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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).

'His Forte Is Psychology and Culture'

So No Longer A Theory of Everything?

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Another predictable response to criticism of Ken Wilber's treatment of evolutionary biology runs as follows: Wilber's real strengths lie in psychology, culture, and consciousness“not in the natural sciences. Even if his biology is weak, that is not fatal to his overall project.

This defense sounds charitable. It is also quietly devastating.

Because it collides head-on with Wilber's own claim to be offering nothing less than a Theory of Everything.

What a Theory of Everything Commits You To

A Theory of Everything is not a metaphor for intellectual breadth. It is a claim of scope. It asserts that:

• all major domains of reality are included,

• none are treated as optional or peripheral,

• and no foundational domain is handled casually or secondhand.

Physics, biology, psychology, culture, and spirituality are not equal in complexity“but they are equal in ontological relevance. You cannot cordon off weaknesses in one domain by appealing to strengths in another without shrinking the theory itself.

Once that move is made, the “everything” quietly evaporates.

Biology Is Not an Auxiliary Domain

Evolutionary biology is not a decorative add-on to Wilber's system. It is the hinge between matter and mind, between physics and psychology, between nature and culture.

If Wilber's account of evolution is distorted, outdated, or rhetorically motivated, the consequences propagate upward:

• developmental claims lose grounding,

• cultural evolution becomes metaphorical,

• spiritual teleology floats free of constraint.

You cannot say “his forte is psychology” while conceding that his understanding of the process that produced brains, minds, and cultures is defective. Psychology does not hover above evolution; it is downstream from it.

A weak biology does not leave psychology untouched“it destabilizes it.

The Asymmetry of Standards

There is a deeper asymmetry embedded in this defense.

Wilber routinely critiques natural science with extraordinary confidence:

• Darwinism is dismissed as explanatorily bankrupt

• mainstream biology is portrayed as reductionist and naïve

• unresolved questions are treated as fatal flaws

Yet when errors or caricatures are pointed out, the response becomes: he's not a scientist; cut him some slack.

This asymmetry is revealing. Scientific domains are held to maximal standards“total explanation, final answers“while Integral Theory is shielded by appeals to partial competence.

A Theory of Everything cannot operate on differential accountability.

Psychology and Culture Are Not Safe Havens

Even the proposed fallback“Wilber's mastery of psychology and culture“is less secure than the defense assumes.

Much of Wilber's developmental psychology relies on:

• evolutionary narratives about increasing complexity,

• hierarchical models of emergence,

• and analogies drawn directly from biological evolution.

If those narratives are simplified or teleologized, the psychological scaffolding inherits the same problems. Cultural evolution, likewise, is repeatedly modeled on evolutionary metaphors whose biological grounding is assumed rather than demonstrated.

So the idea that psychology and culture remain untouched by problems in biology is illusory. They are already entangled.

Shrinking the Claim After the Fact

What this defense ultimately does is retroactively downsize Wilber's ambition.

It transforms a Theory of Everything into:

• a theory of psychology plus culture,

• supplemented by selective metaphysics,

• with science serving as a foil rather than a foundation.

That may still be an interesting project. But it is no longer what was advertised.

And crucially, it is not what Wilber himself has claimed for decades.

The Problem with the “It's Not His Field” Defense

A familiar defense runs as follows: Wilber's real strength is psychology, spirituality, and cultural analysis “ not evolutionary biology. Therefore, even if his engagement with Darwinism is imperfect, it is peripheral rather than fatal.

This defense would be reasonable if Wilber had presented himself as a specialist offering regional insight into mind and culture. But he did not. He explicitly framed his project as a comprehensive integrative system “ most visibly in A Theory of Everything.

That title is not modest. It signals ambition at the highest level of scope. A “theory of everything” cannot selectively defer on foundational scientific domains when those domains directly bear on its metaphysical claims. Evolutionary theory is not a peripheral science. It is the science that explains the emergence of life, complexity, mind, and culture “ precisely the phenomena Integral theory seeks to situate within a spiritual cosmology.

If one claims to articulate the architecture of reality across quadrants “ matter, life, mind, and Spirit “ then evolutionary biology is not optional background material. It is structurally central.

Therefore, the question is not whether Wilber can be an expert in every field. No one can. The question is whether a system that aspires to integrate all domains can afford systematic mischaracterizations in one of the most foundational among them.

You cannot simultaneously claim comprehensive synthesis and invoke disciplinary modesty when the synthesis is challenged at its scientific base.

If Integral theory limits itself to psychology and cultural hermeneutics, the critique narrows accordingly. But once it extends into cosmology and evolutionary metaphysics, the standards rise with the scope.

That is not unfair.

It is proportional to the claim.

Conclusion

You cannot simultaneously maintain that:

• Wilber's work aspires to total integration across all domains of reality, and

• serious weaknesses in evolutionary science are non-fatal because biology is "not his forte."

One of these claims must give way.

Either Integral Theory relinquishes its universal scope“or its engagement with science must meet the standards it so confidently demands of others.

A Theory of Everything does not get to choose where rigor applies.