There is one criticism I receive frequently about my work. It might be the only consistent criticism I can think of that has persisted for years: I construct inductive arguments while academia expects deductive arguments.
To call my work inductive might be hasty, but it isn’t strictly speaking inaccurate. I tend to assemble example cases that encircle a point, illuminating the point by building a case for at least “a” possible answer or string of answers. That’s basically what inductive reasoning is in a nutshell: to go from specific to general while making a case. The opposite, to be seductive, is to focus in the entire time until getting to what most believe is the specific answer.
I tried to reverse my thinking. Looking back, I don’t know why, but I did. And I came to realize that I cannot lean on deduction because it takes a phenomenal effort. Not because it is hard. There isn’t really an easier or harder here. But it’s not how my brain works. It’s something I can do, just like I could operate as if 2+2=5, but just as unnatural to my psyche.
This gets to a concept I’m going to explore here tomorrow that is also the central organizing factor in the movie Arrival. It’s called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and it makes the claim that your language defines how you think. I’m not going that far. I speak write and dream primarily in English. But my assertion will be that there’s a difference between thinking and dreaming in Western binary–right vs. wrong, God vs. Satan, democrat vs. republican–and thinking and dreaming in interconnected stories.
It is Cherokee to be inductive. It values a sense that there is no absolute truth, no need for right and wrong. There are solutions and realities, but they needn’t be bedrock facts to be functional. The need for absolutes is American. It started with “no taxation without representation,” and it has stayed rigid, unwilling to accept the nuance that is natural.
More tomorrow. Phone blogging is hard.