Table of Contents

1. Aims and methods; 2. Rationality reviewed; 3. Cosmology without nature; 4. Seeming and being; 5. Language, literacy and cognition; 6. Gods, spirits, demons, ghosts, mysticism, miracles, magic, myth; 7. Conclusions: the ambivalences of rationality.

Promotional Information

Cross-cultural examination of notions and practices of rationality in ancient and modern societies, drawing on philosophy, ethnography and cognitive science.

About the Author

G. E. R. Lloyd is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy and Science at the University of Cambridge, former Master of Darwin College Cambridge and Senior Scholar in Residence at the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge. He has held Visiting Professorships in Europe, North America, the Far East and Australasia. He is the author of twenty-three books and editor of a further five. He won the Sarton Medal for History of Science in 1987, the Kenyon Medal for Classical Studies in 2007, the Dan David prize in 2013, the Fyssen prize in 2014, and he was knighted for services to the history of thought in 1997.