I’ve wanted – intended – to write this piece for a long time. Yet I couldn’t, because the subject matter seems so reducibly simple. That barrier comes from conceptualization: once a conclusion has been reached, the mind focuses on that conception and buries the supporting conceptions to increase future efficiency. My mind is constantly refusing to deduce, desiring instead to use this conception as part of future inductions. Yet yielding to that barrier would allow mistakes, for I would leap to new conclusions without tracing and examining the evidence for my earlier conceptions. Any error would go unidentified and would be magnified many times over as my web of conceptions grows.

The only guard against such an outcome is rigorous examination of the original evidence – always a challenge, since a completely rigorous trace would take incredible time and effort. This piece is a more limited trace, sufficing to examine and explain the immediate preceding conceptions. As such it will appear deductive, unlike the original inquiry’s inductive pattern – don’t mistake the pattern of a trace for the pattern of an initial inquiry. It’s taken me a long time to comprehend that difference.