rationalist

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Soprano Sydney Mancasola brought spice to Lisa, Elvino’s irritable ex-girlfriend, and bass Alexander Vinogradov was persuasive as the suspect outsider and rationalist.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 8, 2025

A well-known rationalist, Narlikar also took it upon himself to challenge pseudoscience.

From BBC • May 23, 2025

The same contradictions that marked his father’s life went even deeper in Mr. Nashenas’s own: a secular man in a profoundly religious family; a rationalist in a society trapped in tribal ways.

From New York Times • Nov. 9, 2023

When Musk declares that he is motivated by “a duty to maintain the light of consciousness,” for example, the SpaceX CEO sounds less like an enlightened rationalist than a technological shaman.

From Slate • Jan. 26, 2023

There is a puzzle here, because the standard alternative to voluntarism is rationalism, and a rationalist would hold that the laws of nature, like the laws of mathematics, exist because they are necessary.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton