A Brief History of Everything

I’m getting to the last few pages of Ken Wilbur’s, A Brief History of Everything and I’m finding that he is trying to do some pretty incredible things with what previous Philosophers and Psychologists have found and lived by… I’m wondering if anyone else has read THIS book… I have no one to bounce things off of and could use some dialogue to process this book… What he is getting at in this book basically takes all the arguments over the history of Philosophy and shows how no one has nailed it on the head, but at the same time, no one has really been wrong either… I think he fairly successfully shows that all our different schools of philosophy intertwine and build each other up… So I gotta talk to someone about this!

Needless to say, I really enjoyed this book and would suggest it to anyone who is interested in human development and/or philosophy.

I haven’t read it, but I’ve read some of his stuff on holons, a long time ago. I wasn’t impressed, I have to admit - all Big Picture and no details at all, tingly-bongly new age nonsense with a respectable veneer of buzzwords.

Could you give a rough summary of how the schools intertwine?

I can try… But it will take a bit to get that together… It would be easier if ya just read the book! :wink:

So after some thought, and reflection on this book here is what I have for ya…

It’s more or less centered around each branch of philosophy’s version of transcendence… He spends a good portion of the book talking about how we all transcend through various levels of growth or stages of development. This is where the holons stuff gets thrown in… Holons is more or less a quicker way to say, transcend yet include… Atoms combine to form molecules, molecules join to make cells, cell to organism, and so on… transcend, yet include… and her refers to these levels or building blocks as holons. He looks at human development much the same way… When we are young we go through various stages of development, all the while, transcending to the higher lever of development, while including the information and lessons from the previous levels…

As far as combining the schools… When all the schools of thought were laid out in front of him he noticed that transcendence is spoken about across all branches of Philosophy and Psychology, but they interpret it through different eyes… To illustrate this he breaks These down into quadrants. “I”, “We”, “It” and “Its”. the “I” Quadrant refers to schools of thought centering on Self and Consciousness being the ultimate truth also described as the Interior- Individual (Intentional). The “We” quadrant is derived from those who value Culture and Worldview, or Interior- Collective (Cultural), for being responsible for our growth and actions… The “It” Quadrants pulls from the school of though revolving around the Brain and Organism, or Exterior- Individual (Behavioral), cognitive and that lot… And finally The “Its” which is comprised of the Social System and Environment, or Exterior- Collective (Social), Gaia enthusiasts fall into this quadrant…

All of these quadrants are broken down in much more detail in the book and names of Philosophers and Psychologists that operate under their umbrella are mentioned… I’m not one to retain names too well or I would give you a few, but I’m sure, if you are versed in these fields, you can put the names where they belong…

While breaking these into quadrants, he discusses how, in his mind/theory, we need to be developing through ALL quadrants to be successful in furthering the development of humans or individuals…

So that’s my very brief overview of what this book is talking about once you get past him making up words to get his point across… I agree that it falls under the new-agish realm, but at the same time, I think there is much to be praised and said about his approach… Needless to say, I think Transpersonal Psychology is the shit. :wink: