A Brief History of Everything

Rating:
Summary: A convincing call for global well-roundedness
Review: This is the first Ken Wilber book I have read. I got halfway through A Theory of Everything and realized I should have read this first. So I did.

Wilber is a prolific and uniquely American philosopher who has written extensively on his developing Theory of Everything. Unlike other all-encompassing scientific theories (systems theory, string theory, m-theory, etc), Wilber's philosophy encompasses thought and spirituality as well. In fact, Wilber's central point is that our modern mode of thinking unfortunately focuses solely on provable, measurable science, ignoring the spiritual and emotional internal aspects of individuals and of society. We are living in a state of what he calls "flatland." This book is basically a call to global well-roundedness in thought.

This is probably the most challenging book I've read in a long time. I have never read anything like it. Wilber's theory fascinating. It joins many of the great philosophies, sciences, and spiritual beliefs and shows how they can live in accord rather than at odds with one another. It traces our development as humans using aspects of developmental psychology, and examines the evolution of our thought from a historical perspective.

As an attempt to incorporate all modes of thought-psychological, scientific, philosophical, religious, etc.-this is a fantastic book. Several of the reviews I've read criticize Wilber for his inability to scientifically prove his theory. But that criticism is missing one of the main points of his theory-namely that science is only one aspect of thought, only one facet of our world. Not everything can be proven through science. Love, sorrow, joy, humor-these things are not measurable with instruments. There is definite moral right and wrong (e.g. Nazis wrong) that can't be proven with science. And Wilber's point is that science can't be used to prove things of a spiritual nature any more than prayer could be used to calculate the boiling point of water. For an individual and a world to be healthy, it must operate and evolve in all quadrants, not just one. It must break out of this "flatland" approach.

My biggest criticisms of A Brief History of Everything are of style more than content. The book is set up as a dialogue between a questioner and answerer. Why this was done is beyond me, and it actually became very annoying. It's a technique a writer might use to help flush out his thoughts, but there's no need for the questions to be included in the final draft.

My other criticism is that, although Wilber's philosophy is not New Age, the terms he uses to describe his concepts have that flavor. He often makes up several words which mean the same thing and unnecessarily uses them interchangeably. It gets a tad confusing at times. And Wilbur has a tendency to end his chapters with a flurry of this language in an overly dramatic way that seems more like bad New Age poetry than anything else. It detracts from his otherwise brilliant theory.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed but Thought-Provoking
Review: A Review from BLACK PEARL: The Journal of the College of Thelema (Vol. I, No. 5, March, 1999). Copyright 1999, College of Thelema (permission by editor granted Amazon Books to use). This is a flawed but thought-provoking synthesis of various scientific and "wisdom" traditions, both ancient and modern. Essentially a condensation of Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, this book attempts to weave together the threads of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions including Buddhism and Kab-balah, with scientific findings in fields as diverse as psychology, anthropology, and biology. The book is written in a conversational, question/answer format well suited to the broad, intertwined topics being covered. The main problem with this approach is that the book is devoid of references, and there is a sense that the material has been watered down somewhat for mass consumption. Wilber is up front about this, however, and directs the reader to consult Sex, Ecology, Spirituality for elaboration. Some occasional redundancy further detracts from the book's impact, but not so much as to negate its value. In general, Wilber's treatment of the topic areas suggests he has a broad and balanced understanding of his material. This is, in fact, one of the primary reasons I can recommend this book to students of the Mysteries. It provides a convenient refresher course in various philosophies and their implications for modern scientific and spiritual thought. Wilber's "four-quadrant" model is the framework for this approach, and accounts for internal-external, and individual-collective polarities of the human condition. Remarkably, Wilber manages to communicate all this in a very readable and accessible manner, and his discussion of the material is quite insightful. Despite its flaws, this book would be a good addition to any student's library. - DAVID G. SHOEMAKER

Rating:
Summary: One of the best
Review: For any thinking person who's struggling with the schism between science, psychology and faith, this book has the answer. Mr. Wilber has an amazing mind, and in this book he simplifies his theoretical framework to make his brilliant thought easier to grasp. I disagree with the reader who complained about lack of references -- all the footnotes are available in his other works. This is the synthesis of his thought for those who want to understand, not those who want to nit-pick.

