This book explores issues of modernism and postmodernism in relation to knowledge: methods of inquiry, operations of the mind, the role of values, conceptions of self, and the problematic of reason.

Among the distinguished contributors are Michael Arbib, Aaron Ben-Zeev, Helen Couclelis, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jane Flax, George E. Marcus, Donald McCloskey, Donald Schon, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, and Charles Taylor.