Kevin J. Bowman · 2017. 1. 5. · Kevin J. Bowman F or the enactment of Integral Theory presented here, this article reconstitutes its fundamental components as neither holons (as

HOLARCHICAL FIELD THEORYKevin J. Bowman

For the enactment of Integral Theory presented here, this article reconstitutes its fundamental components as neither holons (as in Wilber, 1995) nor perspectives (as in Wilber, 2002, 2006), but as holarchical

fields. These fields describe the ways in which holarchically embedded subjects and objects are interpen-etrated by their holarchical drives when they are in various interactions. This Holarchical Field Theory is created through a synthesis of Integral Scientific Pluralism (Bowman, 2012a) and Holarchical Development (Bowman, 2009).1 Integral Scientific Pluralism integrates within the dualities, triads, and spectra of Integral Theory Esb-jörn-Hargens’ Integral Epistemological Pluralism and Integral Ontological Pluralism alongside Wilber’s In-tegral Methodological Pluralism. This was fostered by crossing Wilber’s (2006) eight zones with the subject-action-object triad and the health-pathology duality. Integral Scientific Pluralism is summarized in the section immediately below. In this article, I cross the zones of Integral Scientific Pluralism with the static-dynamic duality, which allows for an integration of the dynamic drives of Holarchical Development (Bowman, 2009). This enables me to develop Holarchical Field Theory (HFT), wherein holarchically embedded subjects and objects, mo-tivated by their needs, become engaged through their interpenetrating drives. Integral scientific inquiry then becomes a particular, high-level action (among other actions that can be analyzed) within HFT. Various field theories in the social sciences help define Holarchical Field Theory for analyzing action while also inspiring the art of using it in proposed, future applications. Later in the article, Holarchical Field Theory is compared with Wilber’s Integral Mathematics and suggestions are made to overcome the limitations of its current uses. Finally, I conclude this article with a preface for a future application of Holarchical Field Theory (Bow-man, 2012b). In that article, pronouns and person perspectives are oriented while overcoming problems in previous approaches to analyzing dynamics using Wilberian Theory.

Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, 2012, 7(3), pp. 30–48

ABSTRACT Within the dualities of Integral Theory, Integral Scientific Pluralism synthesizes Integral Epistemological Pluralism and Integral Ontological Pluralism, as described by Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, alongside Ken Wilber’s Integral Methodological Pluralism. Further crossing the zones of Integral Scientific Pluralism in this article allows for an integration of the holarchcial drives described in my earlier work. This helps create Holarchical Field Theory, wherein holarchically embedded sub-jects and objects, motivated by their needs, become engaged through their interpenetrating drives. Various field theories in the social sciences help define Holarchical Field Theory for analyzing action while also inspiring the art of applying it in potential, future applications. The theory is then used to describe how it may overcome limitations in Wilber’s current use of Integral Mathematics.

KEY WORDS holarchy; ontology; philosophy of science; fields

Correspondence: Kevin Bowman, 2211 Riverside Ave., Box 70, Minneapolis, MN 55454. E-mail: [email protected].

Journal of Integral Theory and Practice 31

HolarcHical Field THeory

Summary of Integral Scientific Pluralism In Bowman (2012a), I extended aspects of Esbjörn-Hargens’ (2010) Integral Pluralism (itself an elaboration of Wilber’s Integral Methodological Pluralism). My approach, called Integral Scientific Pluralism (ISP), is represented in Figure 1. Eight zones (the four quadrants crossed by the internal-external duality) are crossed with the subject-action-object triad.

Whereas Wilber uses the term inside-outside to describe the duality that crosses the four quadrants to form his eight zones, I use the term internal-external and I explain why here. Wilber (2002) describes constituent parts that follow the agency of the holon as internal and those which do not as external. Items that are within the boundary of the holon are inside it, otherwise they are outside it. Some items are inside,

Figure 1. Forty-eight horizontal realms of Integral Scientific Pluralism. Shaded circles represent the pathology of that realm. IEP—Integral Epistemological Pluralism; IMP—Integral Methodological Pluralism; IOP—Integral Ontological Pluralism.

