''Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters'' is a 2021 book written by Canadian-American cognitive scientist

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychology, cognitive psychologist, psycholinguistics, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psycholo ...

. The book was published on September 28, 2021, by the

Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

imprint of

Penguin Random House Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was or ...

. It argues that rationality is a key driver of moral and social progress, and it attempts to resolve the apparent conflict between scientific progress and increasing levels of disinformation. Pinker explains several concepts underlying rationality, including from the fields of

logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...

probability theory Probability theory or probability calculus is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expre ...

statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...

, and

social choice Social choice theory is a branch of welfare economics that extends the theory of rational choice to collective decision-making. Social choice studies the behavior of different mathematical procedures ( social welfare functions) used to combine i ...

Reception

The book debuted at number nine on ''The New York Times'' nonfiction best-seller list for the week ending October 2, 2021. In its starred review, ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

'' wrote, "He manages to be scrupulously rigorous yet steadily accessible and entertaining." To

Andrew Anthony Andrew Anthony is a journalist who has written for ''The Guardian'' since 1990, and ''The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. In 1 ...

on ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', Pinker, not a "dry and humourless slave to rational thought", "knows that what we find funny is often nothing more than clever inversions of logic". ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...

'' wrote, "The author can be heady and geeky, but seldom to the point that his discussions shade off into inaccessibility." On ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'',

Jennifer Szalai Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic at ''The New York Times''. Szalai was born in Canada and attended the University of Toronto, where she studied political science and peace and conflict. She holds a master's degree in international rel ...

commented that "The trouble arrives when he

inker The inker (sometimes credited as the finisher or embellisher) is one of the two line artists in traditional comic book production. After the penciller creates a drawing with pencil, the inker interprets this drawing by outlining and embellishing ...

tries to gussy up his psychologist's hat with his more elaborate public intellectual's attire", while

Anthony Gottlieb Anthony John Gottlieb (born 1956) is a British writer, author, historian of ideas, and former Executive Editor of The ''Economist''. He is the author of two major works on the history of philosophy, '' The Dream of Reason'' and '' The Dream of Enl ...

noted Pinker's tendencies to "exaggerate the popularity of ill-founded beliefs" and to devote "plenty of space to advocating rationality, which the authors of similar works have not found necessary to do, perhaps because anybody who chooses to read about rationality is probably already in favor of it."

References

External links

''Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters '' on stevenpinker.com
2021 non-fiction books Works by Steven Pinker Reasoning Viking Press books {{nonfiction-book-stub