Reason and Imagination

Many creatures have the ability to reason for it often goes hand in hand with the ability to survive. They have the skills to conclude things are a certain way based on other evidence, or infer information based on previous experience. This helps them adapt and stay alive in the wild. Basic logic and reasoning when used by humans is called common sense. Yet you constantly see people acting without the guidance of their common sense; Bank robbers thinking they can out drive the police in their Toyota Camry, every contestant on "America's Funniest Home Videos", and in my case, eating Cheez Whiz after countless experiences of disappointment in the past.

Animals fail when the sophistication of their reasoning is not sufficient enough to solve a problem or avoid a danger. However, humans make mistakes based on the fact that they ignore their reasoning. The separation between animals and humans lies in the imagination. The human brain has the ability to intentionally see in the minds eye, things the way they are not. The imagination creates thoughts of "what ifs" and "maybe that's". When the imagination alone rules over the actions of the body you might end up in jail, get awarded $10,000 on a low brow TV show, or have to spend the day with a stomachache and a bad taste in your mouth. But the thing that has defined humanity since its existence is the ability to combine reasoning and imagination. This pairing drives us to define our universe and explore our surroundings. Reason shows us the boundaries of our knowledge and imagination convinces us to forge past those boundaries.

Galileo's reason told him there's no way to know about the planets position in the universe for certain without observing them and so his imagination brought him the telescope. Einstein's reason told him that he did not know for sure whether time and space were constant, and his imagination led him to the theory of relativity. Imagination and reason worked together to bring us every tool and every piece of information we know about the universe today.

A more abstract tool brought to us through this method is the symbol. The symbol takes the reasoning behind one thing and uses imagination to try to apply it to something else. The ability to use the symbol has allowed humans to expand their knowledge to an amazing extent based on simple information. It has allowed writers and artists to spread complicated subjects in simple terms throughout the human population. Charlotte Perkins Gilman used a "cottagette", which readers could understand easily, to symbolize the institution of domesticity in marriage, a much more complex idea. Carl Sagan utilized a grain of salt to show the patterns in nature and the universe. Symbols often convey the true essence of a concept that is indescribable through basic language.

For example, in order to extract knowledge, one could look at a simple bottle of perfume as a symbol. Imagination gives us many different perspectives in which to spread the reasoning behind the bottle of perfume to more complex topics and ideas. It could be looked at from the perspective of a sociologist, psychologist, chemist, artist, novelist etc. We could start simply with the perspective of the consumer.

Why would a consumer want to buy a bottle of perfume? To smell pleasantly so you can please someone else. Possibly one of the most base purposes of life to attract a mate and reproduce. We can reason that perfume is effective in society and a good perfume can help a person attract a mate in the modern era. Strangely though, perfume does not mimic what an attractive person would naturally smell like. In fact, natural body odor in modern society is considered something that is unattractive and needs to be covered up. Why then do we like the smell of perfume? Why does something so unnatural stimulate our innate urge to reproduce? Perhaps as technology has brought us away from our natural environment our values have changed. Now the societal importance of cleanliness overpowers our natural attraction to body odor. As humans have increased the level of technology they have slowly but surely completely changed their environment to the point where the odors that that once pleased them now offend. Thus they create the technology of a wide variety of perfumes to choose from.

However, technology is what caused the need for perfume in the first place. A historian's prospective will show us that as technology has developed in history it has lead to more technology; from invention of the wheel leading to the development of the axel, to the invention of the wheelbarrow. When we recognize a need our imagination and reason are able to solve it with technology. And with each technological development our needs change. As soon as we build the car, we have a need for a stoplight and then a seatbelt. As our ability to keep hygienic became easily feasible with technology, we developed a need for perfume. Development of transportation, communication, and cities have brought us closer together and created the need for a wide variety of perfumes to distinguish our scents from person to person.

Technological advances have been seen in society as improvement. Technology is meant to solve problems and make the labors of life easier to bear. A sociologist could look at this bottle of perfume and state that new technology simply changes a societies problems rather than eliminating them and that each technological advancement leads to another problem to be solved.

Multiple perspectives could be taken with this realization. A negative one could state that humanities struggle to improve itself is futile, and that we re deceived and our technological advancements are not forward progressions but rather neutral changes. A positive perspective could see the joy in taking on problem after problem and attempting to answer question after question. Writer Carl Sagan says "We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good." Using our reason and imagination can give us power over the world. Although there may be an infinite amount of problems spurred from each one solved, as we finish each task and move on we have effectively controlled our environment. Humans can take great comfort and happiness in each victory as a success in determining one's own destiny. In Sagan's words "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."