How Reason Almost Lost its Mind – The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith) - Hardcover

Erickson, Paul; Klein, Judy; Daston, Lorraine; Lemov, Rebecca; Sturm, Thomas; Gordin, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022604663X ISBN 13: 9780226046631

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2013

Synopsis

In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences - psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, among others - and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality should mean and how it could be deployed. How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind brings to life the people - Herbert Simon, Oskar Morgenstern, Herman Kahn, Anatol Rapoport, Thomas Schelling, and many others - and places, including the RAND Corporation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Cowles Commission for Research and Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, that played a key role in putting forth a "Cold War rationality." Decision makers harnessed this picture of rationality - optimizing, formal, algorithmic, and mechanical - in their quest to understand phenomena as diverse as economic transactions, biological evolution, political elections, international relations, and military strategy. The authors chronicle and illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Erickson is assistant professor of history and science in society at Wesleyan University. Judy L. Klein is professor of economics at Mary Baldwin College. Lorraine Daston is director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Rebecca Lemov is associate professor of the history of science at Harvard University. Thomas Sturm is a Ramon y Cajal Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Michael D. Gordin is professor of the history of science at Princeton University.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 022604663X
• ISBN 13: 9780226046631
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272