Seeking Untruth
Can we survive without illusions? Sure, nobody wants to live in a fiction, but truth can be hurtful or unsettling. Then is it not allowed to bend the truth a little once in a while? In ‘Seeking Untruth’ Maarten Boudry wonders if useful illusions exist, well-crafted delusions that can be beneficial for our bodies and our minds. What’s wrong with a placebo if it betters your health? Or with the belief in life after death if it makes you happy? Won’t you perform better if you overestimate your capacities, at work or on the playground?
Does anyone seriously think ‘theology’ is a real subject? See Maarten Boudry’s wonderfully scathing Sokal-style hoax.Richard Dawkins
Maarten Boudry will have none of it. In ‘Seeking Untruth’ he proves that illusions are always dangerous: from religious mirages to pseudo-science and financial bubbles. With many recognizable examples (taken from Socrates as well as ‘The Matrix’ and ‘The Sopranos’) and entertaining hypotheses, Boudry makes a convincing case for the truth, and nothing but the truth.
