This is a question that remains unanswered in the realm of science and metaphysics. Science asks the questions how, when, where, and why. but for my question it is the why that i am interested in and so, my questions are:

1.Why, under the right circumstances and locations in the universe, does a phenomina occur,in which atoms and molecules form structures that replicate?
we see atoms and molecules forming cell walls seperating replicative material from the outside world this phenomia leads more and more complex structures i.e life forms.
Edited to add-2. Compared to the What, where, and when questions how important is asking why? For i will admit for me it is The why that of late i have been struggling over. For me out of all the questions a human can ask it is the answer to why that i have been searching for.

Now i know, science has been satisfactory in it's explanation of the where, when , and how but would anyone care to take a stab at the why?
Also
P.S it IS in the realm of science to ask why.

Thank you for your comments

I'll take a stab:

The answer to your question is really just evolutionary theory, but applied to non-living materials.

Self-replicating molecules are prevalent precisely because they are self-replicating. All sorts of molecules get made all the time, and chance dictates that certain molecules will make it slightly more likely that similar molecules will form (similar to the process of crystallization). If this were not the case, then all chemical potentials would have to be the same, but the laws of physics are fortunately arranged such that that is not the case (three cheers for the strong force!).

So, you get a bunch of molecules that are a) energetically efficient/easy to build from available materials and b) tend to push for creation of copies of themselves. It might not even be a direct influence. You might get positive feedback cycles. In any case, with those molecules being more common, you get a greater chance to have them change into something that is even more likely to produce something similar to it. And eventually, because time is so vast, it may happen.

Eventually you end up with things we wouldn't quite call life forms, but which have the potential to join forces to actively search the environment for the materials to replicate. The molecules/combinations that don't tend to replicate are eventually destroyed and lost, but the ones that have replicated, while destroyed, have left copies behind. And so on.

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"It's turtles all the way down."

There are two possibles meanings when you ask the question "why?".

The causal why: "Why do apples fall to the ground?" is about causes; the mechanisms which bring certain events about.

The teleological why: "Why do soldiers crawl on the ground?" is about purpose, intent; the rationale for events.

Science generally is good for investigating the first type and not for the second type.

Confusion between these two has been responsible for plenty of misunderstanding.

Re: the teleological why

I submit that the question is invalid. "Why" is a question of intent, purpose, goal, meaning. These words only make sense in the context of consciousness. You could just as easily ask, "Why is there dirt? Why are there stars? Why is there a mathematical relationship, pi?" Those are things that just are. To ask "why" is to presuppose there is an intent, a purpose, a reason - which presupposes there is someone with the intent, goal, purpose.

So if the question is invalid, why do we humans so frequently ask it? I submit that it is a psychological hangup, buried in the way our brains work. The path of cognitive development for humanity is not fully mapped out, but what has been studied indicates that our perception of the world is influenced by our perception of ourselves. The development of our brains coincides with the development of our self awareness - the awareness of self as something unique, our sense of identity, and also ourselves as causative agents in the world. I do this, it has this effect. The conscious awareness of cause and effect and our ability to serve as cause influenced the development of ideas. It also is woven into the fabric of how our brains work - the cognitive process.

Our languages are shaped by this presupposition, this framework to our thinking. Our ability to explain the workings of nature include implicit anthroposization. "The wind blows the leaves on the trees." That sentence denotes "the wind" as a causative agent. But our deepest sense of causative agents is ourselves, so it is only natural to extend to the wind a sense of a higher cause, an intent behind it. Enter fairies, demons, gods, goddesses, sprites, spirits, etc. These are projected causative agents for the natural events of the world, trying to extrapolate from unexplained causes to consciousness behind it. It is projection of self onto the world.

We do the same thing to the universe as a whole. Asking "Why is there a universe?", "Why do humans exist?", "What is the meaning of life?" - these are all projective questions. They stem from our subconscious mental framework and expectation that causative agents are always just like us.

Why do atoms bond in certain ways to form molecules? Why to molecules combine into more complex molecules? Why do energy and entropy drive chemistry in different directions? Those are meaningless and unanswerable questions. We can ask "how", and find the answers, but "why" is an illusion.

Why did you go to the bank? I needed money.
Why did you slap your sister? She was mouthing off.
Why did you lick your feet? Because I could.
Why did you leave the dog in the house for 12 hours straight? Uh, oops.

Those are "why" questions. They ask for a reason. Reasons require conscious evaluation.

As I mention above there are (at least) two usages of why. When it is about purpose, I agree that it only makes sense applied to the actions of conscious beings. It is however a perfectly good question in that context.

Nice examples - teleological and causal, although the second could have been answered teleologically too.

OK, I think these are another class, rhetorical whys. I'm tempted to call them terrestrial whys ("why on earth...")

