Our problem is that our minds just lack the intellectual capacity to deal with continua, especially if these continua involve the interaction of several variables operating along different dimensions. We are happiest with simple dichotomies because they save us having to think. Although evolution has no doubt provided us with a satisfacotry rule of thumb for getting by in everyday life, thinking in dichotomies becomes increasingly unsatisfactory for handling the complexities that beneath the surface that are the real stuff of science. Knowledge, it seems, is perpetually threatened by our own intrinsic limitations.
Well put. I have wondered about this too. I used to believe that we favour black and white arguments perhaps because we have two of most things: eyes, ears, sides of the brain. Then later I thought that the way we bludgeon truth on a daily basis is more down to the plethora of stone-age artefacts that litter our natural language. Another theory would be that we simply like a scrap, we enjoy taking the polar extreme because we rouse our prehistoric bodies. In the end, I think only more through using computers will we be able to communicate intelligently and more often. With computers we can ensure our arguments are properly researched, laid out explicitly, not rushed, multidimensional, with a wider range of relevant variables.
I enjoyed this chapter so much because Dunbar frames it with accounts of intellectual debates through the ages that have demonstrated that even those we pitch up as wise/intelligent make all the same mistakes as the rest of us. The ability to imagine our minds is truly embarrassing, what plundering idiots we seem destined to always be.
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