The Quadratic Map of the cosmos was created by the philosopher Ken Wilber, and introduced in his 1995 book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality.
It’s the central construct of a new school of philosophy founded by Wilber: integral thought. The map integrates the basic aspects of our world, using the quadrants described below.
The Subjective and Objective
Everything in the cosmos has both a subjective and an objective aspect:
| THE SUBJECTIVE The “interior” of things, such as your internal, mental self. It’s the realm of thoughts, feelings, consciousness. | THE OBJECTIVE The “exterior” of things, such as your external, physical body. It’s the realm of matter, of what is tangible. |
The Individual and Collective
Everything also has both an individual and a collective aspect:
| THE INDIVIDUAL The singular thing. A heart is an individual thing in itself…and one of many organs that collectively make up your body. |
| THE COLLECTIVE The group of things. Your body is an individual thing in itself…and one of many bodies that collectively comprise a species. |
The four existential quadrants
The cosmos’ subjective, objective, individual, and collective aspects are combined to create a four-quadrant conceptual “map” of its fundamental structure.
When we name each quadrant for its domain of our experience—Self, Object, Culture, System—this Quadratic Map helps us understand our world at a very basic level:
| SELF The individual subjective: our inner thoughts and feelings. | OBJECT The individual objective: our material, physical world. |
| CULTURE The collective subjective: our personal relationships. | SYSTEM The collective objective: our social environments. |
Solving real-world problems
The Quadratic Map isn’t just an intellectual construct, it’s useful in solving real-world problems. For example, it has helped one psychologist cure patients of depression.
Standard treatments for depression fail because they focus on the Object quadrant. They assume that there’s no sickness in a person’s mind that can’t be cured by medicating their body.
The psychologist Keith Witt has used the Quadratic Map to develop effective treatments for depression that focus on the Culture quadrant instead. His view is that:
| SELF Many clinicians see depression as a malady of the self… | OBJECT …that’s caused by chemical imbalances in the body. |
| CULTURE But the root cause of depression is a sense of isolation, which arises from a person’s weak cultural ties. | SYSTEM Depression is widespread because our social systems make it difficult for people to form strong ties. |
