Instruct: Classify a review as either positive or negative.
Query: Good effort, not rigorous enough

I read parts of this book for a class assignment, where I had to identify the different paradigms which Gardner uses in his assertions. Basically, Gardner's reasoning is science-centric; even his declarations of faith fall back on science and reason. He also does a good job of artifically separating faith and reason. He is surprisingly ethnocentric, as in one of his refutations of cultural relativism that asserts that certain "primitive" societies do not meet basic needs as well as other societies. He uses pragmatic proofs to refute pragmatism, seemingly without knowing it. Basically, all his conclusions rested on Western principles that are easily deconstructed, that he apparently had not thought about deeply enough. This book shouldn't have survived the 80's. Buy something by Derrida instead.