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Waking Up from the Dream of Reason

Rationality in the Real World

Open University of the Netherlands rene.vanhezewijk{at}ou.nl

For centuries, philosophy and psychology in one way or another identified thought with logic, or logic with thought. Only in recent decades has it become clear that there is more to thought than logic. Evolutionary psychology has stressed the adaptive function of thought, as of other processes often identified as psychological. Gigerenzer et al. have worked for some years now on a program of research in which thinking is approached as an adaptive process. According to them, it is misleading to use the complexities of logic, mathematics or statistics as the standards for correct thinking or as a model for thought. On the contrary, thinking is the effective use of simple heuristics. The four volumes discussed in this review essay demonstrate that the approach can be very fruitful in many domains of human reasoning, and can be effective in practical problem solving as well, without having to fall back on the intricacies of logic, statistics, mathematics and other tools of the trade of scientific decision making.

Key Words: adaptive thinking • decision making • evolutionary psychology • heuristics • risk analysis

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 2, 261-272 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354304042020


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