The Wholeness of the World

The Introduction to the Wholeness of the World is The Inside-Out Encyclopedia.

It is a dialog explaining where this web site comes from, what ontological philosophy is, and how absolute truth is possible despite the skepticism and relativism about knowledge that currently prevails

The Whole Diagram is a map of the whole argument presented in the text pages and, by the way, a map of everything that reason can know. Each box in the diagram represents a specific argument, and the lines connecting the boxes indicate the logical relations among the arguments. Moving your mouse over a box will call up an appropriate label so that you can follow the whole argument from the diagrams alone. Clicking on a box will call up a more detailed diagram of that part of the whole argument (also with labels). And clicking on a box in the subdiagram will call up the relevant text.

The Linear Text is the whole argument spelled out in the standard way like a book.

Each chapter corresponds to a box in the Whole Diagram, and each section corresponds to a box in the sub-diagrams. Special blue boxes indicate discussions of the approach of traditional, epistemological philosophy.

If you have any comments or questions about these arguments or the contents of this website, please send them to pscribner@tWoW.net.

If you would like to receive an e-mail reporting any changes in this website, please send your e-mail address to webmaster@tWoW.net.

Instead of answers to frequently asked questions,
this section contains an alternative introduction to ontological philosophy, including a Précis of the entire argument of the Wholeness of the World and an even briefer Executive Summary.

There is also a copy of several discussions about issues in ontological philosophy that occurred in response to this website.

Clicking this link leads to a map of all the web pages in the tWoW.net site. From that site map, you can navigate to the pages on the site, though the intended way to navigate to specific sections are the diagrams and the navigation frame on each page.

You are welcome to copy parts of this web site for your own purposes. If you publish any of the original arguments contained here, please acknowledge their origin. All rights to any profits earned from the reproduction of pages on the tWoW.net web site or from other uses of the arguments contained in it are reserved to Phillip H. Scribner.

Phillip H. Scribner received his Ph. D. in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 1966, and for over a quarter century, he has earned his living as a philosophy professor at a university in Washington, D. C.

The arguments contained in this web site evolved during that period. The earliest theories were about the nature of society and reason with primitive attempts to solve the problem of mind. The project was expanded by extensive studies in neurophysiology, physics and biology, and these efforts culminated in the explanation of evolutionary change by reproductive causation and the map of the overall course of evolution. The goal, all along, was the whole argument contained on this web site, though it took various partial forms during the process. The main reason these arguments have not been published previously is that not all the parts required for the whole argument had been worked out until recently. The whole argument was assembled as the tWoW.net web site, using the medium of web pages, during 1998-99, and this argument is too long and detailed to be published as a single volume.