Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, Second Edition

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 851 pages
• Published by: Shambhala; 2 Revised edition January 2, 2001
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1570627444
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1570627446
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 2.1 inches
• Weighs: 2.6 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
This is the first in a projected set of three volumes charting recent thought in the title's interrelated areas, the title itself being a slight misnomer since sex and ecology are the foci of the forthcoming volumes. Here, however, Wilber elaborates at great length several contemporary systematic theories concerned with the biological, psychological, spiritual and metaphysical aspects of life and the various evolutionary stages of each. He then offers an overview of spiritual practices that can lead to an evolved "omega point" of consciousness. Wilber, a transpersonal psychologist and the author of No Boundary, among other works, has unfortunately tried too hard to cram everything possible into this massive undertaking. The result is that even the hundreds of pages of notes (sometimes useful, sometimes merely repetitive) become a mass of ideas and names. Wilber is a well-read, sophisticated and energetic thinker; yet his style veers from the discursively expansive to the overly condensed. Those seeking A Theory of Everything will be more than satisfied. For others, the book's sheer length and lack of organization may make this a very frustrating read.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
This is a sprawling synthesis of evolutionary and "systems" theory from the Presocratics to Piaget, permeated by the mysticism of Plotinus. Odd as it may seem for a book with more than 500 pages of text and 200 of notes, it suffers from a tendency to make unsubstantiated or inadequately referenced claims, especially in passing references to various feminisms and postmodernisms. But the reader can take this to be one aspect of the book's oral character: it reads like a composition dictated and transcribed. That is a strength as well as a weakness, since it imparts a lively and passionate tone to a text that could become simply tedious. The book's greatest strengths are its ambitious scope and its relentless attention to the materialist flattening of evolutionary and developmental theories in Western tradition. Wilber follows earlier devotees of Plotinus in insisting on a world composed not of parts and wholes but of wholes that are also parts and parts that are also wholes--wholes within wholes, remarkably similar to the "monads" of Anne Conway and Leibniz. Given a widespread hunger for spirituality and a widespread misunderstanding of materialist readings of development, even a flawed attempt to deepen developmental perspectives with developmental insights from mysticism is a step in the right direction. Steve Schroeder --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
For me, the modern age is characterized by some interesting excesses, and Wilber satisfyingly identifies many of them in his spiritual journey here. Three favorite targets I found were: (1) the attempt to make things simpler than they really are in order to explain them, which analytic philosopher Dan Dennett calls "greedy reductionism," (2) the "rage against reason" found in much postmodernism that rejects the notion of objective reality and confident knowledge; and (3) extreme conservative thinking unable to come to grips with the vision of a complex evolving universe. Wilber has a brilliant imagination and he is a very engaging writer, and this book (probably his best) deals with all three of those excesses in a fascinating way. His overall approach is not original of course (it is essentially a spiritual interpretation of systems and process metaphysics, but there are some very original elements sprinkled here and there. And probably the best thing about this book is that it does a competent job of presenting and integrating ideas from many diverse fields, in addressing the modern excesses, and trying to come up with a satisfying spiritual worldview for our complex age. This is beautifully ironic, since what he attempts is the very essence of reductionism (!), something Wilber rails against mightily in this book when the "reductionists" disagree with his ideas because the "reduction" is not spiritually meaningful. For comparison, the conservative religious/creationist critique of Darwinism holds that a universe composed of material elements that interact algorithmically ("machines") cannot also contain spiritual meaning. The Catholic Pope avoided that bind in support of evolution by imbuing material with living Spirit. Wilber uses the metaphysics of systems and processes rather than living Spirit, making his version, (like that of theologian Haught), noticeably more (if still imperfectly) compatible with the scientific worldview. But this attack of reductionism while using to make his point is the big flaw, to me, in an otherwise very compelling, ambitious, and scholarly synthesis of many of the most profound ideas ever recorded in human thinking. Indeed, this book seems like it would be sure to appeal to a wide variety of people who, like me, are looking for a way of making sense of our world where we don't bury our head in the sand against uncomfortable aspects of the scientific worldview, nor reject the implications of being spiritual beings who crave meaning. Technically, the main problem I found is Wilber's annoyingly spotty attention to analysis (which seems worse because he does it reasonably well when he does it), in favor of linking ideas through metaphor. It makes his ideas flow like repetitive New Age spiritual poetry, from science to theology to philosophy and back again, but it doesn't quite hold together for me. It feeds the soul in many places, and feeds the intellect in many places, but not quite both at once. If this was just a book of inspiring metaphor, the science would be distracting, and as a work of argumentation it is largely devoid of rigor. The result is arguably appropriate to the topic, since one of his targets is the dictatorship of materialist reasoning in science. However, he seems to lapse briefly into some of the excesses of postmodernism or even wishful superstition when after building a perfectly good concept from the ground up, he throws out conclusions that only fit by analogy. The usual leap of faith needed to appreciate any book of religion is then required. This contrasts with the well-reasoned argument leading up to that point. It is perhaps, as other reviewers pointed out, that he has taken on so very much. He is left, sadly, with the same problems that some populists of complexity theory have, their passion for applying their ideas goes beyond what they've actually demonstrated... they _could_ (probably ?) well be right, but they've at that point only built an illusion of scientific soundness by telling a masterful story. This encyclopedic book joins Murphy's masterpiece, "Future of the Body," as another magnificent attempt to construct a new spirituality out of scientific, humanistic, and religious traditions. I applaud his efforts, and I think this is a very worthy book that introduces in understandable form many important complex ideas that most people would otherwise not have the chance to engage. For the sake of space, I'd like to refer interested readers to many of the excellent points made in Frederick Polgardy's very fine review previously here.