25. marraskuuta 2009

 4. ”The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of”

Blaise Pascal has said: “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” While the word “reason” appears twice in the sentence, it has completely different meanings. In the first half of the sentence, reasons refers to the doer (in this case, heart) having motives for something. In the latter part of the sentence, reason is the one doing something (in this case, understanding the heart’s reasons).

The very basic meaning of the sentence is the contradiction between irrationalism and rationalism, illogic and logic. Furthermore, it sets apart the human nature and pure, raw mathematics.

                      Pascal has given the sentence a romantic touch: “the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” Clearly a person in love which does work as a good example. A person fallen deep in love is perhaps not the most rational person. However, the sentence could and should be understood on a more general level. What is love: an emotion, this particular emotion needed for breeding. Perhaps an important emotion but still, only one amongst others. Therefore, what Pascal said refers to the “heart” being human in general. Anger, jealousy, happiness… There are many emotions which can make one act quite irrational. The fact remains, though. Humans do often act in ways that seem quite irrational when examined later on or by someone not involved directly.

                      On the other hand, mathematics, the purest version of logic and rationalism, has no feelings at all. Mathematics was here before us and will be after us. Humans have hardly ‘invented’ any mathematic formulas, we’ve merely found them; noticed them and eventually, given them a form we can understand. But one added one is two and it won’t change whether the form. It doesn’t matter if the words and numerals are said or written in English, French or German; one added one is two and it can’t be made three without it being wrong.

                       So Pascal wasn’t merely playing with words. The heart does have its own reasons, which are important, but there might not seem to be any logic in them whatsoever. Or is there? It is tempting to understand what he said as explained before: human nature acts irrationally and it can be hard to find logic in those actions (sometimes, not always). But it should be noticed, that mr. Pascal said what he said in 1670.  While the ultimate power of the Catholic church was over in Europe and many things were explained with sciences, like the world actually being a round planet and that planet circulating the Sun, there was still no explanation on how all the life had born to this planet. That explanation came only about two hundred years later, when Charles Darwin came up with his Theory of Evolution

                      According to Darwin, different forms of life are tested, or rather in constant fight with the rest of the biosphere. That leads to only the strongest surviving and the weak to die, and that is quite logic, isn’t it? It doesn’t differ from a race of speed: in a race of speed, the fastest wins if other factors than fastness and the possibility of mistakes are ignored.

                      That gives a new point of view to Pascal’s words and his words can even be counter-argued: the Heart has its reasons and those reasons come from the Reason. It is merely a fact of determinism and cause and effect. It does not matter what emotions gives the Heart a cause to act: the action still has an effect. The scenario from the cause to the effect might seem illogical when observed by someone who’s not involved directly, but there is a clear logic, the observer just might not understand it because he would’ve done it in a completely different way. However, even if the observer might’ve seen the whole scenario from the cause to the effect, he or she would not have all the facts needed to understand the logic of the actions. Only if the observer would be exactly the same (as in genes, cells, etc.) as the on acting, would have had exactly the same kind of life with the same people and encounters etc. would he be able to understand the logic. In short, because we’re different from each other and with different histories, we cannot always understand the logic of each other. It still does exist, though.

                      All in all, what Pascal said, is very easy to understand and agree upon with common sense. Yes, we do act in many ways and have reasons and motives which might seem quite odd, illogic or plain stupid to others. But there’s a clear, universal reasoning in it. We’re all part of this Universe (if we believe materialists), so certain laws affect us all. In this case, the most important Law of Universe is Cause and Effect. Whatever we do is ultimately weighted against the actions of others in a quite literal way. Though in our everyday social life Darwin’s Theory of Evolution doesn’t seem to be very much involved, it is. Our actions, based on our feelings, instincts, circumstances and logical thinking, they always affect us. In a good or bad way, but every deed we do is still a part of Theory of Evolution.

                      In the end, the Heart has its own reasons but the Reason does know of them. The reasons might seem illogical, but the logic is there. In fact, it would be more appropriate to say that the Heart has its reasons, but it might not know about the logic them, while the Reason has its reasons which it knows perfectly as it knows the logic of the Heart’s reasons.