Shrewsbury, United Kingdom

Counselling Theory and Practice

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: economy and administration
University website: www.shrewsbury.ac.uk
Foundation Degree (FD)
Theory
A theory is a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking, or the results of such thinking. Depending on the context, the results might, for example, include generalized explanations of how nature works. The word has its roots in ancient Greek, but in modern use it has taken on several related meanings.
Theory
How can we possibly test, or improve upon the truth of a theory if it is built in such a manner then any conceivable event can be described, and explained, in terms of its principles? The only way of investigating such all-embracing principles would be to compare them with a different set of equally all embracing principles- but this procedure has been excluded from the very beginning.
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (1975) pp. 44-45
Theory
Practical life is not necessarily directed toward other people, as some think; and it is not the case that practical thoughts are only those which result from action for the sake of what ensues. On the contrary, much more practical are those mental activities and reflections which have their goal in themselves and take place for their own sake.
Aristotle, Politics, VII, 3, 8, 1325b16-20
Theory
I firmly believe people have hitherto been a great deal too much taken up about doctrine and far too little about practice. The word doctrine, as used in the Bible, means teaching of duty, not theory. I preached a sermon about this. We are far too anxious to be definite and to have finished, well-polished, sharp-edged systems — forgetting that the more perfect a theory about the infinite, the surer it is to be wrong, the more impossible it is to be right.
George MacDonald, in a letter to his father, quoted in George MacDonald and His Wife (1924) by Greville MacDonald
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