How to Use rationalism in a Sentence

rationalism

noun
  • Those values, norms, are outside of the process of critical rationalism.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 5 Sep. 2012
  • What is surprising is the utter rationalism of her response.
    — Justin Chang, New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2025
  • But the book also takes aim at a strain of hyper-rationalism that the author regards as equally dangerous.
    — Washington Post, 27 Nov. 2019
  • With people of faith squaring off against those who believe in scientific rationalism, just put the politics aside.
    — John Kass, chicagotribune.com, 27 Apr. 2018
  • Lib will watch the girl for eight-hour shifts, alternating with a nun—rationalism and faith, dual modes of attempting to understand what exactly is going on.
    — Chloe Schama, Vogue, 14 Nov. 2022
  • There's also a psychology term called rationalism, which people often confuse with denial.
    — Megan Marples, CNN, 16 Aug. 2020
  • Venture capitalists erected their industry on the altar of profits, with perhaps a dash of rationalism.
    — Leo Schwartz, Fortune, 18 Sep. 2025
  • The other skills that pair well with AI are critical thinking and dispassionate rationalism.
    — Rolling Stone Culture Council, Rolling Stone, 14 Apr. 2023
  • There are lots of romantic anti-rationalisms to play with; Rousseau’s was largely soft and sentimental in tone, rather than apocalyptic and violent.
    — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 20 Mar. 2017
  • But whole scenes are narrated from his perspective, which, like Mad’s, displays a mix of sophisticated rationalism and aww-inducing naiveté.
    — Sophia Nguyen, Washington Post, 21 Oct. 2023
  • While her colleagues gravitated toward bling and braggadocio, Badu served up mysticism and rationalism.
    — Dallas News, 16 Feb. 2022
  • For all his technocratic instincts, for all his training as an engineer and a hedge-fund quant, a romantic impulse coexists with his rationalism, and sometimes overrides it.
    — Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 10 Oct. 2019
  • As a lifelong journalist and media entrepreneur, Brill possesses the rationalism of the former and the certainty of the latter that facts are what move the world.
    — Laura Wagner, Washington Post, 30 June 2024
  • By then, the rationalism of the Mu‘tazila school had been superseded by more dogmatic interpretations of Islam.
    — Peter Hessler, The New Yorker, 7 Apr. 2017
  • Where other mathematicians blanched and went crazy, von Neumann persevered, following the contours of rationalism into a black hole.
    — Rachel Cusk, Harper's Magazine, 21 Sep. 2023
  • Evolution may be the most robust and powerful theory for deductive inference in biology, but even here rationalism has its limits.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 19 Aug. 2011
  • The human person remains sacred, despite rationalism and the secular-progressive view of history.
    — M. D. Aeschliman, National Review, 7 Oct. 2017
  • Freemasons believed in principles such as rationalism, which views science and logic – rather than sensory experiences – as the foundations of knowledge.
    — Derek Arnold, The Conversation, 6 Apr. 2026
  • Like everything else, the optimistic rationalism of Russia’s futurists resurfaces in Telluria, but it’s mangled into a joke.
    — Aaron Timms, The New Republic, 2 Sep. 2022
  • In Denmark, the architect Verner Panton, a scion of Bauhaus rationalism and Scandinavian good taste, picked up the scent.
    — Lewis Jacobsen, Air Mail, 23 May 2026
  • In his early work, Kant embraced German rationalism, convinced that pure reason could prove God’s existence and the soul’s immortality.
    — Shai Tubali, Big Think, 30 Sep. 2025
  • This medieval or Gothic aesthetic could make the Romantics, in turn, hostile to the airless rationalism and classicism of the Enlightenment.
    — Jeffrey Collins, WSJ, 18 Mar. 2022
  • Meanwhile, the tribes grow to appreciate the Galaxy Team’s technological rationalism.
    — Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 17 Feb. 2022
  • Mary, living in the world of Galvanism, industrial and democratic revolution, and the newfound delight in rationalism, was able to give us a golem without resorting to the supernatural.
    — Cory Doctorow, Slate Magazine, 22 May 2017
  • The Munich Cosmic Circle, for example, was animated by the belief that rationalism had caused the West to decline and that the only way out was a return to paganism.
    — Frederick Kaufman, Harper's Magazine, 22 Apr. 2024
  • The philosophy of the day was grounded in logic and rationalism, but the English monarchy was threatened by developing democracies in France and America.
    — Jason Foumberg, Chicago Reader, 4 Oct. 2017
  • This passionate defense of the Enlightenment ideals of scientific rationalism and secular humanism argues that human progress is a measurable fact and that the current moment is the best ever.
    — Olivia De Recat, The New Yorker, 14 Mar. 2018
  • Despite these indications of post-humanist scientific rationalism, Galileo had deep connections to humanism.
    — Jessica Riskin, The New York Review of Books, 23 Feb. 2021
  • But a queasy discussion between Doc and Preacher, regarding whether good and evil exist outside the realm of scientific rationalism, only further clouds what never quite comes into focus as a religious parable.
    — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 20 Nov. 2025
  • For the next one hundred years and more science flourished, applying its model of rationalism to every question, while increasingly religion struggled to find any way to justify its existence in the face of triumphant demystifications of reality.
    — Marilynne Robinson, The New York Review of Books, 1 Dec. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rationalism.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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