4 Quadrants
Ken Wilber suggests that we can look at four aspects of any aspect of human experience or "holon." By looking at our experiences through all four of these four perspectives, we both gain greater insight into their totality/nature, and avoid falling into the more common traps of believing that the perspective we are naturally drawn to is the "one right" perspective.
In brief summary, each and every experience we have as human beings can be understood through 4 perspectives, consisting of a matrix of two binary choices: interior/exterior vs. individual/group. These four quadrants are a summary of a data search across various developmental and evolutionary fields. Wilber examined over two hundred developmental sequences recognized by various branches of human knowledge -- ranging from stellar physics to molecular biology, from anthropology to linguistics, from developmental psychology to ethical orientations, from cultural hermeneutics to contemplative endeavors -- taken from both Eastern and Western disciplines, and including premodern, modern, and postmodern sources. Each of the quadrants might more accurately be constructed as a branching tree, and not a simple straight line, indicating the rich variation within each grade and clade (each level and type). Each quadrant includes both hierarchies (or clear gradations) and heterarchies (or pluralistic and equivalent unfoldings within a given grade). The Left Hand is what the holon looks like from within. The Right Hand is what the same holon looks like from without. Interior and exterior, consciousness and form, subjective and objective. The effects of understanding the Four Quadrants model are manifold. First, we can notice that most disciplines of arts and science specialize and/or categorize experience exclusively from one perspective of the Four Quadrants. For example, Freudians and the