Preamble. A Mathematician’s Murder | 1 |
Introduction | 5 |
Reason’s Twin | 5 |
Enlightenment into Myth | 6 |
The Present Moment | 12 |
Irrationality: A Road Map | 19 |
CHAPTER ONE. The Self-Devouring Octopus; or, Logic | 27 |
The Operation of Falsity | 27 |
Explosions | 32 |
Kaspar Hauser and the Limits of Rational Choice | 35 |
Carrying On about the Ineffable | 40 |
CHAPTER TWO. “No-Brainers”; or, Reason in Nature | 51 |
An Ordered Whole | 51 |
Brute Beasts | 57 |
An Imperfect Superpower | 64 |
Small Pain Points | 69 |
CHAPTER THREE. The Sleep of Reason; or, Dreams | 73 |
Upon Awakening | 73 |
Breaking the Law | 80 |
Spirits, Vapors, Winds | 84 |
Hearing Voices | 88 |
Bitter Little Embryos | 94 |
Postscriptum Fabulosum | 98 |
CHAPTER FOUR. Dreams into Things; or, Art | 99 |
Many Worlds | 99 |
Bleeding Out | 101 |
Genies, Genius, and Ingenium | 108 |
What Is Art? | 115 |
The Two Magisteria | 122 |
CHAPTER FIVE. “I believe because it is absurd”; or, Pseudoscience | 131 |
The Stars Down to Earth | 131 |
Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom | 138 |
Alternative Facts, and Alternatives to Facts | 145 |
The Paranoid Style in the Twenty-First Century | 158 |
CHAPTER SIX. Enlightenment; or, Myth | 166 |
Better the Light | 166 |
The World-Soul on Horseback | 172 |
Poetic History | 177 |
Enlightenment into Myth, Again | 185 |
Why Democracy? | 195 |
CHAPTER SEVEN. The Human Beast; or, the Internet | 200 |
An Escargotic Commotion | 200 |
The Modern Shiva | 204 |
Nothing Human Is Alien | 212 |
More Gender Trouble | 216 |
An Age of Extremes | 226 |
CHAPTER EIGHT. Explosions; or, Jokes and Lies | 229 |
Into Nothing | 229 |
Charlie Hebdo and After | 230 |
Pseudologia Generalis | 237 |
Croaking | 247 |
CHAPTER NINE. The Impossible Syllogism; or, Death | 252 |
“In the long run we are all dead” | 252 |
Radical Choices | 256 |
Youth and Risk | 259 |
The Impossible Syllogism | 265 |
Tie Me Up | 273 |
Cargo Cults | 276 |
In Loving Repetition | 284 |
Conclusion | 287 |
Acknowledgments | 291 |
Notes | 293 |
Bibliography | 313 |
Index | 325 |