For me, it's a life-changing book, showing the way to order my own thoughts and experiences. Wilber is the only writer I've come across, other than James Hillman, who helps me reconcile all my disparate reading and experience.

In this book, he perfectly and succinctly outlines the growth process I see in my clients who are struggling to overcome dysfunction, find meaning in life and transcend their pasts.

I am grateful for this book's influence in my thought, and in my work as a therapist.

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent Spirituality
Review: In this work of incredible insight and brilliance, Ken Wilber lays out the basis for the development of all systems and how so many systems have become stunted in their growth by negating or omitting important developmental stages in the expansion to the higher levels of wholeness leaving them in the evolutionary dust of flatland. He speaks out fervently against the concretization of thought in the form of dogma of any type as, in essence, the lazy way out. His work challenges us all to use these wonderful minds in an ever expanding search for higher truth rather than relying on the trite, sound-bite phraseology of the tiny mind. He is very understandable in his descriptions of the growth processes and makes his key points both releveant and clear, however I suggest a basic comprehension of evolving systems theory, some knowledge of Buddhist philosophy and an understanding of history in addition to an open, questioning mind to assist in the absorption of this material. Then again, if you are ready and willing, read on.

Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile, even if you don't fully get it.
Review: Let me acknowledge that I personally struggle to outgrow the "formal-reflexive" stage of consciousness and to feel comfortable in the "vision-logic" stage, and perhaps for that reason I stopped reading A Brief History of Everything after chapter 11. For me, Wilber's effort is a fine account and synthesis of many contemporary philosophical, psychological, cultural ideas, written in a clear, informal style, which often succeeds brilliantly in simplifying without oversimplifying. I finally truly understand post-modernism, and deconstuctionism. By relating and organizing the contributions of many thinkers, Wilber attempts to create new truths as well as express old ones, and I suspect he has accomplished this with his account of the different psychiatric approaches. At the same time, well before chapter 12, there were sections I did not get much out of. Also, Wilber makes two important errors in the first chapter of the book: evolutionists have several competing ideas for the origin of life which do not rely on impossibly random events (cf. Stuart Kauffman: At Home In the Universe: the Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity ), as well as explanations of the functions of pre-flight wing-like appendages. They have begun to identify in the fossil record some of the intermediate stages, and it would be surprising if life is not created in the test tube by the end of the century by "fair" means, and in fact there is not the great divide between non-life and life that Wilber posits.

Rating:
Summary: A joy to read
Review: Regarding Ken Wilber's A Theory of Everything, and A Brief History of Everything. Wilber's books are very interesting, in his synthesis of latest thinking from all over the spectrum of knowledge--evolutionary biology, economics, psychology, history, physics, etc., to name a few--and his building a unified framework or world view that is profoundly inclusive of ideas from all of these fields. He is a "mapmaker" of sorts, an abstractionist and pattern-finder, plotting out how things relate in the various spheres of knowledge, and hanging them together in a single richly-textured fabric--of categories, structures, hierarchies and relationships. Everything from religion to evolution to particle physics are fit within the framework. I have some questions about the validity of some of the premises on which he hangs some of his notions, but the quadrant system he presents--and the common patterns he observes in all of these various spheres of knowledge--is quite amazing. It is interesting and thought provoking reading, if you are interested in a synthesis of the latest ideas on how "everything" hangs together (the "theory") and how it has come to be this way (the "history").

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking in some ways, but undertone of discomfort
Review: This is the first Ken Wilber book i have read. I read it because i had read somewhere else that this book espoused a viewpoint of how religions, societies, political systems, etc evolved. In fact, he does that. It is an interesting explaination. I get the sense however as i read this stuff that he is manufacturing this system. I almost feel that he is making up his own vocabulary, which generally gets in the way, to explain this.

