Thinking Systematics (TSS) is conceived as a “toolkit for the mind” — designed to improve how we think about the world, analyze information and pursue our goals. Smith and Hayslip make a compelling argument that individual thinking and collective decision making are being systematically constrained within limits imposed by outmoded forms of cognition and the determination of privileged elites to perpetuate an unsustainable status quo. The dialectical reasoning advocated in this wide-ranging book aims to overcome those limits and to allow a much more profound understanding of the human condition in the 21st century.

Mainstream problem-solving focuses almost exclusively on scientific/technological fixes on one side and moral/cultural remedies on the other. But to comprehend our world adequately far more serious attention must be given to the specifically social, economic and political arrangements shaping our lives. Once embraced by growing numbers of people, TSS strategies, methods and habits of thought can contribute significantly to a “new common sense” — one adequate to meeting the immense challenges facing humanity in our era.

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Tim Hayslip is a PhD student in sociology at York University. His research focuses on the intersection of the sociology of knowledge and economic sociology, seeking to explain the popularity of the Austrian School of Economics and its remedies for economic malaise: higher interest rates, less market regulation and allowing the bankruptcies of “zombie companies.”

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“The 21st century is an age of fake news, of opinion over fact, of lies over truth, of relativism over objective reality, of faith over reason. We are in desperate need of rational and logical thinking to cut through this morass of confusions and illusions. In this book, Smith and Hayslip show that we can substantially improve how to think and act rationally so that a world scarred by deep social inequalities, material privation and pervasive injustices can be transformed.”

Michael Roberts, author of The Long Depression and co-author of Capitalism in the 21st Century

“This book is a powerful antidote to current intellectual fashions that question the possibility of approximating objective truth. Demonstrating the power of rational ideas and displaying an unalloyed optimism about human beings’ ability to create a new and better social-ecological order, Thinking Systematics is a feast in philosophy and social theory. It provides an accessible and synoptic history of the major controversies in Western philosophy from antiquity up to the modern era and advocates a dialectical mode of thinking about the human world and its relation with nature. The book will be of benefit to anyone who wishes to scientifically understand the world with all its contradictions and to contribute to its radical transformation.”

Raju Das, professor of geography, York University