Transformational Thesis
Humanity is navigating a moment of civilizational inflection—a “metacrisis” when the absence of a coherent worldview capable of integrating mind, matter, and meaning has become a central obstacle to our collective flourishing. The Unified Worldview Initiative is being formed as a foundational act of worldview infrastructure-building that seeks to address the Enlightenment Gap—a structural failure in modern thought to align the domains of natural science, subjective experience, and intersubjective cultural meaning within a coherent ontological and epistemological frame.
The Enlightenment Gap fragments our capacity to hold a unified picture of reality, undermining both the meaning systems of culture and the coordination systems of science. As a result, our models of the self, society, and cosmos remain disjointed, leading to incoherence in our responses to existential and systemic crises.
The UWI responds by unifying three of the most mature integrative metatheories—Critical Realism, Integral Theory, and UTOK—into a scaffolding capable of hosting a plural yet coherent image of the human being within the broader cosmos. In doing so, it underlabors for the continued emergence of a more adequate, Integrative worldview that can support a civilization capable of meeting complexity with clarity, fragmentation with integration, and despair with deep meaning. It is, in short, a keystone project for the reintegration of knowledge and the re-enchantment of our collective story.
Approach
While the world is fracturing under the weight of increasingly complex crises, the most foundational questions of who we are, how we know, and how we grow remain under-clarified across both science and philosophy. This initiative aims to resolve that lack through deep integration.
The project proceeds in three key phases:
- Metatheoretical Mapping & Synthesis
The first phase involves a systematic mapping of the three paradigms—Critical Realism, Integral Theory, and UTOK—with the goal of articulating their underlying logics, categorical structures, and explanatory scope. This project will pursue a non-preservative synthesis—it will examine their underlying assumptions, claims and commitments in order to generate a superordinate integration.
This will involve comparative analysis of ontological, epistemological, and developmental dimensions, and culminate in a white paper articulating a larger Big Picture that includes UTOK’s powerful integrative metapsychology. - Dialogical Deepening through Symposia
A curated series of expert symposia will convene leading voices in the field. These convenings will interrogate and deepen the integration, surface areas of contestation or clarification, and begin forming a network of scholarly and visionary leaders aligned with the emerging whole. - Dissemination & Worldview Activation
The final phase will focus on bringing the metatheory to the world. The resulting book will offer a comprehensive treatment of the integrated framework, aimed not only at scholars but at the wider project of worldview promotion. Additional media, essays, and presentations can make the work accessible and useful for those engaged in systems change.
What’s At Stake
The Enlightenment Gap is not an abstract philosophical curiosity—it is an active fault line running through the very structures of knowledge, meaning, and governance that shape our world. It represents a foundational incoherence in the way modern civilization understands reality, fragmenting mind from matter, science from subjectivity, and the inner life of persons from the systems that govern our collective future.
At the core of this fragmentation lies our inadequate and incoherent understanding of the self. Our models of human interiority are incomplete and siloed, unable to hold the full developmental, existential, cultural, and scientific dimensions of personhood. As a result, our societal institutions—from education and healthcare to governance and religion—are built on partial pictures of what it means to be human.
The Unified Worldview Initiative addresses this directly. By integrating the best available integrative metatheories—Critical Realism, Integral Theory, and UTOK—it offers the possibility of a transdisciplinary metapsychology that is developmentally informed, ontologically rigorous, and epistemologically inclusive. This is not merely a contribution to theory; it is a necessary step toward a coherent and actionable worldview capable of holding the complexity of our planetary moment.
If successful, the UWI will close one of the most consequential gaps in the architecture of human understanding. It will help build the foundations for a re-integrated worldview in which science, subjectivity, and culture are not at odds but mutually illuminating.
Support Requests
To bring this project to life, we are seeking:
• Partnerships with think tanks, academic centers, and research institutes aligned with the integrative mission;
• Scholars and practitioners from across the psychological and philosophical domains to join the process of synthesis and critique
Get Involved
If you are working toward worldview integration, transdisciplinary synthesis, or the re-enchantment of the sciences, we invite you to collaborate.
• Scholars and metatheorists can contribute through our upcoming symposia series.
• Institutions can partner in funding, hosting, or publishing efforts.
• Thought leaders can amplify, critique, and extend the integration into their own domains.
Together, we can help build the missing pieces of the Big Picture needed to navigate our planetary transformation—and a unified Integrative worldview may be among the most essential.