The attempt for the theoretical/philosophical foundation of discourse analysis as a methodology of the social sciences inevitably leads to the engagement with critical theoretical issues that are urgently apparent in contemporary thought. Most of these arise in the discourse of the broad and constantly dispersing intellectual current called "transmission" and often tend to be confused with "postmodernism".

One of these issues is perhaps the only one that does not appear directly - in its first part - in Kyros Doxiadis' book, although it lurks in its problematic from end to end: With the emergence and prevalence of transmission, the terms expressing theoretical/philosophical disputes in the social sciences tend to revolve to a great extent around the dichotomy of rationalism/irrationalism, or the approximate equivalent relativism/antirelativism, even if the conflicting tendencies do not always accept their inclusion in any of the sides of the dichotomies.

By judging both dilemmas as misleading, the author re-approaches a dilemma that has been considered outdated for many years and certainly cannot be reduced to either of the two aforementioned: idealism/materialism.