Zone 1

Individual

PhenomenologicalObjects

Internal

External

Zone 2

StructuralObjects Structuralism

StructuralistInterior

Zone 3

HermeneuticalObjects

Hermeneutics

Hermeneuticist

Internal

External

CulturalAnthropology

Zone 4

Cultural Anthropological Objects

Collective

Zone 8

SystemicObjects

Systems Theory

Systems Theorist

Zone 7

Internal

External

Exterior

Social AutopoieticObjects

Social Autopoiesis

Social Autopoietic Scientist

Zone 6

External

Internal

EmpiricalObjects

Empiricism

Empiricist

Phenomenology

Phenomenologist

Autopoietic Objects

Autopoiesis

Zone 5

Cultural Anthropologist

(Disclosed/Enacted)

(Injunction)

(Apprehension)

Object

Method/Action

Subject

IEP

IMP

IOP

Autopoietic Scientist

32 Journal of Integral Theory and Practice

K.J. BOWMAN

but not internal such as parasites or repressed thoughts. My use of internal-external matches Wilber’s use of inside-outside as in the formation of the eight zones. Yet I prefer to use the terms internal-external for two reasons. First, they can be associated with the common dynamic terms internalize and externalize, as was done in Bowman (2009). We do not have verbs like insidize or outsidify. The second reason is that, as long as the health-pathology duality is used, we can account for all of the distinctions Wilber makes without the need for both dualities (internal-external and inside-outside), which have differences that are not signified by their common meanings. Section 5 of Bowman (2012a) crosses each zone with the health-pathology duality to ac-count for, among other aspects of multiple holons, positive and negative externalities and internalities. With the formation of Holarchical Field Theory in this article, I cross these realms again with the static-dynamic duality, which incorporates the dynamic drives of Bowman (2009) and provides, among others, the processes of positive and negative internalization and externalization. These dynamic forces can be associated with stat-ic snapshots of positive and negative internalities and externalities. For example, a parasite and a repressed thought are pathological internalities at a moment or duration of time originating from past negative internal-ization. So these will intuitively account for the differences Wilber makes in his use of internal-external and inside-outside without the need for both.

The crossing of the quadrants with the internal-external duality is particularly important when dealing with multiple holons, which will have different elements that are internal or external to their holonic boundar-ies.2 This is always the case when dealing with the actions of holons; the environment of the holon is a critical piece to examine.

Employing a methodology for scientific inquiry is considered here as a subset of action. The scientist is the subject that conducts scientific inquiry embedded in epistemological zones (meaning that the zones from which scientific apprehension can arise are described intensively by epistemology). Eight general methodolo-gies can be employed to disclose or enact eight classes of (ontological) objects.

Our scientific understanding of the world is not just fragmented; those fragments tend to be uncon-sciously biased by modern and postmodern methods. It is not merely that there are multiple objects that are only partially disclosed as a less than eight-zonal, many-leveled object because not all methodologies are used. The problem is more severe because there are multiple subjects employing multiple methodologies in ways that are typically only transparent with regards to a small fraction of the epistemologies, methodologies, and ontologies that are invariably involved in all instances of scientific inquiry.

Consider an empiricist working to disclose zone-6 objects. The subject as empiricist employs empiri-cism making zone-6 data and capturing aspects of objects, which are individuated parts of exterior or behav-ioral reality as seen on their external environment. The objects of study, however, are always part of, at least, a many-level, eight-zonal affair, but only certain zone-6 parts are observed through empiricism. Similarly, the empiricist cannot merely occupy what Wilber and Esbjörn-Hargens call a third-person perspective to disclose these realms. The empiricist must also interpret zone-6 theory and data making use of her interior-individual content of consciousness (symbols, translations, metaphors, etc.). Thus the empiricist is also a phenomenolo-gist, although she is not likely to be a trained phenomenologist. So the best methods of contemplation cur-rently available will not necessarily be employed.

Ideally, the empiricist would also have scientific-level skill in using the other classes of methodologies such as sound structuralism, or have had internalized their insights, to be able to gain better distance from her own phenomenology and phenomenological objects; to see them with understanding of individual-interiors as studied from their imprint on their external realm.

Following Wilber (2006), “the meaning of an assertion is the means of its enactment” (p. 266), a process made clearer by ISP, given that the horizontal realms of ISP further differentiate and integrate these aspects of inquiry. The empiricist portion of epistemology relates to zone-6 knowing, for instance; sensory skills and behavioral aspects external to the objects of study, or external to objects related to the study of other



objects. In ISP, the scientist must make use of all eight epistemologies whether or not she is aware of them all. Empiricism with its methodological individualism tends not to consciously acknowledge the culturally

constructed nature of its objects of study or of its own epistemology. This is one enduring critique of mo-dernity coming from postmodernity’s “essential insight” that “there is no single ‘pregiven world’” (Wilber, 2000a, p. 775). Moreover, it is inevitable that the empiricist is a hermeneutist of some sort because she must make sense of her objects of study with her own meaning of the world, which directs her study and interprets her data in ways that are culturally created to a significant extent. So she must think of her objects of study relative to the hermeneutical objects of pre-existing mutual meaning in her field of study. She is also a cultural anthropologist, as she must attempt to differentiate the meaning she makes with her study as differentiated from an external view of the pre-existing mutual understanding in the field. This helps her to find a way to communicate new mutual understanding with her peers. This requires convincing her peers of the proper use of empiricist methods and interpretation while also conveying novel ideas within that general paradigm.

