A Brief History of Everything

Rating:
Summary: KEN WILBER FORUM IS ONLINE
Review: A very active Ken Wilber forum is now online at: http://www.shambhala.com/wilbe

Rating:
Summary: A workable intro to Ken Wilber
Review: Although I've never been a fan of the question and answer format, this is a utilitarian introduction to the stunning work of Ken Wilber. Without a doubt, Wilber is synthesizing a legitimate holistic worldview from a melange of seemingly disparate philosophies. I was somewhat dismayed to find his book categorized as "New Age" in leading bookstores. Wilber is the genuine article, however, and should be "shelved" next to Whitehead and his peers in philosophy

Rating:
Summary: A seminal work that trancends & includes all knowledge
Review: I must agree with John Fesenko. I would only add that Ken Wilber stands alone as an integrator of knowledge. Must reading for anyone searching for meaning in life.

Rating:
Summary: A beacon for those interested in the best of the East & West
Review: Through the ideas presented in this book, and their more complete treatment in "Sex, Ecology, and Sprituality", Ken Wilber synthesizes the best attributes of the "objective" scientific paradigm with the wisdom gained through millenia of contemplative and meditative traditions. Using an easily readable question and answer format, and an equally rare sense of humour, Wilber presents a strikingly lucid and convincing argument for the adoption of a more balanced world view which recognizes and honors the importance of subjective experience. Somehow, Wilber has produced a piece of work which is scholarly without being dry, and infused with a spiritual perspective without losing its focus and sense of balance within the dizzying heights. It is easily the best book of its kind I have read.

Rating:
Summary: A "rare voice."
Review: A BRIEF HISTORY (hereafter referred to as "ABH") is addressed "to those of us grappling to find wisdom in our everyday lives, but bewildered by the array of potential paths to truth" (xii). Ken Wilber is "in a category by himself," Tony Schwartz writes in the book's Foreward. "He is . . . far and away the most cogent and penetrating voice in the recent emergence of a uniquely American wisdom" (xi).

Written in an conversational, easy-access, question-and-answer format, ABH offers a simplified introduction to Wilber's integral vision, a vision which "attempts to include as many important truths from as many disciplines as possible, from the East as well as from the West, from premodern and modern and postmodern, from the hard sciences of physics to the tender sciences of spirituality" (p. xv). (A more in-depth discussion of Wilber's integral approach may be found in his 832-page SEX, ECOLOGY, SPIRITUALITY.)

In this mind-stretch of a book, Wilber takes on "God, life, the universe, and everything . . . it deals with life, mind, and spirit, and the evolutionary currents that seem to unite them all in a pattern that connects" (p. xix). And as Schwartz notes, ABH "delivers just what it promises. It covers vast historical ground, from the Big Bang right up to the desiccated postmodern present. Along the way, it seems to make sense of the often contradictory ways that human beings have evolved--physically, emotionally, intellectually, morally, spiritually" (p. xi). In this book, Wilber triumphs in integrating Freud and Buddha (p. 141), suggesting that on the "precious path to global consciousness" (p. 121), the "coming Buddha will speak digital" (p. 281).

Thoreau wrote: "With all your science can you tell how it is, and whence it is, the light that comes into the soul." In his recent book, WHY RELIGION MATTERS (2000), Huston Smith says that "the greatest problem the human spirit faces in our time is having to live in the procrustean, scientific worldview that dominates our culture" (p. 202). In ABH, Wilber also examines this dilemma. We are living under the Confucian curse of "interesting times" (p. 51), in a flatland of "zero" depth (p. 299)--"no consciousness, no mind, no soul, no spirit, no value, no depth, no divinity found anywhere in the disqualified universe" (pp. 224-5). We live in the scientific "world of the lab technician, slabs of meat each and all" (p. 244). And the "thought that somebody, somewhere might be higher or deeper . . . is simply intolerable" (p. 140). He writes: "Only by rejecting flatland can we arrive at an authentic environmental ethics and council of all beings, each bowing to the perfected grace in all. Only by rejecting flatland can we come to terms with the devastating culture gap, and thus set individuals free to unfold their own deepest possibilities in a culture of encouragement. Only be rejecting flatland can the grip of mononature be broken, so that nature can actually be integrated and thus genuinely honored, instead of made into a false god that ironically contributes to its own destruction" (p. 307).

In following "evolution from matter to life to mind" (p. 15), Wilber reveals "a more accurate, comprehensive map of human potentials" that directly translates "into a more effective business, politics, medicine, education, and spirituality" (p. xvi). (He covers this application in greater detail in A THEORY OF EVERYTHING.) ABH offers an "'all-level, all-quadrant' approach to consciousness, therapy, spirituality, and transformative practice" (p. 221).

Reading Ken Wilber is like being in the presence of someone who knows something you should know. He is a "rare voice" (p. xiii) that belongs on your bookshelf.

G. Merritt

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: 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: 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: 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.