Reason and Cause

 

Reasoning is to understand, cause is explanation

What is difference between reason and cause?

Looking to a lightening in dark sky and in heavy clouds-

‘B’ said that lightning is caused because god is angry. ‘B’ added that whenever god is angry (cause) thunder and lightning started (effect).

But ‘C’ on other hand said that to understand the phenomena of lightning it is important to understand the essential requirement of clouds and rattling of clouds. The reason for lightning is there is some charge electric in clouds.

The difference between ‘B’ and ‘C’ is not only the process of thinking but also the way they came out.

Mostly we take both reason and cause as synonyms and that make great fallacy of judgement. These two words ‘reason’ and ‘cause’ is treated in Hindu philosophy as different but mistakenly taken as same and therefore collapsing the meaningful treatise of Indian Philosophy.

Reason is generally taken as thinking, understanding and logically reaching a conclusion. Reason is not pre-deposition but an enquiry in finding the logic to solve something which is not understandable. Reason is basically a scientific methodology that laboured to find out the factual understanding of any phenomena.  

But cause always came out with the effect. Cause is the explanation of any action, phenomena or condition. Without effect there is no cause. Cause is the explanation why effect exists. Cause depends mostly on the level of knowledge, condition, society, religion and economical and educational level. Everyone can give    cause to any effect.

Reason is always one and universal while cause can be hundreds in numbers depending on the level of person that providing cause to the effect.

Rains fail as there was no low pressure on main land continuous for two months is the reason explain by the metrological department but failing of rains in a year have several causes because there is global warming, because, trees are cut in large number, because god is not happy with the present government and because there people do not want rainy season this time.

Hindu philosophy dealt with the cause and effect theory like Satkaryavad or aasta karyavad but in a different way. For Samkhya- oldest Hindu philosophy- state that effect is pre exist in the cause. The effect remains in cause and therefore nothing is created new. As like of curd coming out of milk is not a new creation but curd is already pre-exist in milk and on certain conditions the effect of becoming curd come out as effect.

Vedanta described cause and effect as wrong knowledge while reason is based on knowledge. A man saw something on road in dim light of dusk and ‘A’ thought that it is long rope like thing which is not having movement and evening on teasing it is static is a reasonable conclusion.

But ‘B’ saw the rope on the road and has a cause that because of the heat, snakes are coming on road and therefore it is better not to cross the road.