by Eve Stenson

"Why?"

It’s the query that epitomizes the innocently irritating kindergartner. Completely unrelated, of course, it’s also a question that I tend to ask a lot.

For example, when I go bowling: why did two seemingly identical rolls produce a strike last time, but a split this time? When I speculate about this aloud and see my friends’ eyes glaze over at the mention of rotational inertia or conservation of momentum: why doesn’t everyone think science is as cool as I find it to be? And when I consider how my persistent questioning would be received if I were younger: why are people so annoyed by children’s curiosity?

Sure, I understand it wearing on one’s patience when the question is asked purely for the purpose of testing one’s sanity. (Although when my younger sister tried that, I derived a great deal of satisfaction from being able to outlast her, usually in the end with some sort of circular regression: "Because they have a negative charge" . . . "Because they’re electrons" . . . "Because they have a negative charge" . . . I realize the reasoning wasn’t particularly sound, but even if it had instead inspired a debate about the finer points of "if/then" statements, at least it would still have stopped her onslaught.)

If a child honestly wants to know, though, how could I ever bring myself to tell it not to ask? Indeed, the injunction not to question might well be the most harmful precedent we can teach. The danger of blind acceptance is one that has been well established, in history as well as fiction; it was when she was closest to the truth, after all, that Lois Lane was always described as "asking too many questions."

This is not to say that everyone who advocates mystery does it with malicious intent, particularly when it comes to science. Some really feel that to understand the intricacies of a process is to make it mundane, that knowing the answer makes the phenomenon less wondrous. I find quite the contrary to be true, however; I feel the most awe for something – be it a sunrise or a DVD player – when I grasp just why it happens the way it does. (Now, if I could only grasp why the laser I and my classmates are assembling for Laser Theory suddenly decided to stop working right before we were done with it …)

Of course, in God and the New Physics this semester, Dr. Mancini said that science answers the "how"s, rather than the "why"s – for example, "How did the universe come to be?" as opposed to "Why did the universe come to be?" But have you ever heard a kid wonder, "How is the sky blue?" An attempt to delineate between "how" and "why" is as futile as trying to separate philosophy and science.

If we’re going to mix things up, though, shouldn’t we also question our questioning? Though borderline blasphemy to the devoted scientist, someone looking at things from a less subjective vantage point – that of an English major, for example, who is not caught up in the excitement of a promising data set or mathematical result – might well want to know, "What’s the point?" Scientists could stand to gain by following suit; we all need a little blasphemy in our lives.

Indeed, the poster on the door to the physics office poses the question, "Why do physics?" My favorite of the answers printed beneath it is William Fowler’s: "If there turn out to be any practical applications, that’s fine and dandy. But we think it’s important that the human race understands where sunlight comes from."

To understand the driving forces behind our lives – or at least, to identify them – can be at least as enlightening in terms of personal choices as it is in terms of energy sources. This quest may in fact be the rarer of the two, despite being the more accessible. Figuring out the behavior of a photon takes a lot more work than questioning whether or not you agree with a social convention, yet the latter tends to generate the greater surprise from onlookers.

Consider, for example, the convention of "distance." I’ve learned from experience that most people look at you funny if you explain that you made a run to Philly at 10 p.m. on a Sunday night "because we really wanted a cheesesteak." And they tend to think you’re joking if they ask you what you did for the weekend and you answer "drove to Ohio." Granted, Pennsylvania is awfully wide, but I have access to a car and I enjoy driving, so why should I let a 300-mile state get in my way?

That is but one of the more trivial questions to which I’ve not found a satisfactory answer in my years at Fordham. Others included: Why not wear light-up sneakers? (I realize that self-respecting college students aren’t supposed to don such footwear. But let me tell you, it looked darn cool when I did back handsprings in the dark.) Why seek attention at bars? (Admittedly, that I was always sober no doubt biased my judgement. But I never understood why my friend would be upset that she wasn’t sufficiently attractive to guys whom she never wanted to see again in her life.) Why graduate in four years?

This last question is the most recent, and came up when the Clare Boothe Luce Committee (which awards scholarships to women pursuing a career in math or the sciences) graciously offered to pay for a fifth year of college, so that I could double major in chemistry as well as physics. And when I asked it of myself, I found that no answer could suffice.

Thus, I have become a member of the Class of 2004. In the coming year, I will get to take all the fascinating chemistry classes that would never fit in my schedule, do hands-on research (which has already given me more practical experience than I garnered from two summers at NASA), and learn a little more about the "why"s of the world around me – starting, I hope, with that part of the world that involves helium-neon lasers.

(published in The Ram, 24 April 2003)