The threat to reason - Dan Hind

Today, media commentators, intellectuals and politicians declare that westernscience and rationality are threatened by irrational enemies.Evangelicals, postmodernists, and Islamists are on the march, they say.The Rome that science built is under siege. But there's a problem withthese stirring attempts to defend the truth. They aren't true.

In this urgent new book, Dan Hind confronts the great machinery ofdeception in which we live, and which now threatens to destroy ourcivilization. In particular, he takes to task a group of prominentintellectuals who have exaggerated the threat posed by the so-calledforces of unreason—religion, postmodernism and other "mumbo-jumbo."The commentators, says Hind, distract us from much more pressingthreats to an open democratic society based on freedom of speech andinquiry.

This book shows that the real threats to reason aren't wacky or foreignor stupid; they reside in our state and corporate bureaucracies—and,one way or another, they probably pay your salary. In recovering theidea of Enlightenment, Hind explores its vital importance and revealshow it can help us to achieve a truly democratic politics, in which wehave a genuine say in the decisions that are taken on our behalf.