"Rationality, as most broadly understood, is characterized by four dispositions: suspicion toward received authority, a commitment to continually refining one's own understanding, a receptivity toward new evidence and alternative explanatory schemes, and a dedication to logical consistency. The whole point of calling a belief rational is not that it is guaranteed to be true but only that it is arrived at through a process of inquiry that allows the inquirers to be so oriented to evidence that they can change their beliefs in ways that make it more likely that they are true. This sense of cognitive progress - a sense that through science we have learned how to learn from our experience so that we can give up erroneous views - is how the scientific worldview has traditionally been distinguished from prescientific worldviews.

. . .

"All beliefs to which we consent should be backed not by authority but by appropriate and independent evidence (independent not of all presuppositions, which is impossible, but independent of the belief in question). Scientific rationality in social life is basically a demand that social authority be backed not by power but by reason."

Meera Nanda, "The Epistemic Charity of the Social Constructivist Critics of Science and Why the Third World Should Refuse the Offer"

in Noretta Koertge (editor), A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science