In classical rationalism in the seventeenth century and in Descartes' influential thesis of animals as machines, human rationality allowed human beings to emerge from the irrational, instinct-driven animal world.
The American social scientist Herbert A. Simon, an influential proponent of the concept of bounded rationality, used the terms "substantive" and "procedural" to distinguish between the notions of rational behaviour commonly adopted in, respectively, economics and psychology.
The holistic approach finds its most sophisticated and influential expression in the maximizing conception of practical rationality.
Rationality is a contested concept in the social sciences, but perhaps the most influential approach derives from the work of psychologists Tversky and Kahnemann, who specify rationality in terms of consistency and coherence.
The results show that the water quality, space, activity, facility, community, width of vegetation, sense of beauty and water content are among the most influential factors and should be considered the main basis for evaluating the rationality of the landscape design of urban rivers.
By drawing on globalization theories from sociology and human geography, we show that socio-technical systems often develop institutional rationalities that are diffused via international networks and thus become influential in various places around the world.
Shoemaker's discussion has been as influential for its positive suggestion that our capacity for self-knowledge is closely tied to rationality (see 3.6 and 3.7)—as for its critical treatment of inner sense accounts.
Most businesspeople are not this calculating, of course, but the assumption of harsh rationality is a useful way to work out how to deter rule-breakers.In an influential 1968 paper* on the economics of crime, Gary Becker of the University of Chicago set out a framework in which criminals weigh up the expected costs and benefits of breaking the law.
(Cf. also Scheffler's Conditions of Knowledge (1965), still the best introduction to the epistemological side of philosophy of education, and his Reason and Teaching (1973/1989), which in a wide-ranging and influential series of essays makes the case for regarding the fostering of rationality/critical thinking as a fundamental educational ideal.
