Knowing Reality is a guided introduction to metaphysics and epistemology. Each of the book’s twelve chapters contains extended excerpts from influential historical and contemporary philosophers, as well as a guided exposition of their views and their locations within the logical space of the issues at play. Topics are introduced through engaging thought experiments, with relevant philosophical puzzles sprinkled throughout. Complex issues are explained using down-to-earth examples, with illustrations provided to connect with readers and assist them in understanding the sophisticated concepts under discussion.

ON KNOWING REALITY is the first English translation with commentary of a crucial chapter of the Bodhisattvabhumi composed in Sanskrit in the late fourth century of the philosopher-sage Asanga founder of the yogacara school of Mahayana Buddhism.

The author addresses key scientific questions previously explained by rich mythologies, from the evolution of the first humans and the life cycle of stars to the principles of a rainbow and the origins of the universe.

How do we know something for sure? How do we decide what's true? In Finding Reality, author Dr. Edwin E. Olson shows how the best answers to these questions emerge from the interaction of four ways of knowing: Insights: what we imagine based on experience Authority: what others have taught us based on their beliefs Empiricism: what others have discovered based on evidence Praxis: what we learn through our senses Drawing from a range of human systems dynamics and scientific, psychological, philosophical, and religious sources, this guide discusses how each way of knowing provides a different approach to reality. When the four ways of knowing interact, creative outcomes for personal development and exploration of important issues come to fruition. Praise for Finding Reality "This is a wisdom book for twenty-first century seekers of truth and for organizations that need to change. ... Here is a book that identifies and honors multiple ways of knowing reality. Using down-to-earth examples, the reader is skillfully and expertly guided through ways of knowing which, when brought to bear on our personal and corporate life situations, results in creative emergence-the surprising solution that is born when intuition, facts, inherited wisdom, and practice converge. I highly recommend this book." - Bruce Sanguin, Author of Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos "Ed Olson has provided a practical and inspiring map to guide inquiry for personal growth and development in uncertain times." - Glenda H. Eoyang, Executive Director, Human Systems Dynamics Institute

A watershed event in the field of sociology, this text introduced “a major breakthrough in the sociology of knowledge and sociological theory generally” (George Simpson, American Sociological Review). In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people. When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.

Knowing is less about information and more about transformation; less about comprehension and more about being apprehended. This radical book develops the notion of covenant epistemology--an innovative, biblically compatible, holistic, embodied, life-shaping epistemological vision in which all knowing takes the shape of interpersonal, covenantal relationship. Rather than knowing in order to love, we love in order to know. Meek argues that all knowing is best understood as transformative encounter. Creatively blending insights from a diverse range of conversation partners--including Michael Polanyi, Michael D. Williams, Lesslie Newbigin, Parker Palmer, John Macmurray, Martin Buber, and James Loder--Meek offers critically needed "epistemological therapy" in response to the pervasive and damaging presumptions that those in Western culture continue to bring to efforts to know. The book's innovative approach--an unfolding journey of discovery-through-dialogue--itself subverts standard epistemological presumptions of timeless linearity. While it offers a sustained and sophisticated philosophical argument, Loving to Know's texts and textures interweave loosely to effect therapeutic epistemic transformation in the reader.