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Kurt Baier

but either hypothesis is equally explanatory. It would be wrong to say that only a teleological explanation can really explain it. Either explanation would yield complete clarity although, of course, only one can be true. Teleological explanation is only one of several that are possible.

It may indeed be strictly correct to say that the question “Why is there a satellite circling the earth?” can only be answered by a teleological expla- nation. It may be true that “Why?” questions can really be used properly only in order to elicit someone’s reasons for doing something. If this is so, it would explain our dissatisfaction with causal answers to “Why?” questions. But even if it is so, it does not show that “Why is the satellite there?” must be answered by a teleological explanation. It shows only that either it must be so answered or it must not be asked. The question “Why have you stopped beating your wife?” can be answered only by a teleological explanation, but if you have never beaten her, it is an improper question. Similarly, if the satel- lite is not man-made, “Why is there a satellite?” is improper since it implies an origin it did not have. Natural science can indeed only tell us how things in nature have come about and not why, but this is so not because something else can tell us the why and wherefore, but because there is none.

There is, however, another point which has not yet been answered. The objection just stated was that causal explanations did not even set out to answer the crucial question. We ask the question “Why?” but science returns an answer to the question “How?” It might now be conceded that this is no ground for a complaint, but perhaps it will instead be said that causal expla- nations do not give complete or full answers even to that latter question. In causal explanations, it will be objected, the existence of one thing is explained by reference to its cause, but this involves asking for the cause of that cause, and so on, ad infinitum. There is no resting place which is not as much in need of explanation as what has already been explained. Nothing at all is ever fully and completely explained by this sort of explanation.

Leibniz has made this point very persuasively. “Let us suppose a book of the elements of geometry to have been eternal, one copy always having been taken down from an earlier one; it is evident that, even though a reason can be given for the present book out of a past one, nevertheless, out of any number of books, taken in order, going backwards, we shall never come upon a full reason; though we might well always wonder why there should have been such books from all time—why there were books at all, and why they were written in this manner. What is true of books is true also of the dif- ferent states of the world; for what follows is in some way copied from what precedes . . . And so, however far you go back to earlier states, you will never find in those states a full reason why there should be any world rather than none, and why it should be such as it is.”5

However, a moment’s reflection will show that if any type of explanation is merely preliminary and provisional, it is teleological explanation, since it presupposes a background which itself stands in need of explanation. If I ac-

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