Irrational Man Irrational Man Irrational Man: A Study In Existential Philosophy is a 1958 book by the philosopher William Barrett, in which the author explains the philosophical background of existentialism and provides a discussion of several major existentialist thinkers, including Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. "Irrational Man" helped to introduce existentialism to the English-speaking world and has been identified as one of the most useful books that discuss the subject, but Barrett has also been criticized for endorsing irrationality and for giving a distorted and misleading account of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Barrett discusses existentialism and its background,
Irrational number Consider ; if this is rational, then take "a" = "b" = . Otherwise, take "a" to be the irrational number and "b" = . Then "a" = () = = = 2, which is rational. Although the above argument does not decide between the two cases, the Gelfond–Schneider theorem shows that is transcendental, hence irrational. This theorem states that if "a" and "b" are both algebraic numbers, and "a" is not equal to 0 or 1, and "b" is not a rational number, then any value of "a" is a transcendental number (there can be more than one value