Integral Research Methodology

Source

* Essay: Integral Review and its Editors. By Sara Ross, Reinhard Fuhr, Michel Bauwens, et al. INTEGRAL REVIEW 1, 2005.

URL = http://integral-review.org/documents/Integral%20Review%20and%20Its%20Editors%201,%202005.pdf

Excerpt: Beyond Perspectives, Reductionisms and Layers. By Michael Bauwens, pp. 14-17.

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Beyond Perspectives, Reductionisms and Layers. By Michael Bauwens

As indicated before, the concept of integral is an umbrella term that can encompass different interpretations, though I believe that they share a commonality: that they are multi-perspectival, i.e. aim to combine not just one worldview, but several, or is meta-paradigmatical, incorporating more than one just one paradigm. The term transdisciplinarity is also closely related: it is not only the juxtaposing of different disciplines in one research project, but an attempt to transcend the partial approaches into a unity, an attempt to go “beyond” the different disciplines.

As my own contribution, I would like to offer some more perspectives on the concept of integral.

The Place of the Integral Approach

Let’s have a look at the first table:

This table is an attempt to show how the integral approach is related to other approaches. We can recognise two axes: one distinguishes attention for the ‘whole’ from attention to the ‘parts;’ the other distinguishes attention to similarities and ‘structural unity’ between different phenomena, from attention to difference.

All four approaches are valid in our attempt to understand ‘reality.’ The classic materialist approach is based on the reduction of any phenomena to its constituent parts, which are then studied separately. The idea of course is that such analysis is eventually followed by a synthesis, but the synthesis is always secondary, and for all practical purposes is often abandoned, since scientists have become hyper-specialised in their disciplines, and have difficulty understanding other specialised domains. It is still the mainstream approach in the hard sciences, and very important in the social sciences as well. The result is a fragmentation of our knowledge and worldviews.

Current emphasis on the whole gives us the systemic sciences such as cybernetics, the system sciences proper, self-organization theory, chaos and complexity theories. In such an approach, a part is only considered through its function for the whole. Furthermore, it is always objective, there is no attention for its separate subjectivity, intention, will, etc... From the world of philosophy have come the postmodernapproaches. These approaches stress that any worldview is dependent on perspective, that no part of a system can understand the whole. Therefore, it rejects ‘grand narratives’ for their hubris of taking an imagined godlike position of a part claiming to be able to know the whole. Postmodern approaches, also called poststructuralist, reject structuralist approaches, which look at structural unity, and like the systemic sciences, forget the subject. Postmodern approaches stress ‘difference,’ no ‘thing,’ no ‘object,’ no ‘subject’ exists apart from the field or system it is part of, and in fact, is defined by its difference from the other things in the same field.

The Integral approach can be seen as a reaction against the limitations and unforeseen effects of the previous methods. Unlike analytical science, it focuses on the whole. Unlike systemic approaches, it always includes the subjective component. Unlike postmodern approaches, it does not shy away from integrative ‘grand narratives.’ But it has also learned from the other approaches: that no attention to the whole can violate the truth of its parts, from the systemic sciences, that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, from the postmodern, that the integral is just another limited perspective, albeit a useful one. Integralism should therefore never be seen as a totalising, ‘imperialistic’ approach, but as another, integrative, multiperspectival way to look at the world. In fact, it can be said that any individual is an integrator, is a different composite, of his/her understanding of reality. But the specific effort, methodology, of the integral forces its practitioner to a more conscious effort to integrate as large a portion of truth as possible. Moreover, because it also knows the limitations of any individual perspective, it stresses that dialogic methods, involving intersubjective meeting of minds, can yield greater relative truth still.

As explained before, Ken Wilber has offered a synthesing way of looking at reality, by stressing the need to cover the following aspects of reality; subjective, intersubjective, objective, interobjective. An advantage is its comprehensiveness. There are few other integrative approaches of such a large encompassing scope.

Looking at any phenomena from those different angles is a very comprehensive way of looking at the world. It is also a tremendous way to avoid different kinds of reductionisms:

- The objective reductionism of the analytical sciences, reducing any whole to its material parts, in a permanent attempt to explain the more complex by the less complex, the immaterial by the material, the subjective by the objective. While such a reductionist and analytical approach yields tremendous value, it is also at the same time an impoverishment.

- The interobjective reductionism of the system sciences, which also do not integrate the subjective component, again reducing reality to its materiality, or rather to its ‘functionality.’

- The subjective reductionism of any ‘idealistic’ approach that takes the human will, or divine will, as paramount, without sufficient attention to its grounding in intersubjective and interobjective systems and in materiality. More recently this tendency emerges as cognitive reductionism, where reality is reduced to the cognitive apparatus of the human.

- The intersubjective reductionism of some postmodern approaches, where everything is reduced to its constituent fields, for example language. In such an approach, materiality is often forgotten, everything becomes a ‘discourse.’

Recognizing Layers

This is an interpretation of the integrative that resonates particularly in the context of my personal evolution.

Humans are layered persons. We have an instinctual apparatus and corresponding reactions, we have an emotional apparatus, a mental apparatus, a transmental ‘witnessing’ apparatus, at the very least. But because of our civilisational evolution, these different layers are far from well integrated. There has been a lot of unconscious ‘repression’ of our earlier layers, especially by mental layer, resulting in many individual and collective pathologies. As I see it, every human being should at some point in life, undertake a ‘regression in the service of the ego,’ i.e. make a voyage of discovery into the repressed aspects, undertake a ‘dark night of the soul.’ An important aspect of the integral approach is its developmental aspect, a focus on the fact that humans, societies, systems, evolve from the simple to the complex, from one historical formation to another. By uncovering this development, making the unconscious conscious, we become more whole, more integrated. Thus an integral approach obtains a ‘transparency’ in terms of our functioning, an ability to recognize ‘where we are coming from,’ not only historically, but ‘here and now:’ which layer is active, and ‘is it appropriate.’ In our particular civilisation this means a growing capacity to grasp reality as ‘a whole,’ and understanding how our different layers operate simultaneously. We can go beyond the ‘cognicentrism’ that is our common cultural lot. This is how I interpret Thomas Jordan’s contribution as well: through our own comprehension of our perspective, we can better understand other perspectives, and thus achieve a growing metaperspectivity.

Conclusion: The Integral defined

To conclude, in my understanding, an integral approach is one that;

- respects the relative autonomy of the different fields, and looks for field specific laws,

- affirms that new levels of complexity cause the emergence of new properties and thus rejects reductionisms that try to explain the highly complex from the less complex,

- tries to formulate level-specific laws that relate the objective and subjective aspects, refusing to see any one aspect as a mere epiphenomena of the other,

- is subjective-objective in that it always relates the understanding of the objective, through the prism of a recognised individual perspective in general,

- and attempts to correlate explanations emanating from the various fields, in order to arrive at an integrative understanding; in this sense it is a hermeneutic discipline focusing on creating meaning.