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5. The AbstractQuestion – Why
"Doctor, why am I so blue?"
"Well, in the beginning was the Big Bang..."
We observe that Why questions can be abstract, difficult, and complex types of Question so in Generative Analysis we recommend that you try to resolve Why questions into more concrete Who, What, How, When, and Where questions as soon as you can. In fact, we often avoid Why questions, especially in the early stages of analysis, because they can easily lead to getting bogged down in uselessly high levels of abstraction, justifications (rather than explanations), and other imponderables.
The Why question has interesting, and quite complex, semantics and we need to understand these to use this type of question effectively. There are many ways to approach this topic, but there is a particularly lucid discussion of the nature of Why questions in [Hollins 1], that we will use here. According to the Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman:
"And when you explain a why, you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true. Otherwise, you're perpetually asking why." [Hollins 1]
This is the crux of the matter. Why Questions are unanswerable unless we provide a framework in which we can formulate an answer that we admit to being true, otherwise, we just get an endless series of Whys. In Generative Analysis, we use the metaphor of "the map and the territory", so this "framework" is the "map" in our metaphor. Here are some helpful definitions:
- Map – our cognitive map of reality which is the mental model of reality that we use to enable us to navigate the real world as successfully we can.
- Territory – the real world that we assume, for the purpose of the metaphor, is an objective reality "out there" that we must navigate.
All Questions require an agreed map if they are to be answered.
The map/territory metaphor allows us to distinguish between the ConcreteQuestions, Who, What, How, When and Where, and the AbstractQuestion, Why.
For ConcreteQuestions, the map must have already been agreed because it provides the context for formulating those Questions in the first place. This is why we call them ConcreteQuestions – they are about an already agreed map.
On the other hand, Why is an AbstractQuestion, because, although it may be about a pre-existing map, it often operates to define a map.
To understand this, let's look at our map/territory metaphor in more detail. Generative Analysis takes it as axiomatic that:
"The map is not the territory".
This means that our constructed mental model of the world is just that – a model. It is not the world, even though we generally act as though it is. A useful definition of sanity is how well our mental model of the world accords with reality – how well the map accords with the territory. It is noteworthy that maps can be completely disconnected from the territory, and this disconnect gives us a useful definition of hypnotic trance or mental pathology.
Also pertinent to this discussion is our Generative Analysis X-Files Principle No. 1, that we borrowed from the famous "The X-Files" TV program [X 1]:
The truth is out there
This is both an admission of the objectivist stance of our map/territory metaphor, and an axiom of Generative Analysis – that you can find out all you need to know about a particular problem domain by research using Questions appropriately.
For completeness, our X-Files Principle No. 2 is:
Trust no one
This principle is inspired by the motto of the Royal Society, Nullius in verba [Royal 1], which means "take no one's word for it". Nowadays, the Royal Society does not apply this difficult rule as rigorously as it might, and in certain cases has set itself up as a source of ultimate truth. This suggests that their motto should be modified to Nullius in verba – praeter nostra! (take no one's word for it – except ours). In Generative Analysis, we prefer Nullius in verba.
Trust no one, has a huge impact on how Questions are used in Generative Analysis, but as we cover this aspect in depth in our book, we will say no more about it here. We apply Trust no one to the book itself, and offer it, not as a source of ultimate truth, but as a compendium of ideas and techniques, the utility of which you can easily test for yourself.
When is an answer not an answer?
The introduction of a map (Feynman's framework) to "answer" a Why question is a sleight-of-hand mechanism whereby we don't really answer the Why question and instead tacitly agree to answer one or more ConcreteQuestions about a map specifically introduced for the purpose of answering the Question. For example, consider the causal question:
"Why is the sky blue?"
The answer to this Why question is, "the sky is blue, because on a clear day, that is what we call the colour of the sky". This tautology has little utility, but it is really all we can say about it without introducing a more explanatory map, exactly as Feynman points out. If we introduce Western science as the map, we can agree that the answer to the question is "the sky is blue because of the Rayleigh scattering of the sunlight by air molecules", which is a much more useful answer that allows further elaboration and even calculation. However, this is sleight-of-hand. This answer doesn't tell us the reason Why the sky is blue, rather it tells us the mechanism of How the sky is blue with respect to the agreed map. It seems to be the human condition that absolute reasons are inaccessible to us, so the only way we can get useful answers from Why questions is to perform this sleight-of-hand to replace them with ConcreteQuestions referencing an agreed map. Provided we understand that this is what we are doing, then this is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate approach. Anyway, we have no other options.
To clearly see this sleight of hand in action, speak to any toddler. They will tend to ask, why, why, why, why...because they have yet to establish a map in which an answer can be agreed. This cascade of Why questions only terminates when some sort of map is accepted by, or forced on, the toddler, or when the adult loses the will to live and tells them to shut up and wait until they are older when they will (of course) understand everything.
The fact that Why questions can only be answered with reference to an agreed map, immediately invites us to explore the nature of that map and the degree to which it accords with the territory. In the above example, we supplied the map comprising Western science, because it is the best map we have for answering that sort of Question in a useful way, and most of our readers will accept it without hesitation. In this case, the Why Question itself naturally led us to that specific map because of our culture and background.
We can take several lessons from this discussion:
- Why Questions can only be answered by reference to an agreed map.
- To understand the answers to Why Questions we must understand the map.
- To understand the map, trust no one, and all conclusions should be based on observable evidence (the truth is out there).
- Why Questions naturally and automatically invoke maps determined by the culture and background of the person answering the Question. These maps may accord with observable reality quite well, or if there is groupthink or elements of hallucination, not so much or even not at all.
The final point is interesting. It means that you can often speak to two different people in the same company and get two different answers to the same Question because they are using different maps. The strategy in this case is to find the common ground and create a mutually acceptable map that accords well with reality, in which there is the possibility of an agreed answer. This is one of the key tasks of the Generative Analyst, and it can be challenging.