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Newsletter Nr. 740
Amsterdam, October 31st, 2018


IS STUART KAUFFMAN REALLY KEN WILBER'S ALLY? - FRANK VISSER

In recent and past communications Ken Wilber has shown the following casual type of reasoning: there is a spiritual drive towards complexity in the universe, which I have called "Eros" ("by any other name"), and this view is corroborated by the work of several famous complexity scientists or philosophers. For example, Wilber assures us, in no uncertain terms, these authors mean "exactly the same" thing:

process philosopher Whitehead's "creative advance into novelty"
theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman's "self-organization"
Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigogine's "order out of chaos"
Erich Jantsch's "self-transcendence through self-organization"

The extent to which these authors would support Wilbers spiritual take on the universe is a matter of debate. Each of them deserves a separate essay in this regard. I have dealt with Prigogine and Whitehead recently, so I'd like to focus on Kauffman here. Most subscribe to a "creative universe", but that can mean many things. The fact that complexity has emerged in the universe is not disputed. What is disputed is the explanation we want to give for this emergence. What actually drives the universe and evolution?

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/visser128.html