Integral Paradox: A Critique of Ken Wilber's Theories

By David Lane and Andrea Diem

The following series of essays were published on Integral World in Europe from December 2006 to September 2023. They cover a range of topics but primarily focus on Ken Wilber's views on evolution, epistemology, consciousness, and enlightenment. Initially, I was a great fan of Ken Wilber's works when I first discovered him in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, after a closer analysis of his books, especially when he focused on Darwinian evolution and fundamentally misrepresented it, I became a harsh critic of his tendency to indulge in spiritual hyperbole. Nevertheless, I still feel that Ken Wilber is an important thinker and has provided us with some valuable insights, especially in how best to adjudicate varying states of awareness in meditation.

A special thanks must be given to Frank Visser, the founder of the Integral World website, for creating a forum where a variety of different perspectives (pro and con) were welcomed and discussed. In organizing this book, I decided it would be best to keep the chronological order in which they were first published since that will provide the necessary timeline and context for the reader to best understand the arguments that I have put forth.

Table of Contents:

1. The Art of Spiritual Hyperbole
2. The Confused Hype of Da Free John
3. Misunderstanding Evolution
4. Wilber on Evolution Revisited
5. Feynman's Clocks vs. Wilber's Winds
6. The Sound of Three Books Clapping
7. On Reductionism
8. Tangled Phone Lines: Dawkins and Wilber
9. Andrew Cohen Exposed
10. Frisky Dirt
11. Random Mutations in Molecular Biology
12. The Faith of Physical Causes
13. The Death of Privacy
14. UFOs and the Chandian Effect
15. Wilber's Eye and the Danger of Reification
16. Darwin's Moral Sense
17. Quantum Theory and the Transcendent
18. Transcendental Sociology
19. The Avatar Project
20. How Seriously Should We Take Mysticism?
21. Integral Apartheid
22. The Missing Nuance: Integral Politics
23. The Misuse of Statistics24. Chroma Casting
25. Wilber as Religious Preacher
26. Moronic Evolution
27. Integral Theory and its Discontents
28. Cosmic Myopia
29. Confused from Eden
30. Eden's Probability Error
31. Novelistic Truth
32. Multiple Infinities
33. Enlightenment and its Vagaries
34. Appendix
35. About the Authors

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CHL9N3GK
• ISBN13: 9798860815124
• Release Date: September 2023
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 492 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.0"