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It is crucial to understand species and species development and evolution.
Species Loyalty: Why should Mr. Zebra or any living individual seek to preserve its current species?
Wrong forum. Science is about how, not why. But I'll happily answer "how".
Though some scientists believe that the descriptive level of science is al that there is to know, that is, they believe that scientists should only ask 'what' questions, I believe that the explanatory level that follows the descriptive level is the actual goal of science - the answers to the 'why' questions.
In the 1970’s, the study of cosmology went through a major conceptual change. Prior to this time, modern cosmologists asked such questions as: What is the composition of galaxies and where are they located in space? How rapidly is the universe expanding? What is the average density of matter in the cosmos? After this time, in the “new cosmology,” cosmologists began seriously asking questions like: Why does matter exist at all, and where did it come from? Why is the universe as homogeneous as it is over such vast distances? Why is the cosmic density of matter such that the energy expansion of the universe is almost exactly balanced by its energy of gravitational attraction? In other words, the nature of the questions changed. The questions became more fundamental. “Why?” was added to “What?” and “How?” and “Where?”. Alan Guth was one of the young pioneers of the new cosmology, asking the Whys, and his Inflationary Universe theory provided many answers.
you can fall into a trap of selfdelusion like our friend jccc who starts with a model and asks why the universe doesn't behave like his model predicts.
"Why" implies a search for purpose.
This further implies control by a sentient being with a sense of time and mortality ..
Quote from: tonylang on 24/06/2015 18:16:50Species Loyalty: Why should Mr. Zebra or any living individual seek to preserve its current species?Wrong forum. Science is about how, not why. But I'll happily answer "how".
"Why" is kinda fun for teaching primary school, but at some point we need to grow up and realise that the universe taken as a whole is entirely mechanistic, with no evidence of gods or entanglement molecules* floating about to direct the processes of chemistry and physics.
The problem with allowing "why" questions is that they tend to lead to anthropomorphic explanations ("the electron wants to...") which can mislead people into thinking that classical mechanics can be applied at all levels of analysis, or that nature must obey laws.