There is a recursive quality to the question why that I find fascinating.
Suppose we are automating regression testing. Why are we doing that? Perhaps because we want confidence that changes have not broken existing behavior. But that answer can itself become the subject of the next question. Why do we need that confidence? Perhaps because we want to release changes without creating unacceptable risk. Why do we want to do that? Perhaps because the product needs to respond quickly to changing needs.
Something interesting happens as we move through these questions. The answer to why at one level becomes the what at the level above it.
Automated regression testing is a What whose Why is confidence in changes. Confidence in changes is then itself a What whose Why is the ability to release safely. The ability to release safely becomes another What, connected to another Why.
The Why of one layer is the What of the layer above it.
This suggests that Why is not simply an explanation attached to something. It is a connection between levels. The higher level gives purpose to the level below it, while the lower level is one way of contributing to what the higher level is trying to achieve.
Perhaps this is also an important part of what we mean by understanding.
We can know a great deal about something without necessarily understanding it. We can know what a system does, what requirements it has, what decisions were made, what processes people follow, and what technologies are used. But if we can no longer move from those Whats toward the Whys that give them meaning, something important has been lost.
A requirement without its Why becomes an isolated statement. A design decision without its Why becomes an historical fact. A process without its Why becomes a sequence of activities that may continue long after anyone can explain what capability those activities were intended to provide.
The information may still be there. The understanding is not.
This also means that Why has no obvious natural endpoint. Every answer can potentially become the subject of another Why. Eventually we stop, but perhaps not because we have reached some ultimate Why. We stop because we have reached a boundary that is sufficient for what we are currently trying to understand.
That makes the choice of boundary important. If we draw it too narrowly, the Why may sit outside it. We can then describe the subject in extraordinary detail while remaining unable to explain its purpose. We may even optimize it successfully according to its internal logic while losing sight of whether it still contributes to what matters at the level above.
Perhaps understanding, then, does not primarily reside in the individual pieces of information we preserve.
It resides in the connections between them.
And perhaps one of the most important connections we can preserve is the one that allows us to keep asking:
Why?
Come to think of it, Why? may be the most frequently asked question in the universe. After all, every answer gives us something new to ask Why? about.
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