When i was much younger, i read quite a bit in the existential and sociological works area. This refreshed my memory of that exercise. You have to really dig down and spend some time thinking about this stuff to have a chance at grasping it. The question becomes whether it is worth it? Is there a benefit from spending a great deal of time reading this guy's works? I do not have simple answer. I know very little about the man himself. I guess the first question would be whether he himself has risen to some higher level of conciousness as a result of his deep thinking here? I do see some applications of thinking about various social, societal, inter-personal interactions. I just am not sure yet whether i buy into this framework of thought.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking in some ways, but undertone of discomfort
Review: This is the first Ken Wilber book i have read. I read it because i had read somewhere else that this book espoused a viewpoint of how religions, societies, political systems, etc evolved. In fact, he does that. It is an interesting explaination. I get the sense however as i read this stuff that he is manufacturing this system. I almost feel that he is making up his own vocabulary, which generally gets in the way, to explain this.

When i was much younger, i read quite a bit in the existential and sociological works area. This refreshed my memory of that exercise. You have to really dig down and spend some time thinking about this stuff to have a chance at grasping it. The question becomes whether it is worth it? Is there a benefit from spending a great deal of time reading this guy's works? I do not have simple answer. I know very little about the man himself. I guess the first question would be whether he himself has risen to some higher level of conciousness as a result of his deep thinking here? I do see some applications of thinking about various social, societal, inter-personal interactions. I just am not sure yet whether i buy into this framework of thought.

Rating:
Summary: Great book that unifies wisdom from many sources.
Review: To me as a scientific minded person approaching spirituality but having a hard time integrating the two, this book was a landmark.

Not only does the book give an excellent structure where all sorts of wisdom and knowledge may live side by side in a friendly manner, but on the personal level it helped me at least intellectually to unify various aspects of myself and my life.

Lately I have read large amounts of buddhist texts, new as well as traditional. This book takes a wider perspective and helps me relate my spiritual understanding and experiences in framework where it can co-exist with everything else I know about biology, physics, psychology, etc.

I recommend this book to everyone with an open mind that has the capacity to understand and grasp the subject and has any interest in science, psychology, philosophy, religion, history, feminism, biology.

I have already one other book by Wilber in my book stack, and I'm sure I will at least buy and read a few more before I move on.

Rating:
Summary: Read With Care: A Summary of the Content
Review: [For full review, see forthcoming, Torosyan, R. (2001). A system for everything: Book review of K. Wilber's Brief History of Everything. New Ideas in Psychology, 19 (3).]

Wilber manages to create a sweeping system for everything in life. He describes our spiritual evolution, and our dominant conceptual concerns: East and West, ancient and modern, individual and collective, physical and metaphysical. Wilber writes in an accessible common-sense style. He deliberately avoids a typical scholarly tone. While not free of some pretense at a monolithic voice, his work promotes rich conceptions of self-reflexiveness, interconnection, spirituality and empathy.

Wilber shows how the major theories of biological, psychological, cognitive and spiritual development describe different versions of how to find "the truth." At the outset, Wilber refers to Douglas Adams's best-selling cult novel Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. We desire final conclusions, just as Adams facetiously proposed the "answer that would completely explain 'God, life, the universe, and everything'" (p. xv). In the novel, that answer was "42," highlighting the absurdity of seeking such a final answer.

Wilber's "answer," instead, is a framework for connecting evolutionary currents. At first, he uses a Socratic dialogue, beginning with "KW" for Wilber and "Q" for the questioner, be s/he reader, fan, or friend. Initially, this appears somewhat contrived. The text pretends to be an interview, when it is clearly the author's own highly controlled construction. Upon further reading, however, the stylistic device helps Wilber engage the reader in a dialogue.

To Wilber, traditions of thought have usually been either "ascending" toward transcendental spirituality, or "descending" to the body, the senses, and sexuality (p. 11). The author suggests that humans must integrate dualities to survive as a species. In fact, we must not merely synthesize but accept the "nonduality" of ascending and descending, mind and body (p. 12).

