Far too few folks have given real thought to how they think — only to what they think.

They might think outlandishly different things, but they do not think about those things in different ways. And they think about different things precisely because the things they think about in their conventional way fail to give them satisfying answers, which drives them to go digging for data in new places, or to speculate about things allegedly happening beneath the surface, inaccessibly, but in a manner that soaks up the inexplicable remainder without requiring any change in how one thinks.

My instinct, a pragmatist’s instinct, is, when confronting an intractable conflict of interpretations, to suspect the How of thought first, and only after to question the What, or Why, or (God forbid!) Who.