Practice and the Human Sciences

The Case for a Judgment-Based Practice of Care

Donald E. Polkinghorne

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780791462003, 9780791461990
• eBook ISBN: 9780791484548
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• PRACTICE AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Technology and Technification
• 3. Practice and Culture
• 4. The Realms of Practice
• 5. Techne and Phronesis
• 6. Embodied Reasoning
• 7. Reflective Understanding and Practitioner Judgment
• 8. A Case Study: Psychotherapy
• REFERENCES
• INDEX