Depends how you’re using “why”. In Russian, they actually have two words for why, one of which implies teleology, and one which doesn’t, and merely requests some explanation for a phenomenon. I wish we had that in English.
In this case, it’s such a general question you can’t do much better, but you could, for example, talk about why oxygen-carrying proteins pretty much always incorporate an ion of something, in a merely cause-and-effect way. (And I actually don’t know the answer to that one)
The answer to the question, “How did this evolve?”, is the same as the answer to a non-teleological “why”. People just need to learn to use “how” because “why” is such a loaded word.
When using “how” in this sense and “why” in the non-teleological sense, they have the exact same meaning (at least to my ear), but then the “how” version isn’t ambiguous.
If I say to myself, “How did this evolve?”, the question feels good. It feels clear, and my mind leaps into thinking about the function of the mineral in the body and the chain of evolutionary steps that could have caused it.
If I say to myself “Why did this evolve?”, I just can’t get the teleology sense of the word out of my head. If someone didn’t want a teleological answer, why did they say “why” when “how” is clearly better? So I assume they mean why.
I feel like even if I answered their question, the next one would be, “Yeah, but why?” Making me feel like I wasted my time explaining the “how”.
That’s might be an option too, I guess, but in some situations it’s a different question. If I make a mistake and you ask “how”, you might just get more details. If you ask “why” I might respond with “I was tired”, which doesn’t really imply teleology. As I understand it почему would be more specific to cause rather than just means, but then again my Russian is pretty basic. The word “how” would be как, and it even works as an intensifier the same way.
But that’s all that can be said. Life is random. There is no “why”. The body uses zinc because it can.
Depends how you’re using “why”. In Russian, they actually have two words for why, one of which implies teleology, and one which doesn’t, and merely requests some explanation for a phenomenon. I wish we had that in English.
In this case, it’s such a general question you can’t do much better, but you could, for example, talk about why oxygen-carrying proteins pretty much always incorporate an ion of something, in a merely cause-and-effect way. (And I actually don’t know the answer to that one)
In English we can use “How”.
The answer to the question, “How did this evolve?”, is the same as the answer to a non-teleological “why”. People just need to learn to use “how” because “why” is such a loaded word.
When using “how” in this sense and “why” in the non-teleological sense, they have the exact same meaning (at least to my ear), but then the “how” version isn’t ambiguous.
If I say to myself, “How did this evolve?”, the question feels good. It feels clear, and my mind leaps into thinking about the function of the mineral in the body and the chain of evolutionary steps that could have caused it.
If I say to myself “Why did this evolve?”, I just can’t get the teleology sense of the word out of my head. If someone didn’t want a teleological answer, why did they say “why” when “how” is clearly better? So I assume they mean why.
I feel like even if I answered their question, the next one would be, “Yeah, but why?” Making me feel like I wasted my time explaining the “how”.
That’s might be an option too, I guess, but in some situations it’s a different question. If I make a mistake and you ask “how”, you might just get more details. If you ask “why” I might respond with “I was tired”, which doesn’t really imply teleology. As I understand it почему would be more specific to cause rather than just means, but then again my Russian is pretty basic. The word “how” would be как, and it even works as an intensifier the same way.
Yeah, I was focused on science questions since this is a science questions community. It’s not universal advice.