TRANSCENDENCE

Transcendence, curiously, was never more scientifically unfashionable than today, and never more culturally fashionable. Everyone but the scientists, it seems, wants to ""transcend"" the tight little rational world of Appollonian man, to experience the a-rational. This collection of essays explains this phenomenon, to a certain extent, by elucidation of and speculation on the concept of Transcendence, the psychological and cognitive expansion of human consciousness, the elements of a workable contemporary Transcendence, the socially structural function of transcendental myths, the transcendence beliefs of Judaism and Christianity, and the relationship between man's creative freedom and the concept of Transcendence. Despite the varying approaches of the several authors (Michael Murphy, Sam Keen, Harvey Cox, Donald Schon, Emil Flackenheim and Charles Hartshorne, among others), there is sufficient conceptual unity to impose editorial coherence upon the collection. All the essays, for example, regard Transcendence as a reality inseparable from the historicalcosmic process, and they all emphasize the necessity of verifying the Transcendent pragmatically as well as formally. The book therefore, despite the eclectic nature of its audience, should be of some interest to students of sociology, philosophy, and theology.