Congratulations! You are a member of the only species on Earth capable of rational thought. That species, Homo sapiens, survived and now flourishes because of the crucially important ability to think rationally. The best estimates are that a reasonably modern version of Homo sapiens had evolved by approximately 300,000 years ago. But rational thinking did not just suddenly take off at that point like the runners in a race at the crack of the starter’s pistol.
The first “rational thinking” was just gaining an understanding of things in the immediate environment that could improve the chances of staying alive. We struggled for many thousands of years to develop, utilize, and understand rational thinking. Incredibly, that struggle still continues today. What has been the holdup? Two primary things have been gumming up the works.
The first deterrent is plain old mistakes. Understandably, thinkers don’t always get it exactly right. Mistakes can cause trips up blind alleys and wasted time and effort—sometimes a whole lot of it. But mistakes can be found and corrected. They are a continuing nuisance that will likely always be with us, but they are not the main and continuing showstopper.
The second and largest problem is that rational thought must always fight its ever-present archenemy and nemesis: irrationality. Irrationality comes in numerous forms: superstitions, myths, religions, customs, and sometimes just refusal to accept valid new deductions for no rational reason. Irrationality has been a major headwind against progress. Irrationality is still kicking even today. It appears that it will still be some time before rational thinking is able to vanquish its archenemy.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century CE, a particularly brilliant and prolific rational thinker contributed greatly to human knowledge and understanding. That was English mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Among many other accomplishments, Newton formalized and codified the scientific method. This was the result of employing rational thinking to understand rational thinking itself.
The fruits of rigorous rational thinking in the scientific disciplines are obvious. There has been a continuing explosion of knowledge and concomitant benefits. However, rational thinking is not something that applies only within some segment of reality called science; rather it is generally applicable to all of reality; or to look at it another way, there is nothing that is outside of science. We have failed to make that generalization and our species has flopped badly at applying rational thinking outside the walled garden of the scientific disciplines.
It is doubtful that even one person in a hundred could even state a reasonably correct definition for rational thinking. Because there are so few diligent and consistently rational thinkers, serious problems in the social/economic/government areas have developed, grown, and festered. Divisive and downright dangerous polarization rages. Rational thinkers know they cannot disagree about the single reality we all share. If or when they do, they cooperatively and peacefully resolve any disagreement by looking for the mistake(s) that one or the other or both must have made. This website is dedicated to rational thinking. Its pages present solutions to some of the fundamental problems we suffer. (Perhaps one or two just-for-fun pages sneaked in as well.) Those interested in gaining a deeper, more comprehensive understanding are referred to this book: