145
Why are 80% of the elements metallic? I get that they ARE, but WHY?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
145 points (98.0% liked)
Asklemmy
42194 readers
1374 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I think either you're misunderstanding me or you have a different philosophy about the kinds of questions science can answer than I do - which is fine, that's my whole point.
You tried here to provide a kind of explanation, but I personally don't see that as an answer to "why". I mean you say it is because of a dense network of bonds with a lot of electrons. But I could just ask "okay, but why is there this dense network of bonds?".
Then you could give me some additional "explanation" and I could again just ask "okay, but why is it like that?". And I could keep asking why.
My point is that any explanation you give ultimately will boil down to something you observed to just be like that. At some point I'll ask "okay but why" and you'll have to just say "it just is like that" - science cannot give you an answer for "why" something is.
This isn't a matter of just studying the laws of physics further. Even if you studied something more and got another explanation to something more fundamental, I could just ask "okay but why is it like that?" again.
Again, you may disagree that science can't answer "why" - but that kinda just proves my point that the answer depends on your philosophy and conceptions around what science can and cannot answer.
I address this in the last sentence of my previous post.
To reiterate, your argument does not matter because if you keep asking why, you are no longer answering the question that is being asked, but an entirely different question altogether. You can answer why there are so many metals. We might not figure out why the laws of physics are the way they are, but if you've gotten to that point where you're trying to answer that question, then you've deviated so far from the original question that you weren't even trying to respond to it to begin with.
Well, again, I don't agree that you can. I wouldn't call that an answer to "why". That's okay, we can disagree. That doesn't make my original answer wrong - just a different perspective.
You can answer why there are so many metals though. You're conflating a different question
It's like saying we can't answer why something is flammable. Yes we can, you need a FAIR few more why's to get to the philosophy part