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This chapter concludes the book in six main sections. The first section provides a summary of the transdisciplinary approach provided by the book and discusses how it relates to the contemporary situation of knowledge fragmentation, particularly within the "anthropological" domain (understood broadly, in Max Scheler"s sense). The second section articulates how the approach offers a view of human life as liminal in the sense of being constituted by boundaries which are then transcended (this is related to Simmel"s notion of life as transcendence). The third section makes explicit the paradoxical nature of this viewpoint, but summarizes the generative aspects of paradox. The fourth and largest section makes explicit a concept of ontological liminality which has informed the approach and sketches how Whitehead, Mead and Simmel each contribute to this through their rethinking of time. Drawing on the work of William Sewell, the fifth section illustrates how ontological liminality plays out in the anthropological example of the French Revolution. A final section draws together the threads by clarifying the ethos of transdisciplinary theorization informing the book.

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-27211-9_7

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