paradigm. The totality paradigm frameworks and
theories are more closely aligned with the medical
model tradition. Nurses living the beliefs of this
paradigm are concerned with participation of per-
sons in health-care decisions but have specific
regimes and goals to bring about change for the
people they serve. Nurses living the simultaneity
paradigm beliefs hold people’s perspectives of their
health situations and their desires to be primary.
Nurses focus on knowing participation (Rogers,
1992) and bearing witness, as persons in their pres-
ence choose ways of changing health patterns
(Parse, 1981, 1987, 1992, 1995, 1997a, 1998a).
Human Becoming, a school of thought named such
because it encompasses on ontology, epistemology,
and methodologies, emanates from the simultane-
ity paradigm (Parse, 1997c).
A META-PERSPECTIVE OF PARSE’S HUMAN
BECOMING SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
Parse’s (1981) original work was named Man-
Living-Health: A Theory of Nursing. When the term
“mankind” was replaced with “male gender” in the
dictionary definition of “man,” the name of the
theory was changed to “human becoming” (Parse,
1992). No aspect of the principles changed. With
the 1998 publication of The Human Becoming
School of Thought,Parse expanded the original
work to include descriptions of three research
methodologies and a unique practice methodology,
thus classifying the science of Human Becoming as
a school of thought (Parse, 1997c). As a school of
thought, the philosophical ideas provide nurses and
other health professionals with guides for their re-
search and practice.
Human Becoming is a basic human sciencethat
has cocreated human experiences as its central
Human Becoming is a basic human science
that has cocreated human experiences as
its central focus.focus. The ontology—that is, the assumptions and
principles—sets forth beliefs that are clearly differ-
ent from other nursing frameworks and theories.
Discipline-specific knowledge is articulated in
unique language specifying a position on the phe-
nomenon of concern for each discipline. The
Human Becoming language is unique to nursing.
The three Human Becoming principles contain
nine concepts written in verbal form with “ing”
endings to make clear the importance of the ongo-
ing process of change as basic to human-universe
emergence. The fundamental idea that humans are
unitary beings, as specified in the ontology, pre-
cludes any use of terms such as physiological, bio-
logical, psychological,or spiritual, because these
terms describe the human in a particular way.PHILOSOPHICAL ASSUMPTIONS
The assumptions of the human becoming school of
thought are written at the philosophical level of
discourse (Parse, 1998a). There are nine fundamen-
tal assumptions: four about the human and five
about becoming (Parse, 1998a). Also, three as-
sumptions about human becoming were synthe-
sized from these nine assumptions (Parse, 1998a).
The assumptions arose from a synthesis of ideas
from Rogers’ Science of Unitary Human Beings
(Rogers, 1992) and from existential phenomeno-
logical thought (Parse, 1981, 1992, 1994a, 1995,
1997a, 1998a). In the assumptions, the author sets
forth the view that unitary humans, in mutual
process with the universe, are cocreating a unique
becoming. The mutual process is the all-at-
onceness of living freely chosen meanings that arise
with multidimensional experiences. The chosen
meanings are the value priorities cocreated in tran-
scending with the possibles in unitary emergence
(Parse 1998a, pp. 19–30).
Principles of Human Becoming
The principles and the assumptions of the human
becoming school of thought make up the ontology.
The principles are referred to as the theory. The
principles of human becoming, which describe the
central phenomenon of nursing (the human-
universe-health process), arise from the three
major themes of the assumptions:meaning, rhyth-
micity,and transcendence.Each principle describes
a theme with three concepts. Each of the concepts
explicates fundamental paradoxes of human be-
coming (Parse, 1998a, p. 58). The paradoxes are
dimensions of the same rhythm lived all-at-once.
Paradoxes are not opposites or problems to be
solved but, rather, are ways humans live their cho-
sen meanings. This way of viewing paradox isCHAPTER 14 Rosemarie Rizzo Parse’s Human Becoming School of Thought 189