All 50 Uses of
rational
in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion.†
Part 1
- What emerged in vague form at first and then in sharper outline was the explanation that I had been seeing that shim in a kind of intellectual, rational, cerebral way in which the scientific properties of the metal were all that counted.†
Part 1
- He tries to swing it without any rational premeditation and botches it and botches it and botches it and after so many botches gives up and just kind of puts a blanket curse on that whole nuts-and-bolts scene.†
Part 1
- There's no rational reason I can think of for saying it's not good.†
Part 1
- I'm just as happy to be thinking about the rational, analytical, classical world of Phaedrus.†
Part 1
- His kind of rationality has been used since antiquity to remove oneself from the tedium and depression of one's immediate surroundings.†
Part 1
- So listen: A motorcycle may be divided for purposes of classical rational analysis by means of its component assemblies and by means of its functions.†
Part 1
- It was the ghost of rationality itself.†
Part 1
- No one then would see the ghost that Phaedrus pursued, but I think now that more and more people see it, or get glimpses of it in bad moments, a ghost which calls itself rationality but whose appearance is that of incoherence and meaninglessness, which causes the most normal of everyday acts to seem slightly mad because of their irrelevance to anything else.†
Part 1
- In his pursuit of what I have called the ghost of rationality he was a fanatic hunter.†
Part 1
- I think his pursuit of the ghost of rationality occurred because he wanted to wreak revenge on it, because he felt he himself was so shaped by it.†
Part 1
- Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle.
Part 2 *rational = based on using reason
- A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.†
Part 2
- I said yesterday that the ghost of rationality was what Phaedrus pursued and what led to his insanity, but to get into that it's vital to stay with down-to-earth examples of rationality, so as not to get lost in generalities no one else can understand.†
Part 2
- I said yesterday that the ghost of rationality was what Phaedrus pursued and what led to his insanity, but to get into that it's vital to stay with down-to-earth examples of rationality, so as not to get lost in generalities no one else can understand.†
Part 2
- Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.†
Part 2
- Talk about rationality can get very confusing unless the things with which rationality deals are also included.†
Part 2
- There is no perfectly shaped part of the motorcycle and never will be, but when you come as close as these instruments take you, remarkable things happen, and you go flying across the countryside under a power that would be called magic if it were not so completely rational in every way.†
Part 2
- It's the understanding of this rational intellectual idea that's fundamental.†
Part 2
- The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.†
Part 2
- The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.†
Part 2
- The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.†
Part 2
- I want to pursue further now that same ghost that Phaedrus pursued…rationality itself, that dull, complex, classical ghost of underlying form.†
Part 2
- We're also at a kind of beginning point in the things I'm discussing at which one can at last start to talk about Phaedrus' break from the mainstream of rational thought in pursuit of the ghost of rationality itself.†
Part 2
- We're also at a kind of beginning point in the things I'm discussing at which one can at last start to talk about Phaedrus' break from the mainstream of rational thought in pursuit of the ghost of rationality itself.†
Part 2
- He coined a law intended to have the humor of a Parkinson's law that "The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite.†
Part 2
- The major producer of the social chaos, the indeterminacy of thought and values that rational knowledge is supposed to eliminate, is none other than science itself.†
Part 2
- Our current modes of rationality are not moving society forward into a better world.†
Part 2
- I see people like John and Sylvia living lost and alienated from the whole rational structure of civilized life, looking for solutions outside that structure, but finding none that are really satisfactory for long.†
Part 2
- To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions.†
Part 2
- To some extent the romantic condemnation of rationality stems from the very effectiveness of rationality in uplifting men from primitive conditions.†
Part 2
- It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location.†
Part 2
- The primary goal of the Church of Reason, Phaedrus said, is always Socrates' old goal of truth, in its ever-changing forms, as it's revealed by the process of rationality.†
Part 2
- What saved him from the wrath of everyone around him was partly an unwillingness to give any support to the enemies of the college, but also partly a begrudging understanding that all of his troublemaking was ultimately motivated by a mandate they were never free from themselves: the mandate to speak the rational truth.†
Part 2
- The contemptuous looks on their faces reflected the same feelings he had toward the whole rational, intellectual process.†
Part 2
- It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem.†
Part 2
- It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem.†
Part 2
- The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone.†
Part 2
- So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution.†
Part 2
- So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution.†
Part 2
- What was depressing was that the text was one of the most rational texts available on the subject of rhetoric and it still didn't seem right.†
Part 2
- He had asked and listened and talked and agreed with their answers in a rational way but somehow still wasn't satisfied with them.†
Part 2
- Therefore it emphasized a mastery of the rational foundations of communication in order to understand rhetoric.†
Part 2
- The wrongness was in the old ghost of his dreams…rationality itself.†
Part 2
- Yet that was all rationality offered and there was nothing to do about it without being irrational And if there was one thing he had a clear mandate to do in this Church of Reason it was to be rational, so he had to let it go at that.†
Part 2
- Yet that was all rationality offered and there was nothing to do about it without being irrational And if there was one thing he had a clear mandate to do in this Church of Reason it was to be rational, so he had to let it go at that.†
Part 2
- If you can't define something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists.†
Part 3
- Why should an irrational method work when rational methods were all so rotten?†
Part 3
- No more wonderful critical schools of experts to determine rationally where each composer had succeeded or failed.†
Part 3
- They saw an intellectual delivering a message that had all the trappings of a rational analysis of a teaching situation.†
Part 3
Definition:
-
(rational as in: rational behavior) reasonablein various senses, including:
- "It's not rational to treat 2+2 as 5." -- logical as contrasted to illogical
- "I know you're upset, but please think about this in a rational manner." -- based on reason as contrasted to emotion
- "When I was 10-years-old, I wasn't very smart, but I was still rational." -- capable of using reason as contrasted to being insane or lacking the ability to reason
- "In matters of the heart, I trust my intuition more than my rational analysis." -- based on a logical analysis as contrasted to intuition, instinct, custom, tarot-card reading, or some other system of decision making