July 22, 2022
Science is undergoing an identity crisis! A renown psychologist and biologist diagnoses our age of wishful, magical thinking and blasts out a clarion call for a return to reason and the search for objective knowledge and truth. Fans of Matt Ridley and Nicholas Wade will adore this trenchant meditation and call to action. Science is in trouble. Real questions in desperate need of answersâespecially those surrounding ethnicity, gender, climate change, and almost anything related to âhealth and safetyââare swiftly buckling to the fiery societal demands of what ought to be rather than what is. These foregone conclusions may be comforting, but each capitulation to modernityâs whims threatens the integrity of scientific inquiry. Can true, fact-based discovery be redeemed? In Science in an Age of Unreason, legendary professor of psychology and biology, John Staddon, unveils the identity crisis afflicting todayâs scientific community, and provides an actionable path to recovery. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Staddon answers pressing questions, including: Is science, especially the science of evolution, a religion? Can ethics be derived from science at all? How sound is social science, particularly surrounding todayâs most controversial topics? How can passions be separated from facts? Informed by decades of expertise, Science in an Age of Unreason is a clarion call to rebirth academia as a beacon of reason and truth in a society demanding its unconditional submission.
About the author (2022)
John Staddon is James B. Duke Professor of Psychology, and Professor of Biology Emeritus at Duke University. A prolific researcher and writer of international fame, he has authored more than 200 research papers, nine books, and is a past editor of the journals Behavioural Processes and Behavior & Philosophy. Staddon was profiled in the Wall Street Journal in January 2021 for his views on the current problems of science.
