Conscientious Thinking : Making Sense in an Age of Idiot Savants.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bosworth, David.

Contributor:

Bosworth, David

Corey, Stephen

Series:

Georgia Review Bks.

Georgia Review Books Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Postmodernism.

Thought and thinking.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (253 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens : University of Georgia Press, 2017.

Summary:

In Conscientious Thinking, David Bosworth cuts through all the noise of today's political dysfunction and cultural wars to sound the deeper causes of our discontent. Americans are living, he argues, in a profoundly transitional era, one in which the commonsense beliefs of the first truly modern society are being undermined by the still crude but irreversible forces set loose by technology's drastic revision of our everyday lives. He shows how this disruptive conflict between modern and post-modern modes of reasoning can be found in all advanced fields, including art, medicine, and science, and then traces its impact on our daily actions through such changes as the ways in which friends relate, money is made, crimes are committed, and mates are chosen.Just as feudal values had to give way to a modern worldview that more effectively contained the new social reality generated by the printed book, so must our democracy reimagine itself in ways that can domesticate—civilize rather than merely "monetize"—a post-modern scene radically transformed by our digital machines. To that end, Conscientious Thinking supplies not only the means to make sense of our contentious times but also a provisional sketch of what a desirable post-modern America might look like.

Contents:

Foreword / by Stephen Corey

Acknowledgments

Introduction. a key to the map

Idiot savants : case studies in the demise of modern reasoning

Our lord Ford : the commerce of disingenuousness

Echo and narcissus : the art of anesthesia

Flatter-fest : the idolatry of literary analysis

Boxed in : the science of self-deception

Intermission. Between common senses

Reality check : plotting a map for post-modern reasoning

Conscientious thinking : alternatives to modernity in the wake of its demise

Fields in play : conscientious thinking reforms the sciences

Together in the ditch : everyday signs of the new conscientiousness

Marrying the monster : hopes and fears for the post-modern era

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780820350646

0820350648

OCLC:

1528955308