This almost seems to be the grown-up form of the childhood game of Why?
“Mom, why is ice cold?”
“Because its temperature is lower than your skin temperature, love.”
“Why?”
“Because its molecules are moving slower than yours.”
“Why?”
And so on.
I like the idea, but with our current imperfect understanding of the universe, such questions addressing facts must inevitably end with some variation of “Because there are turtles all the way down, love.”
I’m not saying that this should be discouraging—rather, that it is good to know where your knowledge ends. Furthermore, each generation (and I use the word “generation” loosely) has succeeded in pushing the turtles down one level more. Maybe one day the game of Why? will actually come to an end...
I don’t think it’s exploring the depth of knowledge, it’s learning to tell maps from the territory, as well as figuring out the limits where the maps stop working.
Why can’t it be both? I think that you’re right, the technique you describe is good for exploring your own maps, but I also think it seems to work for figuring out where the territory continues but your maps end.
I also think I didn’t do a sufficient job of explaining that my “exploring the depths of knowledge” take pertains more to your “The sky is blue” example than your “This book is awful” example (i.e., one that can be answered with fact, rather than opinion.)
This almost seems to be the grown-up form of the childhood game of Why?
“Mom, why is ice cold?”
“Because its temperature is lower than your skin temperature, love.”
“Why?”
“Because its molecules are moving slower than yours.”
“Why?”
And so on.
I like the idea, but with our current imperfect understanding of the universe, such questions addressing facts must inevitably end with some variation of “Because there are turtles all the way down, love.”
I’m not saying that this should be discouraging—rather, that it is good to know where your knowledge ends. Furthermore, each generation (and I use the word “generation” loosely) has succeeded in pushing the turtles down one level more. Maybe one day the game of Why? will actually come to an end...
I don’t think it’s exploring the depth of knowledge, it’s learning to tell maps from the territory, as well as figuring out the limits where the maps stop working.
Why can’t it be both? I think that you’re right, the technique you describe is good for exploring your own maps, but I also think it seems to work for figuring out where the territory continues but your maps end.
I also think I didn’t do a sufficient job of explaining that my “exploring the depths of knowledge” take pertains more to your “The sky is blue” example than your “This book is awful” example (i.e., one that can be answered with fact, rather than opinion.)