The Human Experience: Description, Explanation, and Judgment

Front Cover
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007 - Psychology - 293 pages
The Human Experience is a comprehensive text that examines, analyzes and applies theories of humans, environments and human-environment interaction to professional thinking and action. Through the lens of their original theory, Explanatory Legitimacy, the authors differentiate descriptive from explanatory theories, and analyze the purposive, epistemological, and value base of theory in six major theoretical domains: longitudinal theories or those concerned with passages over time, environmental theories or those concerned with sets of conditions both interior and exterior to the body, categorical theories or those that parse populations into groups, systems theories which look at relationships among parts of wholes, and contemporary and emerging theories that advance pluralism as desirable and relevant to the 21st century. The authors highlight the previously unexamined values and assumptions that underlie theory, its generation and its use in professional practice and challenge the reader to answer two questions throughout the book: how do we know, and what do we do with our knowledge? Significant critical emphasis is devoted to diversity of humans and environments and the value-perimeter in which professionals create, analyze and use theory for decisions and activity.
 

Contents

V
3
VI
15
VII
25
VIII
41
IX
53
X
65
XI
67
XII
73
XIX
175
XX
187
XXI
201
XXIII
203
XXIV
213
XXV
223
XXVI
235
XXVII
245

XIII
85
XIV
105
XV
125
XVI
139
XVII
147
XVIII
163
XXVIII
255
XXIX
263
XXX
267
XXXI
281
XXXII
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information