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The Science Delusion

Asking the Big Questions
in a Culture of Easy Answers

One of our most brilliant social critics—and the author of the bestselling The Middle Mind—presents a scathing critique of the delusions of science alongside a rousing defense of the role of art and philosophy in our culture.

The so-called new atheists, most famously Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, made a splash in the new millennium, telling the evangelical and the liberal believer that they must give up religion and submit to science. More recently, neuroscientists and their fans in the media have delivered a variation on this message: the mapping of the human brain will soon be completed, and we will know what we are and how we should act. The message is nearly the same as that of the new atheists: submit to science.

With the growing acceptance of these arguments, argues Curtis White, the rich philosophical debates of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are being abandoned. Though an atheist himself, White fears what this new turn toward “scientism” will do to our culture if allowed to flourish without challenge.

In this brilliant multipart critique, White aims at a TED talk by a distinguished neuroscientist in which we are told that human thought is merely the product of our “connectome”—neural connections in the brain that are yet to be fully understood . . . he examines the ideas of a widely respected physicist who argues that a new understanding of the origins of the universe trumps all religious and philosophical inquiry . . . and ends with an eloquent defense of the poetry and philosophy of Romanticism, which White believes our technology- and science-obsessed world desperately needs to rediscover. It’s the only way, he argues, that we can see our world clearly . . . and change it.

With a new afterword and a Q&A with the author

CURTIS WHITE is the author of the novels of Memories of My Father Watching TV and Requiem. A widely acclaimed essayist, he has had work appear in Harper’s Magazine,Lapham’s QuarterlyOrion, and Playboy. His book The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don’t Think for Themselves was an international bestseller in 2003.

“A symptomatic tour of the real sense of anxiety about the disenchantment of all those qualities that make us feel most alive and unique in the world.”
New York Times Book Review

“There’s certainly a very real need to march on that citadel, because the idea that there can be only one kind of truth has to be deeply damaging to the intellectual development of a culture.”
Mark O’Connell, Slate

The Science Delusion is an important and necessary book.”
Philadelphia Review of Books

“Thoroughly well researched and astutely put… An essential read.”
PopMatters

“White’s prose is fluid and often enjoyable… White clearly knows his stuff when it comes to classic literature, and offers an interesting sidebar on the development of Romanticism.”
Willamette Week

“[White’s] brisk takedowns of Hitchens, Hawking, Krauss, Lehrer and others are sharp and necessary, wielding elementary logic against figures who should know better. [White shows] just how easily good science can shade into the self-aggrandizing ideology of scientism.”
—Mark Kingwell, Globe and Mail


“A bracing and necessary critique by an able arguer.”
Toronto Star, Books of Note

“A highly readable yet powerful defense of the importance of the humanities against those who believe science to be the last interpretative framework standing. It is destined to become a classic among artists, dreamers, revolutionaries, and anyone who, like Kierkegaard, believes asking questions to be as important a quest as finding answers.”
Tottenville Review

“An enjoyable and worthwhile read.”
Christian Research Journal

“A witty critique of scientific overreach that celebrates the totality of human achievement.”
Kirkus Reviews

“White argues that bio-mechanical reductionism in many scientific quarters has become a kind of dogmatic model or ideology that he labels scientism…[t]he purveyors of scientism are at best self-referentially inconsistent in their language, or at worst attempting to mislead us by means of a monolithic, materialistic worldview that ultimately cannot be proven.”
Artpulse

Praise for Curtis White and The Middle Mind:

“Cogent, acute, beautiful, and true.”  —David Foster Wallace

“A splendidly cranky academic.”  —Molly Ivins

“The most inspiringly wicked social critic of the moment.”  —Will Blythe, Elle

“Re-visioning the world takes brawling muscle and a sneer. Curtis White gots that.” —Andrei Codrescu

“At first, The Middle Mind looks simply like this season’s lefty screed but where White departs from most liberal ranters is that he doesn’t blame the stupidizing of America on brainwashing or sinister corporations. He blames you and me.” —John Colapinto, Rolling Stone

“A strong, knowledgeable, entertaining (and imaginative!) argument.” —John Barth

“A master of bewitchments, parodies, and dazzling tropes.” —Paul Auster

“Not the least pleasure in reading the book resides in the refreshing malevolent irony that transpires from every page. Absolutely indispensable.” —Slavoj Žižek

“A sharp, erudite and witty text that…could help set our country on a path to a saner future.” —John de Graaf, co-author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic

“A serious effort to understand a serious problem and should find a prominent place in every American library.” —Library Journal

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