Integral philosopher Steve McIntosh says the way to approach truth is threefold: science, philosophy, and spirituality. He says, “[W]e know that the scientific, the philosophical, and the spiritual are three authentic and irreducible approaches to truth because there are three kinds of human experience. There’s the sensory experience, upon which science is based. There’s the experience of relationships and meanings that we come to through philosophy, and then there’s the spiritual experience which can’t be reduced to either of those two. In an attempt to try to harmonize science and spirituality without trying to conflate one into the other, philosophy has a very important role of both bridging and separating these three great approaches to truth.” He goes on to point out that evolution always builds on what came before using it as a platform to transcend to a new level of complexity. We need to understand that every stage of human history has evolved to solve problems and that we need not be repulsed or embarrassed by the values of either traditionalism or modernism. If we completely eliminate or try to vanquish the best of the earlier stages of the very structure that we depend on our own cultural achievements will be undermined. He encourages us to reclaim the best of earlier values and to include them in a higher level.
