Philip Regal began writing The Anatomy of Judgment for college science students so they might avoid some of the pitfalls involved in human thinking. However, the completed work is for anyone attempting to make better, more accurate judgments about themselves and the world around them.

According to The Anatomy of Judgment, proper thinking “must be cultivated” if one is to escape the layers of influences that already manipulate the Western mind. Thus, Regal’s work studies these influences in some detail.

He begins by explaining that much of the Western World’s thought is influenced by the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle. Plato’s world was one of shadows. In earthly existence, humans could not see real objects, but only a reflection of their perfected forms which existed in the ideal world with the Demiurge (God). Upon death, humans would then arrive in the ideal world and see perfected objects for what they really are.

Aristotle was much more scientific. He urged students to gather and analyze facts about their world before attempting to make a synthetic judgment about what a thing is. Truth about the underlying substance of a worldly form could only be gotten by sense observation. But The Anatomy of Judgment would caution that the senses are easily misled. A look at the figure below is disturbing because the mind repeatedly tries to make sense of the object but cannot.

Although most people feel they make non-prejudicial analyses of the world around them, author Regal would caution against such thinking. The society in which a person is raised has already exerted a certain mind control. The fact that different cultures have often developed far different systems of laws, customs, and arts over long periods of time often leads to serious misunderstandings, particularly when two peoples meet who do not share a common language.

Evidence of this is obvious when the Europeans invaded North and South America bringing along their religions, their customs, their value systems, and their goods, and, one might be wont to add, their greed. Clashes were inevitable as the Indians watched white settlers clear sites and build homes and protective forts in what had been their home lands -- their family or tribal garden areas — their sacred burial grounds. As the line of coastal settlements grew, Indians could no longer reach the ocean for fish and other sea staples. (See National Geographic’s May, 2007 issue: “Jamestown – The Real Story.”)