ABSTRACT. Science as a mode of knowing reality may contain in itself, in its very foundation, forms and purposes, the germs of mankind’s estrangement from itself. This was Heidegger’s warning. The present paper explores the consequences of such a state of affairs. One conclusion emerges: one way out of this dilemma is the path of holonic integration of all psychic powers extant in a human being: sensation, emotion, reason, imagination. If any of these be left out, the collapse into dissolution (what Heidegger calls abandonment) is sure to ensue. If any sound form of intellectual existence is to be preserved, then any dissolution must be met with a proportional integration. Entropy (the measure of disorder/dissolution of information) must meet negentropy (the measure of order/integration of information). The counter-movement of integration failing to appear, certain extinction is to unmistakeably follow. In the end, it is all a matter of will. The crucial fact in this equation seems to be that the two vectors, of dissolution and integration, of entropy and negentropy, must be held in dynamic balance. In the specific case of man’s psyche, this equilibrium is not simply binary, but quaternary: sensation, emotion, reason, and imagination, or what William Blake called the four Zoas, must cooperate in the eternal battle between the forces of dissolution/ entropy and those of integration/negentropy, these latter two forming also the two main poles of what we call the Pendulum of History, i.e. the perpetual swing, in history, between various polar forms of representation of reality, the clearest polarity in this sense being that constituted by the binary opposition between idealism/ spiritualism versus materialism (spirit versus matter). pp. 3–12

Keywords: Platonic Big Three; progress and regress; Pendulum of History; dissolution; science; abandonment; Jungian Big Four / four Zoas; reason; emotion; sensation; imagination; integration