Four Ways of Knowing — Part 1: An Epistemological Map
- Thilo Weber
- vor 7 Stunden
- 17 Min. Lesezeit
This article is Part 1 of my two articles on the Four Ways of Knowing. I present a quaternary epistemological framework and introduce each quadrant according to examples from Western and Eastern traditions and paradigmatic Western thinkers. In Part 2, I use the developed map to analyze specific systems and traditions and compare them with each other — concluding with a critique of modernity’s imbalanced understanding of knowledge as a primarily one-sided Bottom-Right discipline operating through Empiric Analysis — particularly ignoring the Top-Left quadrant of Symbolic Realization.
Introduction: From Ternary to Quaternary
In a previous article, I created a triangular diagram to illustrate how modern science developed out of Christianity and alchemy. I was pleased with the clarity conveyed by this diagram and hoped to gain even more clarity by extending it and incorporating even more traditions. My goal is to create a complete and structurally stable map of knowledge that can serve a variety of purposes: (1) bringing some order into my explorations of different knowledge traditions and practices; (2) comparing different knowledge traditions and explaining their historical evolution; (3) creating awareness of imbalances in both, cultural and personal, understanding of knowledge; (4) gaining a more complete understanding of knowledge in general; and (5), last but not least, fostering joy and awe for the vast possibilities to explore on a life-long learning journey.
My initial approach to extending the triangular diagram was to expand the three initial poles — nature, reason, and spirit — by relating them to similar triplets, such as body, mind, and soul, or the Indian guṇas: tamas, rajas, and sattva. In particular, the analogy with the three guṇas seemed promising, as they are understood as fundamental qualities underlying all existence, whether matter, mind, or psyche (yet another triplet). However, these analogies also revealed the first problem. While they did broaden the scope of the diagram in a productive way, they simultaneously introduced correspondences between pole labels that appeared plausible from one perspective but broke down from others. For example, in Indian systems, both nature and mind consist of all three guṇas. Thus, although defensible under certain assumptions, it feels wrong to strictly equate nature with tamas and mind with rajas.
Over time, this made it clear to me that the problem was not one of choosing better labels, but of the model itself. I realized that different pole labels constitute ontologies: they express categories of what the world consists of according to different systems of thought. While drawing analogies between such ontologies can certainly be fruitful, these analogies are never exact. Each one opens a new discussion about the conditions under which it holds and where it breaks down. Yet the diagram should help structure such discussions, rather than depend on them to justify its own terminology. I realized that a model based on ontological categories would inevitably suffer from this fundamental problem. What I needed instead was an epistemological model — a model that describes processes of knowing without making claims about the ontological qualities of the world.
In parallel, I began populating the triangular model with knowledge traditions I am particularly interested in and have some familiarity with, such as Western philosophy, Haṭha Yoga, Tantra, Patañjali’s Yoga, and Advaita Vedānta. Western philosophy and Advaita seemed to fit naturally into the “contemplation” intersection alongside Christianity, while Tantra appeared to align well with alchemy. However, I encountered particular difficulty in placing Haṭha Yoga and Patañjali’s Yoga.
In addition to the problem of ontological pole labels, the triangular structure of the model emerged as a second issue. It showed itself also in me having a hard time to decide if the “reason” circle should visually stay above, next to “spirit,” or below, along with “nature.” Over time, it became clear that a quaternary diagram with two orthogonal axes provides a more natural fit for an epistemological categorization of knowledge traditions. The remainder of this article therefore proceeds with introducing a quaternary epistemological map that aims to avoid the encountered limitations and testing its structural stability by applying it for comparison and analysis of different traditions.
The Map
The quaternary epistemological map that proved to be structurally robust under my stress tests so far consists of two axes defined by opposing poles: Universal vs. Experiential (vertical) and Participation vs. Distance (horizontal).
The vertical axis distinguishes the primary domain or orientation of knowledge: whether it is grounded in manifest experiential phenomena (Experiential) or oriented toward universal structures and principles that cannot be directly experienced, but are apprehended through contemplative reflection or symbolic understanding (Universal).
The horizontal axis distinguishes the relation of the knower to what is known: either as a reflective and differentiating observer (Distance) or as an engaged participant who is itself a part of the process of knowing (Participation).
