That video is the first thing I thought of while reading the article. I wasn't sure if it would get up voted or not, but I'm glad it did, since it does highlight how far you can go when determining the root cause of something.
"... but Why?" "Because some things are and some things are not!"
The video is funny, but usually real kids are happy with 2 or 3 chained answers and a "I don't know." Another possible last answer is "Let's look in a book" or the modern version "Let's google that".
I have two kids, and the youngest is just starting on the 'why?' phase. Its great fun! I treat it as a game to try and see how long I can keep on answering. As soon as I don't know the answer, I explain that I don't know (or perhaps that nobody yet knows) and discuss how we could find out.
One interesting thing I discovered - a surprisingly large number of things will either lead to physics or human psychology if you keep asking 'why?'. However I don't know if that reflects some deeper truth about the world, or just my bias in how I answer the questions.
> However I don't know if that reflects some deeper truth about the world, or just my bias in how I answer the questions.
It's the same reason why you always end up on "Philosophy" if you're browsing Wikipedia and consistently follow the first link in each article. Here's the path for "Airplane":
Airplane
Fixed wing aircraft
Aircraft
Vehicle
Motion (physics)
Natural science
Science
Knowledge /* we know where this going... */
Fact
Proof (truth)
Argument
Philosophy
I think that website cheats a little bit. The first link in "Science" is not "Knowledge" but "Latin", where it's describing the root of the word "Science". If you follow it properly, you'll find that even the article for "5 Whys" doesn't go to Philosophy:
5 Whys
Technique
Technology
Tool
Goal
Animal
Eukaryote
Organism
Biology
Natural Science
Science
Latin
Italic Languages
Indo-European Languages
Language Family
Language
Human
Taxonomy
Ancient Greek
Greek Language
Indo-European Languages // Infinite loop!
That path seems to go in the same direction, but then it diverges in Science, mostly due to the first sentence on that page, where [Latin] and [knowledge] are links:
> Science (from [Latin] scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes [knowledge]...
It happens again in Taxonomy, which otherwise would surely lead to Philosophy from the [classification] link:
> Taxonomy (from [Greek]: τάξις taxis "arrangement" and Greek: νομία nomia "method"[1]) is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a [classification].
On our way to Philosophy we are constantly confronted with Latin and Greek concepts, because Rome and Greece are where many of the concepts in Philosophy originated.
I think the wikipedia game specifically excludes words in parenthesis and italics. Following those rules you actually do get to Philosophy, and you also get to Philosophy from Indo-European Languages.
I think it is more revealing of your answers: for anything but the human ones, you take a materialistic approach, which eventually boils down to physics.
Same principle for human matters, except we don't know yet how to close the gap between psychology and physics. Plus, you may be content with psychology if you believe there's some "magic" (like immaterial souls) between the two.
I have two as well and the eldest just started the Whys a few weeks ago. Some of my parent-friends with slightly older kids complain about the endless Whys... Maybe I'll get to that same point of annoyance someday (I hope not), but so far I relish the challenge, hoping not to get stumped too quickly!
His experience of having trouble answering more than '5 why's' is a nice revelation. This is an exercise that nearly every engineer learns about (that started at Toyota[1]) and has become one of the basic tools used in continuous improvement. I often complete the exercise and it is trouble enough to make it to the 5'th why, the thought actually never occurred to me to go farther.
As a side note - when you are improving things, that 4'th and 5'th 'why' are often things that are very hard (and costly) to change.
One of my favorite quotes regarding this is from Michael Crichton in one of his more obscure, autobiographical books called Travels:
"Although knowledge of how things work is sufficient to allow manipulation of nature, what humans really want to know is why things work. Children don't ask how the sky is blue. They ask why the sky is blue."
I recommend the book to anyone and everyone looking to explore their own understanding of the world and their place within it.
The real 'why' can be a dangerous question to answer, though. :)
"Daddy, why do the owls want to make the Sun go away forever?"
"Well, Billy, it's because the film is an expression of the cultural tension generated by the threat of nuclear warfare which faced American society in the 1980s when it was made. When they're singing about how the good guys are 'running out of batteries' it's giving you a context to interpret your experiences in a possible future in which you might have to hide out in a fallout shelter in the dark for days at a time."
"Why" is an interesting hack. Before this children learn how things work through observation of events. "Why" is a force multiplier where the child no longer even has to wait for events to happen but can explore things that haven't happened or that are hard to observe. It's a short hop from there to deep abstraction and philosophy.
Cultivating this may be one of the most important things that parents can do in terms of ensuring children keep their curiosity long into adult hood (with appropriate training to develop the endless string of "whys" into a more socially acceptable question answering model).
Perhaps children intuitively have 'chain of events' thought patterns. It's something many adults seem to lack, which makes proposing solutions to big problems difficult; because one has to be able to see far beyond simple cause & effect to both understand the problem and the proposed solution.
Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. The beat the curiosity out of the kids. They out-number kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults.
The technical term for this is "empiricism," and you're right that some adults lose this after a time, or at least mental models start resembling Kowloon Walled City.
I think the problem is that empiricism is often taught, in primary school, in a very 2-dimensional, black & white fashion – enforcing a rigid view of cause & effect. (Edit: often the case, but not always. There are great teachers out there.)
I think in addition to basic empirical reasoning, kids should be exposed to determinism in the vein of chaos theory; where one is forced to accept that while connections exist, they may not be immediately obvious. (Edit 2: I guess this is "Art/Music Class", sadly non-existent in more and more schools)
I'm trying it myself and love it. You can get real far in 5 whys. Speaking or writing it in a stream-of-consciousness fashion (first thing that comes to your mind) is quite insightful.
Why is almost always the wrong question, since it involves an intention. The right question to ask is How. "Why did you do that?" vs "How did that phenomenon happen?".
I've read somewhere that kids keep asking "why?" because they figure out that it's an easy way to get people to talk a lot, and listening to people talk is how they learn language.
Louis C.K. does a very funny bit on the topic of the OP (NSFW I think)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJlV49RDlLE&feature=playe...