6 relevant questions to discovery. Curiousity and Why?!

The following are just some of my opinions - no links - no real facts(whatever those are) - influenced from books like blink from Malcolm Gladwell, and just some general thoughts that I construed together.

6 relevant questions to discoveries are Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. ( the 5w's & an h).
It has appeared to me that the 3 most influential to our history of discovery out of the 6 are probably, what, why* and how, considering to understand anything is to recognize what it is (or will be) and how it works to help you understand what it is; just as much as why it is worth understanding it to begin with. *why is not consciously asked. - more below*

Each question does correlate with on another, because the answer to one, can reveal the answer to another. All answers are a form of realization.

Why can sometimes be realized from how.
How can't be answered until "what" is answered.
When is a part of time to “what” or “who” it is.
Where is the location of “what” or “who” it is.
Who is just a concept of identity.
What can only be answered if “why” is answered. (like why is it worth finding out?) - more below on the other why.
*what also gives a word to associate it until it is understood.

Then the English language can make what appears to be incorrect questions too; like, how come?(why) or what time?(when) or which?(choice to who or what) actually, which, could make it 7 but, which; is about choice. There is also yes or no questions like, do you? and is there? but we may not know the answer being yes or no, unless we have the answer to one(or more) of the 6 questions that is relative.

Now there has been many discoveries in the past. We believe we know a lot of this world (although we don't) and we believe the question to “what”, for the most part, has been answered (or at least imagined) to some description, after all, there wouldn't be a question to it if we didn't have a word to describe it.

A Scientific advancement or discovery would, IMO, go in this order.
why(worth/establish curiosity) > what(word) > how(it works). Then maybe > why was I curious?(regression to entirely different questions)

I think why is the one uniquely important question subconsciously asked and subconsciously answered, you are not even aware that you are asking the question all the time. Curiosity is the kind of a hidden answer to, “why you should be concerned with what you discover”, you don't need to ask it aloud or introspectively. Think of it as a reflex always explained in the form of a question: if someone smiles and I smile back, it is a matter of why I smiled not how I smile or what a smile is. The actual feeling of curiosity is an answer to“why” not “how” or “what”. I may be curious of “what” something is, but I am subconsciously computing “why” this particular situation deserves more or less attention to establish the curiosity.

The problem is that our body(subconscious) answers the question; in retrospect we don't know why our subconscious asked the question to raise concern...

I will conclude with a question: Why is "why" so important?
I may be able know much about mathematics and the laws of nature, and I may even know how they are emergent properties and how they effect me or how they don't, but I may never know why I have to exist for things like numbers and laws to even be relevant to anything. They are constructed to make sense and to comprehend, but they don't even exist until we make them what they are.

Think about the most important discoveries that have shaped our understanding (primarily the concept of mathematics) to make sense of the world around us, and then ask why do you think we subconsciously found it necessary (curiosity) to discovery them?

It is not a matter of choice. You can choose to explore or not explore, but you cannot choose whether or not to feel curious.

Feel free to post any opinions or real sources or even questions, I will probably be curious to why...






[edit on 24-11-2008 by juveous]

[edit on 24-11-2008 by juveous]

Everything can inevitably be traced to biological evolutionary fitness. But people would rather deal with the unknowns and intricacies of any given subject. That is what I find the most interesting personally. Why do we care when sometimes the answers are so simple? That is my question. The answer to which has obviously had some fairly deep implications for humanity thus far. So understanding that is far more relevant than understanding some "greater intangible truth", because in the end it turns out those truths aren't nearly as great as we would like to believe and are more than tangible enough. Most people tend not to appreciate it when you simplify all the complexity of life into a single, unified system. Most people would like to be small (and simple) so that their ideas appear important, in the scope of such a large, complex world. It's much easier to believe that you are the product of some divine being than of a series of chemical reactions in matter. This scenario gives one an environment where you are actually capable of constantly questioning your surroundings, but where you are not afraid of finding the "wrong" answers, the ones that don't fit with your personal world view, because you have already completely eliminated them before you have allowed your own investigation of the world to begin.

Originally posted by cognoscente
But people would rather deal with the unknowns and intricacies of any given subject. That is what I find the most interesting personally. Why do we care when sometimes the answers are so simple? That is my question. The answer to which has obviously had some fairly deep implications for humanity thus far.

It seems the answers we tell our selves are supposed reduce complexity and unify understanding, but it also seems that there are some people that will never be satisfied. Just the fact that we have a word in our vocabulary called "unknown" is intricate in itself to never end questioning. I think it is so bizarre that we even have the ability to be arrogant or humble to every approach for only our own pleasure of understanding.

In primitive societies, propounding your own ideas and oppressing others might have been a way to enhance your own inclusive fitness, as well as anyone related to you. If your idea was held predominant, for whatever reason, it would benefit the propagation of your own genes, as well as those of your family's.

Most questions can be infinitely reduced, yet those same questions are infinitely important, so they become infinitely more complex to the beings that pose them as time passes and they experience new things. It is quite possible to place all our questions in the simple framework of science and mathematics, but that never seems to satisfy us. Sure, we've categorized all of the unknowns, and we've described which processes account for whichever number of events, but those answers never seem complete.

My previous post was indicative of this natural quantifying behavior. Am I correct in assuming this is what you want to know? Why it is that we take such great pains to organize and reduce all our knowledge in a simplistic, consciously comprehensible framework of understanding?

reply to post by cognoscente

I was putting things in the form of question and answer to make sense of them. Basically we become curious, but I make sense of curiosity as a from of question and answer to "why attentive?". It may very well be an inevibilitiy of our environment with individual predominant genes and a question isn't even neccessary.

As far as for the behavior why we would simplify things, it is some sort of paradox, it is easier to believe what is unified and reduces quesitions, yet we don't want to accept it; we want to make sense of everything that is unified and reduces questions.

I'm not sure that I've understood what has been said so far, so if this is totally off topic feel free to let me know.

I see the question "why" as being the basis for the human need to turn our experiences into stories – to take the infinity of everyday events and sort them into an order that includes causes and effects, and progress toward resolution.

An early 20th century anthropologist named E.E. Evans-Pritchard had the important insight (thanks to the Azande tribe he was studying) that so-called primitive or magical thinking was not, as had been assumed, based on a lack of knowledge about physical or scientific processes, but came from the need to answer that one question: why?

From Wikipedia:

Typically, people use magic to attempt to explain things that science has not acceptably explained, or to attempt to control things that science cannot. The classic example is of the collapsing roof, described in E. E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Magic, and Oracles Among the Azande, in which the Azande claimed that a roof fell on a particular person because of a magical spell cast (unwittingly) by another person.

The Azande knew perfectly well a scientific explanation for the collapsing room (that termites had eaten through the supporting posts), but pointed out that this scientific explanation could not explain why the roof happened to collapse at precisely the same moment that the particular man was resting beneath it. The magic explains why two independent chains of causation intersect. Thus, from the point of view of the practitioners, magic explains what scientists would call "coincidences" or "contingency". From the point of view of outside observers, magic is a way of making coincidences meaningful in social terms. Carl Jung coined the word synchronicity for experiences of this type.

In other words, the "who, what, when, where, how" all refer to a single event or chain of events – the "why" makes sense of the context

reply to post by americandingbat

Thank you for the post americandingbat,

It was directly on topic, and ties exactly into the question I had. We are the narrator of our own history and experience, good post.

i like this.