Five Ws
[7] According to Inoslav Bešker, Professor of Philology at the University of Split in Croatia, the 5 Ws are rooted in the seven questions used in ancient Greece to communicate stories clearly:[8] Although long attributed to Hermagoras of Temnos,[9] in 2010, it was established that Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is in fact the source of the elements of circumstance or Septem Circumstantiae.
Aquinas examines the concept of Aristotle's voluntary and involuntary action in his Summa Theologiae as well as a further set of questions about the elements of circumstance.
And it seems that the most important circumstances are those just listed, including the Why[10]In the Politics, Aristotle illustrates why the elements are important in terms of human (moral) action: I mean, for instance (a particular circumstance or movement or action), How could we advise the Athenians whether they should go to war or not, if we did not know their strength (How much), whether it was naval or military or both (What kind), and how great it is (How many), what their revenues amount to (With), Who their friends and enemies are (Who), what wars, too they have waged (What), and with what success; and so on.
[9]In any particular act or situation, one needs to interrogate these questions in order to determine the actual circumstances of the action.
It is necessary for students of virtue to differentiate between the Voluntary and Involuntary; such a distinction should even prove useful to the lawmaker for assigning honors and punishments.
[15] The rhetor Hermagoras of Temnos, as quoted in pseudo-Augustine's De Rhetorica,[16] applied Aristotle's "elements of circumstances" (μόρια περιστάσεως)[17] as the loci of an issue:
[18] Boethius "made the seven circumstances fundamental to the arts of prosecution and defense": The question form was taken up again in the 12th century by Thierry of Chartres and John of Salisbury.
[26] In the 16th century, Thomas Wilson wrote in English verse: Who, what, and where, by what helpe, and by whose: Why, how, and when, doe many things disclose.
is a plan of study of alliterative methods for the teacher emphasized by Professor W.C. Wilkinson not as original with himself but as of venerable authority.
[28] The "Five Ws" (and one H) were memorialized by Rudyard Kipling in his Just So Stories (1902), in which a poem, accompanying the tale of The Elephant's Child,[29] opens with: I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.
This is not a coincidence, as they are cognates derived from the Proto-Indo-European interrogative pronoun root kwo-, reflected in Proto-Germanic as χwa- or khwa- and in Latin as qu-.
