Don't Throw Out The Baby With The Bathwater

It is easy to make a case that we think in discrete steps when trying to move from uncertainty to decision, and often each step can involve a binary choice: Is it this, or is it that? A left turn at the bridge, or a right? Fries or baked potato? The sort of thinking many of us, including myself, regard as the best the human mind can produce is the merciless process we call scientific reasoning, which is of this discrete kind. However, this wonderful method of either/or can become a ruthless weapon in the hands of those who start from unexamined premises, and demand that any opponent stand, or preferably fall, based on the inexorable conclusions.

My point, if I still have it, is that we must be clear about any position that is up for a "yes" or "no". History, whether of philosophy, or religion, or empires, or families, records that many a "no" threw out all sorts of promising implications that were never considered. Truly Thoreau's "Simplify, simplify" has been much abused.

Gravity, which seems as obvious as an apple falling off a tree, looks quite a bit more complicated when we consider that it holds together the solar system, with its elliptical orbits, each of them falling smaller as time goes by. Anyone bitten by a "vicious" insect can think badly of insects, while enjoying no end of fruit made possible by insect-enabled fertilization, not to mention honey from bees, or the beauty of flowers whose function is to entice these insects to do their jobs.

If the oft-muttered wish, "Rain, rain, go away", were actually to be granted, the consequences would be dreadful, and ultimately fatal, as a desert climate crept over the earth. The counterbalancing maxim has also been spoken over and over: "Be careful what you wish for -- you might just get it". Or, as I'm fond of saying, "It's not that simple".

So the lesson is to identify your premises, and then proceed logically to a conclusion. In other words, make clear what it is you are really talking about.