Van: "Integral World" Aan: Onderwerp: Entropy and Evolution Datum: maandag 28 juli 2014 8:02 INTEGRAL WORLD MAILING LIST =========================== http://www.integralworld.net Newsletter Nr. 515 Amsterdam, July 28th, 2014 ENTROPY AND EVOLUTION - Ken Wilber's arguments for "an infinitely powerful force" behind evolution debunked - FRANK VISSER When Wilber uses the concept of "evolution" he often uses it as a synomym to development—be it social-cultural or individual. These speculations are often interesting and intuitive, when applied to world problems. However, when he develops his core argument for evolution, he uses examples from the biological and cosmological domain. However, the connection between these socio-cultural and bio-cosmological domains is not immediately obvious. When the cosmic dimension is added to the table, the concept of "evolution" becomes so stretched, generic and abstract, that much of its precise meaning is lost. What is more, it is in the biological domain that Wilber seeks to build his case that there's "an infinitely powerful Force" behind all aspects of evolution... But his understanding of biological evolution, as we have argued many times on Integral World, leaves much to be desired. Has Wilber perhaps refined his long-time argument against neo-Darwinism in this recent video? Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/visser72.html KEN WILBER'S LEAP OF FAITH - From Self-Organization to “Spirit in Action” in Wilber's Fourth Turning of Buddhism - ELLIOT BENJAMIN A few days ago Integral Life sent me a promotional video of Ken Wilber's Fourth Turning of Buddhism (meaning ”integral” Buddhism) conference, highlighting Wilber's conference talk about evolution and spirituality. Well to be more accurate, I was sent a brief 2 minute excerpt of the talk with an invitation to join Integral Life in order to watch the full approximately 45 minutes of the video. Since the relationship of evolution to spirituality is one of my dominant philosophical interests, I decided to make the $14.95 investment to join Integral Life for a month, and I watched the video. Wilber was in high gear, complete with his charismatic intellectual authoritative way of “simply” explaining things, his illustrative hand and body movements, and his delightfully witty humor, such as how he described what he views as the preposterously unlikely scenario of evolution happening primarily by chance mutations of genes: “the female is in Mexico and the male is in Siberia...they somehow must find each other, then have a little dinner—perhaps some candy—and have sex” (I'm paraphrasing here). But what interested me particularly in Wilber's talk was how he moved into the core of what he wanted to get across to the integral public, which was “spirit in action” through evolution. Read more: http://www.integralworld.net/benjamin68.html To SUBSCRIBE to this Integral World Newsletter or change your email address, click here: http://www.integralworld.net/pommo/user/subscribe.php To UNSUBSCRIBE, update your account by logging in. For explanation, see: http://www.integralworld.net/nl_faq.html