Reason Seen More As a Weapon Than a Path To Truth

mdsolar writes with this excerpt from the NY Times: "For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment. Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we'll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena."

Comments

"For centuries"?

[Dr. Manhattan]

"Surely you have observed how the first taste of argument provokes lads to misuse it as a kind of sport, that is, they use it competitively. Having been proven wrong in argument, they must go on to prove others wrong. They are like puppies, welcoming all comers to pull and tear at words with them".

(Plato's Republic, Book VII 539b)

How new is this notion again?