Note

Originally posted in https://github.com/orgs/life-itself/discussions/394 (there is a rich comment thread there …)

The Wilber-Coombs matrix (or lattice) maps states (waking up) against stages (growing up):

Key aspect: two independent dimensions of development

A key aspect of the Wilber-Coombs matrix is that any location of the matrix is allowed: i.e. states and stages are independent. Put another way: inner development (aka ontological growth) is, at minimum, two dimensional with independent dimensions of states ("waking up") and stages ("growing up").12

But are the two dimensions independent?

Whilst these two dimensions may be distinct, they could still be correlated. That is, development pathways require advance along both dimensions, at least to an extent: i.e. to grow up to a certain point you may need to have "woken up" to a certain extent or vice versa. Conversely, it is difficult or impossible to be "teal" and to still be in "gross" waking up state.

Here's a very crude sketch of a potential correlation matrix version of Wilber-Coombs (colored by heat-mapping) showing how movement along the "waking up" and the "growing up" dimension are correlated.

Source spreadsheet

More Discussion

  • The overall separation has been questioned. In particular, Terri O'Fallon has continued to argue that you can collapse these back onto uni-dimensional developmental line. See e.g. Collapse of Wilber-Coombs Matrix (2010)

Footnotes

  1. Of course, development is even more multi-dimensional but this was a big advance from linear developmental models that stacked waking up on top of growing up (as in early Wilber in the 70s).

  2. A second important point, not emphasized here so much, is that states are interpreted through stages.

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