The Power of Asking WHY

An explanation often starts with the question “Why?”

However, like everything in a scientist’s intellectual inventory, it’s important to think about how you use this question (and, yes, why you use it!). Feynman was once interviewed by someone who clearly wanted to peer deeper into the nature and process of inquiry, and asked the scientist the following question:

“If you get hold of two magnets, and you push them, you can feel this pushing between them. Turn them around the other way, and they slam together. Now, what is it, the feeling between those two magnets?”

Feynman immediately responded with, “What do you mean ‘What’s the feeling between the two magnets?’” and then “What is the meaning when you say that there’s a feeling? Of course, you feel it. Now, what do you want to know?”

Feynman concedes that two magnets are repelling each other, and the interviewer asks why. Here’s Feynman’s (condensed) response:

“Of course, it’s an excellent question. But the problem, you see, when you ask why something happens, how does a person answer why something happens? For example, Aunt Minnie is in the hospital. Why? Because she went out, slipped on the ice, and broke her hip. That satisfies people. It satisfies, but it wouldn’t satisfy someone who came from another planet and knew nothing about why when you break your hip do you go to the hospital. How do you get to the hospital when the hip is broken? Well, because her husband, seeing that her hip was broken, called the hospital up and sent somebody to get her. All that is understood by people. And when you explain a why, you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise, you’re perpetually asking why. Why did the husband call up the hospital? Because the husband is interested in his wife’s welfare. Not always, some husbands aren’t interested in their wives’ welfare when they’re drunk, and they’re angry.

And you begin to get a very interesting understanding of the world and all its complications. If you try to follow anything up, you go deeper and deeper in various directions. For example, if you go, ‘Why did she slip on the ice?’ Well, ice is slippery. But you ask why is ice slippery? You could either say, ‘I’m satisfied that you’ve answered me. Ice is slippery; that explains it,’ or you could go on and say, ‘Why is ice slippery?’

Because it is, in the case of ice, when you stand on it (they say), momentarily the pressure melts the ice a little bit so you get a sort of instantaneous water surface on which you’re slipping. Why on ice and not on other things? Because water expands when it freezes, so the pressure tries to undo the expansion and melts it. It’s capable of melting, but other substances get cracked when they’re freezing, and when you push them they’re satisfied to be solid.

Why does water expand when it freezes and other substances don’t? I’m not answering your question, but I’m telling you how difficult the why question is. You have to know what it is that you’re permitted to understand and allow to be understood and known, and what it is you’re not. You’ll notice, in this example, that the more I ask why, the deeper a thing is, the more interesting it gets. We could even go further and say, “Why did she fall down when she slipped?” It has to do with gravity, involves all the planets and everything else. Nevermind! It goes on and on.”

Feynman and the interviewer go on, and again consider the question of magnets. Feynman explains that the answer to “Why do they repel?” depends on who is asking the question, and what they know, and what kind of theoretical framework they are inhabiting, and what facts they have taken to be given. Feynman points out that the interviewer is curious about magnets, but not the fact that when he pushes his hand against his chair, the chair pushes back, and his hand does not go through the chair. Yet, it is the same kind of forces and the same kind of principles that are responsible for both the behavior of the magnets, and the hand and the chair.

If the interviewer was not a physicist and didn’t need to be, Feynman could have given an answer that pointed to the existence of magnetic repulsion or electrical and magnetic attraction. Then, the interviewer may have been satisfied that the question was answered. Why do magnets repel? Well, because of (insert explanation about magnetic repulsion). Problem solved. But as Feynman hinted at in the interview, such an answer both is and isn’t satisfactory. If he assumed that the interviewer was happy to live in a world where certain ideas and concepts (for example, magnetism) were taken as a given and resolved part of the natural world, then he could stop asking why and that would be that.

Of course, Feynman was in the habit of continuing to ask why. Not because the question itself is magical, but because it lets us examine our current “explanations” and the causal connections they assume. Why is the kind of question that reveals to us the kind of answers that we are currently satisfied with, and what assumptions we might be taking as true in order to arrive at those answers. We can go on forever: Why did we give that answer?

Now, this isn’t to say that we need to relentlessly ask why, why, why far beyond the point at which we have a workable model that helps us live our lives better. Nobody can expect to get far in life digging into the nature of reality itself every time they open a door or ask what the time is (“but how are you defining floor? How can the time be something, anyway, and what is it that it is being?”). But this question is one that will help us in ways that other lines of questioning won’t. If we ask who or what or when, we are defining the limits of our inquiry; when we ask why, we are looking at the very manner in which phenomena are arising and interacting, and seeking out an explanation of those phenomena.

Look at the first line of the Wikipedia entry for magnetism:

Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities.

This is a great definition (and, as Feynman says, you might want to learn about definitions at first), but does it explain anything? Read the above sentence again and again, asking yourself why, and you will see that at bottom, it is a statement saying, “Magnetism is when things behave like magnets,” which is more or less the same as saying “Magnetism is magnetism.” To look at it another way, see if you can rewrite the above sentence without using the word “magnet” or its derivatives!

Physics teachers the world over have used analogies—for example, “magnets act like they are connected with rubber bands”—because the behavior of rubber bands is something we intuitively understand and might relate to the force of magnetism. Feynman points out that the analogy leaves another question unanswered: “Why do rubber bands pull toward each other, then?” (If you were a really terrible physics teacher, you might be tempted to say, “Because they’re acting like magnets . . .”)

When you are using the why question in your own life, part of the trick comes in how you interpret the answers you’re given. When will you accept an answer as satisfying your need for an explanation? Little children might be told that the sky is blue because that’s what color skies are. That’s fine for children. They simply learn that part of the definition of a sky is “a thing that is blue.” But if you want to gain a deeper understanding, you need to keep on asking why.

One way to wield the why question is to get rid of circular arguments in your everyday life. Take a look at the following:

Janie is so popular because everyone loves her.

It’s a good thing to obey the law, because breaking the law is illegal.

Sweden is the best place in the world to live because it’s better than all other countries.

You might well wonder what it is precisely that makes Janie both popular and lovable? Why do people love her? When you ask why something is legal or not legal, you are not asking for a version of “because that’s the law” as an answer—you want to know why it’s the law. And when people say that Sweden is better than other countries, you might ask why—and not be satisfied with the answer “because it’s the best place to live.”

Ask what level of explanation an answer provides. “I can’t focus because I have ADHD” identifies a condition relevant to the difficulty; it is not equivalent to saying “I can’t focus because I can’t focus.” It does not, by itself, explain the mechanisms or circumstances affecting attention in a particular situation. Those are further questions, rather than reasons to dismiss the diagnosis as circular.

Summary

• “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” Treat your explanation as something to examine. State its assumptions and identify what evidence would make you revise it.

• Ask questions step by step, distinguishing what you know from what you are assuming.

• Pass your work through the ordinary language test—can you explain a new term without resorting to that very term? If not, identify which concepts you need to understand or explain more clearly. Pseudoscience can often be recognized in the way it uses meaningless jargon, which obfuscates rather than illuminates. Always try to paraphrase things simply and in your own words. Watch out for the misuse of technical language or the dressing of nonsensical ideas in the language of science.

• The question WHY is powerful and should be used like a tool. Pitch your question at the correct level, and realize that at some point you will have to accept certain definitions and explanations as given.

• Be honest about whether your explanation actually explains anything. Why is the kind of question that reveals to us the kind of answers that we are currently satisfied with, and what assumptions we might be taking as true in order to arrive at those answers. Be on the lookout for circular arguments that do not have any explanatory power.

Chapter 4: Building Your Map of the World