Some Thoughts on the 4 Quadrants
My question is, what would it take to refute Ken Wilber’s claim that the 4 Quadrants are a map of reality? Although it is a metatheory, not a regular theory like quantum mechanics or the germ theory of disease, it should still be falsifiable just as they are. Otherwise, it is just an a priori postulate of the kind of metaphysics that everyone hates these days. Integral Theory says anything we could mention as a reality must be either interior or exterior or either individual or collective. So if we could identify something that is neither interior nor exterior or neither individual nor collective, that would seem to refute the theory. One possibility, I thought, would be a field.
In physics a field is a region of space where a force acts.
"In the modern framework of the quantum field theory, even without referring to a test particle, a field occupies space, contains energy, and its presence precludes a classical “true vacuum”.[8] This has led physicists to consider electromagnetic fields to be a physical entity, making the field concept a supporting paradigm of the edifice of modern physics. Richard Feynman said, “The fact that the electromagnetic field can possess momentum and energy makes it very real, and […] a particle makes a field, and a field acts on another particle, and the field has such familiar properties as energy content and momentum, just as particles can have.”[9] Wikipedia
If, as Feynman says, a field is an entity that has physical properties, then it is a holon and has 4 quadrants. So, if Feynman is correct, it appears we cannot use fields to refute the 4 Quadrants.
So over to you, my integral friends. Can you think of something that cannot find a place on the 4 Quadrant map?