1. Scopes, Scales, Stages
1.1. Scopes of Inquiry
Scopes of inquiry define the breadth within which a scholarly inquiry occurs. This comes by way of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity. Disciplinarity, though it often borrows from other disciplines, focuses on one specific domain of knowing and doing (Biglan, 1973b, 1973a; Gibbons et al., 1994; Lattuca, 2001; Moran, 2010; Squires, 1992). Interdisciplinarity releases the anchor from one specific discipline and uses two or more disciplines simultaneously for joint research and practice (Frodeman et al., 2010; Gibbons et al., 1994; Ogburn & Goldenweiser, 1928; Repko & Szostak, 2012). Transdisciplinarity goes a significant step further and broadens its scope of inquiry to include any and all domains and their disciplines (Gibbons et al., 1994; Nicolescu, 2008, 2010; Repko & Szostak, 2012). Archdisciplinarity follows from transdisciplinarity by taking transdisciplinary approaches as the units of analysis and synthesis (C. D. Barker et al., 2024).
1.2. Scales of Theory
In knowledge representation, there is a dimension of belief, where opinion sits at one pole and absolutes at the other. Opinions are personal or shared viewpoints or preferences. While opinions may incidentally reflect empirical facts, they generally lack an empirical basis for verification and are, at best, anecdotal propositions. Next come conjectures, which come with an acknowledgment that the claim is speculative. Then come hypotheses, which define a supposition that is self-recognized as speculative but now with some preliminary evidence. If advancement continues, the hypothesis will be tested with one or more methods, the outcome documented and conveyed. When the outcome of the method matches expectations, the hypothesis can be elevated to a theory, which often entails others testing the validity of the suppositions and the methods used to produce the outcome. When enough people can independently verify a theory, the theory can then be elevated to a law. In general, scientific endeavors spend more of their time in theory because science is an iterative process. Beyond laws are absolutes, though good science remains cautious about propositions regarding absolutes.
Here, we emphasize theory. Scales of theory, more or less, follow the scopes of inquiry. Disciplines produce theories, interdisciplinarity produces metatheories (Edwards, 2013; Overton, 2007; Ritzer, 2007; Stein, 2010), and transdisciplinarity produces unification metatheories (C. D. Barker et al., 2024), also called integrative metatheories (Esbjörn-Hargens & Hedlund, 2015). The “more or less” part is because metatheories can be self-referential (a theory being applied to itself) (Carnap, 1937; Church, 1940; Gödel, 1931; Tarski, 1936/1983; Turing, 1938/2012), or can be a theory that subsumes and integrates multiple theories within and across domains (Edwards, 2013; Overton, 2007). Unification metatheories, as an outcome of transdisciplinary inquiry, are theories that result from fitting together theories across all disciplines and their domains (e.g. Henriques, 2022; Wilber, 1995, 2000). This generally results in perennialistic, theory-of-everything, unification-of-knowledge frameworks that fit together everything humanity has come to understand. The “more or less” part also shows up in unification metatheory, because sometimes people will put forth one interdisciplinary synthesis in a particular domain as a “theory of everything” while minimizing or excluding other domains, such as physicalism for the material domain (Göcke, 2009; Neurath, 1983), organicism for the life domain (Gilbert & Sarkar, 2000; Haraway, 1976), panpsychism for the mind domain (Skrbina, 2017), the information universe theory for the semiotic domain (Davies & Gregersen, 2014; Meijer, 2015), among others. Archtheory is proposed as a theory that integrates two or more unification metatheories that are transdisciplinary in nature (C. D. Barker et al., 2024).
1.3. Stages of Development
One of the outcomes of the transdisciplinary scope of inquiry was the realization that individuals and societies go through stages of development (Dux, 2011; Freinacht, 2017; Habermas, 1984). While a full account of the history of developmental psychology and sociocultural evolution is out of scope for this paper, a few names will be mentioned here. There are two kinds of developmental psychology models: domain-specific and domain-general. Domain-specific frameworks apply to specific areas of development such as logic, affect, ego, and sociality (Cook-Greuter, 2013; Kegan, 1982; Kohlberg & Hersh, 1977). Domain-general frameworks aggregate across the multiplicity of developmental areas of being a person and put forth frameworks that hold for any given area of personal growth, for example, Kurt Fischer’s Dynamic Skill Theory (Fischer, 1980) and Michael Lamport Commons’s Model of Hierarchical Complexity (Commons et al., 1984). These models are of interest to us here because they can be used to map the behavioral complexity of individuals and groups as people develop skills for advancing through the scopes of inquiry and devising frameworks that express the scales of theory (Commons, 2008).
The behavioral complexity ceiling for theories generally caps out at what Commons calls the paradigmatic stage, which coordinates principles for a specific domain into a system of principles (Commons, Miller, et al., 2014; Commons & Chen, 2014). Interdisciplinarity reaches its ceiling of behavioral complexity at the cross-paradigmatic stage, where the principles between two or more paradigms and therefore the paradigms themselves are integrated (Commons, 2008). Transdisciplinarity, however, reaches its upper stage at what Commons calls meta-cross-paradigmatic (Commons & Kjorlien, 2016). In order for people to construct a “theory of everything,” they need to hold multiple groups of paradigmatic systems and then relate those systems of paradigms to each other. This generally leads to universal architectural classes and universal process classes, which will be discussed below.
To stay on point, societies also go through stages, which here are named sociocultural evolutionary stages (Freinacht, 2017; Johnson & Earle, 2000). No one person or society is at any one stage, per se. People have a wide array of areas of personal development and can be at different stages of development in different areas of life (Commons, Miller, et al., 2014; Fischer, 1980; Wilber, 1995). Similarly with societies, societies are made up of many people who are all at different points in their growth as people. However, any individual or society as a whole will have a general average behavioral complexity, which acts as a kind of tensor network, with human relationships along shared meaning holding society together. Sociologists have language for this, defining the trajectory that goes from premodern to modern to postmodern to metamodern (also called polymodern) social sensibilities (Andersen, 2023; Freinacht, 2017, 2019; Vermeulen & van den Akker, 2010). Even if a society has an average of one sensibility, there can be people in the society who have more or less advanced sensibilities.
