The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out

by Leonard Peikoff

Integration is the process by which people interrelate concrete data to make a connected whole, data such as individual facts, values, laws, the events in a novel, the provisions of the Constitution and so on. In all these contexts and more, The DIM Hypothesis identifies three different methods of integration and their consequences for the West’s past – and for America’s future.

One type of mindset works to integrate data by rational means (which Peikoff calls “Integration,” or for short “I”). Another seeks to integrate by non-rational means (“Misintegration,” or “M”). A third opposes integration of any kind (“Disintegration,” or “D”). Thus the acronym DIM. (One example of I is science; of M, religion; of D, non objective art.)

The purpose of the book is to demonstrate the role of these three methods in shaping Western culture and history, and their implications for America’s future.

In Part I, which deals with epistemology, Peikoff explains what integration is, why it is the most crucial aspect of a thought process, why there are only three possible interpretations of it, and which philosopher is the source of each.

In Part II, which deals with culture, the DIM approach is applied to four different and culturally representative fields. The analysis shows that, within the modern era, each of the main trends within these fields is an expression and consequence of the DIM category dominant at the time. The fields are literature, physics, education, and politics.

In Parts III and IV, which deal with history and prediction, the book uses the DIM approach to analyze the progression of Western cultures from Greece, Rome, and the medievals to the present. By surveying the status of the four fields in each culture, Peikoff is able to identify each society’s ruling method of integration; he can thus discover the logic of these societies’ succession across the centuries. Extrapolating from the historical pattern he has identified, Peikoff concludes by predicting, as he sees it, the most likely future in the twenty-first century of the United States.

Click here for history books recommended by Objectivist historian Steve Jolivette.

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