Wilber's first chapter presents a brief summary of the entire book in the voice of the questioner:

Q: So we'll start with the story of the Big Bang itself, and then trace out the course of evolution from matter to life to mind. And then, with the emergence of mind, or human consciousness, we'll look at the five or six major epochs of human evolution itself. And all of this is set in the context of spirituality-of what spirituality means, of the various forms that it has historically taken, and the forms that it might take tomorrow. Sound right?

KW: Yes, it's sort of a brief history of everything...based on what I call 'orienting generalizations' (p. 17)

"Q" is obviously more highly informed than a first-time reader. Wilber uses Q less to ask questions than to help simplify points [the book summarizes the more complex content of Wilber's massive Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995)]. The "generalizations" he notes are Kohlberg's and Gilligan's moral stages. "Human moral development goes through at least three broad stages" (p. 17). In brief: before the child is socialized, it is "preconventional," as it learns the values of society it becomes "conventional," and eventually it may reflect on its own values critically, becoming increasingly "postconventional."

Wilber goes on to show a number of "tenets" or "patterns that connect." The first of these is that "reality is composed of whole/parts, or 'holons'" (p. 20). A holon is something that is itself "a whole and simultaneously a part of some other whole" (ibid.). Borrowing from Arthur Koestler, Wilber argues that the world is full of "holarchies," as opposed to hierarchies. Where a hierarchy typically separates distinct parts, a holarchy consists of both wholes that are parts, and parts that are wholes. For example, an atom is a whole of its own, but also a part of a whole molecule. A whole molecule is a part of a whole cell, and a whole cell is part of a whole organism. As Wilber says, "Time goes on, and today's wholes are tomorrow's parts" (ibid.).

Wilber uses the ideas of "depth" and "span" to say that whenever we map a territory, something always gets left out. For instance, as we narrow focus with a microscope, "There are fewer organisms than cells; there are fewer cells than molecules; there are fewer molecules than atoms; there are fewer atoms than quarks. Each has a greater depth, but less span" (p. 34). Similarly, if we move from mysticism and psychology, into biology and physics, the progression gives greater depth of specific detail but less span, embrace, or inclusion of levels of reality (pp. 36-38). These dimensions are neither dependent nor independent, but interdependent.

Great shifts in "reality" paradigms were brought by what Wilber calls "the watershed separating the modern and postmodern approaches to knowledge" (p. 58). Postmodernists criticize old paradigms such as "the Enlightenment,... the Newtonian, the Cartesian, the mechanistic, the mirror of nature, the reflection paradigm" (ibid.). In opposition, many postmodernists propose that "all truth is relative and merely culture-bound, there are no universal truths" (pp. 62-63). But as Wilber notes, even Derrida now concedes the elemental point that worldviews are not "'merely constructed' in the sense of totally relative and arbitrary" (p. 62). In Wilber's diagnosis, assertions that "there is no truth in the Kosmos, only those notions that men force on others," are nihilistic, replacing truth with "the ego of the theorist" (p. 63).

As a tool to place different worldviews, Wilber uses "four quadrants of development" (pp. 71-75). The exterior form of development is measured objectively and empirically. The interior dimension is subjective and interpretive, and hence depends on consciousness and introspection. And both interior and exterior occur not just separately but in social or cultural context.

Wilber describes how Foucault summarized the "monological madness" that dominated the eighteenth century and Enlightenment notions of the subject: "the subjective and intersubjective domains were thus reduced to empirical studies-I and we were reduced to its- and thus humans became 'objects of information, never subjects in communication'" (p. 269). Treated as objects, people were expected to meet norms of mental health, for instance, while their subjective position in the world was ignored.

Wilber says the whole of his morality aims to "protect and promote the greatest depth for the greatest span" (p. 335). He argues we must use these criteria when we make judgments. Although the spirituality risks opacity, the overall effort suggests deeply researched and grounded ways to structure reality. If we as a society need human empathy for multiple perspectives, then the patterns of thought laid out by Wilber provide a system for integrating such perspectives. Distilling messages of vast ranges of thought, Wilber presents highly differentiated worldviews and multiple points of intervention through which we can, if contingently, take action.