Thus, all methodologies are employed during the course of scientific inquiry. In order to reconstruct our scientific understanding integrally, we must understand how the secondary methodologies are employed. The empiricist’s primary methodology in the previous example is empiricism, but the biases from fragmented, non-integral science emanate from the other secondary methodologies. Secondarily, empiricists, for example, have typically assumed that values, morals, and preferences are unknowable scientifically. Rather than treat-ing them as variable and unknowable in modeling techniques, however, they have assumed that agents’ mor-als are fixed at egocentric while being advanced cognitively. This has encouraged selfish behavior in modern societies dominated by empiricist epistemology. It also tends to assume decision-making in agents is more conscious cognitively and better informed than it really is. It ignores interior sciences that have uncovered a distribution of agents at various stages of cognitive, moral, and other lines of development with varying degrees of health and pathology. Wilber’s contributions often derive from his recognition that theorists tend to overstate their claims because they do not hold their implicit and unconscious enactment of zones by level constant in their stud-ies. Or, they may be transparent in their assumptions, but inaccurate when examined with the current state of scientific understanding across many domains of knowledge. In either case, they may be biased by their (im-plicit or explicit) non-neutral assumptions. Wilber’s skillful use of theory and data across many disciplines has allowed him to place certain theories and data in proper context and relation to each other as he unpacks and makes conscious some of the hidden, biased, or unjustified assumptions of many major theorists. Phenomenology and structuralism, for instance, help Wilber scientifically reconstruct (the methodol-ogy of) spiritual practice and (the ontology described by) perennial philosophy, but without the unchecked metaphysical (and ontological) pre-givens that they once assumed. According to Wilber (2006, pp. 44-46), modern and postmodern knowledge refute these metaphysical assumptions. Postmodern findings in herme-neutics and cultural anthropology are included in the AQAL model, which greatly humble the overly strong claims of, especially, modern, exterior methodologies that assume the scientist is not biased or limited by her own culture, for example. The existential lack of meaning in pathological relativism in some zone-3 science, which derives from the assumption that no relative truth can be relatively stable or reliable (Wilber, 2000a, pp. 746-747), is overcome with the promise of higher-level meaning and holarchical reality found in some zone-2 and zone-4 science. For other examples of Wilber’s integral reconstruction, see Bowman (2012a). Integral Scientific Pluralism makes Wilber’s epistemology and methodology more transparent and us-able for others in their own areas of expertise. It is unreasonable to assume that scientists can control for, and make explicit, all the relevant epistemological, methodological, and ontological factors that ISP specifies. Yet, ISP can guide the researcher to be more intentional with regards to what is, and what is not, controlled for. Of those factors for which the researcher does not have the ability or resources to control, ISP can be used as a next best proxy for their control by treating a study as a module that links up to the existing body


K.J. BOWMAN

of disciplinary and transdisciplinary theory and evidence currently available. This I call Integral Scientific Modularity (ISM). Integral Theory can contextualize the results of models that make simplistic assumptions. For the previous example, pre-existing studies on the actual morals and cognition distributions of agents in a given population may help the scientific writer contextualize the results from mathematical models that assume egocentric, cognitively-advanced agents. See Bowman (2012a) for more on how ISM adds to the literature on Integral Research. Notice that each subject, action, and object area within each zone of Figure 1 is divided among healthy and unhealthy portions. To the extent there is equal opportunity, help for the disabled, advancement based on merit, loving parental care, constructive moral codes, ecological balance, fairly well-adjusted individu-als, and so on; there are healthy aspects of each zone of the ontological world. Examples of pathologies in the various ontological realms include child abuse, mental illness, political corruption, nepotism, ecological crisis, arbitrary moral codes, and physical ailments. It is reasonable to say that our current understanding of sound science has uncovered aspects of health and pathology in each of the eight ontological zones. Simi-larly, there are healthy and pathological aspects of each epistemological zone within scientists and scientific communities conducting scientific inquiry. They significantly influence whether or not methodologies will be employed well or pathologically. See Bowman (2012a) for some examples of how the epistemological and methodological realms are divided by the health-pathology duality.

