Donald E. Polkinghorne – författare

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 the philosophy of science since 1960 call for a reexamination of the original issues of this debate.The book traces the history of the deliberations from Mill and Dilthey to Hempel and logical positivism, examines recently developed systems of inquiry and their importance for the human sciences, and relates these systems to the practical problems of doing research on topics related to human experience. It discusses historical realism, systems and structures, phenomenology and hermeneutics, action theory, and the implications recent systems have for a revised human science methodology.

This book expands the concept of the nature of science and provides a practical research alternative for those who work with people and organizations.Using literary criticism, philosophy, and history, as well as recent developments in the cognitive and social sciences, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences shows how to use research information organized by the narrative form-such information as clinical life histories, organizational case studies, biographic material, corporate cultural designs, and literary products. The relationship between the narrative format and classical and statistical and experimental designs is clarified and made explicit. Suggestions for doing research are given as well as criteria for judging the accuracy and quality of narrative research results.

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.