> I used to suffer from the lack of "why" too until one day it dawned on me that there really isn't a why, or maybe, the why is always the same: for engineers d

> I used to suffer from the lack of "why" too until one day it dawned on me that there really isn't a why, or maybe, the why is always the same: for engineers doing classical physics solving problems by hand, it's convenient to define it that way. No more, no less. 'Why' is shorthand for a description of the context of the operation or method being taught. My senior high-school experience was that my maths teacher just plowed through the curriculum from limits to derivatives to integrals and beyond without explaining what each was used for or why. I managed to scrape a pass in high-school calculus but never grew beyond the most rudimentary of understanding until I was taught by a university lecturer who invested time in explaining the why. The backbone of my mental schema is narrative, so just throwing equations and processes at me does not cause the knowledge to "stick". Teaching me that Gauss had a problem X that he tried to solve by Y, then showing me what he discovered process N, is invaluable to me because it aids my recall.