The Limits of the Exterior Approach

Wilber's View

This is Wilber's specific technical objection to systems theory, argued from inside his own twenty-tenets framework rather than against it. He grants that the tenets are genuine "homolog laws" — the same dynamic patterns really do show up across the physiosphere (A), biosphere (B), and noosphere (C). But he points out a structural consequence that follows just from what it means for a law to hold across all three domains: such a law can only be general enough to apply everywhere by describing what A, B, and C have in common — which, since B and C both contain A as their base, means the tenets are really laws of A (matter) that also happen to hold, in a thinned-out way, for B and C. They can tell you evolution gets more complex; they can't tell you why pride can be wounded, what honor means, or how to resolve an Oedipus complex — B and C do further things (sexual reproduction, verbal communication) that aren't derivable from the tenets at all. So a science built to cover every level necessarily settles at the least interesting level — his memorable phrase is that such a science "does not also cover the weakest noodle," meaning it can only assert what's true even of the least conscious, least interior holons, and so tells us least about the most conscious ones.

The sharpest part of the argument is his complaint that impressive systems-theory books (he names Laszlo, and elsewhere Jantsch and Prigogine's popularizers) are "rich and impressive" on the physiosphere, "somewhat" adequate on the biosphere, and go "pale and anemic" the moment they reach culture and history — not because the authors are lazy, but because that thinning-out is what the method itself guarantees. This is a fair and specific critique of a real tendency in systems-theoretic and complexity-science writing about mind and culture. It's less clear, though, that Wilber has shown something in principle impossible for an exterior, empirical approach, as opposed to something merely undelivered by the particular general-systems tenets he's built — the chapter mostly asserts the limit via examples (poetry, Oedipus, honor) rather than arguing why no future exterior science could in principle capture interiority; the positive argument for that stronger claim is carried by [[interiority|the next chapter's case for the within of holons]], not by this one.

In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

In the previous chapter I said that holistic systems theories leave out the interiority of the holons they describe… they then subject these interiors to the same analysis as they apply to the surfaces, because they are trying to be empirical, and this produces some very unpleasant results.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 4, "A View from Within"

But none of the twenty tenets—as crucially important as they are—describes specifically what is happening in B and C… The B and C qualities and functions and cognitions will follow the same tenets that also apply to A, but they will further follow other laws and patterns and actions not specifically derivable from the twenty tenets… There is nothing in the twenty tenets that will tell us how to resolve an Oedipus complex, or why pride can be wounded, or what honor means, or whether life is worth living.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 4, "A View from Within"

…the twenty tenets—by which I mean dynamic systems theory in general—are the most fundamental tenets of all of development, and therefore the least interesting, least significant, least telling tenets when it comes to B and especially C… nothing gets into systems theory that, to borrow a line from Swift, does not also cover the weakest noodle.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 4, "A View from Within"

And the weakest noodles, the lowest holons, have the least depth, the least interiority, the least consciousness—so that a science of that is correspondingly a weakest noodle science. It is a science of surfaces.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 4, "A View from Within"

…one finds a very rich and impressive setting forth of something like the twenty tenets, and a rich application of them to the physiosphere and somewhat to the biosphere, but then the presentation, as it really explores the biosphere and then gets into the noosphere, becomes pale and anemic and thins out very quickly.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 4, "A View from Within"

It takes more than imagination; it takes hallucination.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 4, "A View from Within"

See Also

• Interiority (the "Within" of holons) — the positive case Wilber builds right after this critique, for why exteriors alone can't be the whole story
• Systems Theory and the Sciences of Complexity — the broader literature (Laszlo, Jantsch, Bertalanffy) this critique is aimed at
• flatland — the larger diagnosis this chapter-level critique is a specific instance of
• holons — the twenty tenets this page argues are necessarily "weakest noodle" laws
• Right-Hand and Left-Hand Paths — the it-language / interior-meaning distinction this chapter's argument sets up
• four-quadrants — the fuller framework (interior and exterior crossed with individual and collective) this critique is building toward