Practice and the Human Sciences, livre ebook

Argues that the technical model of practice has limited applicability for the practices of care (teaching, nursing, social work, and psychotherapy).

Argues that the technical model of practice has limited applicability for the practices of care (teaching, nursing, social work, and psychotherapy).

Teachers, nurses, psychotherapists, and other practitioners of care are under pressure to substitute specific, prescribed techniques in place of using their own judgment. Donald E. Polkinghorne assembles the case for the return to judgment-based practice for the professions that engage in direct person-to-person interaction with those they serve. Set in the larger context of the technification of society, Polkinghorne draws from Weber, Heidegger, Ihde, Bourdieu, de Certeau, and other philosophers to trace the advancing power of the technological worldview in Western culture and uses Aristotle, Dewey, and Gadamer to help make his case that we should be doing things very differently.

Preface

1. INTRODUCTION

The Technical-Judgment Practice of Controversy
Understanding Practice

2. TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNIFICATION

Techne
The Effect of Technology on Culture
Technology and Technical-Rational Practice
Technical-Rational Practice
Critique of the Technified Culture

3. PRACTICE AND CULTURE

Two-Term Explanations of Practice
Practice Theory
Summary

4. THE REALMS OF PRACTICE

Form and Flux
The Realms of Practice
The Practitioner
The Human Sciences and Practical Knowing

5. TECHNE AND PHRONESIS

The Fusion of Horizons
Techne (Science) versus Tuche (Luck)
Plato's Science of Living
Aristotle's Phronesis and Practical Action

6. EMBODIED REASONING

Epstein's Experiential Thinking
Lakoff and Johnson's Embodied Rationality
Gendlin's Experiencing
Damasio's Embodied-Enactive Model
Conclusion

7. REFLECTIVE UNDERSTANDING AND PRACTITIONER JUDGMENT

Practice and the Background
Reflective-Understanding Reasoning
Conclusion

8. A CASE STUDY: PSYCHOTHERAPY

The First Phase: 1890–1950
The Second Phase: 1950–1990
The Third Phase: 1990–the Present

References

Index