Premodern cultures are primarily characterized by religiosity. They often have beliefs grounded in faith, perhaps reason, but not empirically verifiable facts (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 58–61). Conversely, modernist cultures are defined by a sensibility characterized by reasoning and empirically verifiable facts (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 61–62). Postmodernist sensibility looks at the modernist outcome, recognizes that different methodologies for theory and practice come to different conclusions, and takes on a relativistic approach to what is true (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 62–63). Metamodernist sensibility looks across these different methods of knowing and what is known, fits them together into schemas, and then uses them together simultaneously in a practice called methodological pluralism (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 63–64, 78). The metamodern sensibility generates or binds with integrations of ontological superstructures and domain-general developmental stage models and overcomes the absolutistic errors of modernity and the lack of coordination across knowledge in the relativism of postmodernism (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 63–64). After metamodernism, archmodernist sensibility is observed, but there have not yet been enough examples from which to derive a clear definition (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 65–66). It is, however, suggested to be generated by the sociality of unification metatheoreticians and to represent a kind of stewardship for scaffolding and fostering planetary evolution, advancing and synthesizing across metamodern agendas (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 65–67).
2. Archdisciplinary Research & Practice
2.1. Foundations of Research
Archdisciplinarity divides into two areas: archtheorizing and archpractice (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 20, 79). Archtheorizing studies big-picture, theory-of-everything, unification metatheoretical frameworks and looks for ways to fit them together into an archtheory (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 12–14, 33). Archtheories are theories that integrate two or more unification metatheories (also called integrative metatheories) either (a) into a higher-order, more complex and integrated framework, or (b) through the identification and verification of arches (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 20, 73). Arches are proposed universal pattern laws that show up across unification metatheoretical frameworks. Arches are the glue that such frameworks require to hold their shape, and they suggest universal properties across nature and cognition (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 20, 73). Archpractice involves the joint use of stand-alone unification metatheories, either as frameworks used side by side or synthesized into archtheory, for real-world problem solving (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 79–80).
The foundation of research begins with defining the criteria of what constitutes a unification metatheory. Unification metatheories need to express one of the following: (1) a coherent unifying architectural, ontological, or structural schema that fits together all known domains about what exists; (2) a coherent unifying processual, methodological, or transformational schema that fits together all known domains for how things change; or (3) a unifying calculatory, functionative, recursively formulaic schema that can be applied across all known domains about what exists and how things change (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, p. 71). Transdisciplinary unification metatheoretical frameworks can be researched and organized along several different lines. The research can be done along historical appearance, location, and authorship, tracing when and where transdisciplinary work has occurred and does occur, and who influenced whom (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, p. 75). The research can also evaluate the causality and impact of the means for transdisciplinary studies, such as the conventional and academically derived fields in which transdisciplinary work was produced (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 75–76).
Some examples of unification metatheories are Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism, which provides deep unifying ideas such as the empirical–actual–real and four-planar social being frameworks (Bhaskar, 1993); Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, which utilizes the All Quadrants, All Levels (AQAL) architecture to organize objective-subjective and individual-collective dimensions across various levels of reality (Wilber, 2000); Gregg Henriques’s Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK), which bridges the enlightenment gap between qualitative subjective experience and objective scientific facts across matter, life, mind, and culture (Henriques, 2022); and Bobby Azarian’s unifying theory of reality, which maps universal evolutionary processes that hold broadly across physics, biology, and psychology (Azarian, 2022).
2.2. Foundations of Practice
Practice can be divided into (1) applied archtheoretical research, (2) real-world application, and (3) reporting of application results. Applied archtheoretical research is the use of unification metatheories, whether frameworks used side by side jointly, frameworks integrated in an archtheoretical synthesis, or the implementation of arches as an implementation classifier, toward explaining real-world problem mechanisms. This introduces new ways of sense-making about local-to-global systems through the combined and emergent explanatory power of unification metatheoretical synthesis. The real-world application part is, of course, the implementation of these new explanations in local-to-global transformation procedures. The third part, the reporting of application results, communicates to the larger community the outcome of the implementation, such that archtheorists and archpractitioners are aware of what is working and what isn’t, in the ever-evolving iterative process of their sciences (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 79–80).
2.3. Archtheory
While there are examples of people doing what we now call archdisciplinarity, working across unification metatheoretical frameworks and gesturing toward the notion of arches such as those found in Nicolescu (2008, 2010) and Kelly (2021), synthesizing unification metatheoretical frameworks with a high level of fidelity across their super-structures first seems to have appeared with Esbjörn-Hargens and Paul Marshall’s complex integral realism (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2016; Esbjörn-Hargens et al., 2016), synthesizing Wilber’s integral theory (Wilber, 1995, 2000), Bhaskar’s critical realism (Bhaskar, 1993), and Morin’s complex thought (Morin, 2008). Though they offered no term to describe the scope of scholarly inquiry (except for perhaps the occasional use of the term “post-disciplinary”), they did offer a notion for the scale of theory, which they termed integrative metatheory 2.0, roughly equivalent to what is here meant by archtheory.
Hedlund put forward an archtheory called visionary realism, which synthesized critical realism and integral theory (Hedlund, 2023). Dempsey’s universal development theory (Dempsey, 2026) is also archtheoretical, synthesizing Azarian’s unifying theory of reality (UTOR), Henriques’s unified theory of knowledge (UTOK), and others (see also Dempsey, 2022). Archdisciplinary theory and practice are further found in the activities of the Institute of Applied Metatheory, with examples found in The New Story of Wholeness and Integrative Worldview projects, and in Smith’s notion of Archphilosophy and Alethic, as well as, of course, the Archdisciplinary Research Center. Additionally, I completed an archtheoretical framework in 2019, lexicographic in nature, which I call architectonic simulation (C. D. [Architectonics] Barker, 2019). A full explication of the architectonic simulation framework will be given in the upcoming book Mythos and Machina (C. D. Barker, 2026). Some of the above-mentioned archtheories will be further expanded on in the discussion section below.
3. Arches, Relations, Systems
3.1. Arches
The notion of arches is an outcome of the comparative analysis between transdisciplinary, theory-of-everything, unification metatheoretical frameworks (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 20, 73). Arches are among the primary distinguishing characteristics of what separates archdisciplinarity outcomes from transdisciplinarity ones (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 12–13). When individuals and groups construct unification metatheoretical frameworks, it turns out there are recurring universal patterns that show up across the frameworks (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 20, 73).
