“Why are you in the hospital?”—“Because I was injured when a car hit me.”
“Why did the car hit you?”—“Because the driver was drunk and I was standing at the intersection.”
“Why was the driver drunk?” and “Why were you standing at the intersection?” and so on and so forth.
Every “why” question about something occurring in the natural world is answered by going one (or more) levels down in the granularity, describing one high-level phenomenon via its components, typically lower-level phenomena.
This isn’t unlike deriving one corollary from another. You’re climbing back* the derivation tree towards the axioms, so to speak. It’s the same in any system, the math analogy would be if someone asked you “why does this corollary hold”, which you’d answer by tracing it back to the nearest theorem. Then “why does this theorem hold” would be answered by describing its lower-level* lemmata. Back we go, ever towards the axioms.
All these are more aptly described as “how”-questions, “how” is the scientific question, since what we’re doing is finding descriptions, not reasons, in some sense.
Of course you could just solve such distinctions via dictionary and then in daily usage use “why” and “how” interchangeably, which is fine. But it’s illuminating to notice the underlying logic.
Which leaves as the only truly distinct “why”-question the “why those axioms?”, which in the real world is typically phrased as “why anything at all?”. Krauss tries to reduce that to a “how” question in A Universe From Nothing, as does the Tegmark multiverse, which doesn’t work except snuggling in one more descriptive layer in front of the axioms.
There is a good case to be made that this one remaining true “why”-question, which does not reduce to merely some one-level-lower description, is actually ill-formed and doesn’t make sense. The territory just provides us with evidence, the model we build to compress that evidence implicitly surmises the existence of underlying axioms in the territory. But why bother with that single remaining “Why”-question when the answer is forever outside our reach?
*(We know real trees are upside down, unlike these strange biological things in that strange place outside our window.)
There is a good case to be made that this one remaining true “why”-question, which does not reduce to merely some one-level-lower description, is actually ill-formed and doesn’t make sense.
Am Douglas Adams on this one. 42 is the answer, we don’t know the question. Seriously, though I’ve gotten to a stage where I don’t wonder much about the one ‘why’ axiom anymore*. Thanks for the clarification though.
“Why are you in the hospital?”—“Because I was injured when a car hit me.”
“Why did the car hit you?”—“Because the driver was drunk and I was standing at the intersection.”
“Why was the driver drunk?” and “Why were you standing at the intersection?” and so on and so forth.
Every “why” question about something occurring in the natural world is answered by going one (or more) levels down in the granularity, describing one high-level phenomenon via its components, typically lower-level phenomena.
This isn’t unlike deriving one corollary from another. You’re climbing back* the derivation tree towards the axioms, so to speak. It’s the same in any system, the math analogy would be if someone asked you “why does this corollary hold”, which you’d answer by tracing it back to the nearest theorem. Then “why does this theorem hold” would be answered by describing its lower-level* lemmata. Back we go, ever towards the axioms.
All these are more aptly described as “how”-questions, “how” is the scientific question, since what we’re doing is finding descriptions, not reasons, in some sense.
Of course you could just solve such distinctions via dictionary and then in daily usage use “why” and “how” interchangeably, which is fine. But it’s illuminating to notice the underlying logic.
Which leaves as the only truly distinct “why”-question the “why those axioms?”, which in the real world is typically phrased as “why anything at all?”. Krauss tries to reduce that to a “how” question in A Universe From Nothing, as does the Tegmark multiverse, which doesn’t work except snuggling in one more descriptive layer in front of the axioms.
There is a good case to be made that this one remaining true “why”-question, which does not reduce to merely some one-level-lower description, is actually ill-formed and doesn’t make sense. The territory just provides us with evidence, the model we build to compress that evidence implicitly surmises the existence of underlying axioms in the territory. But why bother with that single remaining “Why”-question when the answer is forever outside our reach?
*(We know real trees are upside down, unlike these strange biological things in that strange place outside our window.)
Am Douglas Adams on this one. 42 is the answer, we don’t know the question. Seriously, though I’ve gotten to a stage where I don’t wonder much about the one ‘why’ axiom anymore*. Thanks for the clarification though.
*-- Used to wonder some 10 years ago though.