Questions - 4 - What do Rudyard Kipling, Aristotle and Lewis Carroll have in common?

This post follows on from Questions - 3.

Einstein famously said that he arrived at the general theory of relativity by asking childlike questions with an adult mind. It’s telling that Kipling’s six serving men (what, why, when, how, where, who) are listed in a rhyme in a children’s book. As we shall see, another children’s author - Lewis Carrol, tops off Kipling’s list with four more.

But in case you think that this is all too frivolous, let us consider a Great Classical Philospher. Aristotle.

Ah, classical philosopy, that’s more like it, isn’t it?

Aristotle listed eight questions to discover what he called the “circumstances of an act” - Aristotle was interested in investigation:

Cause

Why did it happen?
What made it happen?
Who made it happen?
With what instruments?

Circumstances

When did it happen?
Where did it happen?
How did it happen - in what manner?

Result

What happened?

What this shows us is that although Kipling’s serving man will steer the question in a specific direction, the rest of the question is, if you like, the payload.

There is a difference between:

How does it happen?

The answer will describe the mechanism in qualitative terms.

How much does it happen?

Which produces a number of some sort which can be measured in some way, a quantative answer.

How often does it happen?

Which is in fact a time question and more closely related to “When” than to “How” because you can measure how often it happens. If you want to use jargon, it is a quantative temporal question. Doncha love those long words?

Spatial questions should sometimes include direction. Kipling limited his six serving men to the main one-word questions available in the English language but he omitted whence, meaning “where from”, and whither, meaning “where to”.

There is a powerful and not very intuitive, set of questions which let one examine a theorem, its converse, its inverse, and its reverse mirror image. You were doing fine until I said “reverse mirror image” weren’t you? This isn’t mine. I’ve picked it up out of a paper by a chap called Tony Hookins. I’ve taken out the maths to make it easier to read:

Theorem What would happen if you did?	Inverse What would happen if you didn’t?
Converse What wouldn’t happen if you did?	Non-Mirror Image Reverse What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t?

This, deliciously, comes from Lewis Carroll, and you can that sprang from mind of the man who wrote “Through the Looking-glass”, can’t you?

Sad bunny that I am, I have produced 18 questions to pick and choose from when analysing systems and processes:

Time - When? How often? For how long?

Place - Where? Whence? Whither?

Quantity - How many?

People - Who by? Who for? Who with? Who from? To whom? Whose?

Events - What happens?

Means - How is it done?

Things - What things are used? What things are produced?

Reasons - Why do it?

One can extend almost all of these questions out along another axis by applying Carroll’s matrix, (what would happen if it was done then / what would happen if it wasn’t done then, etc).

To be honest, this way madness lies. Ultimately one can produce check-lists and tables to one’s heart’s content, but what matters is to think about extending Kipling’s questions by considering number and direction, and - as Caroll shows us - to consider inversions and opposites.

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Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, book 3 section 1.

Carroll, L, (originally writing as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, presumably). 1939. The complete works of Lewis Carroll. London, The Nonesuch Press.

Kipling, R. 1902. The Elephant’s Child, The Just So Stories. London. Retrieved 3rd February 2007.

Hookins, T. Revisiting the interrogative pronouns and adverbs in the design of information systems. Retrieved 3rd February 2007.

More another day.