Combining the two axes results in four quadrants, each described by the intersection of two of the poles:
Experiential × Distance: Empiric Analysis (Bottom-Right)
Experiential × Participation: Embodied Transformation (Bottom-Left)
Universal × Participation: Symbolic Realization (Top-Left)
Universal × Distance: Metaphysical Contemplation (Top-Right)
For the purpose of convincingly illustrating and verifying the map, I have selected three paradigmatic examples for each quadrant: one Western tradition, one Eastern (respectively Indian) tradition, and one representative European thinker. In the next four sections, I am going to introduce each quadrant with the help of these examples.
Bottom-Right: Empiric Analysis
The Bottom-Right quadrant is combines the Experiential and Distance poles and is called Empiric Analysis. The paradigmatic example of a Western tradition here is modern science. Hannah Arendt compared its distant stance toward the world with the discovery of the Archimedean point, the fixed point from which Archimedes imagined he could apply a lever to move the world:
“Without actually standing where Archimedes wished to stand …, still bound to the earth through the human condition, we have found a way to act on the earth … as though we disposed of it from outside, from the Archimedean point. […] All laws of the new astrophysical science are formulated from the Archimedean point ….” – Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958), pp. 262–263
The more distant its standpoint, the greater becomes science’s power. Its second hallmark is its empirical grounding. In a previous article, I characterized science as “reason grounded in facts” and referred to modern science as data science. Science proceeds through systematic observation, measurement, and the accumulation of data — data is both its starting point and its result. It is worth noting that “science” did not always refer to this empirical, data-oriented form: Christianity and alchemy also described their practices as scientia, and yoga is often referred to as a science in India.
A more surprising example in the Bottom-Right quadrant is classical yoga, by which I mean the yoga structured around Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtras, sometimes referred to as Rāja Yoga. One might ask whether there exists any analytical-empirical tradition in India comparable to modern Western science. While the historical trajectories differ significantly, Patañjali’s yoga shows striking epistemological similarities. It adopts a stance of observation and disciplined control toward nature — here primarily mental nature — and offers detailed analyses of mental phenomena and their structures.
One could object that the ultimate goal of Patañjali’s yoga is not empirical analysis but transcendence. However, this model categorizes traditions according to their epistemological mode rather than their final soteriological aim. In many Eastern traditions, epistemological practices function as upāya — provisional means toward a unifying “higher knowledge” that transcends explicit epistemological forms of knowing. In contrast, Western traditions often treat epistemological knowledge as an end in itself. My placement of Patañjali’s yoga in the Bottom-Right quadrant therefore refers to its core method: citta vṛtti nirodhaḥ — cessation of the manifest mental fluctuations through observation, differentiation, and regulation. As Prof. Edwin Bryant remarked, the unique contribution of Patañjali is to make the primarily intelligible structuring of the Universal upanishadic wisdom (Vedānta) Experiential, and thereby accessible as empirical knowledge.
As a paradigmatic European Bottom-Right thinker, I choose Isaac Newton. Newton is an intriguing case, as while he considered himself an alchemist and spiritual Arian who understood force as an inherent quality of matter, his mathematically precise laws established a mode of knowing that models nature from a distant, non-participatory standpoint (see for example this interesting video). As for example John Maynard Keynes wrote:
“Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.” – John Maynard Keynes, Newton, the Man (1946)
Thus, Newton marks the historical pivot where alchemy’s participatory engagement gives way to a worldview in which force and energy become abstract variables within a formal language, used strictly to objectively describe and predict phenomena.
Bottom-Left: Embodied Transformation
The Bottom-Left quadrant combines the Experiential and Participation poles and is called Embodied Transformation. Knowledge is still experiential because it operates within manifest phenomena, but participatory because understanding arises through active interaction rather than detached explanation. Its aim is transformation through participation rather than analysis trough decomposition into parts.
A paradigmatic European example is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, particularly in his critique of Isaac Newton’s theory of color.
In his prism experiment (around 1665), Newton decomposed white light into a spectrum and concluded that colors correspond to constituent frequencies already contained within the light. His model explains color by analyzing light into its constituent parts.
Goethe, working more than a century later, actively resisted the prevailing distance-oriented knowledge approach of his times. He approached the phenomenon color differently. Rather than isolating a beam of light in a darkened room, he investigated color as it appears within lived perception. In one of many experiments, looking through a prism, he observed that colors arise at the boundaries of light and dark, and vary depending on the viewed image as well as the distance to the prism. In his conclusion, color was not a hidden structure of light but a phenomenon emerging through the interaction of opposites.
