Here is an excerpt from my discussion post today, which gives some background on how the Integral Studies field has emerged:
Spiritual thinkers and some philosophers wrote for decades before Wilber on similar themes, and a few even used the word "intgeral". Wilber defined a new variation with his books in Wilber IV in the mid-1990s that he called Integral Theory with capital letters, and he calls his theory Integral with a capital I. In the past 14 years, there have been many developments. The one that I am most concerned with is the emergence in 2008 -- 13 years after Wilber started promoting Integral Theory -- of an scholarly field of study which is called Integral Studies which includes Integral Theory as one of its methodologies. I
Integral Theory itself is now no longer associated strictly with Wilber himself, but is an evolving discipline with many contributors. (It is certainly scholarly, and it includes a roster of dozens of academics engaged in interdisciplinary (they call it "trans-disciplinary") research, however it is not widespread (which is NOT to say that it is "unaccepted" only that it is not *practiced* and largely ignored by academia, a different situation altogether from the most common definition of "fringe" which would be a movement like Creationism), a fact that needs to be noted prominently. Note that the keynote address at next year's Integral Theory conference is Robert Kegan, the tenured and highly esteemed developmental psychologist at Harvard School of Education.
Integral Theory (even Alan Kazlev has made this point, and he is no Wilberian) is NOT all of the integral movement, which includes strands such as the Aurobindian that preceded Wilber by decades and have continued to evolve separately in dialogue with his contributions. Not all of those integral movement factions, however, are part of the Integral Studies programs in universities, and the latter is my focus. To illustrate the point another way: the last book published by Integral Books featured Ken as one of four co-authors, and it includes refinements by quite a number of theorists writing in three different peer-reviewed academic journals and can hardly be described as simply "Wilber's book". By what principle are the other authors of the book (Terry Patten, Adam Leonard, and Marco Morelli) who have contributed to a methodology called ILP denied an examination of their work except under Wilber's article? I'm happy to provide references for any part of it to those with less familiarity with this specialty, as I think it's a factual account. Is any of it disputed?
Given this, it seems that Goethean is primarily concerned with treating Wilber parallel to philosophers such as Neitzsche. But I would argue that Nietzsche doesn't have a body of living, breathing academics and scholars publishing amendments, revisions, and developments in his philosophy and calling it Nietzschean Theory or what have you. (Actually, arguably this is the case, given the influence of postmodernism in academia, but let's leave that tangent aside.) So in order to include the material about the Integral Theory body of work at the outskirts of academia, it is important that it be treated separately from Wilber. That doesn't mean that it couldn't ALSO be examined at the Ken Wilber article, so long as the Wilber article only discussed HIS particular ideas and not any future developments in Integral Theory apart from his contributions. Would it alleviate your concerns, Goethan, if the basic material remained at the Ken Wilber article but it was largely duplicated in a separate Integral Theory article that also included non-Wilber developments? I would have proposed that idea myself, except for my concern with redundancy. Also, I know from the Integral movement talk page that at least a few years ago some editors expressed concern that the information about this range of topics was already disproportionately expansive. While I don't agree with that, I don't see much of a need to expand on what is already contained on Wikipedia on Wilber's theory itself and would be open to duplicating a discussion of the same themes at an Integral Theory article.
Snowded, while I agree with your points, I'm not sure that I understand your rationale completely, and don't know what your conclusion is (if you have one at this time). It's absolutely true that Integral doesn't refer just to Wilber, but there is a define body of work called Integral Theory which is both (a) a development of his work and those of others in his think tank, and includes contributions both critical and appreciative, by many others outside of his think tank, and (b) separate from the integral spiritual/"philosophical" movement at large, if there is such a thing as Alan Kazlev has rightly questioned, because there are folks calling themselves "integral" including adherents such as the Aurobindians who still call themselves integral based on a usage of the term that far precedes Wilber, and others influenced more by Gebser or Claire Graves or other strands that have little to do with Wilber. So to be clear, my proposal is to create a new page for Integral Theory (with the capitalization just like that, as is done in the field), apart from an integral portal page of whatever name that would treat primarily developments in the Wilber side of the integral thing.
Finally, let me say that I am friendly to the idea of creating other pages for the integral field of study as well, simply because the entire field of integral studies (distinct from the nebulous "integral" usage) is treated by Wikipedia at this time in a very confusing and inaccurate fashion. I am currently working on a specific proposal and hope to have something developed to the point of an actual proposal within a week or two. This discussion at "Ken Wilber" I started specifically because I do not want to unnecessarily duplicate Wikipedia's discussion of Integral Theory if it can be avoided. I know this is a lot to read. Thanks to everyone for following along & contributing.
