Wilber's Integral Theory for Connecting Qualitative with Quantitative

Rebecca MacKinnon agreed to pass along some of my ideas about a New Media Ecosystem, and commented to me that it was a bit difficult to quickly digest and convey to people. I sent her back the following e-mail that gives a little more context to the issue, and hopefully clarifies it a little bit -- But there is no easy solution for a complete paradigm shift in how we understand and comprehensively explain reality.

These ideas are dense which is exactly why they haven't been implemented yet -- We need to pool together the collective knowledge of our society in order to integrate all of the different viewpoints into one comprehensive system that takes into account all of the different ontologies. I propose that this system is Ken Wilber's Integral Philosophy, and I sent Rebecca the following e-mail trying to give a little bit more context.

Thanks Rebecca,
I appreciate it.

As Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

These ideas are a methodolgical paradigm shift that tries to bridge the gap between the qualitiative and quantitative worlds -- a gap that is not just isolated to journalism.

Ken Wilber's philopophy has only been applied to the holistic health movement because he provides a framework that integrates the insights that come from Eastern Philosophy.

There isn't a scientific model that describes why yoga works, why prayer can help healing, why accupuncture is so effective. But there is enough scientific data for the National Institutes of Health to have an entire National Center for Complementary and Alternative Health.

Ken Wilber provides a philosophical framework, and his ideas are domain-independent and just as applicable to the Bloggers versus Journalism split as they are between the Qualitiative versus Quantitative split and Eastern Medicine vs. Western Medicine battles.

Below is something more that I wrote up about this to put it into more context:

MIXING SCIENCE WITH EASTERN PHILOSOPHY
I basically propose a more scientific approach to journalism, but with the caution that the reductionism of Western science is limited in covering the inner depths of our subjective and intersubjective experiences.

Objective journalism provides factual reporting, but fails to represent the inner feelings and motivations of politicians. Blogs pick up the slack by adding more personality and subjectivity, but often fail to have a perspective beyond partisan ideology.

The battle between the inner worlds and outer worlds is not just an issue with journalism -- It's a problem that spans across all academic disciplines.

Many insights into solving this problem can come from medicine by looking at Eastern Medicine, at NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and at the Institute of Noetic Science Medical Textbook: "Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine"
http://www.noetic.org/research/ch_book/main.html

Philosopher Ken Wilber's Integral Approach provides a solution for bridging the gaps between the quantitative with qualitatitve, objective with subjective, external phenomena with internal phenomena. Wilber is very popular in holistic medicine circles because of this.

I'm working with Adam Leonard who is the Co-Director of the Integral Practice Center at Wilber's Integral Institute. Leonard wrote his master's level thesis on a theoretical integration of communication theories, and he's going to be providing his insight feedback to the project as I go along. He has let me post his thesis here on my site to share with the world -- He asks that you properly source information.

If you've ever heard of Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics integral, then Leonard ties Wilber's philosophy together Beck's approach to worldviews and different levels of pyschological development.

I've only mentioned this briefly and haven't formally announced this yet, but I will be soon.