The discussion of Steve McIntosh's book reminds me of a quote from statistician George E. P. Box, "Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful."  I can't comment on the book as I haven't read it, but I'd like to comment on the ideas as I see them presented here.  From what I can understand from this brief glimpse, there's some conflation of the map and the territory here.  Option 1 is essentially the same as Option 3, unless we assume in Option 1 that integral theory is operating as some final word on scientific exploration and spiritual practice.  The only way to determine truth is through active practice and exploration.  Spiritual truth is elusive to investigation because all truth is elusive to investigation, which is why constant investigation is needed.  The idea that anything can be asserted as absolutely real indulges in the myth of the given, so Option 1, if it's to be considered any different from Option 3, seems to assume something of science that no good science should ever assume.  All assertions about reality, all claims to truth, are essentially working hypotheses based on experiential evidence.  We are more certain of some things than others, but we are never absolutely certain of anything.  Integral Theory is a model, and thus it is inherently wrong, but it may be useful as a partially true map for practice.  Integral Theory also cannot, in itself, act as science and spirituality, because Integral Theory is a map, and science and spirituality are both practices.  Integral Theory informs science and spirituality, allowing us to see how they are connected and can supplement each other in a more free and full understanding of our universe.  I don't think Ken Wilber has ever implied anything different.

"The idea that anything can be asserted as absolutely real indulges in the myth of the given ..."

Fangsz, are you asserting the above as absolutely real?

Ah.  Good point.  Maybe my response there doesn't completely shake the post-modern myth of complete relativism, but the point I'm trying to make is that all truth is experiential, based on practice, and all the conceptions and maps we make of this experience are inherently inadequate, but serve to aid our practice to the greatest extent that they can.

Sorry, I hit the post button too many times.

Sorry, I hit the post button too many times.

I follow you.  Experience, in my experience (!), is really of a different character and feel, and so much richer, than mapped explications of it.

Yes, and I think pure experience can essentially be equated with the nondual nature of reality.  Probably what I should have said in regards to uncertainty is that nothing is certain, including the statement that nothing is certain.  Our experience gets mapped out by concepts and narratives which are really only contractions from pure experience, so that we can say "I did this" and "I did that" refering to our human bodies, when they really did nothing of the sort, it's wide open love that is doing all the doing.  When one uses the scientific method, one is essentially delving into nonduality, as one is looking for the truth of things, and ultimate truth is nondual.  The process of continuously testing our working hypotheses to find repeatable results is essentially a process of inquiring into the nature of our experience, like asking "Avoiding?"... "Avoiding?"... "Avoiding?" in meditation.  The human contraction never completely finds truth, it is always seeking it, and in participation with that process of seeking, one can rest in the non-seeking mind.  In this way, I think science and spirituality are very compatable.  Both inquire into the nature of our existence, and we only seperate them for the sake of skillful orientation within a relative world.  Ultimately, though, I think they are part of the same process.

I agree with everything you say, Fangsz.  Our mappings (call them knowledge, theory or science) are but abstractions, bits selected via some notion of relevance---relevated, if you will---from the whole.  Any abstraction is only relevant within the limiting case it represents.  The truth, for its part, cannot but refer to the whole which, as the whole, must be everything.  The shape of this everything must amount, if you think about it, to nothing, because thingness implies distinction.  Truth is therefore nothingness.

One can see the operation of these principles in any attempt to explain.  To fully explain any thing, that thing's entire past must enter the explanation---literally back to the big bang, and before, if there was a before: I was this way because my parents were such and their parents blah blah.  Moreover, this history telling, for the given thing, by extension means telling the entire history of the universe, as the definition of a thing is partly what it is relative to others: no thing exists or can exist in isolation, and all things are truly relative.  And not only must history enter the explanation, so too must history as seen by the future.  As evolution tells us, we only know fuller implication of any given thing-in-time by the light of what it becomes.  I mean, who knew atoms would become molecules?

Of course, any such history of anything, which reveals itself as a History of Everything, ahem, is nothingness itself, the full truth, or pure experience, because only vis a vis nothingness (the non dual) is there no other (truth).  : ) 

Implication watch: to get a universe going, yes, you need single and plural, inside and outside, as KW says, + you need nothingness, per the following:

1. finite implies infinite; accordingly:

2. finite = end

3. end = limit = line = boundary = this

4. this implies that

5. that implies another that, ad infinitum; to wit:

6. no just-two-thing universe because this + that = this, implying another that, etc.

7. etc., etc., etc., poof, everything disappears (everything = disappearance, disthisness, am that, am what?, zen quiet)

Krikey, would somebody stop hitting that disappearo button?!