Congratulations!

You are a member of the only species on Earth capable of rational thought. Since the first Homo sapiens evolved about 300,000 years ago, we have struggled to learn how to properly and more fully utilize this unique and potentially powerful ability. Progress was painfully slow for 295,000 years with lots of ups and downs.

Progress picked up about 5,000 years ago with the development of language and writing. Then, 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.” 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.

Today, it is doubtful that even one person in a hundred could state a reasonably correct definition for rational thinking. Because there are so few diligent and consistently rational thinkers, serious problems in the social, economic, and governance areas have developed, grown and festered.

Divisive and downright dangerous polarization rages. Rational thinkers know they cannot possibly disagree about the single reality we all share. If or when they do disagree, they cooperatively and peacefully resolve it by looking for the mistake(s) that one or the other or both must have made in their thinking. But with so few rational thinkers, disagreements instead often lead to violence.

The dearth of rational thinkers is the root cause of nearly all human problems.

The largest obstacle to progress and harmony 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 is still kicking today. It appears that it will still be some time before rational thinking is able to vanquish its archenemy. 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: Rational Thinking — Definition, Importance, History, and Future.