I disagree with some of the "teleological why" idea. I think that many ideas are mistakenly interpreted as being teleological (wow, I love that word). For instance, it's possible to quantify why sand exists. It exists because of a variety of physical processes which have been very nicely described, at levels from nuclear fusion to erosion. It doesn't "just exist," although to a cave man 50000 years ago, that may have seemed to be the case. He just didn't know enough about the world to have any idea why.

Certainly, there's a point at which you have to stop asking why. "Why does the universe exist?" is a good one. We simply don't know enough to begin to answer that question: indeed, we may never know enough. Therefore, our time is better spent understanding the things we can understand, and maybe one day we'll get to that far-off why. Maybe one day human behaviour will be quantifiable, even though there's no point in asking those questions now. That doesn't mean the question is ultimately teleological; it just seems like it because we don't know any better.

(And of course, the "what is the meaning of life?" question presupposes that life does indeed have a meaning, so the question itself may not make any sense. If it does have an answer, that answer is clearly 42.)

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"It's turtles all the way down."

thank you for your responses EDIT: i have been looking at my computer for the last hour lost in thought about this and have already deleted 3 of my would be posts because i need to adhere to this forums rules. admittedly it this is a hard topic for me to be a part of and adhere to the rules heh

Interesting perspective analogy about sand and the quantization of it. But this is more of a "scientific" why-the kind omiting pupose, Joff's casual why. Well if it's so much harder to ask the teleological why regarding life, us, and the universe can anyone speculate on a casual why the phenomina occurs? the kind devoid of the "purpose"? EDIT: you know what Moderators im sorry even trying to give answers as to why in a casual way regarding the universe and life seems to me know to not belong at least in this topic and possible on this whole forums save maybe off topic blabbling. Science does ask why for many things but it's not sciences job to ask why regarding these questions it's non sequetor to the general science topic IMO. i

Causal, not casual. Quite different.

Life and us are not hard. Statistics and the laws of physics.

Why do those exist? That is, why is the universe the way it is? We don't know enough to answer that. Well, maybe Steven Hawking does, and he's just not telling.

Re: sand. Quantization and quantification are different things.

Also, it's science's job to ask why to everything, eventually. It's just a matter of picking out which questions actually have meaning, and proceeding in small enough steps that progress can be made. If you can't answer a question, put it aside and pursue questions that will lead you to your answer instead. Or entirely different questions. You never know.

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"It's turtles all the way down."

I heard a quote a while back, I'm not sure who said it but it goes something like this: "Given enough time, anything and everything can and will happen". We seem to have an infinite amount of time or nearly so. We've had at least 13 or 14 billion years since the Big Bang. So to me, it's not surprising that a molecule that could replicate itself came to be or that life evolved. Given the vast amount of possible combinations coming from the vastly differing types of conditions that have occurred in the Universe since the Big Bang.

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"Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket...."

why?

because..


that's why..

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

To me, the question "why" in science has a very specific meaning, akin to the question "what is the meaning of this". If you walk into a room on your birthday and see a lot of your friends crouching behind chairs, you might ask "what is the meaning of this?", or simply "why are you here?". Of course, you'll quickly get your answer when they all jump up and say "surprise", but the point is, the question why in this case is looking for some kind of meaning that comes in the form of a reason why. Meaning in the form of reasons involves making connections, and the most fundamental connection is cause and effect, so lots of times when science asks why, it is looking for a cause and effect relationship, as has been pointed out. But my point here is that there is a very linguistic character to looking for connections, for asking "what is the meaning of this", and I see it as just like looking for the definition of words. What are we asking when we say "what is the meaning of the word fate"? We are looking for connections between the word fate and other words that we already understand. Thus a dictionary does not really tell you the meaning of things, it merely connects some things to other things-- you already have to know some words to make it work. This is why you can't keep asking why in science, because eventually you've made all the connections you can make (like sand to ground up rocks), and there is nowhere further to go without actually transcending the connections. It is just like the fact that at some point you need something other than words to explain the meaning of words.

So the bottom line is, when science asks why, it is just looking for the connections, whereas when religion or philosophy ask why, they are probably looking for fundamental truths that underlie the connections, that underlie reality itself. In science, that piece can only be supplied by axioms and assumptions, the validity of which are measured only by their expediency in practice. That type of why is the end of the line for science, as for a dictionary-- it is consistent and useful rather than true. Using science to try to ask the absolute why questions would be like asking "what is the meaning of life" and having someone hand you a dictionary and say "it's all in there".

[quote=snarkophilus]I'll take a stab:

The answer to your question is really just evolutionary theory, but applied to non-living materials.

Self-replicating molecules are prevalent precisely because they are self-replicating. All sorts of molecules get made all the time, and chance dictates that certain molecules will make it slightly more likely that similar molecules will form (similar to the process of crystallization). If this were not the case, then all chemical potentials would have to be the same, but the laws of physics are fortunately arranged such that that is not the case (three cheers for the strong force!).

