When I was a lad, no self-respecting male ever relied on intuition. Many considered it half a word, “feminineintuition” being the complete, seven-syllable utterance. This, very likely, is why the phrase “trust my gut” was coined. Males were allowed to have abdominal organs, but not a feminine style of cognition. Real men all knew, of course, that intuition was the only thought process available to the double-X contingent.

Decades of feminism have left us more enlightened now, and men are encouraged to use their intuition without feeling embarrassed or emasculated. Except, worry some correspondents, yours truly. I’ve burned a lot of time, energy and electrons in Keep the Joint Running and its predecessors promoting rational, linear, evidence-driven thinking as the preferred way for managers to make decisions. Don’t I see any value at all in intuition and gut feeling?

Sure I do. And if popular and business culture ever overemphasize the value of rationality, I’ll be right there on the ramparts, advocating the value of spatial, non-linear, “integrative” thinking. Intuition is a vital part of how we humans think.

I’m not a cognitive scientist, so what follows is a personal, rather than research-driven perspective. Among its other limitations, this means I’m not going to provide a taxonomy of different types of non-linear thinking. I’m sure someone has done so, differentiating between intuition, pattern recognition, subconscious alarm and another half-dozen distinct ways humans can be aware without involving rational, linguistic processes. It’s even possible that if you learn the taxonomy and properly exercise each one separately you can achieve the brainpower equivalent of isolating muscles and exercising them individually. Mental washboard abs.

It’s possible. I’m skeptical, but then, I’m a rationalist. Still, there’s plenty of value in non-rational thought processes. I’ll call the whole schmear intuition and claim that it provides two irreplaceable services in human thinking.

The first is that it’s the most important source of new ideas. Rationality is the best way to assess the value of an idea, but it’s worthless for creativity. In the absence of intuition, we’d all be left to mentally trudge through the same old ruts. Scientists and engineers are as aware of this as anyone — probably more so. They all recognize that unless they’re capable of an Archimedes-style “eureka moment” they’ll never win the Nobel Prize, the contract to build a new bridge, or tenure. Except for intuition, the only way I know of for anyone can get to a new idea is through misunderstandings.

Yes, misunderstandings. They’re the other source of “meme mutation” (memes being Richard Dawkins’ postulated unit of cultural transmission). You say one thing, I think you said something different and like what I thought I heard, so I pursue that line of thinking to its logical conclusion.

Anyway, intuition is an incredibly important part of how we think, pointing out new conceptual avenues to explore.

It’s also highly valuable in helping us recognize when something “doesn’t fit.” Visually, this is the old square peg/round hole situation. Our brains are superb pattern recognizers. Very likely, the circuits got their start helping animals turn visual stimuli into a mental map of the world in front of them. Whatever the origin, we’re very good at turning a bunch of disconnected information into patterns, and at remembering and comparing patterns. When a pattern doesn’t fit what we expect, alarm bells ring in our heads, even if we aren’t consciously aware of exactly what’s bothering us.

And so, we apply the brakes, thereby missing the pickup that runs the red light and otherwise would have t-boned our car. And so, an insurance underwriter recognizes that something is wrong with the application in front of her and flags it for further investigation.

What intuition doesn’t do is give us any reason to rely on what it puts in front of us. In the 1950s, intuition informed most pale Americans that the dark-skinned American in front of them was likely to violently assault them. In the 1300s it informed most of the world’s population that the earth is flat. As mentioned last week, it leads people to expect that a ball whirled on a string will follow a curved path when released.

Intuition — gut feelings — are just the ticket when you need new perspectives that might be worth exploring, or a warning that things aren’t as they should be. Rational thinking is what you need to find out whether those new perspectives are anything more than the result of indigestion.