This remarkable book undertakes the daunting task of exploring the interaction and reciprocity between institutional, interpersonal, and subjective means for imposing meaning and structure upon the chaos of life. Its power comes as much from its uncanny skill at raising neglected questions as from its thoughtful and courageous approach to reformulating familiar ones. It is genuinely and richly interdisciplinary in emphasis.

Jerome Bruner Ι New York University

In 13 ecstatically composed essays, the author brings to life, in a spiral of historical reflections, his take on what we might understand by the self. Erudite, powerful, and rich in metaphor, these essays, formulated over a life time of scholarship, reach for a world-view that ranges from indefiniteness to form, in the quest to grasp in a general system of thought intention and action, experience and communication, and motivation and decision. Abiding it his concern with understanding and explanation, these essays are blatantly philosophical as the author plunges the depth of contemporary thought in the human and cultural sciences, of course, as well as in the formal disciplines that would bring order to the manifestation of life. Magnificent in breadth of scholarship, this collection of essays constitutes a standard of “things to think about” for years to come; it is a treasure and a joy to read.

Leendert Mos Ι Professor of Psychology and Linguistics
University of Alberta Ι Edmonton, Alberta, Canada