What is Reason?
We presume our sense of reason to be the
premier survival asset of all time. And of course
it is. But it has also become the greatest survival
threat we have ever faced. With the advent of the
technological revolution we face pollution, resource
depletion, global climate destabilization and nuclear
annihilation. We cannot grant the rational mind such
laurels as attend our technical, medical and social ac-
complisments, without equally assigning blame for almost
every major malady in the human catalog.
Reason is a double edged sword that we must soon ad-
address or die by our own hand for our arrogance. Fortu-
tunately the answer is not as difficult our philosophers might
suggest. The answer is simple: Find the limits of Reason.
The first rational limit we can establish is how we do science.
Currently, we imagine ourselves as scientists to be nearly finisted with the description of the universe. Men have
have always imagined themseves to be on the precipice of figuring it all out and only having the details left to fill
in. Take the science of cosmology. Every time we devise a new
cosmological model we imagine it to be for the
last time. We imagine every time that our reason is potent enought to fully reflect the entiretly of the potentially
infinite universe. But inevitably we discover that the universe
is bigger and more involved that we thought. So
we make a new cosmology that again describes the entirety of
the universe with little or no regard to the
fates
of all our prior cosmologies. Clearly, we should devise a
cosmology that is presumed to be only a local
des-
cription of a much larger more diverse universe than we are capable of describing, just like it's always been.
This humbleness, this presumption of the immensity of the universe compared to the relative insignifi-
cance of our ability to reason it all out is a microcosm of what we can do as a species to help rectify al-
most all of our modern social and political delimmas.. The book, The God of Reason, is the \first of a
three volume set that outlines the philosophical process of
determining the appropriate limits on
human reasoning. The second book, The End of Reason, outlines the tangible actions we can take
to transition from out current mindset to a more survivable philosophy. And the last book, The
Return of Instinct, offers a glimps into the future
of the inevitable self-evolution under
the
guidance of our most commonly held feelings, instincts intuitions and beliefs.
(read
excerpt from book)
© Abu
Ben Adhem Productions 2007