How Do You Think?

By his very nature man detests doubt and finds comfort in certainty. When he cannot explain some event, he feels anxious and unsettled; likewise he prefers a false proof to silence. A simple example will make this clear to you: suppose you rose at midnight feeling your insides torn with pain. At first you ask yourself what brought on the pain; then you go back in your thoughts to review your recent meals. The cause of the pain might be a chemical disturbance in the stomach, or an emotional complication resulting from some incident, or it may be that raw vegetables provoked this pain — that is the easiest of these explanations, so your mind settles upon it, even if it is not the true cause!...

Many superstitions arise from supposition — as when you see a black cat in the morning and then lose your purse that same day. What connection is there between the two events?... Thoughts of this kind cause confusion, and a misery we can well do without, in an age whose problems have piled up until our lives can scarcely contain them!

Many of the astrologers' theories rest on suppositional reasoning: they believe that the movement of the stars and planets influences the course of human life, while science endorses none of these suppositions and theories! Their reasoning sounds like an advertising phrase: "She is engaged, and she uses such-and-such a cream..." — therefore the use of this cream causes engagement!...

Thinkers and scholars sometimes fall into errors of suppositional reasoning. The famous historian Gibbon observed that at the time of the renaissance of the Christian religion the Roman Empire began to decline, so he explained the fall of that empire as the result of the Christian renaissance; but not one of our historians today accepts this view!

Someone wrote that university students who practice smoking fail more often than the others; whoever hates smoking adopts this theory and clings to it in order to convince others that smoking causes failure at the university. But there is another explanation: failure leads the student to smoking. The prevailing opinion, however, is otherwise; it says that sociable students do not shut themselves away with themselves and the book!... What concerns us in this matter is that every theory has several doors through which it may be explained; it is not right to cling to one view and pay no heed to the others!

Suppositional reasoning places us before three cases:

1 — An event occurs, followed by another, and it appears to us that the first caused the second!

2 — Event (A) may influence event (B) indirectly, and may be of no serious importance.

3 — The two events run together, so that it is hard to distinguish the cause from the effect; and this influence sometimes has yet another factor behind it.

Modern scientists believe that most events result from several causes, which we understand better if we think of them as a chain of interconnected links. We must distinguish error from truth if truth is our aim and we are seeking after it. Then let us ask ourselves whether we have gathered all the facts that caused the event — and we shall have won half the battle!