We Built Reality

For the past half century, claims dressed up as science have seeped into almost every corner of daily life. Approaches drawn from the social sciences now shape how people date, how economies are run, how votes are understood, and how artificial intelligence is built, and their influence has reshaped the world in ways few expected.

The results of treating popular science as unquestioned authority have been costly. Jason Blakely links this habit to the 2008 financial crisis, to the failure to foresee Donald Trump's rise, to the strained relationship between poorer communities and the police, and to the way other kinds of knowledge and practical wisdom have been pushed aside. He argues that social science theories have not only described political life but have also helped to produce it.

Blakely's alternative is hermeneutics, the practice of interpretation. It asks readers to pay close attention to the historical and cultural circumstances in which people act, and it shows ordinary readers how insights from the humanities can inform everyday judgments and choices.