Changes

'''Point 22.'''     Intelligent inquiry involves inquiry into inquiry.

'''Point 22.'''     Intelligent inquiry involves inquiry into inquiry.

In view of the previous points, it appears that intelligent inquiry is necessarily reflective inquiry, seeing itself as one inquiry among others and evaluating its own progress in a setting of comparable alternatives.  This means that intelligent inquiry into any subject whatever is forced to embody a component of self study, of inquiry into inquiry.  Thus, the general capacity for successfully conducting inquiry both relies on and bears on a specialized kernel of talent for doing inquiry into inquiry.

In view of the previous points, it appears that intelligent inquiry is necessarily reflective inquiry, seeing itself as one inquiry among others and evaluating its own progress in a setting of comparable alternatives.  This means that intelligent inquiry into any subject whatever is forced to embody a component of self-study, of inquiry into inquiry.  Thus, the general capacity for successfully conducting inquiry both relies on and bears on a specialized kernel of talent for doing inquiry into inquiry.

'''Point 23.'''     Inquiry into inquiry involves integrating independent inquiries.

Point 23.

One way of gathering data that is relevant to the task of self study is to conduct a multiplicity of independent studies, each of which tries to track what the others are most likely to miss.  This requires a monitor, a moderator, or a non parallel but mutually concurred upon medium of comparison for overseeing and reconciling the mosaic of disparate and scattered results that can derive from a multitude of isolated studies.

One way of gathering data that is relevant to the task of self-study is to conduct a multiplicity of independent studies, each of which tries to track what the others are most likely to miss.  This requires a monitor, a moderator, or a non-parallel but mutually concurred upon medium of comparison for overseeing and reconciling the mosaic of disparate and scattered results that can derive from a multitude of isolated studies.

Finally, this project of self study demands a comprehensive method for integrating the divergent and fragmentary imports of individual studies into a unified form, constituting the resultant bearing that they are meant to have on the main inquiry.  Toward this end, it is a frequent stratagem of intelligent inquiry to maintain a form of "outrigger", an attached but esthetically distant study that serves to steady the main course of study by embodying a full program of peripheral perspectives and exploratory investigations.  In this way, the global aims of even a specialized inquiry can be achieved more robustly by keeping a studied eye out for its own systematic alternatives, often involving precisely those "outliers" that are ignored by the more focal styles of inquiry.

Finally, this project of self study demands a comprehensive method for integrating the divergent and fragmentary imports of individual studies into a unified form, constituting the resultant bearing that they are meant to have on the main inquiry.  Toward this end, it is a frequent stratagem of intelligent inquiry to maintain a form of “outrigger”, an attached but esthetically distant study that serves to steady the main course of study by embodying a full program of peripheral perspectives and exploratory investigations.  In this way, the global aims of even a specialized inquiry can be achieved more robustly by keeping a studied eye out for its own systematic alternatives, often involving precisely those “outliers” that are ignored by the more focal styles of inquiry.

In times of shifting paradigms the outrigger of an established inquiry can take on a signal purpose as the forerunner of a new investigation, and can with added reinforcements even take over the role of the main.  With nothing more than a few spare kernels of aptitude for reflective inquiry, that is, with a minimal but germinal talent for inquiry into inquiry to serve as a catalyst, the outriding projections and their deponent objections, testifying all along in what seems like a purely negative fashion to the mounting accumulations of anomalous evidence, can find themselves converted, refitted, and positively reconditioned.  Transformed in this way, the original outrigger, with its outrageous hypotheses and its crew of motley anomalies, are ready to become the new hull, the mainstays, and the supporting constituency of a renewed constitution for inquiry, one that can sustain its overall course but more significantly its overriding cause through another day.

In times of shifting paradigms the outrigger of an established inquiry can take on a signal purpose as the forerunner of a new investigation, and can with added reinforcements even take over the role of the main.  With nothing more than a few spare kernels of aptitude for reflective inquiry, that is, with a minimal but germinal talent for inquiry into inquiry to serve as a catalyst, the outriding projections and their deponent objections, testifying all along in what seems like a purely negative fashion to the mounting accumulations of anomalous evidence, can find themselves converted, refitted, and positively reconditioned.  Transformed in this way, the original outrigger, with its outrageous hypotheses and its crew of motley anomalies, are ready to become the new hull, the mainstays, and the supporting constituency of a renewed constitution for inquiry, one that can sustain its overall course but more significantly its overriding cause through another day.

Point 24.

Point 24.