Integral Institute website (and foreword to one of Ken's books). Of all the grand Synthesisers who have tried to create a truely universal and all-encompassing system of thought, Ken Wilber is the only one to actually formulate a methodology whereby this can be done. Rather simply be guided by feelings or spontaneous intuition (useful as they may be), he follows a specific and quite rigorous, very rational approach in integrating all bodies of human knowledge and understanding. In this way he claims to counter the extreme postmodernist relativism currently favoured in academia, by incorporating the present diversity of isolated fields of sciences, philosophies, religions, and cultures into a single grand model, which at the same time preserves the unique truths of each.
The central thesis and overarching point about Wilber's methodology is that he almost never rejects a person or an entire system of thought. For example, although he criticises Jung, he does not say that Jung is wrong, and in fact he frequently advocates Jungian therapy as an example of what he calls a fulcrum-4 modality. The essence of his "Integral" approach is, as Ken often says, "everybody is right, and nobody is smart enough to be completely wrong all the time." Thus all theories and teachers have something valid to say, and to contribute to our understanding of the whole.
Wilber's method of inquiry involves three discrete but sequential stages. The following summary is based on and more or less paraphrased from the explanation by Jack Crittenden's well-written (if at times a tad over-exuberant) essay What is the Meaning of "Integral"? found on the Integral Institute website (and foreword to one of Ken's books).
The first step is to identify an "orientating generalization" or "sturdy conclusion", in other words, a basic conclusion or agreement, from various systems (including rival systems) of thought, particularly those that are accepted as being beyond criticism by competing schools of thought.
"In working with any field, Wilber simply backs up to a level of generalization at which the various conflicting approaches actually agree with one another. Take, for example, the world's great religious traditions: Do they all agree that Jesus is God? No. So we must jettison that. Do they all agree that there is a God? That depends on the meaning of "God." Do they all agree on God, if by "God" we mean a Spirit that is in many ways unqualifiable, from the Buddhists' Emptiness to the Jewish mystery of the Divine to the Christian Cloud of Unknowing? Yes, that works as a generalization..."
The above simple example is from theology, but Wilber does not limit himself to mysticism or psychology - he approaches all the fields of human knowledge in the same way. In every case he assembles a series of sturdy and reliable orientating generalizations. It is not important if other fields do not accept the conclusions of any given field (e.g. empirical science not matching religion); rather he simply assumes that each field contains a very important and valid generalization which is indeed true.
The second step takes all the truths assembled in the first step and poses the question: What coherent system would in fact incorporate the greatest number of these truths? Wilber's reply is his "integral system" which so he and his followers claim incorporate "the greatest number of orientating generalizations from the greatest number of fields of human inquiry." According to Wilber then, it is not the case of someone being right and someone else wrong. Rather, his basic idea is that every worldview or system of knowledge or belief, has an important even if partial, truth. "Instead of asking which approach is right and which is wrong, we assume each approach is true but partial, and then try to figure out how to fit these partial truths together, how to integrate them - and not how to pick one and get rid of the others."
The third step is the development of a new type of critical theory. Once Wilber has the big picture arrived at in the preceeding stages, he uses that to criticize the partiality of narrower approaches, even though he has included the basic truths from those approaches. He criticizes not their truths (which are part of the overall integral system), but their partial nature.
As bold and breathtaking an attempt it is, Wilber's methodology fails on a number of points, and has been strongly criticised by Jeff Meyerhoff on these grounds
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