What is important to understand is that transdisciplinarily derived unification metatheories are primarily oriented to solve local-to-global, post-industrial information age challenges (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 1–14). They give us maps of how we can fit together everything humans have come to understand about ourselves, the world, and the universe, and they often define trajectories of both individual (cross-domain) development and collective (sociocultural) evolutionary growth (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 53–67). The problem is that unification metatheoretical frameworks can greatly differ. When people try to fit together all human knowledge architectures and intelligence processes into coherent systems, even if the transdisciplinarians disagree on the nature of reality and frameworks differ in form and function, the unification metatheoretical frameworks nonetheless share recurring themes, patterns, and invariants (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 15–51). These archetypal shapes are found to be the glue that holds these frameworks together (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 115–138). Since these arches show up across all domains and scales, and across all variations of expression of unification metatheoretical frameworks, they are therefore proposed as universal pattern laws that underpin natural law for both nature and cognition (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 157–234).
For the purpose of this paper, I will here define what arches have been observed, how they are related, and how they can be systematized. Note first that the arches are put forth as approximations, and that for brevity, proofs of arches showing up across big-picture, theory-of-everything, unification metatheoretical frameworks are omitted from this paper, yet provided in great detail in Foundations of Archdisciplinarity (see C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 115–234). Additionally, in Foundations of Archdisciplinarity, each arch is expressed as a theorem consisting of axioms, many of which are accompanied by corollaries (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 115–138). They are intended to also have formal science expressions, which will be presented in a future publication. Here, arches will only be summarized to convey their general character. The arches that have been observed are 1) universal computation, 2) complexity, 3) permeative boundaries, 4) fracticality, 5) integrative levels, 6) universal architectures, 7) universal processes, 8) universal grammar, 9) ruliad, and 10) singularity. That there is a rounded ten is incidental, not deliberate. The arches, their relations, and how they systematize, however, are non-arbitrary (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 139–234).
The first arch here discussed is universal computation. People have a tendency to suppose that the notion of universal computation implies an interpretation of nature and cognition from a machine-computer analogy, and will follow up with arguments that people are not machines; they are organisms, so how dare one compare people to computers. The derivation of universal computation as an arch, however, originates from the meta-language synthesis work of Church (1936, 1940), Turing (1936, 1938/2012), Tarski (1936/1983), and others before computational machines had been invented. It was found that for any given formal language, there will always be types, operations, and functions, and this triplication will recurse. As an arch, more universalized terms are used for the triplication: static (equilibrium, rest, entity, state, type, structure, architecture), dynamic (disequilibrium, motion, action, event, operation, relation, process), and multinamic (equilibration, rest-in-motion, entity-action, circumstance, function, system, calculation), whereas recursion is self-reference of the triplication back on itself (C. D. Barker, 2013; C. D. Barker et al., 2024). When the computation runs forward, it is synthesis or assembly, and a multinamic becomes a new static. When the computation runs backward, it is analysis or disassembly, and a static comes undone into its composite multinamic parts in relation (C. D. Barker et al., 2024). Some examples of how the arch of universal computation shows up in unification metatheories are in Ken Wilber’s articulation of part-relation-whole structures known as holons (Wilber, 1995, 2000), Fischer’s actions, action mappings, and action systems (Fischer, 1980), Stephen Wolfram’s multi-computational paradigm (Wolfram, 2021a), and Gregg Henriques’s periodic table of behavior within his Unified Theory of Knowledge (Henriques, 2003, 2022).
The properties of the arch of complexity come in three forms: horizontal, vertical, and diagonal complexity. Horizontal complexity is how many units exist at a given scale, vertical complexity is how many scales there are as a result of the recursions of the universal computational triplication, and diagonal complexity is where the result of one scale can impact another that is not directly above or below it in the scalarity. These properties parallel the characterizations found across the works of various complexity theorists, such as the horizontal and vertical measurement dimensions of Commons (Commons, Gane-McCalla, et al., 2014), the transversal complexity of Nicolescu (2010), and the self-organizing complex systems of Kauffman (1995).
The properties of the arch of permeative boundaries consist of objectivity, subjectivity, and transjectivity. Objectivity is the exterior boundary of an entity, action, or system, whereas subjectivity is the interior of that same boundary. Transjectivity is the “crossterior” space that pervades both objective and subjective spaces. Note that the definition of what constitutes interiors and exteriors is dependent on what is being described, e.g., an objective exterior outside of a boundary can itself be the subjective interior space when that objectivity is nested in a larger context. These properties are evident in unification metatheories, such as the subjective and objective quadrants of Wilber’s Integral Theory (Wilber, 1995, 2000), the logic of the included middle in Nicolescu’s transdisciplinarity (Nicolescu, 2010), and the iQuad coin in Gregg Henriques’s Unified Theory of Knowledge (Henriques, 2021).
The arch of fracticality (or fractality, if you prefer) defines the properties of self-similarity in a system and consists of qua (hypernym for quality and quantity) and morphisms. Quantity describes incrementation exhibited by the relation of parts, such as in measures of complexity as described above in as self-similar repetitive expression, while quality describes characteristics or properties derivative of staticism, dynamism, and multinamism. Morphism describes the same, similar, and different characteristics across singular and multiple recursions. These fractal properties are evident, for example, in cross-scale analysis of earth sciences (Turcotte, 1989), organism physiology (Weibel, 1991), and neurology (D. M. Alexander & Globus, 1996).
The arch of integrative levels consists of properties of nests, stacks, and vectors. Nests occur where parts are made of smaller parts and themselves make up larger wholes, such that components have components of their own. Stacks are layering and plexification, where discrete spaces of various shapes touch each other but do not share their interior spaces across their barriers. Vectors are directions of interlocking entities, actions, and systems throughout levels, which can, for example, be cause-effect chains. Integrative levels exhibit other properties. For example, a level can exhibit emergent properties that did not exist at the previous level, such that the new property is the result of the combination of its constituent parts. Another example is that there will always be fewer things at the top of the combinatoric pyramid than at the bottom. A final example is that mechanistic properties in nested levels mean that a change in a lower level can and often does impact the higher-level structure of which something is made. Examples are Joseph Needham’s coinage and description of integrative levels concerning complexity and organization (Needham, 1937), James Feibleman’s articulation of the twelve laws of integrative levels (Feibleman, 1954), and Michael Kleineberg’s comprehensive mapping of levels as nests, pyramids, and chains across numerous big-picture frameworks (Kleineberg, 2017).
