ABSTRACT

This closing chapter reflects on how one can escape from the inevitable problem of the "chinese boxes" (larger ones fitted sequentially around smaller ones ad infinitum), or otherwise said, the problem of infinite regress. An abbreviated answer, though one that may neither be comprehensible without elaboration nor possibly be considered true by most readers, is that the book itself answers both questions simultaneously. The book itself, plus a repetition of an earlier admonition that the theory sketched in it, must not be considered complete. As men are languaged beings, they cannot escape the perspectives linked with the epochs and societies or social worlds when and in which they happen to live. Ours is an immensely variable society. The strategy of transcedenpe which leads to grounded theory should free man from impulses to follow simple or easily assumed prescriptions, and widen his choice of alternative paths of action.