Twenty-Five Centuries of Debate
This chapter traces the history of decision-making and rationality in Western culture. Despite the fact that the concept of rationality has been tackled by philosophers since early Greek antiquity, it only really emerged in popular culture after the Middle Ages. The science of rationality culminated in the twentieth century with the axiomatization of preferences and theories of decision-making development by economists. Ultimately, psychologists and economists agree that the concept of rationality is relative. To summarize: when a subject decides, they do not usually optimize choice. For behaviourists, explanation is to be found in exploratory behaviour: evolutionary pressure has selected behaviours that anticipate possible changes in environmental conditions. The subject (animal or human) exchanges some immediate efficacy against information which may serve him later. For economists, the answer is more complex. It is a combination of the inability to understand all of the options relating to the problem (bounded rationality) associated with biases that cloud judgement.