How to Use rationalism in a Sentence
rationalism
noun-
The temptation of rationalism can be a hard one to resist.
—Sean Carroll, Discover Magazine, 11 Aug. 2011
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But the book also takes aim at a strain of hyper-rationalism that the author regards as equally dangerous.
—Washington Post, 27 Nov. 2019
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Those values, norms, are outside of the process of critical rationalism.
—Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 5 Sep. 2012
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But rationalism has provided a new spin on this old debate.
—James Romm, WSJ, 27 Oct. 2017
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Black Dogs is a novel of ideas pitting rationalism against spiritualism and encompassing the Holocaust and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
—Adam Begley, The Atlantic, 9 Sep. 2022
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Hustvedt rejects the sterile rationalism of the dualists.
—Katy Waldman, Slate Magazine, 13 Jan. 2017
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The path is marked by big breaks, family scars and scares, three golden retrievers, a dislike of coffee and the secret sauce that helped him become the voice of reason in a sport whose fans often resist rationalism.
—Brent Schrotenboer, USA TODAY, 31 Dec. 2020
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With people of faith squaring off against those who believe in scientific rationalism, just put the politics aside.
—John Kass, chicagotribune.com, 27 Apr. 2018
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Lib will watch the girl for eight-hour shifts, alternating with a nun—rationalism and faith, dual modes of attempting to understand what exactly is going on.
—Chloe Schama, Vogue, 14 Nov. 2022
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By then, the rationalism of the Mu‘tazila school had been superseded by more dogmatic interpretations of Islam.
—Peter Hessler, The New Yorker, 7 Apr. 2017
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An admirer of Sherlock Holmes (whose fictive hyper-rationalism might be a sign of Asperger’s), Christopher aims to solve two mysteries: the fate of his long-absent mother and the killing of a neighborhood dog.
—Misha Berson, The Seattle Times, 26 July 2017
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The other skills that pair well with AI are critical thinking and dispassionate rationalism.
—Rolling Stone Culture Council, Rolling Stone, 14 Apr. 2023
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There are lots of romantic anti-rationalisms to play with; Rousseau’s was largely soft and sentimental in tone, rather than apocalyptic and violent.
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 20 Mar. 2017
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This medieval or Gothic aesthetic could make the Romantics, in turn, hostile to the airless rationalism and classicism of the Enlightenment.
—Jeffrey Collins, WSJ, 18 Mar. 2022
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The philosophy of the day was grounded in logic and rationalism, but the English monarchy was threatened by developing democracies in France and America.
—Jason Foumberg, Chicago Reader, 4 Oct. 2017
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Its detractors equate it with ideas ranging from the technocratic policies of the contemporary Democratic Party to the chilly rationalism of the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes.
—Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post, 28 July 2023
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For all his technocratic instincts, for all his training as an engineer and a hedge-fund quant, a romantic impulse coexists with his rationalism, and sometimes overrides it.
—Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 10 Oct. 2019
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Like everything else, the optimistic rationalism of Russia’s futurists resurfaces in Telluria, but it’s mangled into a joke.
—Aaron Timms, The New Republic, 2 Sep. 2022
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Mary, living in the world of Galvanism, industrial and democratic revolution, and the newfound delight in rationalism, was able to give us a golem without resorting to the supernatural.
—Cory Doctorow, Slate Magazine, 22 May 2017
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And its toll continues: liberal rationalism is, in Gray’s view, an impoverished creed that has asphyxiated richer forms of life.
—Kwame Anthony Appiah, The New York Review of Books, 9 May 2019
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This passionate defense of the Enlightenment ideals of scientific rationalism and secular humanism argues that human progress is a measurable fact and that the current moment is the best ever.
—Olivia De Recat, The New Yorker, 14 Mar. 2018
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There's also a psychology term called rationalism, which people often confuse with denial.
—Megan Marples, CNN, 16 Aug. 2020
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While her colleagues gravitated toward bling and braggadocio, Badu served up mysticism and rationalism.
—Dallas News, 16 Feb. 2022
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These are knee-jerk would-be Christian reactions in a culture which, generations back, embraced rationalism: everything must have an explanation.
—N.t. Wright, Time, 29 Mar. 2020
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The human person remains sacred, despite rationalism and the secular-progressive view of history.
—M. D. Aeschliman, National Review, 7 Oct. 2017
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Evolution may be the most robust and powerful theory for deductive inference in biology, but even here rationalism has its limits.
—Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 19 Aug. 2011
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Meanwhile, the tribes grow to appreciate the Galaxy Team’s technological rationalism.
—Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 17 Feb. 2022
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By the 1950s, after a chain of architectural movements that included rationalism, Bauhaus and minimalism, a new style emerged and grew into perhaps the most fashionable design trend in recent history—midcentury modern.
—Spencer Elliott, Forbes, 9 Mar. 2023
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Its often pure abstraction has the single focus of parts of the old MoMA but filtered through an entirely different sensibility, one whose restraint and rationalism often reflects the influence of European geometric art.
—Roberta Smith, New York Times, 17 Oct. 2019
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Kassell has studied astrology’s prevalence throughout history, noting that the field declined amid the Scientific Revolution during the 16th and 17th centuries, when an emphasis on rationalism took hold.
—Sydney Page, Washington Post, 13 June 2023
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rationalism.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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