Two ways to flatten the Kosmos

A sequel to One thought, four windows.

Two ways to flatten the Kosmos: gross and subtle reductionism on the four quadrants. Three two-by-two quadrant grids side by side, interior on the left and exterior on the right of each. The first is the Kosmos: all four windows filled, I, It, We, Its, with a thought at the crossing. The second is gross reductionism: three windows are empty dotted outlines with arrows into the Upper Right, which now holds only scattered dots labelled atoms. The third is subtle reductionism: the two interior windows are empty dotted outlines, arrows carry I to It and We to Its, and the exterior half holds one web of connected nodes labelled the great interlocking web; the purple interior tint is gone. Under each grid, Wilber's verdict: gross reductionism has not been historically that influential; subtle reductionism is the truly devastating contributor to modern flatland ontology. Below, two verbatim passages from Sex, Ecology, Spirituality chapter 4.
Two ways to flatten the Kosmos: gross and subtle reductionism on the four quadrants Three two-by-two quadrant grids side by side, interior on the left and exterior on the right of each. The first is the Kosmos: all four windows filled, I, It, We, Its, with a thought at the crossing. The second is gross reductionism: three windows are empty dotted outlines with arrows into the Upper Right, which now holds only scattered dots labelled atoms. The third is subtle reductionism: the two interior windows are empty dotted outlines, arrows carry I to It and We to Its, and the exterior half holds one web of connected nodes labelled the great interlocking web; the purple interior tint is gone. Under each grid, Wilber's verdict: gross reductionism has not been historically that influential; subtle reductionism is the truly devastating contributor to modern flatland ontology. Below, two verbatim passages from Sex, Ecology, Spirituality chapter 4. WILBER WIKI · A CONCEPT IN ONE PICTURE Two ways to flatten the Kosmos The atomist keeps only atoms. The holist keeps the whole web and loses every within. Wilber says the second built flatland. THE KOSMOS · ALL FOUR QUADRANTS one thought, four windows: interiors and exteriors, all four real INDIVIDUAL COLLECTIVE INTERIOR EXTERIOR Iintentional a meaning behavioralIt a brain state Wecultural a shared language socialIts a social system a thought one holon every interior has an exterior correlate, which is what makes both reductions tempting “…each quadrant is intimately correlated with, dependent upon, but not reducible to, the others.” GROSS REDUCTIONISM all quadrants to the Upper Right, then the Upper Right to atoms INTERIOR EXTERIOR Iintentional a meaning Wecultural a shared language socialIts a social system behavioralIt a brain state I We Its It atoms nothing but atoms: no interiors anywhere, yet not, in Wilber’s telling, the main story “…by and large it has not been historically that influential” the Epicureans · Holbach · La Mettrie SUBTLE REDUCTIONISM the Left half collapsed to its correlates on the Right half INTERIOR EXTERIOR Iintentional a meaning Wecultural a shared language It Its behavioral social I We I reduced to It thoughts as brain states We reduced to Its culture as social integration “the great interlocking web” the web is kept whole and every within is gone: a holism of surfaces, with nothing inside it “The truly devastating contributor to modern flatland ontology” systems theorists · structural/functionalists “new paradigm” and “ecological/holistic” theories ◇ The three grids, the dotted empties, the arrows and the web drawing are this wiki’s; the two reductionisms, their moves, their verdicts and their targets are Wilber’s “They don’t reduce everything to atoms; they reduce everything in the Left-Hand to a Right-Hand description in the ‘system.’ They reduce a four-quadrant holism (or Kosmic holism) to merely a Right-Hand holism, a flatland holism.” Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), ch. 4 “…the downside of the Enlightenment was that it took a Kosmos of both Left and Right dimensions and reduced it to a cosmos that could be empirically (or monologically) described: it collapsed the Left half to its correlates on the Right half. Its great crime was not gross reductionism but subtle reductionism.” Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), ch. 4 Redrawn from Wilber’s account of gross and subtle reductionism in SES ch. 4; not a reproduction of a published figure. The quadrant frame follows “One thought, four windows” · sans labels summarise SES ch. 4 · ◇ marks this wiki’s own device SEEDS OF RENAISSANCE · WILBER WIKI
The Kosmos as the previous figure drew it: one thought, four windows. Interiors on the left, exteriors on the right, and each window correlated with the others, which is what makes a reduction tempting. Gross reductionism starts from the same four windows… …and reduces all of them to the Upper Right, then reduces the Upper Right to atoms. Wilber's verdict: a few "highly gifted nuts", and "not historically that influential". Subtle reductionism also starts from all four windows, and keeps the whole web of exteriors in view… …but reduces every interior to its exterior correlate: I to it, we to its, a thought to a brain state, culture to social integration. The web is whole and nothing is inside it. This is flatland, and in Wilber's telling the Enlightenment's real downside. The settled frame: the Kosmos and its two flattenings side by side, with Wilber's sentences. This is the shareable image.

A sequel to One thought, four windows. Every interior has an exterior correlate, and that is what makes two kinds of reductionism tempting. Gross reductionism reduces everything to the Upper Right and then to atoms. Subtle reductionism keeps the whole interlocking system but collapses every interior into it, so thoughts become brain states and culture becomes social integration. Wilber says the second, not the first, is what built "flatland":

"They don't reduce everything to atoms; they reduce everything in the Left-Hand to a Right-Hand description in the 'system.' They reduce a four-quadrant holism (or Kosmic holism) to merely a Right-Hand holism, a flatland holism."

Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (1995), ch. 4

The two reductionisms, their verdicts and their targets are Wilber's. The three grids, the arrows and the web drawing are this wiki's. More: Flatland.

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