Within Reason: Rationality and Human Behavior

Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience have revolutionized our understanding of the human mind and human cognition. But what implications do these new findings have for the place of reason--long considered the crowning human faculty that ensured transcendent purpose--in human life? This is the profoundly important question Donald Calne, a leading neurologist and clinician, addresses in Within Reason.

His conclusions are startling, disturbing, and of immense potential usefulness. Offering both a general explanation of the way the mind works and a compelling humanistic defense of the value of science and rationality, Calne shows that reason has no direct links to the brain's pathways of pleasure and satisfaction that motivate our behavior. Reason is simply a powerful tool put into the service of goals it cannot determine or change. Within Reason brilliantly and succinctly delineates how reason--through its deployment in all domains of human endeavor, from science to religion, from ethics, commerce, and government to art and music--has enabled mankind to achieve dominance over all other forms of life without providing any specifiable content, beyond survival, to the meaning of existence.  Echoing the great religious and philosophical traditions but written from the perspective of neuroscience, Within Reason offers a new and fascinating picture of the role of rationality in both evolution and daily consciousness.

Donald B. Calne is director of the Neurodegenerative Disorders Centre at Vancouver Hospital and professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia. He lives in Vancouver.