Goethe’s method was to stay strictly true to perception; he categorically rejected any abstract explanatory reduction:
“The human being himself, to the extent that he makes sound use of his senses, is the most exact physical apparatus that can exist.” – Goethe, The experiment as mediator between subject and object (1772)
While modern science treats darkness as mere absence of light, Goethe conceived light and dark as polar forces whose dynamic interaction creates color. Distance-oriented approaches seek explanation through composition. Participation-oriented approaches understand phenomena through polarity and interaction. Newton’s theory is compositional; Goethe’s is polar.
The Bottom-Left quadrant thus privileges dynamic tension over structural analysis, lived engagement over abstract decomposition.
A structurally similar mode appears in Haṭha yoga, my Eastern exemplar of the Experiential x Participation orientation. Ha and tha symbolize solar and lunar principles — or vital energy and consciousness. These are not treated as abstract metaphysical categories but as experiential polarities to be balanced and integrated through practice. Knowledge here unfolds through disciplined Participation in one’s own embodied processes.
Accordingly, Embodied Transformation cannot be forced by external explanation. The Haṭha Yoga Pradipika emphasizes the secrecy of practice:
“Hatha yoga is the greatest secret of the yogis who wish to attain perfection (siddhi). Indeed, to be fruitful, it must be kept secret; revealed it becomes powerless.” – Maharishi Svatmarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika, v.11
This ambivalence toward explanation marks a key difference from the Bottom-Right quadrant. In the Bottom-Left quadrant, one has to fully immerse oneself into experience and hold the tension of its oppositional nature. Premature analysis or display of results can interrupt or “collapse” the transformative process. The symbol of the Bottom-Left quadrant is a tree. A tree doesn’t grow by explaining the concept of growth or by communicating his vision of a fruit, but by staying one with the process — one with the Tao. By trusting oneself fully to the process, the fruits will grow inevitably. But straining for a particular result hardens or blocks the process and hence will bear no fruits.
In symmetric contrast to Bottom-Right, it is the East that offers a strong lineage of such Experiential x Participation traditions, while in the West comparable practices are less well known. One important example is however medieval alchemy.
Alchemy, the precursor of modern chemistry, sought the transmutation of matter but understood its work as inseparable from the transformation of the practitioner. It called itself both science and art. Through the correspondence of microcosm and macrocosm, the alchemist participated actively in the processes and experiments in his laboratory.
Significantly, both Newton and Goethe considered themselves alchemists. New discoveries occur when one fully participates in the process of ones experience. It this sense, all true discoverers can said to be alchemists at heart.
Another parallel between alchemy and Eastern traditions, such as Haṭha yoga and Tantra, is their double face nature: like Haṭha yoga is an experiential practice that emerged from the symbolic-philosophical system of Tantra, so alchemy worked both in a material-experiential and in a symbolic-philosophical dimension. The symbolic-philosophical dimension will be the topic of the next section on the Top-Left quadrant, where Participation meets the Universal.
Top-Left: Symbolic Realization
The Top-Left quadrant combines the Experiential and Participation poles and is called Symbolic Realization. While Bottom-Left concerns embodied and manifest processes of transformation, Top-Left concerns the symbolic realization of deeper patterns of meaning that underlie and orient such processes. In Top-Left, transformation occurs through participatory assimilation of symbols that mediate psychic or religious reality rather than through direct interaction with phenomenal experience.
The processes addressed in Top-Left are not immediately accessible to everyday consciousness; Christianity speaks of the soul, psychology of the psyche. They become intelligible through symbols charged with affections and meaning. These symbols are not mere representations but mediating forms that both reveal and guide integration. Knowledge in this quadrant is still participatory, since these symbols can only be known by assimilation through ones own experience. Once assimilated, they become sources of genuine meaning.
Both Top-Left and Bottom-Left frequently occur as complementary practices within the same traditions — such as laboratorial and philosophical alchemy, or Haṭha and Kriya yoga and symbolic rituals and philosophy within Tantra. The connection between Bottom-Left and Top-Left is that knowledge unfolds through polarity — whether in the perceived interplay of light and darkness or pranic energies in Bottom-Left, or in the symbolic oppositions of sol and luna, mercury and sulfur, and so on in Top-Left — revealing polarity as the structural principle of participatory knowing on both manifest-experiential and psychic–religious levels.
I recognize that this quadrant is the most difficult one for me to find proper language for — partly due to my comparatively recent engagement with these topics, partly due to the general lack of shared language for symbolic knowledge in modern Western culture.