Merging ISP Realms with Holarchical DrivesThis section will reconstitute this version of integral metatheory such that its fundamental component is neither holons (Wilber, 1995), nor perspectives (Wilber 2002, 2006), but rather fields which include static capabilities and potentials of subject and object holons as well as their interpenetrating dynamic drives. My previous work (Bowman, 2009) has described dynamics in Integral Theory as differentiated from, but also associated with, the dualities that make up holarchical realms. This made use of Wilber’s writings to provide a clarification and extension of his four dynamic drives of holons (agency, communion, self-transcendence, and self-immanence), which were specified as part of his 20 Tenets (Wilber, 2000a, pp. 48-54). The fuller set of drives provides direction for analyzing action, including communication, here with the ISP framework. I define positive dynamic drives as tendencies toward action that foster, or are consistent with, fur-ther development. Negative drives are tendencies toward action that prohibit development or contribute to regression. The drives and examples of each of their corresponding actions are given in Table 1. See Bow-man (2009) for more on the limitations of, and omissions within, Wilber’s specification of only four drives; the theoretical justification for specifying a healthy and unhealthy drive per pole of each duality in Wilber’s AQAL model; and some of the implications of these drives, including a novel conception of holarchical development. The holarchical drives represent tendencies towards categories of action that are associated relatively intensively with a particular pole of an integral duality. There is some overlap in the examples of Table 1 because action in a quadrant or realm will be a combination of drives. An example of a combination of posi-tive interiorization and positive individuation (relatively intensive in the intentional quadrant) could be when a teenager begins to question his parents’ thinking and develops independence of thought (this also involves positive ascension). In the Lower-Left quadrant, a combination of positive interiorization and positive col-lectivization may include a conversation that clears up destructive tension between two co-workers. This article makes clear distinctions between static states, capabilities, and realms versus the dynam-ics within and between holons. With Wilber’s concept of Kosmic address, subjects and some dynamics are combined. Kosmic address is defined as altitude plus the perspective of a holon (Wilber, 2006, p. 69). I con-sider taking a perspective a dynamic process since holons are capable of redirecting their focus in various ways. Personality types, on the other hand, can be used as part of the description of a person who tends to



Table 1. Holarchical drives and examples of their corresponding actions.

Positive Interiorization

Training or reading a book that expands one's

understanding.

Positive Exteriorization

Putting into writing a brilliant idea;

reproducing another machine part;

forming muscle memory from practice.

Negative Interiorization

Ignoring exterior causes from a belief that we can

change all of our reality by recognizing the

exterior as illusory; paranoid interpretations.

Positive Interiorization

Operating with limited intention because one

thinks thoughts are only products of brain

chemicals reacting to exterior stimuli; computer

hacking a benevolent charity’s website.

Positive Individuation

Honoring individual choice; respecting the

individual perspective for its partial truth.

Negative Individuation

Alienation from the collective; not honoring

the partially-valid individual perspective.

Positive Collectivization

Contributing to social value; learning the language of

the collective; openness to learning from another person.

Negative Collectivization

Indiscriminately accepting all individual choices as

equally valid; destructive herd behavior.

Positive Internalization

For society, taxing gas to make drivers bear costs

of pollution; taking responsibility for a mistake.

Negative Internalization

Absorption of pollution by an innocent bystander;

feeling guilt for what is beyond one's control.

Positive Externalization

Releasing limiting thoughts; firing an incompetent

worker; the destruction of a virus by antibodies.

Negative Externalization

The loss of awareness from a peak experience;

Projecting beyond oneself one's own repressed issues.

Positive Ascension

Releasing attachment to a literal notion that demons

cause illness in order to open to the germ theory of

disease; emergence of a higher capacity.

Negative Ascension

Denying an ability to attain higher awareness with

transformative practice (rather, thinking only

through death or by miracle can one go higher);

blind obedience to higher-level authority when one

should know better.

Positive Descension

Enjoying the act of eating healthier such that the lower

hunger drive is satisfied with rational understanding of

health; green-level parents teaching amber-level children

to recycle.Negative Descension

Denying greater potentials of the lower (e.g., one must

abstain from sex to transcend lower expressions of it); an

orange-level holon disallowing the expression of feelings.

