Method
"Method of this work:
literary montage.
I have nothing to say only to show."
(Passagenwerk (1927 - 1940) - Walter Benjamin)
The "rhizome" allows for multiple,
non-hierarchical entry and exit points
in data representation and interpretation.
--Mille Plateaux - Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,
volume 2 of Capitalisme et Schizofrénie (1980)
Benjamin and Virilio: induction
If Walter Benjamin had one true intellectual descendant who extended his inquiries into the second half of the twentieth century, this must be Paul Virilio. Indeed, Benjamin and Virilio share a number of crucial affinities both in terms of their method and the themes they explore. The method: both are able to practice the most difficult philosophical method of all -- that of induction -- inferring general laws of culture and history from the minute details of everyday life. (This sets them apart from most critics who are predisposed to see such details through the filters of already existing theoretical paradigms.) Both also abandon the conventional method of theoretical exposition which requires the writer to first clearly state general arguments and then support them by particular examples in favor of another method, borrowed from cinema: montage of images. --Lev ManovichReason
In philosophy, reason (from Latin ratio, by way of French raison) is the faculty by means of which or the process through which human beings perform thought, especially abstract thought. Many thinkers have pondered reason, and the various views on the nature of reason may not be compatible with one another.
Reason is sometimes narrowly defined as the faculty or process of drawing logical inferences. From Aristotle onwards, such reasoning has been classified as either deductive reasoning, meaning "from the general to the particular", or inductive reasoning, meaning "from the particular to the general". In the 19th century, Charles Peirce, an American philosopher, added a third classification, abductive reasoning, by which he meant "from the best available information to the best explanation", which has become an important component of the scientific method. In modern usage, "inductive reasoning" sometimes includes almost all non-deductive reasoning, including what Peirce would call "abductive". --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason [Feb 2005]