It is important to encourage children to ask "why?": not only to encourage scientific curiosity. They must learn they have a right to ask "why?" of rules, of statements with which they are bombarded, of advertising, of anything which doesn't seem right. (why?)
Adults too have to remember to ask "why?". We can encourage this inquiry by making hypertext which rewards it with quality answers.
Fred Brooks, in The Mythical Man Month, describes the "second system effect", in which the designers of the new system carefully avoid all the problems of the first system, but fall into all the traps the designers of the first system had in their turn been careful to avoid. When specifications and plans have a "why" tree behind them, they are more likely to be changed with careful thought, rather than abandoned in a rush of feeling that we can do better.
We are hiring a person in order for them to write a programThis gives us the answer to two questions: "Why are we hiring the person?" and "how will we get the program written?". The "why" relationship is the inverse of the "how" relationship. Tracing the "why" links back as far as possible should give a complete rationale for an action. Tracing the "how" tree the other way should give a recipe for how it will be accomplished. Building the "how" and "why" links allow one to create a plan with a built-in justification.
Thanks to my brother Michael for descibing "how and why" trees he uses in his team-building training.