The arch of universal architectures and processes share similarities, and therefore I’ll discuss their properties together. Across integrative levels there are often universal architectural classes of what exists, and universal processual classes of how things change. The universal computational triplication recurses in both cases, though for universal architectures it is the structure of entities, relations, and systems, while for universal processes it is the transformations of entities, relations, and systems. From this, structural and transformational distinctions can be made between different domains of nature and cognition. Unification metatheorists will often populate integrative levels with universal architectural, universal processual, or combinatoric calculatory expressions. Each of these universal panoptic classes can be and often is given sub-levels specific to its domain; for example, with the commonly agreed-upon universal architectural domains of matter and life, sub-levels will be described as building blocks of matter, or as building blocks of living beings and their ecosystem scales. Examples of architectural frameworks include Alexander’s universal categories of reality (S. Alexander, 1920/1950), Gregg Henriques’s Tree of Knowledge System (Henriques, 2003), and Rolston’s domains of matter-energy, life, and mind (Rolston, 2010). Examples of processual frameworks include Fischer’s Dynamic Skill Theory (Fischer, 1980), Commons’s Model of Hierarchical Complexity (Commons, 2008), and Kegan’s stages of constructive development (Kegan, 1982), though process frameworks extend to processes of nature and the universe in general, such as the evolution of Darwin (1859/1909), environmental epigenetics of Skinner (2015), the periodic table of behavior of Henriques (2022), the meta-naturalism of Azarian (2022), and my notion of process ratiocinators (C. D. Barker, 2026; C. D. [Architectonics] Barker, 2019).
The arch of universal grammar defines properties of language as properties of nature and cognition. Human language has lexical and functional grammatical properties precisely because nature and cognition themselves intrinsically have them. It would be exhaustive to discuss them all here, but among the most obvious are nouns, which are synonymous with staticism, and verbs, which are synonymous with dynamism. Another example is conjunctions as expressions of computational relations, where static conjunctions are satisfiability (e.g., is, is not), dynamic conjunctions are juncturing (e.g., or, and), and multinamic conjunctions are collative (e.g., because, therefore). Examples in the literature where this arch shows up include the recursive meta-linguistics of Noam Chomsky (Chomsky, 1956), the grammar-associative 6Ws model within Sean Esbjörn-Hargens’ integral pluralism matrix (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2016; Esbjörn-Hargens et al., 2016), and the integral grammatology articulated by Bruce Alderman (Alderman, 2019).
The arches of ruliad and singularity are also two sides of the same coin, so I will here again discuss the two arches and their properties together. The arch of ruliad can be defined as the maximal possible limit of combinations and permutations of all possible states and transitions across bounded fractal levels of complex computations in a given system. The arch of singularity can be defined as the self-arrangement and self-organization of a self-referential system by its actual limit of combinations and permutations from all actual states and transitions across bounded fractal levels of complex computations in a given system. Ruliad properties derive from the possibility space of permutations and combinatorics. Singularity properties derive from an axis consisting of convergences of components that have evolved the greatest capacity to receive and respond to the greatest enumeration of direct concatenations and overall impact of cascades. There will be a nexus, which is the greatest measure of impact, and depending on the system, the nexus can move around to different components in that system. An important notion about singularities is that of the characteristic of cascading: there are often ripples of impact moving all over the system in feedforward and feedback loops, which, depending on how complex the system is, can make it profoundly difficult, although not impossible, to predict outcomes. These ruliad properties are evident in Wolfram’s multi-computational paradigm of the ruliad (Wolfram, 2021a, 2021b), but previously existed in the literature, such as Nolte’s concept of phase space (Nolte, 2010) deriving from Maxwell (1879) and further back to Boltzmann (1872). The arch of singularity is expressed in Kurzweil’s technological singularity (Kurzweil, 2005), Korotayev’s evolutionary phase transitions (Korotayev, 2018), and Henriques’s fifth joint point of epistemological singularity (Henriques, 2011), the notion originally deriving from Deleuze (1968/1994) and Poincaré (1881).
3.2. Arch-Relations
The arch of universal computation is proposed to represent static, dynamic, and multinamic properties (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, p. 140). Complexity immediately appears as horizontal layers of static entities, dynamic relations, and multinamic systematizations, all of which can be enumerated per layer (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 140–141). Complexity also appears vertically as these layers act as nests, such that dynamic relations are formed from static entities, and multinamic systems form from dynamic relations, all of which can be counted (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, p. 141). The result of an equilibrated system is a new static, equilibrious (or at least low-entropy) state that now separates a boundary space between those components in which the new equilibrium was produced, from within the interior subjective composition and the exterior objectivity of itself, where that overall space it populates stands in relation to a larger space consisting of other objects (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 140, 143–144).
The moment that the new static object finds a relationship with another of similar scale, the recursive procedure of the triplication of static-dynamic-multinamic can possibly repeat, and, if successful, creates increasing complexity (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 140–141). There is no longer just the enumeration of static, dynamic, and multinamic phases, but there is also an enumeration of overall universal computational recursions, the recursions serving us as a universal measure that can hold for any domain and scale (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, p. 141). There is an immediate fractalization that occurs with the second recursion, because the qua and morphism from the first recursion and those of the second share same and similar properties by means of the repetitions of the universal computational triplication, its recursion, permeative boundary spaces, and the larger compositional enumerations of horizontal and vertical complexity across recursions (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 141–143). The locus at which we began our enumeration must necessarily have been preceded by a previous universal computational recursion because the locus of our observation consists of static components that themselves resulted from a previous universal computational recursion. That recursion generated the multinamic systematization of their compositional relations as static units, which we observed entering into the dynamic relations of our first universal computational recursion count (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 140, 142). In other words, looking outward or inward, the arch-system is virtually identical and goes on in both directions as far as we can see. Non-dual comprehension is no longer a floating abstraction, but begins to take on a formal scientific observation via this arch-systematic coherence from arch-relations.
The repetitions of universal computational recursions at a given scale in the vertical complexity enumeration will exhibit repeating morphisms for that given scale, which is imposed by the previous scale and sets the precedents for what kinds of potential systematizations can occur from the given scale’s composition (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, p. 150). This produces a morphogenic trajectory of assemblage, which the arch of integrative levels is intended to describe. It will be observed that the trajectory of universal computational recursions will exhibit discrete classes of universal architectures and universal processes in universally recurring sequences everywhere in the universe, as a natural consequence of the qua and morphisms specific to the previous universal computational recursion of a given locally (to non-locally) bounded space (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 150–151). This paragraph is a very wordy way of saying something quite simple: in order for something to exist and happen, other things must exist and happen first, and we can get quite organized about understanding how this works across any domain and scale.
