Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

And the same can be said, and has been said, for the
perspective born out of the Certainty of Uncertainty with the
dawning of Post-Modernity, where, as C. H. Knoblauch had
claimed, “the privileged deity is now neither the god of our
forefathers nor the god of the laboratory nor the god of
consciousness, but instead the god of history.” And so upon
this epistemological frontier, as it were, laid out between
these two extremes of perspective that are Certainty and
Uncertainty, how do you, and I, exist as a thinker, as a writer,
as a teacher? How do you exist amidst the pull of those two
opposite forces so that it fosters the “reflective thinking” of
John Dewey – the “[a]ctive, persistent, and careful
consideration of any belief or supported form of knowledge” that
comes from “overcoming the inertia that inclines one to accept
suggestions at their face value […] [and the] willingness to
endure a condition of mental unrest and disturbance” (13) - or
the “relativistic pragmatism” of William Perry - the
“perceiv[ing] [of] all knowledge and values (including
authority’s) as contextual and relativistic and subordinates
dualistic right-wrong functions to the status of a special case,
in context” (9-10), eventually culminating with “experience[ing]
the affirmation of identity among multiple responsibilities and
realiz[ing] Commitment as an ongoing, unfolding activity” (10)”
- these two concepts that most resemble, philosophically, that
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