Narrative knowing and the human sciences /

This book is a timely follow-up to Methodology for the Human Sciences (1983). The author takes his cue from Merleau-Ponty's thesis that language is the lens by which we focus reality; he regards the study of narrative as the optics of humanity. Polkinghorne (California State, Fullerton) first recounts the effort of Dilthey and others to distinguish the historical from the natural sciences in terms of the former's use of narrative; these attempts presumed that narrative was artificially imposed on real events. The author criticizes this tendency, using Paul Ricoeur's work to show that narratives tell as much about the narrator as about the narrated events. In this way, a unified theory of narrative--encompassing history and literature--is possible, with methodological insights drawn from case-study psychology. The book's strength lies in the ease with which Polkinghorne deploys his encyclopedic learning, which culminates in a discussion of the practical applications of narrative research. The discussion suffers when he tries to conjure up "positivism" as an antagonist to narrative inquiry, underplaying the importance of language in behaviorism and overplaying the sense of humanism in structuralism. Recommended as the most accessible guide to the hottest area in the humanities today. S. Fuller University of Colorado at Boulder