Walking the Tightrope of Reason

In the tradition of Simon Blackburn's THINK and other "small books on big ideas", comes Robert Fogelin's elegant and accessible mediation on the paradox of logic and reasoning. We rely on our ability to reason to make sense of the world, and indeed it is responsible for humankind's phenomenal success. Simultaneously, however, using our rational faculties also leads us to doubt our own conclusions. Can we really know the nature of the universe - or anything, for that matter? Isn't...
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In the tradition of Simon Blackburn's THINK and other "small books on big ideas", comes Robert Fogelin's elegant and accessible mediation on the paradox of logic and reasoning. We rely on our ability to reason to make sense of the world, and indeed it is responsible for humankind's phenomenal success. Simultaneously, however, using our rational faculties also leads us to doubt our own conclusions. Can we really know the nature of the universe - or anything, for that matter? Isn't knowledge just a matter of perspective, or of social and cultural bias? Fogelin leads us into the heart of this conundrum through the history of ideas, lightly touching on the Greeks, Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein, and its current form in the debates called "the culture wars". In the end, he says, knowledge is possible, if we adjust our sense of the limits of reason.