Overview

In the culmination of his 1972 BBC science series, The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski envisioned science as a grand strategy for refining everyday thinking based on John von Neumann's game theory and (incomplete) mathematics of reasoning. Refining everyday thinking includes refining itself. As Plato wrote in Charmides, self-referential science may suffer two problems. First, it calls for people to know what they do not know, which may be a logical contradiction. Second, it may be too idealistic to be useful. This book explains how the union of rules for relating beliefs well (logic), rules for choosing concepts well (dialectics), and rules for using logic and dialectics well in deciding well in living well can overcome these two problems. Underlying this boundless approach to science is a new form of the science of goal-seeking (cybernetics). Rather than seeking either well-defined (first-order) or ill-defined (higher-order) ends, this new form seeks the transcendent (infinite-order) end of deciding well. It does so by breaking this end down into transcendent factors. Pursuing any of these factors well calls for deciding well, which calls for pursuing all the others. The better people decide, the more tightly the pursuits of these factors intertwine. Among these factors are the timeless ends of living well (Happiness), contemplating well (Beauty), governing ourselves well (Justice), believing well (Truth), and competing well (Winning). This rings true with Bronowski's claim that what von Neumann sought in reason was a procedure, as a grand overall way of life-what in the humanities we would call a system of values. Understanding the reason underlying this formal process of refining everyday thinking not only helps us learn to live ever more wisely but also to identify defectors in the game of deciding well ever more readily.

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9781499618815

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