This arch-systematization is described in Foundations of Archdisciplinarity as a fractal phase transformation space, where all possible states and transformations can be described for any system as a ruliadic expression (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 153–155). Any proposition that attempts to account for, describe, and put into order all states or and transformations within or and across domains that can occur in a system, is a crystallization of ruliadic universal coherence. Thus, the notion put forth is that this serves as a kind of universal coherence or universal identity that holds within and across any domain and scale, which can be applied to any actual states and transformations of a given singularity. The arch of universal grammar implies a higher-order language—an arch-language—of the universe, which essentially brings us back to where archtheory started, with Gödel, Turing, Church, Tarski, and the others. A reorientation toward universal language, informed by arches, will necessarily have a profound impact on future technologies that work across renders of the complete systematization of nature and cognition in simulated spaces (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, p. 146).
3.3. Arch-Systematization
This arch-systematization appears as a universal morphism identity of a fractal phase space, and defines approximations that can only improve (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 157–234). One may suppose these are metaphysical assertions, but they are not. Arches, their relations, and their systematization are put forth as scientific propositions of universal pattern laws that underpin natural law and are empirically observable across domains and scales. The arch-systematization unit as a universal identity will be found to exist in any entity, relation, and system, in any domain, at any scale.
I’ll summarize Foundations of Archdisciplinarity regarding the evidence provided for the arch-systematization being universally present across domains and scales (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, p. 158). In the book, three universal architectural classes were considered, with other universal architectural classes included, though to a lesser degree. The three classes that were described in their arch-systematized character were the domains of matter, apparatus (life), and psyche (mind) (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 159, 169, 184). They were chosen because they are the most obvious and least disagreeable universal architectural classes to general audiences, and these three universal architectural classes show up in virtually every unification metatheoretical framework that consists of a universal architectural trajectory populating integrative levels (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 47–48). For brevity, I’ll give a concise summary.
Matter, apparatus (life), and psyche (mind) all exhibit universal computational characteristics, in that each exhibits the static-dynamic-multinamic triplication, which recurses across their sub-levels (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 160, 170, 189–190). Matter consists of substances (static), forces (dynamic), and configurations (multinamic), from which emerges new substances at the next sub-level in the domain. Similarly, apparatus (life) consists of instruments (static), animation (dynamic), and organization (multinamic), which produces different kinds of instrumentation at the next sub-level of its domain as well. The same is true for psyche, which, treated here in its architectural character, consists of faculties (static) that mentate (dynamic), resulting in an orientation (multinamic), which produces a next sub-level of facilitation (static). Each of these domains recurses the same triplication for each of their sub-levels, and these sub-levels overlap in the same place at the same time across domains, much like organ systems on transparency sheets overlapping each other across the human body in a biology 101 textbook. These three universal architectural classes populate an integrative level trajectory, where unification metatheorists will place other universal classes before and after by virtue of dependency, which looks a bit different depending on the unification metatheoretical framework, but there is general agreement on the overall trajectory itself (C. D. Barker et al., 2024, pp. 150, 158–159). For example, by direct observation, there can be no psyche (mind) without apparatus (life), and no apparatus without matter.
The arch of complexity is evident, in that for matter, apparatus, and psyche, it can be enumerated (provided we have the right scientific instruments to do so) along horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. The arch of fractality is also evident across these domains—not just in universal computation, complexity, permeative boundary, and other archic properties, but also in the recurrence of occurrent morphism instances that show up in all three domains (e.g., filament structures, fracture lines, Fibonacci sequences, bifurcation patterns, etc.). Of course, the whole point of science is to attain as symmetrical a rendering as possible of the reality we are attempting to represent and to understand its possibility space (the ruliad arch), so that we can operate and attain goals within and by means of the actuality space (the singularity arch). This has often involved means of communicative expression and methodological operation that are domain- and scale-specific, though, as suggested above, it is expected that an arch-language (the coherence of the universal grammar arch) will allow a total unitary congruity across disciplines by means of the universal identity.
4. Frameworks & Futures
4.1. The State of Institutional Advancements
The prevalence of archdisciplinarity in social spheres is expected to be sparse for some time. For one, disciplinarity is the standard across academies, though coherent interdisciplinarity has become more prominent from the mid- to late 20th century (see Klein, 1990; Moran, 2010; Repko et al., 2016; Weingart, 2010). Universities such as Georgetown, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, the University of Virginia, and Harvard all have explicitly interdisciplinary programs (Authority.org, n.d.). College Factual states that interdisciplinary studies results in 134,694 degrees awarded annually (College Factual, n.d.). According to Authority.org, as of 2025, there are over 600,000 students enrolled in interdisciplinary studies in the United States.
Despite there being over a hundred transdisciplinary approaches, transdisciplinarity has not seen nearly as widespread use as interdisciplinarity, and is often confused with it. As of the time of writing this paper, I was not able to find statistics, but it has indeed become more frequent conceptually from the latter half of the 20th century, when Piaget coined the term (Piaget, 1972), up to current times (Jahn et al., 2012; Jantsch, 1972; Klein, 2014; Max-Neef, 2005; Nicolescu, 2002; Pohl & Hirsch Hadorn, 2008). Most academic programs focus on climate and social change. Programs that are authentically transdisciplinary in nature, in the way transdisciplinarity is described in this paper, can be found at institutions such as Claremont Graduate University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Arizona State University, all of which place emphasis on systems thinking. The California Institute of Integral Studies, Meridian University, and the California Institute for Human Science all have integral-theory-based studies programs, with the last mentioned institute having archdisciplinarily informed programs by way of Esbjörn-Hargens’, Marshall’s, and Hedlund’s previous integrative metatheory 2.0 work.
Outside academia, estimates for how many people in the world operate with interdisciplinary coherence differ, and this has not been entirely researched. Data USA (2022) states that there were 979,354 people with interdisciplinary degrees in the workforce in the United States. It’s probably a lot more. There are no statistics available for transdisciplinary- or archdisciplinary-minded people in the workforce, though, based on behavioral complexity measurements by Torbert (2004) and Cook-Greuter (2013), we can wager that the number of people operating at the transdisciplinary scope is a very tiny minority of the population (less than half of 1%), with archdisciplinary researchers and practitioners an even smaller share still. This makes sense, given the sheer breadth of knowledge and behavioral complexity required to proceed with transdisciplinary and archdisciplinary studies. Outside the academies, there are countless interdisciplinary organizations, and many transdisciplinary ones. Transdisciplinary organizations include places such as the Santa Fe Institute, the World Academy of Art and Science, the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, and Integral Life. Currently, only two archdisciplinary organizations are known: the Institute of Applied Metatheory and the Archdisciplinary Research Center.
