The End of Knowing

For centuries, knowledge has been thought to be the key to human progress of all kinds and has dominated Western culture. But what if knowing has now become an impediment to further human development? This volume is concerned with the practical consideration of how to reconstruct our world when modernist ideas have been refuted and many social problems appear insoluble. Newman and Holzman suggest that we should give up knowing in favour of "performed activity". They show how to reject the knowing paradigm in practice and present the many positive implications this has for social and educational policy. Since the 1970s, a postmodern critique of the modern conception of knowing and its institutionalized practice has emerged. To many, this is a dangerous threat to the tradition of liberal education, strengthened by recent prestigious voices from the physical and natural sciences. This text challenges even the postmodernists themselves, rejecting the reform of knowing for a totally new performatory form of life.