PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Jason Blakely is Associate Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University. He is the author of Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and the Demise of Naturalism and, with Mark Bevir, of Interpretive Social Science (Oxford).
This book is an essential contribution and absolutely must be read widely. It explains what's wrong with attempts to explain human action and culture with reductive theories modelled after mechanistic natural science. It is not just that these explanations don't work; it is also that simplistic versions of these theories are accepted as valid self-descriptions by many. The resulting changes in self-understanding can do a lot of damage. Witness the role of the notion of 'economic man' in the financial disaster of 2008. But Blakely gives many other examples. * Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, McGill University *
