noun
definition
A real number that can not be expressed as the quotient of two integers, an irrational number.
adjective
definition
Not rational; unfounded or nonsensical.
example
an irrational decision
definition
Of a real number, that cannot be written as the ratio of two integers.
example
The number π is irrational.
Examples of irrational in a Sentence
It wasn't the money he objected to so much as the irrational logic.
There must be a God who can miraculously endow the irrational mind of man with truth - so runs the new.
The soul is partly irrational, partly rational; and therefore there are two kinds of virtue.
These are isolated cases of irrational numbers.
The real numbers, which include irrational numbers, have now to be defined.
His thoughts were scattered and irrational.
I tried to comprehend his thought process but I found it irrational.
The irrational discords of Strauss are also real phenomena in musical aesthetics.
But now the irrational real numbers have all made their appearance.
The irrational soul, as well as the rational soul, is immortal.
The Stoic regarded the condition of freedom or slavery as an external accident, indifferent in the eye of wisdom; to him it was irrational to see in liberty a ground of pride or in slavery a subject of complaint; from intolerable indignity suicide was an ever-open means of escape.
God could not have intended Nature or His Holy Word to seem irrational.
It may well be a matter of the heart, but that makes it irrational even if it is not downright stupid !
Would Dean ever make such irrational and illogical decisions if faced with a test of his love?
In the top ten was this little lady and I couldn't have explained my irrational dislike of her half as well as this.
He said the act was " replete with seemingly irrational distinctions " .
Rational debate seems to be your reason, but on some topics you start from fundamentally irrational positions.
Once the clients understand how their thoughts may be irrational, the therapist tries to rationalize their fears.
You may also be irrational and engage in risky situations.
According to the American Psychological Association, more than 10 million people in the United States alone suffer from an irrational fear.
A doctor, mental health professional, or counselor should be consulted when irrational fears interfere with a child's normal functioning.
Homophobia-An irrational hatred, disapproval, or fear of homosexuality and homosexuals.
Often described as the "disease of doubt," the sufferer usually knows the obsessive thoughts and compulsions are irrational but, on another level, fears they may be true.
Obsessions are intrusive, irrational thoughts that keep popping up in a person's mind, such as the urgency to wash one's hands again.
A phobia is a strong but irrational fear.
Virgo thinks that's a bit irrational and constantly questions Scorpio.
Atoms swerved as they fell endlessly downwards, and thus introduced an indeterminate or irrational element into the processes of the world.
Under the general heading "Fundamental Notions" occur the subheadings "Foundations of Arithmetic," with the topics rational, irrational and transcendental numbers, and aggregates; "Universal Algebra," with the topics complex numbers, quaternions, ausdehnungslehre, vector analysis, matrices, and algebra of logic; and "Theory of Groups," with the topics finite and continuous groups.
The workings of this Will are irrational primarily, but, as in its evolution it becomes more rationalized and understands the whole meaning of the Weltschmerz, it ultimately reaches the point at which the desire for existence is gone.
The harmony between arithmetical and geometrical measurement, which was disturbed by the Greek geometers on the discovery of irrational numbers, is restored by an unlimited supply of the causes of disturbance.
We therefore take a third step, and obtain theoretical continuity by considering that every point on the line, if it does not represent a rational number, represents something which may be called an irrational number.
But the world will take what is available in Comte, while forgetting that in his work which is as irrational in one way as Hegel is in another.
The number of questions which Calvin failed to ask or eluded by absolutely irrational expedients frees him from any taint of modern rationalism.
But could Christians sufficiently numerous to deserve a long discussion by St Epiphanius in 374-377, who upheld the Synoptists, stoutly opposed the Gnostics and Montanists, and had escaped every special designation till the bishop nicknamed them the " Alogoi " (irrational rejectors of the Logos-Gospel), dare, in such a time and country, to hold such views, had the apostolic origin been incontestable ?
Moral virtue, which is that of the irrational desires so far as they are obedient to reason, is a purposive habit in the mean.
In applying tests of memory, it may be legitimate to allow a candidate to pass who answers correctly from 30 to 50% of the questions; such an allowance if applied to a test of capacity, such as the performance of a sum in addition, the solution of triangles by means of trigonometrical tables, or the translation of an easy passage from a foreign language, appears to be irrational.
In crystallography, the regular or ordinary dodecahedron is an impossible form since the faces cut the axes in irrational ratios; the "pentagonal dodecahedron" of crystallographers has irregular pentagons for faces, while the geometrical solid, on the other hand, has regular ones.
Her commercial policy was one of most irrational and intolerable restriction and repression; and till the end of Spanish rule on the American continent, the whole political power was retained by the court at Madrid, and administered in the colonies by an oligarchy of home-bred Spaniards.
Another widespread reason for avoiding flesh diet altogether was the fear of absorbing the irrational soul of the animal, which especially resided in the blood.
The same fear of imbibing the irrational soul of animals, and thereby reinforcing the lower appetites and instincts of the human being, inspired the vegetarianism of Apollonius of Tyana and of the Jewish Therapeutae, who in their sacred meals were careful to have a table free from blood-containing meats; and the fear of absorbing the animal's psychic qualities equally motived the Jewish and early Christian rule against eating things strangled.
We may, if we like, call this element, which is assumed as the basis of all scientific method, irrational - will instead of reason, feeling rather than knowledge.
Posidonius, unable to explain the emotions as " judgments " or the effects of judgments, postulated, like Plato, an irrational principle (including a concupiscent and a spirited element) to account for them, although he subordinated all these as faculties to the one substance of the soul lodged in the heart.
This was a serious departure from the principles of the system, facilitating a return of later Stoicism to the dualism of God and the world, reason and the irrational part in man, which Chrysippus had striven to surmount.3 Yet in the general approximation and fusion of opposing views which had set in, the Stoics fared far better than rival schools.
Sometimes, too, he writes as if he accepted an irrational as well as a rational part of the soul.
There is, however, in the Cynic notion of wisdom, no positive criterion beyond the mere negation of irrational desires and prejudices.
We saw that Socrates, while not claiming to have found the abstract theory of good or wise conduct, practically understood by it the faithful performance of customary duties, maintaining always that his own happiness was therewith bound up. The Cynics more boldly discarded both pleasure and mere custom as alike irrational; but in so doing they left the freed reason with no definite aim but its own freedom.
Then, in arranging the other special virtues, he begins with courage and temperance, which (after Plato) he considers as the excellences of the " irrational element " of the soul.
All action or movement of all thins irrational as well as Thoma g Aquina s.
But though it is an essential point in Clarke's view that what is right is to be done as such, apart from any consideration of pleasure or pain, it is to be inferred that he is not prepared to apply this doctrine in its unqualified form to such a creature as man, who is partly under the influence of irrational impulses.
It is this irrational and unnatural element - .as Max Muller says, " the silly, savage and senseless element " - that makes mythology the puzzle which men have so long found it.