Why "Why?"

We humans have a fascination with why questions: why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there air? Why did the chicken cross the road? Why am I writing about an interrogative pronoun?

In this case, the immediate provocation was this by Hawking and Mlodinow via Steve Landsburg:

To understand the universe at the deepest level, we need to know not only how
the universe behaves, but why.
• Why is there something rather than
nothing?
• Why do we exist?
• Why this particular set of laws and not
some other?

So say Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their book The
Grand Design, and so say I.

I sympathize with the sentiment, but I also question its propriety. They tell us that one of the fundamental steps in human cognition occurred when we started modeling other’s thought processes. Once we start thinking about what others are thinking, a very fundamental aspect is that of motivation. Why, for example, is Joe-Bob talking to my enemy Duke? Are they plotting against me?

Once we had models of other peoples thinking that were useful predictors, it became natural to try to extend that kind of analysis beyond our fellow humans. Animals too seemed to behave with motivation and purpose – plants too, growing toward water and the Sun. Maybe otherwise inexplicable things like clouds, rivers, and heavenly bodies could be interpreted with similar logic. A whole world populated by spirits and gods resulted.

Science gave us an alternative to this kind of thinking. Weather happened not because the thunder god was unhappy, but because air and moisture followed some discoverable laws. There was an order to the Universe, but motivation and purpose doesn’t seem to come into it. It’s a deeply shocking idea to our brains so carefully crafted to seek and understand motivation, but there is a lot of evidence for it.

That’s why I’m inclined to think that when it comes to the fundamental character of the Universe, ours is not to reason why. What seems to be the best that we can do.