Summary
Contents
Subject index
Reflexivity—the critical examination of how we see the world—is integral to good research practice. From this state-of-the-art, accessible tour of its history and contemporary relevance, readers will learn of its importance to social research and to society generally. The text introduces a host of influential thinkers and their key ideas on reflexivity, and incorporates examples from a range of disciplines and research settings. Drawing on the authors’ extensive experience of real research settings, this book: • Pinpoints the importance of reflexivity in social research • Demonstrates its relevance to everyday life • Firmly locates the concept in the history of ideas • Explores key questions about the bases of knowledge and understanding • Presents key thinkers, concepts and issues in easy-to-understand learning boxes The result is a book that provides students and researchers in the social sciences with the knowledge and understanding necessary not only to examine the role of reflexivity in contemporary life, but to apply it in their own research practice.
Thought and Knowledge in the History of Ideas
Thought and Knowledge in the History of Ideas
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice … to endure uncertainty is difficult. Dogmatism and scepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
Introduction
The search for certainty is one of the most enduring themes of humanity. The question of how we might know ourselves and the world we inhabit has driven a range of responses from the Greek philosophers to the scholars of the Enlightenment and on to the twenty-first-century thinkers of our age. The desire to understand what we ...
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