Irrationality a history of the dark side of reason

A fascinating history that reveals the ways in which the pursuit of rationality often leads to an explosion of irrationalityIt's a story we can't stop telling ourselves. Once, humans were benighted by superstition and irrationality, but then the Greeks invented reason. Later, the Enlighten...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Smith, Justin E. H.
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 2019.
Subjects:
Online Access:EBSCOhost
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Table of Contents:
  • Cover; Title; Copyright; Dedication; CONTENTS; Preamble. A Mathematician's Murder; Introduction; Reason's Twin; Enlightenment into Myth; The Present Moment; Irrationality: A Road Map; CHAPTER ONE. The Self-Devouring Octopus; or, Logic; The Operation of Falsity; Explosions; Kaspar Hauser and the Limits of Rational Choice; Carrying On about the Ineffable; CHAPTER TWO. "No-Brainers"; or, Reason in Nature; An Ordered Whole; Brute Beasts; An Imperfect Superpower; Small Pain Points; CHAPTER THREE. The Sleep of Reason; or, Dreams; Upon Awakening; Breaking the Law; Spirits, Vapors, Winds
  • Hearing VoicesBitter Little Embryos; Postscriptum Fabulosum; CHAPTER FOUR. Dreams into Things; or, Art; Many Worlds; Bleeding Out; Genies, Genius, and Ingenium; What Is Art?; The Two Magisteria; CHAPTER FIVE. "I believe because it is absurd"; or, Pseudoscience; The Stars Down to Earth; Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom; Alternative Facts, and Alternatives to Facts; The Paranoid Style in the Twenty-First Century; CHAPTER SIX. Enlightenment; or, Myth; Better the Light; The World-Soul on Horseback; Poetic History; Enlightenment into Myth, Again; Why Democracy?; CHAPTER SEVEN. The Human Beast
  • Or, the InternetAn Escargotic Commotion; The Modern Shiva; Nothing Human Is Alien; More Gender Trouble; An Age of Extremes; CHAPTER EIGHT. Explosions; or, Jokes and Lies; Into Nothing; Charlie Hebdo and After; Pseudologia Generalis; Croaking; CHAPTER NINE. The Impossible Syllogism; or, Death; "In the long run we are all dead"; Radical Choices; Youth and Risk; The Impossible Syllogism; Tie Me Up; Cargo Cults; In Loving Repetition; Conclusion; Acknowledgments; Notes; Bibliography; Index