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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

The How and the Why of Evolution

Ken Wilber's Rhetorical Sleight of Hand

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

In his critiques of mainstream evolutionary theory, Ken Wilber frequently draws a sharp distinction between science's ability to answer the how of evolution and spirituality's unique access to the why.[1] On the surface, this distinction appears balanced and generous—each domain, it seems, is assigned its rightful territory: science explains mechanisms, while spirituality offers meaning and purpose. Yet upon closer inspection, this framing masks a more insidious maneuver.

Wilber is not merely supplementing science's account with deeper metaphysical insights; he is actively undermining and ridiculing the scientific explanation of evolutionary mechanisms, only to replace them with an untestable spiritual principle he calls Eros. His so-called complementarity is thus a rhetorical sleight of hand—one that conceals a deeper hostility toward naturalistic science and misleads readers about the true nature of his critique.

The How/Why Distinction: A Philosophical Tradition

Wilber's how/why distinction has deep roots in philosophy. Aristotle himself divided causality into four types—material, formal, efficient, and final—of which modern science has largely retained only the efficient cause: what physically brings about a change. In Wilber's integral system, the how refers to the efficient, material mechanisms studied by science—random mutation, natural selection, gene drift, and so on. The why, by contrast, refers to final causes, telos, purpose—the deep intention or direction underlying evolutionary processes. Wilber insists that to reduce evolution to mere molecular shuffling is to blind oneself to the unfolding of Spirit in and as the Kosmos.

This might sound like a respectable division of labor: science gets the mechanics, spirituality gets the meaning. But this apparent generosity begins to crumble when we examine how Wilber treats the “how.”

Undermining the How: “Utterly Idiotic” Mechanisms

Wilber does not merely say that science is silent on the question of ultimate meaning; he goes much further. He ridicules the scientific explanation of biological evolution. In Finding Radical Wholeness, he writes:

“But gone is the insanity of there being nothing but chance mutation and natural selection driving evolution—a notion so utterly idiotic that it reminds one of Arthur Lovejoy's comment that "there is no human stupidity that has not found its champion.”

This is not an attempt at philosophical refinement. It is rhetorical assault.

By labeling the core mechanism of modern evolutionary biology as “utterly idiotic,” Wilber goes beyond critique and into derision. The very “how” he claims to leave to science is, in his view, a vacuous and implausible fantasy. In place of randomness and natural selection, he introduces a spiritual force—Eros, or “Spirit-in-action”—that supposedly guides the emergence of complexity, consciousness, and self-transcendence.

Yet Eros is not presented merely as an interpretive gloss or a metaphor. It is described as a causal force. That means it isn't just answering the why; it is intruding into the how. And once Eros is invoked as an actual engine of evolution, the distinction between how and why collapses. Wilber is no longer respecting science's domain—he is replacing it.

Science Does Ask “Why”—Just Not the Way Wilber Likes

Wilber often frames science as incapable of asking “why” questions, but this is a misleading generalization. In evolutionary biology, “why” is often interpreted in terms of function: Why do peacocks have large tails? To attract mates. Why do humans have color vision? To detect ripe fruit and social cues. These are proximate and ultimate explanations grounded in empirical research.

Wilber rejects this kind of explanation because it lacks metaphysical depth—it does not appeal to Spirit or cosmic intention. But to argue that science doesn't ask “why” at all is a straw man. It asks why within its own naturalistic framework, which Wilber finds unsatisfying—not because it fails, but because it refuses to spiritualize its findings.

The Eros Substitution: A Metaphysical Hijacking

The heart of Wilber's spiritual alternative is his notion of Eros—a mysterious, metaphysical drive toward increasing depth and complexity. He claims that evolution cannot be explained by bottom-up processes alone and must be driven by this cosmic force. But this move is not a friendly expansion of science—it is a metaphysical hijacking.

Eros is unfalsifiable. It has no measurable properties, no predictive power, and no empirical support. It functions as a God-of-the-gaps—inserted wherever scientific explanation is deemed emotionally or philosophically unsatisfying. While it offers rhetorical comfort to those who seek meaning in cosmic processes, it offers no insight into actual biological mechanisms. As such, it fails both scientifically and philosophically.

The Illusion of Integration

Wilber frequently positions his work as “integrating” science, art, morals, and spirituality. But his treatment of science reveals a deeper tension. Integration, in this context, too often means subordination—science is tolerated only insofar as it can be reframed in terms of spiritual metaphysics. Mechanisms are not just incomplete; they are foolish, idiotic, and unworthy of serious respect.

Thus, Wilber's distinction between how and why becomes a rhetorical illusion. He claims to honor the domain of science, but his tone and content betray a desire to replace scientific explanation with metaphysical storytelling.

Conclusion: A Spiritual Coup Disguised as a Partnership

Ken Wilber's framing of the how/why distinction in evolution is not a sincere effort to reconcile science and spirituality. It is a strategic move designed to discredit the authority of science while introducing metaphysical claims in the guise of deeper insight. By calling the mechanisms of evolution “moronic,” he shows contempt for the very processes he claims to defer to. His spiritual “why” does not sit alongside the scientific “how”—it quietly elbows it out of the room.

What appears to be an integrative gesture is, in the end, a rhetorical bait-and-switch—one that does more to mystify than to clarify our understanding of evolution.

NOTES

[1] Wilber says in Up from Eden (1981):

The point, in a phrase, is that the orthodox scientific theory of evolution seems correct on the what of evolution, but it is profoundly reductionistic and/or contradictory on the how (and why) of evolution. But if we look upon evolution as the reversal of involution the whole process becomes intelligible. (p. 305)

Here Wilber clearly includes the How of evolution in his theory: Spirit-in-action, involution is followed by evolution as a spiritual process.

[2] In Finding Radical Wholeness (2024), in a section called "Evolution—the "What" and the "Why" (and this seems to include the How), we read:

So that inherent drive to greater complexity, order, and wholeness can indeed legitimately be pictured either as just an inherent drive of the universe or as the creative drive of Spirit itself, a creative drive or Spiritt-in-action that brings something out of nothing moment to moment to moment... One of these two versions—secular or spiritual (both of which embrace self-organization)—is the most common explanation of the why of evolution... Bit gone is the insanity of there being nothing but chance mutation and natural selection driving evolution—a notion so utterly idiotic that it reminds one of Arthur Lovejoy's comment that "there is no human stupidity that has not found its champion. (p. 170)

Wilber's description of this rational stage of development misses the point entirely that a rational-scientific apprroach does not involve "inherent drives" or "creative drives" at all, but looks for naturalistic mechanisms to explain complexity. This dishonesty is rampant in Wilber's works, such is his spiritual bias.