| The primary purpose of the study was the development of a tool to study an academic discipline. The study answers the questions: What are the boundaries of a discipline? What are its history, powers, content, limitations and structure? A secondary purpose of this dissertation is to describe and evaluate transpersonal psychology as a field of study. In a descriptive sense, it answers the questions: What are transpersonal psychology's methods of inquiry, history, valuative and affective stance, heritage of literature, specialized language, instructors, conceptual structures, community of scholars, traditions, and domain?;The primary result of this study was the tool, "The Criteria List of Ten Aspects of a Discipline." The secondary result was a thorough, systematic description of transpersonal psychology using "The Criteria List of the Ten Aspects of a Discipline" as the descriptive tool. Two variables were found to be mandatory and unique to an academic discipline, a syntactical structure in relationship to a conceptual structure. Transpersonal psychology currently does not maintain these variables, and met only 8 of the 24 criteria of the criteria list. Thus, it was found that transpersonal psychology was more like a religion, to be studied within the field, psychology of religion. Currently, transpersonal psychology is not an academic discipline.;Although much has been written about the academic disciplines, a systematic search of the literature of higher education, history of science, philosophy of education, and sociology of science revealed few measurements, if any, that could be used to evaluate or measure a discipline. Philosophers have speculated on the divisions of knowledge since Aristotle; however, no scientific measurement has currently been developed to examine scientifically a field of study. King & Brownell (1966) were found to have developed a broad definition of the disciplines which encompasses almost all of the observations of other scholars in the field. It was chosen as the major theory in the development of the tool, "The Criteria List of the Ten Aspects of a Discipline."... |