Interior-Exterior Duality

Individual-Collective Duality

Internal-External Duality

Higher-Lower Duality


K.J. BOWMAN

take particular perspectives or who is more developed in certain areas. In Bowman (2011), I introduced the term holarchical embeddedness, which conceptually separates a subject or object from processes. Holarchi-cal embeddedness of an individual holon is the level of development of the individual in various lines (its psychograph); its membership in groups, occupation, and amount of capital it owns or works with (its related sociographs); plus its typology. Holarchical processes or dynamics are the perceptions, analyses, changing relations, choices, actions, etc., of an agent or multiple agents through holarchical realms where agents are positioned initially by holarchical embeddedness. Actions link subjects and objects in particular subjective and objective states through certain moments in time. The holarchical drives of Table 1 connect subjects and objects of Figure 1 with dynamic processes. Reality is always at least an ISP affair, a dynamic event between subjects and objects across all zones. Notice that there is a drive for each of the poles that make up the multiple levels of the 16 horizontal realms of the subject or object. The realms created by interior-exterior times individual-collective times internal-external times health-pathology times higher-lower correspond, respectively, to the dynamic dualities of interior-ization-exteriorization, individuation-collectivization, internalization-externalization, positive-negative, and ascension-descension. The two sets of dualities (static and dynamic) are linked by the static-dynamic duality. So, for instance, a negative drive from a scientist may originate from a unique shadow element from her own psyche (zone 1) or from a common shadow aspect from the problematic portion of the conventional wisdom of her discipline that she shares (zone 3). The dynamics are described here as within and between subjects and objects and can be used in linguis-tics. The statement “He read Wilber’s book” implies the subject enacts the object by reading with at least the exterior portion of this method (passing eyes over words and turning pages). “His mind benefited from that book” suggests positive interiorization and positive individuation from object to subject with the interior por-tions of the reading method (forming meaningful mental images, reflecting on the material, etc.). The degree to which the subject can benefit is a function of the embeddedness of the object (e.g., well-intentioned, high-quality, teal-altitude material across various domains) and subject (perhaps teal in certain lines and lower in others) and the dynamic effort expended or the degree to which the subject rises to the challenge of the object. The formal separation of action from capabilities or static states is commonplace and highly useful, and therefore is needed in Integral Theory. One example is found in national income accounting. Stocks of hu-man, physical, and knowledge capital plus natural resources are a nation’s assets at a particular point in time; say the beginning of the year (static, holarchically embedded capabilities). They are employed each year to assess the country’s GDP or total output (the dynamic processes of the assets). This production of goods and services provides consumption goods and may add to the capital stocks for a new, higher level of capital at the start of the following year. Another example is the categorization of state versus action verbs. As their names imply, state verbs such as “is” tend to describe a subject or object in a particular static state while action verbs such as “run” describe dynamics of a subject or object. Therefore, the philosophy of this article suggests specific distinctions and relations between relatively static and active developmental theory. Developmental stage theories for cognition (Piaget; Aurobindo), mor-als (Kohlberg; Gilligan), values (Graves; Beck and Cowan), techno-economic base (Lenski; Marx), and so on, can be thought of as intensively specifying deep structures relating to capabilities, limitations, and poten-tials of subjects and objects. Therefore, these are relatively static developmental theories relating to actual and potential embeddedness. Action developmental theories, in contrast, include William Torbert’s action inquiry (Torbert et al., 2004) or Chris Argyris’ action science (as interpreted developmentally by O’Connor, 2008, 2010). These action theories have specified the action logics and guiding action-strategies by level of individual and organizational development and so are describing relatively more the dynamic drives associ-ated with various levels of embeddedness. Integral U (Wilber & Scharmer, 2003), the integration of Theory U (Scharmer, 2009) into the AQAL model, is another example of action-intensive aspects of Integral Theory,



in this case working to harness the power of states of consciousness to empower transformation of individual and collective holons. The full description of this framework can now be seen as a Holarchical Field Theory, which will be explained in the next section.

