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Stuart Watt
@morungos.bsky.social
Cognitive scientist and coder. PhD/Dr. Purveyor of Jurassic Park memes. Likes wild places. Halifax, Nova Scotia morungos.com/
357 followers409 following1.9k posts
SWmorungos.bsky.social

A lot of it is the belief that there is *always* a “right” way to do things. Michael Oakeshott’s Rationalism in Politics dismantles the type of person very nicely, and it was written around 1950. His delicious phrasing is “the assimilation of politics to engineering”. LW to a tee.

Quote from Michael Oakeshott’s Rationalism in Politics. "The general character and disposition of the Rationalist are; I think, not difficult to identify. At bottom he stands (he always stands) for independence of mind on all occasions, for thought free from obligation to any authority save the authority of 'reason. His circumstances in the modern world have made him contentious: he is the enemy of authority, of prejudice, of the merely traditional, customary or habitual, His mental attitude is at once sceptical and optimistic: sceptical, because there is no opinion, no habit, no belief, nothing so firmly rooted or so widely held that he hesitates to question it and to judge it by what he calls his 'reason'; optimistic, because the Rationalist never doubts the power of his 'reason' (when properly applied) to determine the worth of a thing." (Oakeshott, p1-2).
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SW
Stuart Watt
@morungos.bsky.social
Cognitive scientist and coder. PhD/Dr. Purveyor of Jurassic Park memes. Likes wild places. Halifax, Nova Scotia morungos.com/
357 followers409 following1.9k posts
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