How We Why

WHINING AND WHYING 

I'm thinking about why as a verb in this context. Whying is an activity that all humans engage in, and indeed, it is one of the things that defines us as humans. Anyone who has taken a road trip with a young child knows how true this is.

When we ask why, we tend to do so for many reasons, but our approaches seem to come from one of two directions.

 

TWO WHYERS

To demonstrate the different ways to why, I'll briefly discuss two ancient Greek characters: Pythagoras and Democritus.

Pythagoras is, of course, famous for the theorem that bears his name. Democritus is hardly known at all but, among other things, was one of the first people to understand the concept of the atom - that is, objects are made up of small, invisible particles.

Democritus and Pythagoras had vastly different world views. Pythagoras was, in addition to a brilliant mathematician, a staunch mystic. He believed in perfect spheres, numbers, shapes, etc. He also believed that the ultimate human endeavour was pure thinking - that is, whying within ones own mind to learn the truth of the universe. When he discovered that the square root of two was an irrational number, he tried to hide that information from people, thinking it was "dangerous" (as it violated his assumptions around the perfection of numbers). He also hid knowledge of the dodecahedron which he believed held a kind of mystic power.

Democritus, on the other hand, was a skeptic and practical experimenter. He believed the world could only be understood through observation and experiment. He didn't believe in deities (even the Gods of his time), magic, or perfection. He believed that it was inherently impossible to understand things objectively and so one must constantly challenge assumptions in order to arrive at the truth, which may not even exist in objective form.

 

WTF IS A DEMOCRITUS

Democritus is almost entirely unknown. The reason for this is that Pythagoras and his later followers including Plato were successful in burying Democritus and the followers of his methods. Eventually they ran afoul of "piety" laws and such experimental approaches disappeared. As major western religions embraced the Platonic view of the universe, the skeptical scientific method more or less disappeared in the west for approximately 2000 years; only returning in the 16th century.

That is a long time to not be whying the scientific way.

Pythagoras was whying, to be sure, but he was doing it within the limits of internal assumptions. In modern times this is called selection bias, but Pythagoras, unlike many other people, was doing it intentionally. He believed that the answers to why were located inside the mind and anything outside the mind represented a violation and corruption of an absolute internal truth. Much can be learned and understood in this way, as Pythagoras proved; but much is also lost.

I believe that the Democritian method of whying is far superior at illuminating things.

To illustrate I'll use a very simple example.

 

HOW TO STOP A CHOLERA OUTBREAK NEXT TIME YOU ARE IN 1850s LONDON

Cholera could be a major problem in 19th century London. Outbreaks could spread quickly and kill many people. Of course at that time, there was no penicillin or good understanding of microbiology. One September in 1854 Dr. John Snow (nothing to do with GRR Martin) was investigating a nasty outbreak of Cholera. Rather than using the internal why approach, thinking about what the causes might be and ruling them out, or doing research on the bodies to find "why" people are dying, he took a Democritian approach.

He mapped out the deaths on a map and looked for a pattern. He noticed that the deaths clustered around a central area and then dissipated as the distance from the point increased. He looked to see if there was anything noteworthy in that area and noticed that there was a water pump in that area. He then mapped all the other water pumps in that area to see if there was any relationship to the deaths. Sure enough, only this pump seemed to correlate with the deaths. Thus, it was likely a problem with the pump and not, say, the central water supply. By replacing the handle on the pump in question, the epidemic was stopped.

(From: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Tufte, Edward R., p.24)

Now... in 1854, there was no penicillin and knowledge of microbiology and infection wasn't particular advanced. Also, what causes outbreaks and disease was not very well known either and in many cases you were better off NOT going to a doctor if you valued your health. But Dr. Snow was whying in the experimental and observational way. He was trying to see what was going on and understand it as opposed to becoming obsessed with the reasons behind what was happening. He didn't need to know how microbiology works or how infections spread in the same way that Democritus didn't need to understand Quantum physics to understand the world was made up of tiny particles and was at it's core, imperfect.

It is very hard to do this kind of whying as it requires an almost relentless self-doubt and active questioning. It makes the world feel both frustrating and amazing and I'm not surprised that many people have died attempting to keep that questioning alive. The quest for truth is not always a comfortable path.

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