4.2. Archtheoretical Frameworks Revisited
Earlier, I briefly mentioned existing archtheories. Here, I’ll elaborate on them further and describe how they express arches in their frameworks. To my knowledge, no one has yet brought together all the existing archtheories with an explanation of them and how they are related, so I’ll do so here. The archtheories discussed are complex integral realism, visionary realism, and emergentism. My own framework, architectonic simulation, will be omitted until I formally publish it. However, I’ll reference some additional archdisciplinary works that are important to the following section on metamodern and archmodern sensibilities.
Complex integral realism (Esbjörn-Hargens & Hedlund, 2015) was put forth by Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Nick Hedlund, Paul Marshall, and others (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2016; Marshall, 2016b, 2016a). This approach establishes a largely preservative synthesis of three major unification metatheories: Edgar Morin’s complex thought, Ken Wilber’s integral theory, and Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism (Esbjörn-Hargens & Hedlund, 2015). The framework combines the unique strengths of the three models to counterbalance their respective blind spots, through a three-part complementarity referred to as metatrialectics (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2016). These components are the ontological domain lattice, which expresses the arch of integrative levels; tetradynamics, which acts as a quadrification of interior/exterior and individual/collective dimensions expressing the arch of permeative boundaries; and the integral pluralism matrix (Esbjörn-Hargens, 2016; Esbjörn-Hargens et al., 2016). The integral pluralism matrix’s 6W grammar-associative model (who, how, what, when, where, and why) expresses the arch of universal grammar, where these grammatical questions specify clarification about fundamental properties across the models to understand how the frameworks are oriented. For example, “what” asks about architectural properties, and “how” asks about processual properties, meaning that the interrogatives are non-arbitrary in what we might here call arch-systematic identity. Additionally, they found that each of these transdisciplinary frameworks included notions of horizontal and vertical complexity, which was also used to orient the models to each other.
Next, we can look at Dempsey’s Emergentism (Dempsey, 2022) and Evolution of Meaning (Dempsey, 2026). While Emergentism is discussed for metamodern sensibilities, it treats both metamodernism and unification metatheoretical frameworks as objects of reflection, such as the integrated evolutionary synthesis (Azarian, 2022), the unified theory of knowledge (Henriques, 2003, 2022), integral theory (Wilber, 1995, 2000, 2006), and the model of hierarchical complexity (Commons, 2008). This is cause to define emergentism as an expression of the archdisciplinary scope of inquiry. Dempsey’s work across these texts employs the common threads of complexity, recursivity, and levels as binding themes across multiple unification metatheoretical frameworks, in the unfolding of increasingly more integrated versions of reality as the way reality understands itself; the universe inherently complexifies, creating novel emergent levels of reality (integrating Azarian). He maps this evolution across four distinct, emergent planes of complexity: matter, life, mind, and culture (integrating Henriques). Dempsey assesses how cognitive structures and behavioral tasks become hierarchically more complex across different domains in human affairs (integrating Commons).
More specifically, the arch of universal computation shows up in his quite explicit articulation of recursive iterations across integrative levels, both of the universal architectures of reality (levels of reality) and of the universal processes, in terms of both the universal cosmic evolutionary learning process and individual and sociocultural development (Dempsey, 2026). Dempsey (2022, pp. 50–51) suggests that symmetry between a version of reality and the reality that version represents is iterative, achieved as “the subjective model comes to match more accurately what it seeks to represent: objective reality.” The arch of complexity is central to his entire project, defining the unfolding of evolution as complexification itself; we can only reach an ultimate point of coherence through the continued complexification of meaning and worldviews (Dempsey, 2022, 2026). Dempsey also draws on the arch of ruliad and singularity, observing that constraints are required to create structural coherence, acting as “limitations of the possibility space of equilibrium that allow for difference” (Dempsey, 2026, p. 536). The arch of ruliad takes expression as “the possibility space of existence […] from generation to generation, towards greater embodied encoding of the world” (Dempsey, 2022, p. 84). While Dempsey does make reference to the notion of technological singularity, the arch of singularity primarily shows up in his notion of the Omega Point, understanding the entire cosmos as moving from one state of singularity to another, characterizing its transformational trajectory.
The archtheory of Hedlund (2023), called visionary realism, integrates unification metatheoretical frameworks with emphasis on critical realism (Bhaskar, 1975, 1993) and integral theory (Wilber, 1995, 2000), with mention of the model of hierarchical complexity (Commons et al., 1984), among others. Hedlund, too, was onto the notion of arches, defining law as “contingent tendencies of stable and universal generative mechanisms, powers, or forces. The mechanisms themselves are universal, but they only ever instantiate themselves concretely, relative to a complex conjunction of forces in an open system, or when they are isolated in a closed-system experiment” (p. 470). Hedlund’s framework includes notions such as pandimensional realism, which is an expression of permeative boundaries across integrative levels, defining versions of reality as not just emerging from individual and sociocultural stages, but as objectively real in their own right, such that they feed back onto the larger superstructures of life, societies, and the world.
Hedlund (2023) points out that looking across (unification) metatheoretical frameworks, we can attain ontological realism, here considered an expression of the arch of universal architectures by another name, which he contrasts with unification metatheoretical “superidealism” (p. 225). He proposes that it is possible to know what is ultimately real, which he calls alethic resonance (p. 302). He suggests that symmetry between a version of reality and the reality that version represents is iterative, and that we can only get there through epistemic humility (p. 302). His notion of epistemology is how we know the world (subjective), and, along with his notion of “generative mechanism” (objective), constitutes a reaching toward the arch of universal processes coherence that will hold across boundaries (p. 235). The arch of complexity threads throughout his entire thesis, discussing complexity in relation to practically every topic covered. The arch of ruliad takes expression as ontological excess and superabundant potentiality, which he defines as “the real bursting forth with a myriad of inexhaustible possibilities and potentials, expressing its creative fecundity on a level that eludes a definitive and exhaustive understanding, dominion, and control” (p. 160). Last to be mentioned here is the arch of singularity; he defines singularity as the “laminated open totality” encompassing the “common root causes, actualized symptom-events, human construal and interventions, and the possibility of a more adequate metaview that grasps real future possibilities” (p. 281).