An accessible framework for me has been the psychological perspective of Carl Gustav Jung, an important modern Western pioneer of this mode of understanding. Jung interpreted religious and mythological symbols as expressions of psychic processes of transformation. Through extensive comparative study of texts and traditions, he sought to show that symbols are not arbitrary inventions but structured expressions of real transformative dynamics within the psyche.
For example, he described the symbols of the Catholic Christian Mass, philosophical alchemy, and Buddhist Tantra all as instantiations of what he called the individuation process — the transformation and integration of the lower self (Ego) into the true Self.
In order to explore such parallels, I created the comparative table below with the assistance of AI (ChatGPT and Gemini), comparing the symbolisms of Tantra (Kashmiri Śaivism tradition), alchemy, the Christian Mass, and Jung’s individuation process.
1. Tantra (Kashmiri Śaivism): The Arc of RecognitionThe Tantric arc begins with the Absolute (Paramaśiva) projecting itself into the world through vibration (Spanda). Transformation is not about becoming something else, but about stripping away the veils of limitation (Mala) and “recognizing” (Pratyabhijñā) one’s true nature as the union of Awareness and Power. The arc concludes with the Jivanmukti, one who is liberated while still in the body, seeing the entire world as the play of their own consciousness.
2. Alchemy: The Arc of TransmutationThe Alchemical arc follows the physical and metaphysical refinement of “base” matter. It begins with the chaos of the Prima Materia, undergoes a painful “blackening” (Nigredo) and “death” of the old form (Mortificatio), and culminates in the Coniunctio of opposites. The result is the Lapis, which possesses the power of Multiplicatio — the ability to transmute and “tint” everything it touches, representing the spiritualization of the material world.
3. The Christian Mass: The Arc of IncarnationThe Liturgical arc moves from the hiddenness of God to the “Real Presence” of the Divine in the physical elements. It is a communal journey of purification (Confiteor), hearing the Word, and the sacrificial breaking of the bread (Fraction). By consuming the Divine, the congregation becomes the “Body of Christ.” The arc ends with Ite, missa est, a command to carry that divine presence out of the temple and into the suffering of the world.
4. Jungian Individuation: The Arc of WholenessThe Jungian arc is the psychological journey from an unconscious state of “oneness” (Unus Mundus) to a conscious realization of the Self. It requires facing the Shadow, sacrificing the Ego’s claim to be the center of the personality, and establishing a stable Ego-Self axis. The final stage is not an escape from the world, but a return to it, where the individual lives out their unique “totality” in a way that contributes to the collective human experience.
The table does not claim identity between traditions. Rather, it suggests structural analogies of resembling arcs of transformation expressed through different symbolic languages. Such comparison follows a method similar to Jung’s own — using analytical reflection to illuminate recurring symbolic patterns without collapsing their particular meanings.
AI introduces new possibilities for conducting this kind of comparative analysis. It can assist in identifying symbolic correspondences and structural parallels based on Bottom-Right-type analytical work. Such analysis can help a Bottom-Right-dominated Western mind like mine to wonder if there might be more to Top-Left traditions than “nothing but” metaphorical stories — and if it succeeds in making you wonder that is already a lot. For example, the arcs of alchemy and the Mass generated with AI-assistance show how alchemy is concerned with the spiritualization of matter and Christianity is concerned with the incarnation (or materialization) of divine spirit — they form surprisingly complementary movements.
However, just as Jung’s textual comparisons did not replace the lived process of individuation, AI-assisted comparison cannot transmit Top-Left knowledge. Symbolic Realization requires participatory assimilation. The deeper meaning of symbols becomes real only through engagement in the transformative processes they mediate.
Thus, in the Top-Left quadrant, knowledge is neither abstract metaphysics (Top-Right) nor an embodied experience (Bottom-Left). It is the participatory realization of transcendental structures of meaning through symbols — a mode of knowing that integrates psyche, ritual, and worldview into lived coherence.
Top-Right: Metaphysical Contemplation
The Top-Right (Top-Right) quadrant combines the Universal and Distance poles and is called Metaphysical Contemplation. It concerns the reflection of Universal, metaphysical patterns in human consciousness. I speak deliberately of human consciousness, since this is the only quadrant for which to date there is no known non-human intelligence capable of such Distant reflection of Universal patterns. Contemplation can be described as the practice or process through which this reflection takes place.
As a paradigmatic Western thinker for the Top-Right quadrant I choose Alfred North Whitehead. He is an interesting example for two reasons. Firstly, his best known reference to Western philosophy as all being “footnotes to Plato”:
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” — Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, Free Press, 1978, p. 39.
