Constructive Postmodern Perspective on Self and Community From Atomism to Holism
| Author: | Edge, Hoyt | |
| Year: | 1994 | |
| Pages: | 192 | |
| ISBN: | 0-7734-9075-2 978-0-7734-9075-8 | |
| Price: | $159.95 + shipping | |
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Argues that a kind of thinking which this study calls "atomistic" has come to predominate in western culture, and describes four assumptions of modernism: atomism, foundationalism, dominionism, and "Mind as Reason". Traces the origins of these ideas and their implications, and then describes a transition from atomism to holism and the increasing emphasis on relational thinking in a number of areas, from politics to science and ethics.
Reviews
"He has written the book in an open, direct way, refreshingly free from jargon, which certainly will make it stimulating and rewarding for many outside the academy. Even so, I am sure that philosophers, as well as many others within the academy, will find much that is suggestive in this wide-ranging and fertile cultural study, which draws on inter-disciplinary material as much as it does on the philosophical tradition in making its arguments. . . . A great virtue of this book is to co-ordinate into a single balanced yet forceful argument a range of themes many of which have elsewhere found expression separately. Speaking as a philosopher, I know only too well that philosophers can sometimes fail to see the forest for the trees. Professor Edge's book has certainly helped me towards a better sense of the forest . . . . I have no doubt that this very readable and intelligent book will provide a similar service for others in different intellectual fields, while it also speaks to a yet wider audience, indeed to anyone interested in 'questions about the nature of self and its relation to community'." - Dr. Christopher Cordner