Foundations of Archdisciplinarity states that one of the biggest challenges going forward into archdisciplinary endeavors is getting transdisciplinarians to work together toward big-picture transformation. In the paper Mapping an Ecology of Integrative Approaches to Addressing the Meta-Crisis (Nørgaard et al., 2025), the authors carry this very topic forward, mapping out the ecology of integrative approaches to the metacrisis, pointing out that people fall into what they call the Single Focus, Single Cause, and Single Solution fallacies, describing how people reduce complex global threats to single things. In this paper, they show how different sociocultural worldviews interpret crises, along with evaluating the limitations and pathologies of their sense-making. They propose that by looking across what is termed the “liminal web” (online communities coming together to discuss big-picture topics), we can organize these higher-order approaches into paradigmatic lenses, integrative metatheories (here interpreted as transdisciplinary), archtheories (archdisciplinary), and practical projects or movements. The authors suggest that if we actually want to reach a protopian or eudaimonistic society (which I consider archmodern in nature), these unification metatheoretical communities have to stop getting bogged down in fractionation and rivalrous brand competition. Instead, the authors argue, we need a creativity of synthesis, an expression of deep cross-pollination and collaboration across these integrative frameworks, such that they feed back onto each other to mount a coordinated strategy capable of handling the true complexity of the metacrisis.
This notion is further described in Smith’s (2025) paper A Sociology of Big Pictures: Network Strategy for a 21st Century Worldview. While there is significant overlap with Nørgaard’s paper across topics, and much in this paper worth mentioning, of specific interest here is Smith’s attention to the technological challenges that are here, and incoming. He references Baudrillard and puts forth the notion that we are moving from the real into the hyperreal, which he describes as “a constructed, non-local, ideational, unbounded semi-fictional world of metaverses and social mediated ‘realities.’” Smith references Alderman’s (2025) notion of the algorithmic undertow, “the technologies, systems, and algorithmic processes by which our personalized informational landscapes become ‘algorithmic tunnels’… progressively narrowing pathways that trap individuals and groups in isolated realities” that destroy our meaning-making and sense-making capacities across all four quadrants of our lived experience (i.e., psychological-existential, cultural-meaningful, behavioral-efficacious, and social-systemic). Smith goes on to state the impending issues of AI, that “non-human intelligences will influence, obstruct, determine, or accelerate the forces and outcomes of the meaning crisis, hyperreality, climate change, and geopolitical governance.”
4.3. Metamodern and Archmodern Sensibilities
I propose that the problems metamodern sensibilities solve are information age problems, or, more specifically, information fragmentation problems. It is the metamodern sensibility in which transdisciplinary studies occur, and in which unification metatheoretical frameworks are proposed. There is, for transdisciplinarians, the ascertainment that disparate domains of knowing and doing can be fitted together in, for the most part, empirically demonstrable ways, which includes the positive outcomes of premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism, while trying to transcend and overcome their deficits. That said, in general, epistemological / methodological pluralisms typically treat empiricism as one way of knowing among others, though it is nonetheless important here, when trying to get at verifiable claims, that we lean into it. It follows that there may be some phenomenological (personal), religious (group), or industrialist (systems) character to unification metatheoretical endeavors; after all, transdisciplinary endeavors grow from a world full of people and institutions of various sorts that lean different ways. For some transdisciplinarians, doing research, producing books, giving lectures, and running courses is enough: to educate the public about super maps and point toward more complex ways of knowing and doing. For other transdisciplinarians, this is not enough; there is a desire to put their comprehension into practice on the ground and impact real-world systems that are collapse-prone.
It is apparent, however, that most people are not too interested in transdisciplinary endeavors, and this is largely a behavioral complexity issue. People may see big-picture frameworks as objects of fascination but can otherwise do nothing with them. This is because unification metatheories are huge super maps that organize, across architectural and processual domains, what is known and how people know it in methodologically pluralistic contexts. To engage with the frameworks directly requires individuals to have a certain openness, which, on the one hand, can be susceptible to those in fringe sciences, and, on the other, can lead scientific communities to mistake such an edge of human knowledge evolution for fringe science. Also, unification metatheoretical frameworks can devolve into premodern shenanigans, which Wilber elegantly called the pre-trans fallacy. Further, it would seem that many academics see transdisciplinary integrations as impinging on the scope of their fields and disturbing the status quo. To fully engage with and employ a unification metatheoretical framework requires a person to expand into polymathic knowledge with an encyclopedic range, which is rather antithetical to the ethos of academia, which places emphasis on specialization. In any case, unification metatheories tend to aggregate multiple paradigmatic systematizations along panoptic, architectural, or processual classes, meaning that they require post-paradigmatic coordinative abilities on the part of the individual and their audience; otherwise, the higher order (that is, the more integrated and orderly) gets downwardly assimilated into less complex behavioral forms, resulting in information loss and taking on the character of those less complex behavioral shapes and forms.
Furthermore, metacrisis problems do not exist in a vacuum; they exist in a web of interconnected religious, economic, and political (and other variety) tensors, such that solving one problem means having to solve all related problems at the same time, or risk a solution coming undone by internal and external sources not accounted for in the transformational operation. Where interior individuals or groups lack the coordinative powers to maintain a solution, or where exterior systems impose themselves and their problematic natures on the solved system, a solution cannot persist. I suspect this is the reason why transdisciplinary approaches to solving metacrisis problems fail: they ask the larger population of human civilization to understand and implement enormously complex ideas, which general populations may find fascinating and even important, but lack any means to convert into everyday life or sociocultural transformation, given the tensor network of ethos in which they are embedded. Beliefs and routines of individuals and societies are not just economic, political, social, and psychological, but neurological as well, meaning that people need to literally rewire their brains for higher-order, more complex sense-making, and this takes time (Commons, 2014; Leite et al., 2016; Tuladhar & Commons, 2014).
