Meta-level research, crossing boundaries and appreciating differences
Boundary crossing is one of the essential characteristic of performing meta-level research - boundary crossing within disciplines, between disciplines and across disciplines and of, course, within, between and across other non-disciplinary related boundaries as well. When we play with conventional boundaries with a little awareness we get to see a broader picture. Meta-studies is largely about how we move across different conceptual, methodological and cultural (meaning-making) boundaries and what we do with the results of that movement. Creativity and fecundity flow from meta-level boundary crossing in the same way that natural systems thrive when their ecologies are diverse and rich in difference. Without diversity and difference meta-level research stagnates and turns more towards ideology than any kind of authentic science. My colleague Dr Wendelin Küpers brought to my attention this week a paper by Philipa Rothfield (2005) on the issue of universalism and its tendency towards the homogenisation of diversity. Here’s a few snippets:.
The concern expressed here is that universalism is liable to overstep its brief, that the desire to universalize is itself vulnerable to corruption.
In light of the many forms of social inequality inherent in social life, it appears that the universal impulse is all too readily co-opted towards hegemonic forms of utterance and appearance. In these instances, the universal becomes homogenized, and difference is thereby effaced according to dominant norms of articulation.
Dr Rothfield writes from a particularising perspective, one that values diversity and difference above all else. Her world is not one of the meta-studies researcher. She is not interested in finding universal patterns, generalising orientations and underlying architectonics. But her point is even more valid because she writes from the other side of an important boundary - that which lies between the universal and the particular, between the integral and the diverse, between the local and the general. She says to watch out for the domination of one over the other. All metatheorists, integral theorists, transdisciplinarians and systems theorists need to be mindful of this danger. Where when and to what extent do we, as big picture researchers and practitioners, promote diversity, look for the differences, find problems with our meta-frameworks. Do we systematically question our generalisations and test them against the plurality of theories that are our data? Do we occasionally remind ourselves of the dark history of metatheories and big pictures and unifying philosophies? Do we build these questions into our methods and designs? And if we don’t, why don’t we?
References
Rothfield, P (2005), 'Differentiating Phenomenology and Dance', Topoi, vol. 24, pp. 43-53.
Comments
Hi Nikolaus,
Thanks for your excellent post and questions. Do I think science be the basis for a truly integral meta-theory? Yes I do and I will look into those reasons in responding to your post.
You say that you find it difficult to refer to integral metatheorising as a science for two reasons: i) that science is all about “factualness” (objective facts reached through social agreement) and is, therefore, exclusive of other domains and ii) that science does not answer many questions, e.g. of a spiritual or philosophical nature, and so how can it be integral.
To the first point, that science is about objective facts and therefore exclusive of much that an integral approach is interested in, I say that this is a narrow definition of science and that Wilber himself, following people as far back as William James and John Dewey, recognise that integral science is possible if we open up and broaden the definition of what science can be. In speaking of an integral metatheoretical science I hold to this broader and more inclusive definition of science. Science for me, and many other scientists, is about establishing understandings as much as facts, its about subjective, and relational truths as much as objective truths, it’s about intersubjective and interobjective negotiation as much as establishing fact.
To the second point, that science is concerned with exploring some questions and not others, my view is that this does not capture the real difference between science and other activities. In my approach science can explore any topic but it does not do this using any method. It does not for example, journalistic methods, biographical methods, literary methods, philosophical methods, therapeutic methods or political methods. Science can study literature, therapies, politics, and philosophy but it does this using scientific methods. Hence for me no topic or question is outside of the gambit of science. The limiting feature of science is the method that it adopts in researching those questions and not the questions themselves. In this sense integral scientific metatheorising is integral in that nothing lies outside its possible purview. This does not mean it has a completely open-ended domain. For example, integral metatheorising is about sense-making through finding patterns and generalisations. There are other scientific disciplines that do not take this approach they are about finding particularisms and local forms of sense-making that are messy, anarchic and without method. They deal with scientific domains that are not able to be included in integral metatheorising or any form of metatheorising for that matter.
And so to your other questions which I will paraphrase:
1) Is it possible to develop an integral approach that recognises it limits:
I agree that it is entirely possible and, in fact, highly desirable that we develop an integral meta-theory that stays within the boundaries of a (broad) scientific approach while also allowing 'non-scientific' aspects to the universe and our existence? I actually think that this is a big problem for Wilber’s AQAL – in that it doesn’t recognise any limits to what it can integrate and is, therefore, not scientific at a fundamental level.
