Analytic thinking, religion and science – the rhetoric and the psychology

Over the past few decades there has been an increasingly large literature on styles of thinking and cognitive biases (to which I am grateful to Jocelyn Stoller, a reader of this blog, for introducing me) in psychology, culminating in the marvellous book, which I recommend to everyone, by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow. If you want to understand about how we think, this is the best book for it.

Kahneman, in conjunction with his late colleague Amos Tversky, identified two cognitive systems in our minds, which they called, using prior terminology, System 1 and System 2. System 1 is the immediate response cognitive system – it doesn’t involve reflection or mediated judgement. It is how you know to avoid a thrown object or to recognise a face. System 2, however, is under some control and is something you are aware of as you employ it, and it takes effort.
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