Holarchical FieldsIn the initial specification of his AQAL model, Wilber (1995) considered holons as the fundamental compo-nents of reality. In his latest phase of theorizing (Wilber, 2002, 2006), the fundamental component became perspectives. The fundamental component of Holarchical Field Theory (HFT) is neither holons nor perspec-tives, but rather the fields (intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social) that include and interpenetrate hol-archically embedded and acting subjects and objects. The holarchical field concept transcends and includes holons (the relatively static descriptor of holarchically embedded subjects and objects) and their actions (resulting from their space-time-specific drives, which include, in part, perspective-taking). A definition for a field by English and English (1958) was found by Smith and Smith (1996) to apply broadly across all social and natural sciences. A field “substitutes events for things having fixed properties, and sees events as totalities in which parts of the event are what they are, qualitatively and quantitatively, only in terms of the rest of the event” (English & English, p. 207). This definition applies to HFT. The crossing of the eight zones with the subject-action-object triad along with the embeddedness of subjects and objects interpenetrated with holarchical drives fosters holistic examination of a holon dynamically engaged with its environment while making qualitative, quantitative, and other ontological, methodological, and epistemo-logical distinctions. Notice also the similarities of HFT with the field theories in the social sciences following Lewin (1936, 1951) and Kantor (1946, 1959). In these theories, the subject acts according to a probability function in-formed by its environment, its potentials, its history of actions with the object, and the intrinsic characteristics of the objects. A subject is disclosed in a particular state, but cannot be fully described in its entire multiplic-ity. An individual human’s expressions and relations, for example, are in constant flux, and it is only when an individual is engaged when one captures certain aspects of it in a particular state. Even maintaining a particular state through time is a dynamic event that requires subject and object to persist in equilibrium. In theory, a subject’s expression and action can be estimated by a probability function based on the holarchi-cal embeddedness of the subject and all relevant objects. The subject’s and object’s pre-existing statics (i.e., needs, characteristics, capabilities, potentialities, occupation, incentives, and social power differentials) and history with components of the environment are all potentially described by holarchical embeddedness. The HFT probability function, of course, is not an easier one to specify. The theory, however, does provide a con-ceptual framework for analyzing existing theory and data more formally in field-theoretic terms. The success Integral Theory has had in integrating developmental and philosophical theory and data can significantly empower field theories. We can see a connection to Bourdieu’s (1984) conception of a field as a bounded social space with positions held in relation to one another, differentiated by power and status hierarchies, which produce in occupants and institutions particular ways of being, thinking, and doing. Rummel (1975, 1976, 1981), following field theorists such as Sorotkin (1969) and Ushenko (1946), similar to HFT, treats dynamic interactions as stemming from interpenetrating drives between subject and environment. These drives make up a vector field. Applying these approaches to HFT, dynamic interactions can be described by a holarchical vector field where the dynamic drives are vectors that act on, and from, the subjects, objects, and their actual and potential space. In mathematics, vectors specify magnitude and direction. Each holarchical drive (of Table 1) represents a different holarchical direction of force. Variations in their magnitude allow for relatively greater energy and intensity in different portions of holarchical space. Complementary drives from, or to, subject and object (with proper balance of competition and cooperation in the given situation) can amplify those dynamic energy waves for novel creativity, or they may cancel or


K.J. BOWMAN

dampen each other out. Balanced, positive drives will work to satisfy needs in healthy ways that contribute to internal or external development. Holarchical embeddedness helps determine the potential power (magni-tude) of a subject’s or object’s drives. It would be wise to always treat the zones of ISP as also divisible by the actual-potential duality where drives are constrained by what is possible. Positive drives will foster development. The 20 Tenets (extended by the fuller set of holarchical drives) provide a theory about the moves that result in more developed indi-viduals, cultures, and societies. For example, moves that reconcile polarities with the transcendence of the limitations in opposing views, but inclusion of their partial, seemingly irreconcilable stances guide us to the positive potentialities of subject and object interaction. These positive potentialities are powerful, beneficial attractors for further development and creative emergence. Potential negative interactions are described by the opposite such as greater polarization of subject and object away from reconciliation of their partial truths making mutual satisfaction of needs that depend on further development less likely (or satisfying lower needs in less healthy ways). Pathological imbalances create forces that prevent holons to coalesce as they might under the attractive forces of potential, positive drives. In a related line of field theories following Stephenson’s (1953) Q-methodology, one’s subjective pref-erences are accessible and usable as objective data consistent with Wilber’s broad science and IMP (which are included in ISP). Subjective questions can be posed to individuals. Representative answers from multiple respondents are then given to the test subjects who rank them according to the degree with which they agree or disagree. This allows for objective analysis of subjective preferences. Therefore, HFT can be used to inform field theories in the social sciences of the capabilities, poten-tialities, and limitations of agents in field-theoretic settings. Meanwhile, field theories via HFT can inspire integral theorists to more systematically analyze complex dynamics.