This perfectly describes what I mean by canonical Western philosophy as the exemplary Western tradition for this quadrant as “all philosophy that can be viewed as a footnote to Plato.” A great overview over the Western philosophy tradition leading from Plato to Whiteheads Process and Reality can for example be found in the following interview with Matthew Segall.
The canonical tradition does however not include the second lineage of Western philosophy often referred to as alchemical philosophy, natural philosophy, or Hermetic philosophy — which in the same vein could be described as being footnotes to the legendary figure of Hermes Trismegistus.
The second case for Whitehead is his critique of modernity’s downfall from the glorious and bright Top-Right quadrant into the pragmatic reality of Bottom-Right, effected by what he identified as a misplaced concreteness attributed to results and theories of science:
“The enormous success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand matter with its simple location in space and time, and on the other hand mind, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact. Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated in a complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists, who accept matter and mind as on equal basis, and the two varieties of monists, those who put mind inside matter, and those who put matter inside mind. But this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the inherent confusion introduced by the ascription of misplaced concreteness to the scientific scheme of the seventeenth century.” — A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
Next to Goethe — who was resisting modernity from a stand point of Bottom-Left embodied Participation — and Jung — who identified modernity’s Top-Left mythological-symbolic shadow — Whitehead hence completes the group of critics from a Top-Right perspective which was the last quadrant to lose its justification for existence to modernity’s Bottom-Right pragmatism. But these pioneers were all more than mere critics. What unites them even with the fourth Bottom-Right pioneer, Newton, was that they were all striving at integrating the new scientific paradigm into a more complete spiritual and epistemological map.
In this perspective, Whitehead’s Process Philosophy can be understood as an attempt to restore metaphysics by integrating the experiential and relational character of reality into a Universal conceptual framework. Rejecting the bifurcation of nature — the modern separation between inert matter and subjective mind — Whitehead proposed that the fundamental units of reality are rather momentary events of becoming, which he called actual occasions, rather than static substances. Each such occasion comes into being through prehension of the world and occasions around it — Whitehead’s term for the basic process by which an entity “takes account of” or incorporates aspects of other entities into its own formation.
According to Whitehead, mind can be described as the process that interweaves the infinite potential of the future into the already actualized occasions of the physical past. Hence, mind and physical reality grow together in a unifying process of experience, to which Whitehead refers to as concrescence: “the many become one, and are increased by one,” as one of his fundamental principles runs.
Through his metaphysics, Whitehead sought to re-integrate the contemplative tradition of philosophy with the experiential character of the world disclosed by modern science, showing that the Universal structures studied by metaphysics are expressions of the dynamic processes through which reality continually comes into being — particularly involved in the future-directed potential inherent in every single moment experience.
This integrative aspect of Whitehead’s Process Philosophy relates also to my example of an Eastern tradition for the Top-Right quadrant: Advaita Vedānta. Unlike canonical Western philosophy, Advaita sought to reveal the structure of Universal reality through a meticulous inquiry into human experience.
Advaita begins with the fundamental insight that the ultimate ground of all existence is Brahman, the non-dual absolute. However, this claim is not intended as a merely speculative doctrine but as a pointer toward direct recognition. Through contemplative practices of self-inquiry and constant discrimination (viveka) between the real and the transient, the disciple works towards the culmination of realization of “Tat Tvam Asi” (“That [Brahman] Thou Art”) until not the least amount of doubt remains. A great introduction into Advaita can be found in the many videos on Youtube by Swami Sarvapriyananda.
Mapped into my model, Advaita Vedānta can therefore be understood as integrating both the Experiential and Participatory dimensions into Top-Right metaphysical contemplation: the universal metaphysical principle is approached through philosophical reflection, yet its truth becomes fully evident only through the transformation of understanding in which the knower recognizes their deepest level of consciousness — Atman — to be identical with absolute (Universal) existence — Brahman.
Conclusion
With this, we arrive at a full circle of introducing each epistemological quadrant. Through the illustrations of each mode of knowing through diverse examples from Western and Eastern traditions, I arrived at a solid feeling that my proposed map addresses a real structure of the territory of epistemology.
In the second article, I will apply the map to a series of comparative and critical studies, exploring how different theories and traditions combine these modes of knowledge and how modern culture has come to heavily privilege the Bottom-Right quadrant of Empiric Analysis while largely ignoring symbolic and participatory forms of knowing.
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