We Built Reality Quotes

“Human agency is far more plastic and heterogeneous than rational choice allows. Rational choice fails to explain human behavior because it does not grapple with the range of possible meanings that motivate human life. In the rush to establish a universal, scientific anthropology, this theory neglects human beings’ distinguishing feature: their ability to embody meanings.”
― Jason Blakely, We Built Reality: How Social Science Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power

“Even James Madison, who believed that interest would check interest in a federal society, never imagined that self-interest alone could sustain a republic. As he noted in his speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, delivered in June 1788: “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue is a chimerical idea.”
― Jason Blakely, We Built Reality: How Social Science Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power

“Indeed, a culture of scientism helps produce a culture that also rejects genuine scientific authority. The scientism studied in these pages, by falsely trading on an authority it does not wield, helps to sow a wider skepticism and cynicism about the 'elite' voices of scientists as such. A disturbing increase in science denial (e.g. conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers) is in a mutually supporting dialectic with the absolute scientism of a Pinker or a Dawkins. Although they have not yet realized it, figures like Pinker and Dawkins, far from defending science, undermine it by overpromising and exaggerating its authority. Ultra-Darwinists and biblical literalists are dance partners”
― Jason Blakely, We Built Reality: How Social Science Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power