Integral theory (Ken Wilber)

Integral theory is Ken Wilber's attempt to place a wide diversity of theories and thinkers into one single framework. It is portrayed as a "theory of everything" trying "to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into an interrelated network of approaches that are mutually enriching."

Wilber's Integral Theory has been applied by some in a limited range of domains. The Integral Institute currently publishes the peer-reviewed Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, and SUNY Press has published nine books in the "SUNY series in Integral Theory." Nevertheless, Wilber's ideas have mainly attracted attention in specific subcultures, and have been widely ignored in academia.

Origins and background

Origins

Ken Wilber's "Integral Theory" started as early as the 1970s, with the publication of the Spectrum of Consciousness. that attempted to synthesize eastern religious traditions with western structural stage theory, models of psychology development that describe human development as following a set course of stages of development.

Ken Wilber

Kenneth Earl "Ken" Wilber II (born January 31, 1949) is an American writer on transpersonal psychology and his own Integral Theory, a four-quadrant grid which suggests to synthesize all human knowledge and experience.

Biography

Wilber was born in 1949 in Oklahoma City. In 1967 he enrolled as a pre-med student at Duke University. He became inspired, like many of his generation, by Eastern literature, particularly the Tao Te Ching. He left Duke and enrolled in the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, but after a few years dropped out of university to devote all his time to studying his own curriculum and writing books.

In 1973 Wilber completed his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, in which he sought to integrate knowledge from disparate fields. After rejections by more than twenty publishers it was finally accepted in 1977 by Quest Books, and he spent a year giving lectures and workshops before going back to writing. He also helped to launch the journal ReVision in 1978.

In 1982 New Science Library published his anthology The Holographic Paradigm and other Paradoxes a collection of essays and interviews, including one by David Bohm. The essays, including one of his own, looked at how holography and the holographic paradigm relate to the fields of consciousness, mysticism and science.