{"id":2288,"date":"2011-02-04T07:06:41","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T06:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=2288"},"modified":"2012-06-13T23:19:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T22:19:00","slug":"review-dick-taverne-the-march-of-unreason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2011\/02\/review-dick-taverne-the-march-of-unreason\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Dick Taverne – The March of Unreason"},"content":{"rendered":"

317 pages. Can be found here<\/a>. ETA: Apparently, that link got DMCA’d. Here is the book:<\/strong> The.March.of.Unreason.Science.Democracy.and.the.New.Fundamentalism<\/a><\/p>\n

I thought it was an interesting read. It is one long rant against unreasonable people at various places in life. It has a chapter on: Alternative medicine, organic farming, GM crops, fundamentalist environmentalism, globalization, and reason and democracy. It has made me want to reconsider my views on environmentalism, Greenpeace and the like, so I’ll be doing that in the near future (in a danish essay). Sometimes it would have helped him if he knew a bit more about philosophy or science. Two examples: 1. He does not seem to know that in science the words \u201ctheory\u201d and \u201cfact\u201d are used differently from their usage in ordinary english. He should have read something like this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a consensus among scientists that Darwin\u2019s theory of<\/p>\n

natural selection is no longer a theory (whatever the creationists<\/p>\n

may say) but a true description of the way species evolved. But<\/p>\n

the scienti\ufb01c method itself involves critical examination and test-<\/p>\n

ing of every new hypothesis and many hypotheses will be replaced<\/p>\n

in time.\u201d (p. 257)<\/p>\n

2. He should have learned about Hume, reason and emotion when a critic threw this quote at him<\/p>\n

\u201cThe National Gallery is a monument to irrationality! Every concert hall is a monument to irrationality!\u2014and so is a nicely kept garden, or a lover\u2019s favour, or a home for stray dogs. You stupid woman, if rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic \ufb01eld of soya beans!\u201d (p. 286)<\/p>\n

But overall it’s a good read if you think reason is important and that people are not reaonable enough. People with alternative views will not be convinced by this book because it is pretty one-sided. But then again, not much will convince someone that believes alternative medicine works or some such.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

317 pages. Can be found here. ETA: Apparently, that link got DMCA’d. Here is the book: The.March.of.Unreason.Science.Democracy.and.the.New.Fundamentalism I thought it was an interesting read. It is one long rant against unreasonable people at various places in life. It has a chapter on: Alternative medicine, organic farming, GM crops, fundamentalist environmentalism, globalization, and reason and democracy. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1107],"tags":[1649,1650,1640,1067,1648],"class_list":["post-2288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politik","category-science","tag-dick-taverne","tag-irrational","tag-pseudo","tag-review","tag-unreason","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2288"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2290,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2288\/revisions\/2290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}