How or Why ?

“There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t” – Robert Benchley

WAIT!  This is not a summer rerun.  But you are correct; you have read this quote in an earlier post.  That’s because one of the simplest styles of analysis is compare and contrast.  And we all agree, I am nothing if not simple.

While the concepts here are not nearly as globally important as the dissertation on “cat people” vis-à-vis “dog people”, I will be treading into territory rife with metaphorical land mines.  Today’s cerebral wanderings concern construction and causality.  So I proffer, there are two kinds of people, those who ask “How?” and those who ask “Why?”

I do not speak specifically of any individual among my readers.  I suppose that is unusual in this case as I normally type people I know.  You needn’t admonish me, I am aware that stereotyping or profiling is currently considered bad form, but every breathing (and some perhaps who are not) human being has behavior tendencies and it is essential for effective communication that a writer or speaker recognize those personality definers.  It is equally important that would-be communicators know their own personality definers as they shade the message and may make it unacceptable to the targeted audience.  But I digress.

We have, I am sure, experienced the interposition of the two questions and perhaps have even committed this error ourselves.  “How could this happen?” and “Why does a lead to b?” both mean the opposite of the definition of the operative words.  How indicates a desire to understand an association, operation or evolution of some phenomenon.  Why assigns a philosophical quality to an observed event.

“How?” is the realm of engineers and scientists.  They spend their labors investigating the chain of causality and applying the truths uncovered toward the development of technologies targeting humanities challenges from hunger to electronic social networking.  If they can quantify it, apply it, predict it and document it they are happy.  They don’t care why it works… as long as it works within acceptable ranges of statistical predictability.

“Why?” then is the fairy land of dreamers.  It was my good luck to have worked for an employer which recognized the value of continual professional development.  As a result I participated in countless critical thinking and analytic tools seminars.  Among the plethora of techniques to which I was exposed was the Five Levels of Why.  To describe it simply, the technique purports that attacking any problem (unacceptable error rate, in geek speak) by asking and answering “why?” five times, the investigator will uncover the true root cause.  The technique has its merits and I have used it successfully on several occasions.  The problem with this technique is that it is misnamed.  We are not really searching for “why?” the error occurs, rather “how?” does the system produce the unwanted result. Why it happens is of no consequence to the solution.

At this juncture you may be thinking, “Dale, you effete snob. You are simply parsing words!”  To which I reply, “You don’t understand the meaning of the word effete!” To prove my point, let me take you through a mental exercise.

The earth orbits the Sun.  Do we all agree this is simple statement of fact borne out by observation of the evidence available?  Good!  If not, please go to Google! and look up Nicolaus Copernicus.  Go ahead, we’ll wait here.

Ah, you’re back. As I was saying, the evidence at hand demonstrates that our test statement is true (meaning factual, not morally correct… now, that is parsing words, in case you were confused a bit earlier) and any parent, god-parent, au pair, or teen-age babysitter for a three-year old can tell you the next question is, “Why?”  And you would reply, “Gravity!”

Now you are thinking, “But Dale, you are hoist on your own petard!  You have given us the very ammunition we need to blow up your thesis.”  To which I ask you to advance the conversation to the level of a five-year old, “What is gravity?”  Okay, hot shot, give that one a tumble.  Aha, you can’t!  Because nobody knows what Gravity is.  You might say, “That’s silly, everyone knows that gravity is a bending of space-time by the presence of matter.”  And you would be correct. If you are of a scientific bent, you would most probably be able to apply the calculus tools necessary to predict the behavior of orbiting bodies (and no, I cannot).  But application of said tools would merely demonstrate how gravity works.  I challenge you, answer this question: why does it work?  Go ahead and think on it a bit, I’ve got a good twenty-five years, give or take, left.  I’ll be glad to entertain any theory on why gravity works.

Now, back to the purpose of “Why?”  At some point in the discussion of any physical system (or process) we come to the technological limit of current knowledge.  This is the parking lot where we leave our “How?” tractor behind and change to the “Why?” star ship because continuing this journey is going to take us into the realm of fantasy and myth.  Whether you believe God set the universe into motion or Tinkerbelle sprinkled fairy dust on it; whatever the subject at hand, when you drill down into why deep enough, you come up with the same answer… because!  And from that point on, it is all conjecture based on faith, no matter what faith you have chosen.

The answer to the question posed by this missive doesn’t really matter except that it clarifies how one sees one’s self.  When handed a poser do you ask, “How?” or “Why?” 

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This week’s punch line: “This morning they were all in the bed of the truck and one of ‘em was in the cab honkin’ the horn!”