How do humans build better explanations?

We do not simply accumulate new beliefs. We construct increasingly encompassing explanations capable of integrating more of our experience into a coherent understanding of the world. Yet inhabiting the space between an explanation that no longer adequately explains our experience and one that has not yet fully taken shape can be one of the most cognitively difficult experiences we face.

01Framework

ObservationAssumptionCauseInterpretationExpectation

02Challenge

ObservationAssumptionCauseInterpretationExpectationNew observation

03Reorganization

ObservationAssumptionCauseInterpretationExpectationNew observation
An explanatory framework meets something it cannot readily contain. Its elements can then be defended, discarded, reinterpreted, or reorganized.