2) Could we use another word instead of 'science'
One of my purposes in developing a meta-level science is to actually open up our understanding of a broad science. So I want to use the word while also reframing it into this much more integrative context.
Yes is may be that your training as a natural scientist has some input into your connotations with the word. I actually do not think that any element of human experience is outside of scientific research and as I said before it is the method that places limits on what it does and what it can produce. The word 'science' of course means knowledge and we can develop knowledge on any human experience or behaviour. When we do that while applying scientific methods and using extant theories and models as our data, we are doing metatheoretical research. It is these elements of method and pattern finding that provide the boundaries for our metatheorising and not the type or origin of the experience or behaviour.
Best wishes
Mark
News
IFIS-Newsletter Nr. 3 (Januar 2012) ist erschienen. Download hier als PDF.
Aktuelles Interview mit Wolfgang Hetzer zur Finanz- und Schuldenkrise
Benzin aus Sand. Aktuelles Interview mit Dr. Peter Plichta
Termine:
IFIS-Herbstklausur 18.-20.11.2011
Symposium Wissenschaftliches Forschen
7.-8.10.2011, Kassel (gemeinsam mit dem Deutschen Kollegium für Transpersonale Psychologie und Psychotherapie, DKTP )
IFIS-Pfngst-Retreat
11.-16. Juni 2011
6 Tage integrale Forschung und Begegnung im Südschwarzwald
"Wirtschaft ohne Wachstum?!" Vorlesungsreihe des Studium Generale, Universität Freiburg im SS 2011
IFIS-Februar-Klausur 2011 mit integralem Forschungskolloquium
Freiburg-Schauinsland, 18.-20.2.2011
IFIS-Newsletter Nr. 2
(Dezember 2010)
Download hier als PDF
Auszeichnung:
IFIS-Mitarbeiter erhält Kapp-Forschungspreis für Ökologische Ökonomie
Mehr Informationen hier
Empfehlung:
Lernen aus der Krise.
Auf dem Weg zu einer Verfassung des Kapitalismus. Mehr unter:
http://www.rat-kontrapunkt.ch/
IFIS-Newsletter
Nr. 1 (Dezember 2009)
Download hier als PDF
Ein Aufsteller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE
Can science be the basis for a truly integral meta-theory?
Hello Mark,
i have only just noticed that there is a blog at the IFIS website and want to say that I very much enjoyed reading your first entries!
I share your feeling that the issue of boundaries is really a very crucial one for any meta-theory. Locating and defining boundaries (i.e. making distinctions / indentifying differences) can maybe be seen as the complementary pole to identifying general principles that hold true even across boundaries. In a way, the process of defining boundaries is even in itself a process of creating meta-theory because most of the times in order to make a distinction between A and B we need some "higher ground" C from which to justify the distinction. In other words, it's often the boundary that links the opposites, its often that which divides that unites.
From this perspective, now I have two questions to you concerning your first entry, where you stress the importance of basing meta-theory on science. To explain: I think I know what you mean (as i understand you, what you mean to say is that in our efforts to develop an integral meta-theory we should be as rigorously self-critical, fact-based, humble and neutral as possible) and I agree fully with that. But I find it difficult to call such an approach "scientific". This is because science even at its very best and in the most general sense of the word, seems to me to imply some kind of "intersubjective objectifyability" or "factualness". This is not problematic as long as one is happy either assuming that there are only objectifyable facts in the universe or accepting that there is a non-factual non-objectifyable aspect to the universe which science is simply not concerned with. The first view, however, does not correspond to my experience and the latter leads to a problem when I then want to use Science as the basis for an integral meta-theory which ultimately holds the aim of describing the universe as a whole.
So my questions to you are the following:
1) Might it, in your understanding, be possible (and even helpful) for the project of developing an integral meta-theory to define the boundaries of the scientific approach (i.e. limit its applicability to facts that are at least in principle objectifyable) and at the same time allow there to be a non-objectifyable, and in that sense 'non-scientific' aspect to the universe and our existence?
2) Could we, instead of using the word 'science', maybe capture the sense of what you are describing in that first blog-entry by using a diffent word? maybe calling for a strikly "phenomenological" approach would do the trick?
Maybe I should say that having been trained and working as a natural scientist, I may assosciate a different "taste" with the word science than you do as a social scientist, but isn't it fair to say that even the social sciences are based on (and in that sense defined by) a methodology for which some elements of our experienced reality remain inaccessible? (the most drastic example i can think of probably being the subjectively qualitative nature of conscious experience itself.)
well, so it turned out to be three questions..
i am looking forward to reading more from you,
best,
Nikolaus