Now What? Developing Our Future: Understanding Our Place in the Unfolding Universe - Softcover

Goodman, Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820462330 ISBN 13: 9780820462332

Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, 2003

Synopsis

Where are we and where do we go from here? Exploring our current historical moment as offering unprecedented opportunities for transformation, this book is an invitation to a dialogue about our place in an evolving universe. The author examines the limits and possibilities of modern thinking and considers key concepts such as a metaphysics based on consciousness, the notion of our future as a common global one, and the reunion of fact and value. Our collaborative task is developed as a dynamic process involving the creative interplay between the deconstructive and constructive aspects of postmodernism and beyond.

About this title

About the Author

The Author: Anne Goodman is a peace educator, researcher, and practitioner working both in university and community settings. She is an associate of the Transformative Learning Centre of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and a member of the council of the Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University. For the year 2002/2003, she will serve as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Menno Simins college, University of Winnipeg. She is the author of «Transformative Learning and Cultures of Peace» in Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning (2002).

Review

«Anne Goodman’s brilliant work combines the best features of the deconstructive and constructive aspects of postmodernism. She is very convincing in her ability to create what Gadamer suggests as a fusion of horizons – that is, how the past, present, and future interact in dialogic ways. Goodman displays this breadth and depth of knowledge in a way that is as reader-friendly as possible. She skillfully demonstrates the importance of creating dialogue with readers so they can interpret their own text. Goodman set a Herculean task for herself to develop a model of education that would respond to the crisis of our time. The development of her model of education includes an important statement about the present misdirection of education and provides several features that form a cohesive statement of hope for education.»
(Joel Weiss, Professor, Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto)
«With courage and hard work, unafraid of contradiction, using every source she could find, disregarding academic and cultural boundaries and fads, Anne Goodman offers us tools for optimism and a rough map of our choices for the future. This is no detached, impersonal scholarship, but an intensely personal, moral, and demanding journey that we are invited to undertake with her.»
(David Adams, Former Director, Unit for the International Year
for the Culture of Peace, UNESCO; Former Professor of Psychology, Wesleyan University, Connecticut)
«Now What? Developing Our Future is a bold undertaking, given the scope of its inquiry. Eschewing feigned detachment and pretensions of a valuefree perspective, Anne Goodman invites the reader to share in her personal exploration of what she terms ‘mapmaking’. The result is a profound reflection on the construction of reality, drawing on an impressive array of disciplines and sources, that aims to recover aspects of reality not perceptible within the traditional scientific paradigm that still defines much of dominant contemporary consciousness. Goodman’s sensitivity and generosity of heart seep through these pages, which are imbued with the urgency of a millennial undertaking whose central purpose is to construct a lifesustaining worldview for our age.»
(Gary Warner, Director, Arts and Sciences Program, and Member of Council, Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario)
«With a lucid sequence of thought expressed in a flow of language that carries the mind of the reader along with a quiet ease, Anne Goodman adds considerably to my own understanding of our historical moment. I appreciate her important insight that we can only work our way into the future out of the realities of the present.»
(Father Thomas Berry, Founder and Former Director of the Riverdale Center of Religious Research in New York City; Former President of the American Teilhard Association; Eco-Theologian and Cultural Historian)
«This book is an invitation to serious conversation and exchange of ideas for which Anne Goodman, an experienced educator, has laid out an open and welcoming framework. I urge you to accept her invitation; as you go to listen and to participate, you will find yourself in excellent company; the author’s thoughtful guests will stimulate and inspire you and no one will put you down.»
(Ursula M. Franklin, University Professor Emerita and Senior Fellow, Massey College, University of Toronto)
«Anne Goodman’s book is a brilliant discussion of the holistic and highly dialectic worldview that lies in the deeper recesses of the collective unconscious. She draws on vast amounts of diverse literature as well as on her own rich experiences and signals from her inner self. This is also a very

Edition details

• Publisher: Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0820462330
• ISBN 13: 9780820462332
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 230