Actually, it's not the strong force that dictates self-replicating molecules...it's the electromagnetic force that's involved in chemical bonds. The strong force is a residue of the color force binding quarks in nucleons...and it's range is limited to about a Fermi....approximately the width of a proton or neutron. Early models involved shuttling pions, but modern quantum chromodynamics is more apropros.
In a primeval ocean teeming with nucleic acids and other organics...it's just a matter of time, temperature, and concentration before self-replication begins. Whether that leads necessarily to our lifeforms is another story. Pete.

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A third rate theory forbids
A second rate theory explains after the fact
A first rate theory predicts...A. Lomonosov

I'm aware of that... I was thinking on a more fundamental level, saying that it's a good thing that there are different types of nuclei (varying numbers of protons), and that there are both protons and neutrons (and that they are different) such that those nuclei can be stable. But we can always cheer for the weak force and electromagnetism, too!

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"It's turtles all the way down."

I submit that this question is not really why, but how. Apples grow from tree limbs as the seed-bearing pulp organ. As the ripen, the stem begins to weaken. Once the apple reaches a particular state and the stem is weak enough, some disturbance will induce enough stress in the stem to cause it to fail (break). Gravity is continuously pulling the apple toward the ground - that's what gravity does. The stem prevents falling. Once the stem breaks, the apple has no more resistance to falling, so it falls.

All of that is how the apple falls to the ground. Why to apples fall to the ground? Because apples want to fall to the ground? Because nature likes bruised apples? Because gravity thinks falling apples are pretty? There's no purposeful agent behind apples falling - they just do. No why, just how

I didn't say why was invalid in that context. I said that it only has that context. Outside of that context it is invalid.

To my mind, all four questions address the same context - they are all about reasons. The specific reasons have different contexts, but the context is purpose in each case. Why could be replaced by "For what purpose" in each case and still mean the same thing.

In fact, "For what purpose" makes the point more explicit. If you can't replace your "why" with "for what purpose", then I claim you are not really asking why.

The problem is linguistic. These question words get used in different ways, so their uniqueness is lost. Depending on the phrasing I can trade the question words around.

I was in a discussion about engineering vs science vs technology once, and someone tried to summarize by stating engineering is about how and science is about why, and technology what. But each word alone is not a question. The question requires more context to explain what specific why or how. Often the why or how is a one word response, but it directly corresponds to a preceeding statement. Thus the context (i.e. rest of the question) is implied. But it is still there.

Why is there sand?
How is there sand?
For what is there sand?

They can all mean the same thing. I submit that the first is nonsense (sand exists, it only has a purpose in a context of the person needing the sand), the second is the question explained by snarkophilus. The third is a way to corrupt "what" to mean "why". "For what" is an abbreviation of "for what purpose".

You misunderstand me. How sand exists is not answered by "it just does". You refer to how sand exists - natural processes accumulate from silicon and oxygen generation in stars, distribution through the galaxy by supernovas, accummulation on the planet through gravity and other processes, formation into rock through igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary processes, wearing away via wind and water erosion, and accummulation in dunes and beaches. None of that explains the purpose for sand. Sand is the result of a particular string of physical processes, without any causal intent. It just is.

firstcontact, there is no why life exists - it just does. Any more than there's a why fleas exist, or a why dirt exists, or a why quantum fluctuations exist.

That is not why, that is how.

The universe is the way it is because if it weren't, then it would be different. That's the only why to it.

No, it's science's job to ask how. Why is only valid in the context of purpose, which only makes sense in the context of intent.

I submit that we tend to anthropomorphize the world. We say, "the wind blew", i.e. the wind did something. That makes it easy to mentally attribute intent to the wind, because the wind is the active agent in that sentence. But the wind doesn't have intent, it just follows natural processes. It just is.

Well, Irishman, you go ahead and speak your version of English. The rest of us will acknowledge reality.

"Why?" certainly can mean "For what purpose?" (or I prefer "To what end?"). It is also - definitely - used to mean "From what cause?", as in "Why is the sky blue?" Wishing that English is different is a singularly unhelpful position, and one which undermines your analysis of the real questions.

Looking at your quesiton 2, you can see that the answer given is about cause, whatever the questioner meant.
The dad asks: "Why did you slap your sister?"
The child thinks, "What caused me to hit her?"
She answers: "She was mouthing off"
- definitely about causes, not purpose.

Your submissions on this point are noted; but they are wrong.

Joff, I acknowledge that language in action is not so cut and dried. I'm trying to examine the philosophical concept. Yes, we use words in all sorts of ways. I can ask "How come" and really mean "why" - "for what reason". My intent is to explore the meaning of the questions, to uncover hidden assumptions. I don’t expect my analysis to have an impact on the way people use words in everyday life, and I acknowledge the different uses. I am trying to explore those uses to understand them better.

For example,