Heaven knows we spent a good deal of time and money trying to turn up something supernatural or spiritual in parapsychology research, and so far the results have been pretty disappointing compared to, say, cognitive neuroscience.

By all means, let's all keep open minds, but let's not fail to see what side the bread is buttered on: the scientific method.

Richard

 

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How Does the Debate Process Work?

Posted April 18th, 2010 by Craig Pinegar

In all sincerity, I really don't know how the Integral theory debate process works. In other words, Wilber writes or speaks, we rebut or refute in a blog, forum or publication of our own, but Wilber (as far as I can tell) does not participate in the debate in real time.

I kind of imagine (or fantasize) the debate happening as two or more guys behind a podium able to field and respond to questions in person. Are there any real-time forums where the debate can play out with Wilber as an active participant?

These are all really good rebuttals to dated arguments, and I really would like to know if the think tank could or would be inclined to respond with current views.

Cheers,

Craig

www.grassrootsnlp.com

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Grace!

Posted April 21st, 2010 by Mary Linda Landauer

I didn't sleep well last night. Around 4:30 this morning I began my meditation. Only a few minutes into this always peaceful space, a volcanic pain rose from my heart, gripping me in spasms of tears. I allowed this outpouring from my heart then just sat in quiet repose asking for deeper guidance.

The last week on this thread has been filled with controversy around this issue of whether Ken misunderstands the science of evolution. But looking deeper into these back and forth comments it comes to me that an environment of controversy, without deep respect for all views, makes it hard to abide in peace and love while pushing through the layers of differences. Especially if the environment feels threatening to being open and flowing with open dialogue.

If my part in this dialogue has hurt anyone, I deeply apologize. My intention was just to bring everyone back to some humor and the real issue. But, alas, this seems to have failed. The truth is controversy, for me, does not co-exist with peace and love. (my issues possibly) Disagreement between people is a fact. Healthy resolution to those disagreements should honor and respect all participants which then can lead to, hopefully, creative solutions. Or at least everyone being okay if an agreement can't be reached without bulling and badgering each other.

At the end of my meditaion this morning the beautiful cover of Ken's book, Grace and Grit came into my vision. Again tears flowed down my cheeks. This book to me, and the book Ken wrote after his beloved Treya died, SES, is all one needs to read to understand the science of evolution, and that Ken could never misunderstand or misrepresent this science. What he has given to the world is his and Treya's direct encounter with Eros, the spiritual love that drives higher evolution. SES brings both material science and spiritual/subjective science together to complete the two truths.

Rustin, in my heart, I believe, if you read both of these books it will bring further insight and better interpretation of Ken Wilber and his truly brilliant body of work he gives to science and the world.

You are a brilliant writer Rustin. I had a small taste of your poetic words in another thread. Those words were both inspiring and created a space within me of your own beautiful light and love. I hope that you will consider pursuing more of this direction in your own writing.

Integral Life maybe isn't the right forum for me. Please everyone know how much I've loved and enjoyed all of you and how much you all contribute to the Integral movement. I will continue to hold all of you close in my heart as we continue to journey along this evolutionary path.

With love,

Mary Linda