Comparing Aspects of Integral Mathematics with Holarchical Field TheoryThis section describes some ways Wilber uses Integral Mathematics in contrast to the dynamic analysis en-couraged by Holarchical Field Theory (HFT). A key argument in Bowman (2009), regarding the specification of a set of dynamic drives to correspond with each of the dualities in Integral Theory, is that development to a higher stage is typically associated with a move that is relatively intensive in a particular holarchical direc-tion. Transformation is not a move that is necessarily balanced in the vertical and horizontal dimensions. A move to a higher first-tier stage does not necessarily proceed with full inclusion of its lower levels, but only, at least, minimum core capacities. Beck and Cowan (1996) and Wilber (2000b) state that the integral or vision-logic stage of consciousness is the first to significantly recognize and honor the role of all stages that preceded its own. For example, orange-altitude holons tend to suppress lower-level feelings while embracing mental cause and effect reasoning. The next stage (green altitude) tends to suppress its lower level of simple cause-and-effect reason (orange altitude) in favor of reconnecting with, and expanding the sense of feeling into a wider array of perspectives. The integral stages tend to integrate feelings, instrumental reason, and intuition within a substantially more mature intellect and intentionality. That is, teal altitude may more deeply include a given first-tier stage than its successor first-tier stage does. Therefore, it is necessary to allow for development or regression with variable intensities in the dynamic drives. Wilber’s vertical drives only specify a positive ascending drive (self-transformation) and a negative descending drive (self-dissolution). Integral Theory also needs to have positive descending and negative ascending currents, as the examples in Table 1 demonstrate (and as do less formal aspects of Wilber’s writings).3 The value of developing in a particular holarchical direction will depend on the environment in which holons find themselves engaged. Consider further the following examples that demonstrate the benefit of specifying the subject holon as having internal and external relations with its object environment while al-lowing for positive and negative drives by pole of each integral duality. Beck and Cowan (1996) and Wilber



(1995) attribute vertical transformation to the necessity to solve problems created at the existing structure of development. Beck and Cowan describe the environmental conditions of each stage necessitating transforma-tion or dissolution. Moreover, Beck and Cowan argue that successive stages oscillate between individual and collective emphasis. Lastly, today’s problems are often the result of complex interactions of agents at differ-ent, typically conflicting levels and types of development. For example, I (Bowman, 2010a, 2010b, 2011) have characterized failures to implement sound economic policy, which may have consensual support in the scholarly economics literature, as the result of warring political-economic types across all major stakeholder groups at relatively less mature levels within the learning line of political-economic development. Agents tend to be segmented by the major stages of values development, occupational incentives, and so on. Of course, Wilber has brilliantly specified the war of partial perspectives and the problems of imbalanced de-velopment. An example of his opposing flatland reductionisms includes the tendency to reduce reality to the exterior realms for modernity or to the cultural (Lower-Left) quadrant for postmodernity. Yet we would like to analyze these issues in the formal specifications of the theory. Thus we must differentiate not only the typical expressions of a holon at a particular level from that level’s emergent capa-bilities (Wilber’s distinction between surface features and deep structures), but also map out the healthy and pathological of these typical expressions in relation to its relatively healthier potential or less healthy dangers when included within differently developed realities. Policy prescriptions, cultural therapy, integral coaching and consulting, and Integral Life Practice can potentially profit by specifying ISP embeddedness of subject and object and their interpenetrating drives taken versus prescribed in given situations. In HFT, embeddedness of subjects and objects are each 16-zonal, with 16 drives operating in varying degree between subject and object. HFT recognizes an ontology that is causally efficacious and constraining in some ways, while also allowing for potential beyond our current skillful means of enactment. For example, take a Harvard business professor that is dependent on proprietary data for his case study. Rudimentary as-sumptions by the subject (professor) of the object (a firm) may distort the subject’s understanding of the object. The subject (professor) studying the object (the business) is not only engaged by the methodology consciously employed. The subject’s scientific choices (a subset of the engaged drives) will also be affected by how the subject is initially embedded. This embeddedness of subject is also within the object of study (receiving drives from it) because access to the data may depend on relatively favorable assessments of the businesses analyzed. Zingales (2012) has analyzed these and other academic biases that tend to favor estab-lished interests. Therefore, acknowledged methodological drives can be a mere subset of the total drives interpenetrat-ing subject and object (to and from each) during the use of the methods (or of agents’ actions more generally) where directions and strengths of drives are influenced by actualities and potentialities. Given that reality is more complex than our ability to understand it, the subject is often, perhaps always, constrained and influ-enced in unknown ways by the Kosmos. This formally overcomes Roy Bhaskar’s (1978) specification of the epistemic fallacy, which is the erroneous view that “statements about being can be reduced to or analyzed in terms of statements about knowledge; i.e. that ontological questions can always be transposed into epistemo-logical terms” (p. 36). Regarding the level a holon will operate from, Wilber (2002) treats expected level-specific behavior as a probability function of past expression of the individual and the length of historical time that the structures of that level have been in existence (Kosmic habits). With this function, it is not clear how behavior of an amber agent, for instance, will be expected to be different in a Western European city versus a Middle Eastern one today, two regions with very different distributions of agents by level; and regions embedded in a global society in common, yet in very different ways. These cultural differences are treated as relatively unexamined differences in surface expressions in Wilber’s AQAL model for the amber agent. In HFT, the environment of the amber agent becomes as essential for the theory as the basic structures of the subject, and the environment


