In Marina's human nature experiment, when people placed the pistol in her hand, Marina was under general anesthesia. She might have been unable to fire it herself.
But Earth's gravity, or an involuntary muscle contraction, could have pulled the trigger. If the gun had gone off, blood would inevitably have been spilled on the spot.
Fortunately, someone among the audience came to their senses in time and prevented the tragedy.
What was rationality? If there were two marriage proposals, should one choose the wealthier man for the sake of the future, or the one who would disregard everything to save you?
Georgiana envied Our Lady of Thermidor, Madame Tallien, even though Teresa had ultimately married the wealthy banker Gabriel Ouvrard.
Rose aboard the Titanic had chosen Jack Dawson rather than Carl, the steel magnate. Her actions seemed terribly irrational, but think about it: would a man willing to throw away his life for a girl stay out all night after they married?
Socrates believed ignorance was a sin, while Christian ethics held that preserving a pure heart was most important. Ignorance could preserve that natural purity, almost childlike in its innocence. Only such people could enter The Paradise, because they had not been tainted by the "life experience" of the mortal world.
Ordinary believers might not know Socrates, but priests had always studied him. Before the Common Era, philosophy was roughly divided into the intellectual school and the faith school, and the two often argued. It was only during the Renaissance that the Continental rationalists represented by Descartes and British empiricism represented by Sir Bacon emerged.
"I think, therefore I am" was Descartes's famous saying. Although his contributions to geometry far exceeded his contributions to philosophy, he still influenced people such as Hobbes and Pascal...
Why was a statue of