Causal Explanations Once upon a time there was a young lass who wanted earnestly to know why the chicken crossed the street. Her parents, who wanted her to have only the best answers, sent her to a college of great reputation. After the lass had settled into the academic routine, she went around the campus asking this question. She received the following answers. Biolom Professor: "Natural stlrctlon. Thwe chickens who cross the srrrrt will a haw hrtter chance of finding hod and mates 2 n d thus, survlvr. to produce mure oftheir progrnv Thry hnvr h r ~ wsrlwted t n he the filtest to survive."
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Molecular Biology Professor: "Obviously, there is a gene that controls the street-crossing behavior. We have not yet isolated the gene or studied how it is expressed." Physical Chemistry Professor: "Gibhs free energy determines the direction of change. In this case, AG" = Go(final)- Go (initial) < 0.Hence, the process is spontaneous." Mathematics Professor: "That's the only way all points in the phase space become equally accessible to the system."
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Psychology Professor: "All behavior is learned. It all depends an the reward structure."
Philosophy Professor: "There are no causal explanations. Hence, the question, Why?' does not arise. Chicken crossing a street is a prohlem in ontology or epistemology. In the first case, the relevant question is: 'Does the chicken or the street exist?' In the second case, the relevant question is: 'How do you know what you think you know? "
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Physics Professor: "Consider a spherical chicken of radius R. Let the potential energy be a linear function of distance . . . ."
Alas! Alas! The lass left the officebefore the explanation was completed G. K. Vemulapalli The University of Arizona Tucson. AZ 85721
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Journal of Chemical Education
