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...

Methodology for the Human Sciences addresses the growing need for a comprehensive textbook that surveys the emerging body of literature on human science research and clearly describes procedures and methods for carrying out new research strategies. It provides an overview of developing methods, describes their commonalities and variations, and contains practical information on how to implement strategies in the field. In it, Donald Polkinghorne calls for a renewal of debate over which methods are appropriate for the study of human beings, proposing that the results of the extensive changes in...