One of the outcomes of the transdisciplinary enterprise, though not a comprehension shared by all, was clarity about individual developmental and sociocultural evolutionary stages. Individuals and groups cannot skip stages, since each stage builds on the outcomes of the next lower level (Commons, Miller, et al., 2014). It became apparent that, in the vast majority of cases, people are not at the point where a unification metatheoretical framework will make sense or have value, so imposing unification metatheoretical coherence simply doesn’t work. Implementation of the coherence needs to be fitted to the unique circumstances of an individual or group in accordance with their knowledge and stage, instead of attempting to get people who are not yet ready to acknowledge and utilize the unification metatheoretical framework itself. Implementation becomes more like a fostering that speaks in the language of the sense-making of that individual or group, supporting individuals and groups in becoming the best version of themselves they can be for their current knowledge breadth and stage of development. This may include clearing the possibility space for people to grow when they themselves are ready. I think this kind of implementation is easier for people who have adopted a big-picture framework than it is for the authors of one, because authors of unification metatheoretical frameworks often have their personhood, egos, and identities tied to their work. Having the insight to know when to implement transdisciplinary coherence without talking about the transdisciplinary coherence directly might be among the best examples of the metamodern sensibility.
So there is then the question of what archmodern sensibility is about. In Foundations of Archdisciplinarity, it was put forth that there aren’t many examples from which to derive a common theme, but that it would involve transdisciplinarians putting their heads together and using multiple unification metatheoretical frameworks jointly for big-picture problem solving. Since the publication of Foundations of Archdisciplinarity in 2024, I think I can propose a closer approximation. As stated above, metamodern sensibilities and the transdisciplinary enterprise have, in large part, been aimed at solving information fragmentation problems that resulted from the premodern, modern, and postmodern trajectory. This resulted in the capacity to get organized about what people know and how they know it, and in solutions for how to encounter and solve metacrisis problems. Personally, I think of ages as characterized by predominant technologies and the way they cause us to orient to life. I therefore suspect we are currently in transition to, and overlapping with, another age after the information one, which some have been calling the synthetic age.
Some scholars who’ve discussed overlapping concepts include Baudrillard’s (1981/1994) foundational work on simulacra, Preston’s (2018) account of outdesigning evolution in a reengineered world, and Chalmers’s (2022) defense of virtual worlds as genuine reality. Every historical age is defined by a primary existential friction in relation to its technology. Where the Industrial Age threatened the ecological stability of our planet, and the Information Age threatened to fragment, capture, hold, and control our attention, the Synthetic Age presents a fundamental crisis of discernment. Simulation technologies emulate nature and cognition and are already becoming completely indistinguishable from the nature and cognition they simulate, and this will only increase in prevalence. I suspect that this age will throw both rationality and empiricism into crisis, not simply on account of simulation technology used for disinformation, but because the human capacity to simulate and synthesize technological artifacts indistinguishable from what we consider real will upheave traditional methods of knowing and doing, putting them into a larger context of evaluation. It is from this hypothesis that I suspect simulated reality theory, and variations on it, will become more normalized in this upcoming age as an acceptable belief.
AI-generated profiles are being created on social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook for corporate espionage and credential harvesting (Krebs, 2022), and to sway public opinion (U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 2019). Synthetic personas are gathering millions of followers on social media (Financial Times, 2024). The proliferation of deepfake and “undressing” technology has enabled the generation of non-consensual explicit imagery affecting both adults and children (BBC News, 2023; Chesney & Citron, 2019). Political stability is threatened by AI-generated video and audio designed to create false narratives of electoral interference (Milmo & Hern, 2023). This includes the use of AI-generated voices for robocalls, which have been deployed to discourage voter participation by impersonating political figures (The New York Times, 2024). These are just a small slice of what is happening, and say nothing about future technologies coming over the next century. One thing is certain for now: we have arrived at the “liar’s dividend,” a state in which the surge in simulated truths causes the public to dismiss objective reality as fraudulent (Chesney & Citron, 2019).
The archdisciplinary outcome thus far points to universal pattern laws of nature and cognition, scalar invariants that, regardless of which instantiative version of reality turns out to be true, will persist across them. So I am inclined to suppose that the archmodernist sensibility may exhibit a way of existing coherently among all possible realities through this synthetic age, operating across domains and scales regardless of their expressions, in a kind of superposition that assembles into shapes as needed, with a sensitivity to, and agency in, multi-fractal, multi-scalar singularity self-organization. Metamodern metacrisis interventions will not be replaced but will rather become a subtask informed by scalar invariant universals that hold through any version of reality.
4.4. Concluding Remarks
It is, of course, worth mentioning the Institute of Applied Metatheory’s flagship project, The New Story of Wholeness (n.d.), which is an attempt to voice scalar invariant truths that everyone can relate to, in a language that everyday people can understand, without requiring them to study unification metatheory for years to get a sense of what is going on.
Across these cases of archdisciplinary studies, there is a clear common convergence along similar notions, and a story is beginning to form: as we transition beyond the information age, the synthetic age confronts us with a fundamental crisis of discernment, where simulation technologies blur fact and fiction, fracturing sense-making across demographics about metacrisis dangers. Yet versions of reality are part of a larger complexification process, and we can understand it. Further, there are universal truths we can employ, universal truths that will remain true no matter which version of reality one holds, and no matter which version of reality turns out to be real. I’m inclined to believe archmodernists are right on time.
Archdisciplinarity is an inevitable outcome of individual and sociocultural evolutionary trajectories. Transdisciplinary attempts to solve the metacrisis often fail because they underestimate the difficulty of making global change, demanding a level of behavioral coordination that exceeds general capacities within individuals, groups, and social superstructures writ large, leading to failed projects and competition between rivalrous brands among unification metatheorists themselves. Archmodern sensibility is, however, being expressed wherever there is mutual exchange and support among transdisciplinarians, where scholars collaborate through deep cross-pollination among frameworks. The activities with which archmodernists concern themselves may be circumstantially characterized by our era and its challenges, though at present they seem aimed at mounting a coordinated strategy against our interconnected planetary threats and discernment challenges. I am optimistic, and I anticipate that archmodernism will express an alignment of our collective problem solving with the invariant universal laws that govern the systems we seek to change, reaching toward an extraordinarily fine-grained comprehension that turns the incoherence about the mechanisms of the hyper-object that is the anthroposphere, and all its hyperreality obfuscations, into sharp alethic clarity. Archdisciplinarity and archtheoretical frameworks, under any name, I anticipate, will provide the scholarly scaffolding needed to produce such solutions for both our information age and the incoming synthetic age’s challenges, and to steward ongoing planetary evolution.