Relistening to podcasts about how linguists determined where the Indo-Europeans were originally from*, it occurred to me that I enjoyed this in the same way that I enjoy Tom Wessels and Reading the Forest Landscape and the general idea of forest succession underlying it. It is not all blue-sky dreaming, there is real data to be dealt with, plus some ability to check one's conclusions with other information. It is similar to a geometric proof, staring at something and trying to figure out what is relevant and how hard or soft the information is.
Psychiatric diagnosis is much fuzzier, because there are 10x more factors brought to bear on the final problem, but I liked that puzzle for the same reasons, and discerning motives is much the same. I am less fascinated by treatment plans, which really should be the more important task, unfortunately. It is detective novel stuff, whether one favors the Conan Doyle or Chesterton approaches, which is rather like playing 3-dimensional "Clue," whatever that might look like.
*Episodes 6-9 would be a good starting point.
2 comments:
"The solution is left as an exercise for the reader."
I remember that. Wasn't that wonderful?
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