Within Reason: Rationality and Human Behavior - Hardcover

Calne, Donald B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375403515 ISBN 13: 9780375403514

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 1999

Synopsis

An eminent neurologist explores the role of reason in human evolution and daily consciousness, explaining how the mind works and offering a thoughful defense of the value of science and rationality. 12,500 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Donald B. Calne is director of the Neurodegenerative Disorders Centre at Vancouver Hospital and professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia. He lives in Vancouver.

From the Inside Flap

throughs in neuroscience have revolutionized our understanding of the human mind and human cognition. But what implications do these new findings have for the place of reason--long considered the crowning human faculty that ensured transcendent purpose--in human life? This is the profoundly important question Donald Calne, a leading neurologist and clinician, addresses in Within Reason. <br><br>His conclusions are startling, disturbing, and of immense potential usefulness. Offering both a general explanation of the way the mind works and a compelling humanistic defense of the value of science and rationality, Calne shows that reason has no direct links to the brain's pathways of pleasure and satisfaction that motivate our behavior. Reason is simply a powerful tool put into the service of goals it cannot determine or change. Within Reason brilliantly and succinctly delineates how reason--through its deployment in all domains of human endeavor, from science to religion, from ethics, commerce, and

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375403515
• ISBN 13: 9780375403514
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 332