K.J. BOWMAN

is not reduced to the exterior quadrants. Rather, in all four quadrants, there are internal and external aspects for the subject and object, which mutually influence each other through engagement. In his Integral Mathematics (a notational system, not a system of mathematical operations), Wilber uses Kosmic address of the subject and object to specify the perspective of the subject and the position at which the object is viewable. Mutual understanding may occur, but deeper analysis typically takes the form of merely more complex views, such as a fourth-person perspective. Besides Wilber’s emphasis on including interiority, as his examples of Integral Mathematics surely do, his uses tend not to include many essential insights of his integral vision such as his own, relatively unspecified methodology used to transcend and include major theorists. Toward this aim, as with Integral Scientific Modularity, HFT hopes to encourage the description of the growth in epistemological knowledge with a more mature employment of methodologies to better integrate a fuller set of ontologies. In future work (Bowman, 2012b), I will compare HFT with Wilber’s Integral Mathematics. There, I point out inconsistencies and reductionisms regarding the use of pronouns, person perspectives, and some dualities in the work of Wilber and other integral theorists (Edwards 2003; O’Connor, 2008, 2010) who have attempted to overcome these issues. The application provides a needed clarification of inconsistencies and reductionisms associated with these aspects and some uses of dualities in the Integral literature.

ConclusionThis article proposes a more fundamental layer of integral metatheory, holarchical fields, to transcend and include holons, their drives, and their interactions. HFT synthesizes Integral Methodological Pluralism and two other integral approaches that have extended Wilberian theory in certain directions (Esbjörn-Hargens’ Integral Pluralism and my Holarchical Development). Suggestions were offered for using HFT to conceptual-ize and use existing state and action developmental theories. Holarchically embedded subjects and objects are active within a field of drives, causing change in and by holons through holarchical space-time, and integral scientific inquiry can be seen as a high-level form of holarchical field action. HFT creates a framework for a genuine Wilberian action science. Crossing the dualities of interior-ex-terior, individual-collective, internal-external, higher-lower, health-pathology, subject-object, static-dynamic, and actual-potential with one another provides a useful conceptual tool for analyzing events more formally using Integral Theory. In Bowman (2012a), I describe my admiration for Wilber’s integral methodology in constructing the AQAL model. In this article, HFT was used to suggest ways in which Wilber’s vision could be further explored more formally than what has been developed by Integral Mathematics thus far.

N O T E S

1 My extensions of Integral Theory diverge from Ken Wilber’s approach and standard Wilberian thought. Therefore, I am offering them as a separate, but related branch of integral metatheory.2 See Edwards (2010) for justification of crossing dualities, triads, and spectra in metatheory.3 HFT treats each vertical drive of Wilber’s as a larger dynamic category that includes, to begin with, more than one drive in Table 1. More precisely, self-transformation represents relatively balanced development, including the emer-gence of a new stage, but also involving at least both positive vertical drives, unless otherwise specified. Self-dissolu-tion is the reverse, a regression with the loss of the highest stage, at a minimum, which entails negative ascension and negative descension.



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KEVIN J. BOWMAN, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of economics at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has created mathematical models with the forces of invention, innovation, and diffusion solving puzzles in the relation-ship between inequality and growth. Kevin has extended Ken Wilber’s dynamic drives, developed the first mathematical model for Integral Theory, and is a leader in the field of Integral Economics. Kevin has synthesized Wilber’s and Sean Esbjörn-Hargens’ Integral Pluralisms and his own Holarchical Development into Holarchical Field Theory. His work has appeared in Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Eastern Economics Journal, Journal of Asian Econom-ics, International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, and the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice.

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Kevin J. Bowman · 2017. 1. 5. · Kevin J. Bowman F or the enactment of Integral Theory presented here, this article reconstitutes its fundamental components as neither holons (as