I drove in to work today. The commute was not bad, hopefully parking will be as easy when I get back.

As I drove down Mass. Ave. I looked forward to see a beautiful blue sky. It slowly graduated from a rich deep sky blue to a lighter milky blue as it intersected with the crisp lines of the buildings surrounding me. Seeing that sky reminded me of reading a science book my parents gave me when I was young. The book had all sorts of things in it, like experiments with bubbles and water tension, how to suspend an egg in a glass of water by putting in the right amount of salt. I remembered as I looked at that milky blue about the book explaining light diffraction in the atmosphere and it had an experiment involving a flashlight and a glass of water with some milk in it to demonstrate how the light is affected when it goes through a medium with particulates in it. That reminded me of how young children always ask "Why?"

My point is that children ask "Why?", and we train them to ask "How?". If you think about it science is designed to describe causal events, or document phenomena, but that does not involve causation or intentionality. For centuries science has reformulated "Why?" into "How?" some times there is little that is lost, but often, the essence of the answer sought is completely ignored. There is no purpose found in scientific inquiry. What then can tell us "Why?" Why is the sky blue? What is the answer to a question like that?

Let me approach this from a different perspective. Let's say I stack two books on top of each other, the book on the bottom is authored by Newton, and the book on the top by Marquez. Another person comes along and asks "Why did you stack these books this way?" I can answer a multitude of ways, either "they are alphabetical by author" or "I had not particular reason" or even "so that you might ask why I did it that way." The point of this example is that I could give intentionality to that act. The question "Why?" could be answered properly because I as the one who stacked them could give insight as to the reasoning I used when stacking the books. I may also have had some future purpose for having the books stacked which I could enlighten the observer about. Understand, science is not designed to ask the one who caused an action about it's purpose. A scientific inquiry as to why the books are stacked in such a way would work something like this:

Observation: The books are stacked
Hypothesis: They may have fallen into place as such
Observation: The book by Newton happens to be heavier than the book by Marquez
Hypothesis: If the books fell from a significant distance then air resistance might disproportionately affect the book by Marquez making it more likely to land on top of the book by Newton.
Observation: The author of the lower book is Newton and the upper book is Marquez
Observation: Newton comes after Marquez in the alphabet
Hypothesis: The books were intentionally stack in an order
Problem: Since there are two books, the order of their placement is not significant to prove intent.

Now a scientist may make the hypothesis that the books were stacked intentionally, but that is not a provable hypothesis. How can they prove intent without access to the one who exercised intent initially. Furthermore, science is fundamentally focused on experimental verification. A scientist can take those two books and drop them multiple times and record the results to see if the falling on each other hypothesis would work.

I think that much the way Plato used the structure of his dialogues to illustrate that often people are speaking at cross purposes, we still today answer things like "Why?" with "How?" And why shouldn't we, science, and the exploration of how to do things had been enormously successful. Or has it? What is fundamentally different about Humans now versus 1000 years ago? On average we live longer? Okay, but do we live better? We can't tell, that is a qualitative question which is not answerable. I would contend that since we still read the ancient books and find value in them, that we are not so different now. We still love, live, eat, cry, die, etc. So has focusing on answering "How?" instead of "Why?" helped us appreciably?

I don't know. Socrates said that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. Every day that I live I feel those words. I think of how true they are. But Socrates meant them in a specific way I believe.

Aristotle was the great systematizer. In the West he was often called "The Philosopher"(I take offense at that title). I don't remember who said it, but once Aristotle was referred to as Plato's worst student. Why? Clearly, Aristotle's mental fortitude was amazing. I think the problem with Aristotle is that he was too willing to give up on the "Why?" and try to explain the "How?". Have you read about his idea of a First Cause? That is an elegant solution to the issue of how a dynamic system begins. I mean it is essentially the Ancient Greek philosophical version of the Big Bang. There is one problem though,(in both theories), the problem is "Why?" Why did the first cause need to start, and the corresponding question, why does a super symmetric unmeasurable speck of nothing need to burst into a universe? The scientific inquiry can move no further. Once you move all the way back to a singularity, there is no prior evidence to consider, every thing you can examine is after that "First Cause" or "Singularity" and so the inquiry stops. At that moment the conversation is nothing but guesses, but that is hardly science. It is however, religion, in a way.

I remember reading Kierkegaard for an ethics class in college. The book we were reading was "Fear and Trembling". The book is largely an examination of the scene in the Old Testament, or Torah where Abraham is told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham prepares for the sacrifice, and climbs the mountain with Isaac to go to where they sacrifice to God. Remember, at this point, Isaac is old enough to ask questions and he asks of his father something like "Where is the sacrifice?" Abraham's response is that God will provide the sacrifice. Abraham had his son gather together the branches to make the fire, he then binds his son(If I were Isaac I would be freaking out) and places him on the brush on the altar. The knife is raised and the angel of the Lord stops Abraham, an animal is provided and they sacrifice that instead.

Abraham knew what was right, and it was not something which would be condoned by ANY ethical code. Abraham knew, by faith, that God would not ask him to do something wrong. In this instance I don't even feel qualified to say what right and wrong are. The point is that Kierkegaard wants you to understand that ethics is not limited to reasonable action, or sentimental action codified through rational inquiry. There are actions which are right for wholly inexplicable reasons, and in those moments we just know they are right. In Abraham's case he knew what was right was what God had asked him to do.

By the way, if I were Isaac, I don't think I would like God much at that point. I also question a lot about how Abraham never told people that Sarah was his wife, and this always got him in sticky situations which God essentially finagled him out of. God didn't seem too happy about the whole calling Sarah his sister thing, but still Abraham did it. So why is it that Abraham who does not have the guts to tell people Sarah is his wife, is fine with sacrificing the child promised to him by God Himself.

Anyway, I went a little farther with this that I had planned. Time to turn in for the night.