The principle proposed here is structurally different from, and considerably more aggressive than, the classical positivist position. It is articulated thusly:
A premature or incorrect Why actively corrupts the What by providing an explanatory scaffold to justify the observable errors and thereby defend them against correction.
The Latin term periculum cur, which means “the danger of Why,” is chosen deliberately. The positivists treated the Why as irrelevant and useless. Veriphysics regards the Why as dangerous and potentially corrupting. The distinction is vital.
The principle has three components that distinguish it from every prior formulation.
The diagnostic: Most science is reverse-engineering. The engineering and the trial-and-error work first, and the Why is constructed afterward to rationalize what already works. The Why is therefore parasitic on the What, not generative of it. The classical positivists were defending science against metaphysics. Periculum cur diagnoses science itself as performing metaphysics under another name.
The contamination: If the What is wrong, the Why built on top of it is necessarily wrong, and worse than wrong: it now defends the false What against criticism by supplying an explanatory scaffold that justifies the error and prevents it from being corrected. Confidence in the Why reliably tends to lock in a wrong What. The Why becomes a protective shield for the error. Comte never noticed this. He treated the laws of phenomena as essentially settled and the Why as merely surplus. Periculum cur recognizes that the Why actively contaminates the process by which the What can be examined, and if necessary, corrected.
The rhetoric: “Why” is not just an epistemically inferior question. It is the standard tool by which a theoretical construct is used to erase or negate a material observation. “Yes, but the reason this happens is...” is the universal solvent for inconvenient facts that cannot be otherwise denied. When an observation contradicts the accepted theory, the Why usually provides the mechanism by which the observation is dismissed, reinterpreted, or ignored.
None of the classical figures reached this third point. Wittgenstein came closest, when he noted that the modern system “tries to make it look as if everything were explained.” He saw that “Why-by-law” was a substitute for the older terminus of God or Fate. But he did not see it as a defensive shield against the What. He treated it as if it were a misunderstanding rather than as rhetorical armor.
