As described elsewhere on this blog, the abbreviation FAQ stands for ‘Frequently Asked Question’. It is often seen on websites. It is a way of providing the visitor with key information quickly and easily. The intention of such questions is not to prompt further questions or inspire anything akin to contemplation. That is the job of a quite different type of question.
These are questions that often get asked again and again. That type of question might be called an FAQ with those letters this time standing for ‘Frequently Addressed Question’. Such questions typically resist satisfactory answers. They are the deeper, perennial questions about life (…the Universe and Everything).
These questions certainly cannot be answered quickly and easily. They have been asked by succeeding generations of thinkers. Thus, they may rightly be called Frequently Addressed Questions. A Frequently Addressed Question is one to which we return again and again not necessarily expecting an answer. The benefit of unanswered questions is that they open up new avenues of thought; they prompt new ideas.
In relation to the human body, what are (or should be) the Frequently Addressed Questions?
This, in itself, may be the first such question. We should ask repeatedly, ‘In relation to the human body, what are (or should be) the Frequently Addressed Questions?’
I come to such questions from a scientific perspective but there are others. Our different perspectives are not mutually exclusive nor should they be kept entirely separate.
