By Michael Shermer, Stephen Jay Gould
Why do clever humans think bizarre things?
Why achieve this many of us think in brain studying, past-life regression remedy, extra-terrestrial abduction and ghosts? what's in the back of the increase of 'scientific creationism' and Holocaust denial? In an age of meant clinical enlightenment why can we look extra impressionable than ever?
Scientific historian, and director of the Skeptics Society, Michael Shermer debunks those remarkable claims in a no-holds-barred attack at the renowned superstitions and burdened prejudices of our time. Exploring the very human purposes in the back of otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories and cults Shermer explains why are they're so beautiful to so many.
"Skepticism is the agent of cause opposed to prepared irrationalism -
and is consequently one of many keys to human social and civic decency."
Stephen Jay Gould, from his foreword
Shermer unearths the darker aspect of wishful pondering, throughout the recovered reminiscence flow, satanic rituals and different glossy witch hunts, and ideologies of racial superiority. Confronting those that reap the benefits of the gullibility of alternative humans to enhance their very own, self-serving agendas Why humans think bizarre issues is compelling and sometimes irritating. it's a perceptive portrait of the human capability for self-delusion and a party of the medical spirit.
Read or Download Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time PDF
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Extra info for Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time
Sample text
Aesthetics, history of Hegel divided the history of art into a pre-classical ‘symbolic’ phase, then the classical phase of the ancient Greeks, which he regarded as superior because of its attainment of unity between content and sensory medium, and a third phase of romanticism which embraced medieval Christian art and the art of modernity. Art had already declined in the modern period, and must end, according to Hegel, superseded by religion and philosophy. Two further German philosophers of the nineteenth century produced original aesthetic theories of lasting interest: Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
A long history attaches to thinking of the property of being an agent as (i) possessing a capacity to choose between options and (ii) being able to do what one chooses. Agency is then treated as a causal power. Some such treatment is assumed when ‘agentcausation’ is given a prominent role to play in the elucidation of action. In recent times, a doctrine of agent-causation is associated with Chisholm, who thinks that no concept of eventcausality is adequate for understanding human beings’ agency.
R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (Oxford, 1938). A. C. , 1981). J. ), The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford, 2003). A. Neill and A. ), Arguing about Art: Contemporary Philosophical Debates (London, 2002). R. Wollheim, Art and its Objects (Cambridge, 1980). aesthetic value: see value, aesthetic. aeterni patris: see neo-Thomism. affirmative action. This term refers to positive steps taken to rank, admit, hire, or promote persons who are members of groups previously and/or currently discriminated against.