Views from Crestmont Drive

Here’s a book I read a few weeks ago while in the hospital (so my notes on it are sketchier than usual). It was published last October, though I didn’t buy it until February. When I picked it up to read in June, I couldn’t remember why I’d bought it. It’s not by an author I’m already familiar with (in fact this is his first book); even the blurbers on the back cover are not among the usual suspects for books I usually read (though I do know of one, Jim Holt).

Perhaps what had enticed me was the book’s subtitle: “How Irrationality Created Modern Science.” Really, irrationality? Isn’t that counter-intuitive, at best? Science, ideally, is a rational process that considers evidence of the real world, formulates hypotheses, looks for further evidence to confirm or dismiss the hypothesis. How is this irrational?
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