Why does anything happen?
A dialogue on scientific thinking and the source of reason.
“Let’s go home, kid”.
“Why? Its not even dark!“
“Because I said so” should’ve been my answer, but I indulge in the nephew’s interrogation.
“Because the tides are rising”
“Why?”
“Because the moon pulls the sea water up”
“Why?”
I don’t answer, and start to tug at him. He persists. And he’s annoyed.
“Why?!”
“Why what?”
“Why does the moon pull the water?”
Yes dear nephew, why does the moon do this? I can tell him its gravity, but then he’ll ask why and I don’t have the patience now.
We finally get in the car. With a frustrated nephew in the back, I get back his question. Why? I mean, I know the equations, I’ve done the math many times, but how do I answer the “why” from the math?
—
What is the fundamental source or axiom of any analytical explanation? Put simply, given an effect, what is the ultimate cause? The answer for millennia was God. But now God is apparently dead and we’re asking “why” again.
Is it Robert Pirsig’s quality – a visceral, intuitive understanding of the essence of something? Or is it David Perell’s mysticism - where discoveries seem to arise from unconscious realms of mind?
Or is it that the world is filled with matter in motion all of which can be explained mathematically? This was the ‘mechanical philosophy’ of Rene Descartes. Decades after it was introduced, Sir Isaac Newton inherited this philosophy and extended it to provide the most coherent answer.
Newton explained that mechanical action of matter was not enough. Granted that such mechanical action could account for large classes of phenomena, yet it could not account for all. It could not account for the processes of life, where cohesive and guiding principles were clearly operative. It could not account for the manifold riches of the phenomenal world. There was, ultimately, no "sufficient reason" for variety to emerge.
His answer to this was ‘vegetation’ - a vitalistic animating spirit of alchemy that produces variety (vegetation is from “vegetare”, Latin for “to animate, enliven”). But for all great things that nature produces due to vegetation, it still is not the ultimate cause. In Newton’s view, God was the ultimate cause. He said “[natural diversity] could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing”. And that God was acting through the animating agent in this world. This was the Divine Providence of Christianity applied to natural philosophy.
This vegetative living spirit was present throughout Newton’s alchemical and physics work. For a long time, the ability of one object to affect another without touching was considered magic. But by Newton’s time, studying this could be problematic - you could be convicted of being a witch. He nevertheless persisted and used this spirit to discover the idea of force - action at a distance - which caused motion even without physical contact.
—
When we eventually go home, I answer my nephew.
“The moon pulls water as its attracted to it”
“But why is it attracted?”
“All objects attract each other, kid”
“So it’s like magic?”
Yes it is magic, in a way. Newton didn’t know about fields, or differential geometry. He was stuck with action at a distance, which he used to describe gravity but not explain it. Einstein went further but there’s still the question of ultimate cause. So there is still magic in the world, in a way i.e the vegetative living spirit inside matter and/or God.
I could tell my nephew that..
Most of the world is mechanical and can be understood by empirical study. Observe, collect data, conclude. Be very analytical. Newton even offers 4 rules for reasoning.
The rest of it is guided by an animating vitalistic spirit. If you believe in God, this is His agent in nature. Use this agent for your source of hypotheses. Use your emotions and senses; ground your thinking in physical, bodily experiences; use your environment; all these are places where the agent acts. Tap into this agent and use it to guide you.
But he’s far too young for this.
“No its not magic. You can use math to tell when the water rises and by how much”
“Ok. But why does it rise?”
“Yes, that is magic”.