The useful question about any symmetrical thing is not why somebody made it that way but what process would produce that arrangement without anybody deciding. Here are sixteen answers.
1.…
There is a category of human behaviour that is universal, immediately recognisable across every culture, entirely involuntary, and without a settled explanation.
Emotional crying belongs in it, alongside blushing and…
There is a general expectation that pain corresponds to damage. A large injury should hurt more than a small one, and a deep wound more than a superficial one.
A…
Most visible human variation is complicated. Height, skin tone, hair texture and facial structure each involve many genes contributing small effects, which is why they vary continuously rather than falling…
The interesting thing about an egg is how many contradictory requirements it satisfies simultaneously. Strong and breakable, sealed and breathing, hidden and identifiable. Here are sixteen.
1. It Has to…
The governing constraint is that heat is gained by volume and lost through surface, so the ratio between the two determines the entire problem. Almost everything below follows from that.…