Since the origin of the human race, our ability to pass on our knowledge of the world, our experience in life and our achievements has enabled the human family not only to survive but to prosper. Observation is probably the first means used to instruct the young but as their powers of comprehension improve; they are educated and socialized through speech. The faculty of speech is extremely versatile.

In its ability and desire to externalize itself through acts of creation and reflecting on its experience, the human race is obsessively curious, always posing the question: why? By consistently posing that question, it arrives at the second, and perhaps more significant one: why not? The search for the answer to the second stirs human beings to change and constantly transform the environment, and by so doing, make and remake themselves.

Drawing from observation and what is said, authors in this issue comment on legislation; adoption of technology; agricultural processes; development paradigms and societal perceptions among other issues. They ask why things are the way they are and why they cannot be done the other way.