Description
| Product ID: | 9780226324159 |
| Product Form: | Paperback / softback |
| Country of Manufacture: | US |
| Title: | How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind – The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality |
| Authors: | Author: Judy L. Klein, Thomas Sturm, Rebecca Lemov, Paul Erickson, Michael Gordin, Lorraine Daston |
| Page Count: | 272 |
| Subjects: | History of the Americas, History of the Americas, History, Cold wars and proxy conflicts, Social and political philosophy, History of ideas, Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000, The Cold War, Social & political philosophy, History of ideas, USA, c 1945 to c 2000 (Post-war period) |
| Description: | In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences—psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, among others—and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality should mean and how it could be deployed. How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind brings to life the people—Herbert Simon, Oskar Morgenstern, Herman Kahn, Anatol Rapoport, Thomas Schelling, and many others—and places, including the RAND Corporation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Cowles Commission for Research and Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, that played a key role in putting forth a \u201cCold War rationality.\u201d Decision makers harnessed this picture of rationality—optimizing, formal, algorithmic, and mechanical—in their quest to understand phenomena as diverse as economic transactions, biological evolution, political elections, international relations, and military strategy. The authors chronicle and illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship. |
| Imprint Name: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publisher Name: | The University of Chicago Press |
| Country of Publication: | GB |
| Publishing Date: | 2015-11-17 |
