Methods of Inquiry that have immediate credibility to the modern-ear begin with the early Greek philosophers.
Inquiry must begin, they said, with the assertion of Axiom, the investigative analogue of the atom. [You can’t prove an Axiom. Bad idea. The idea of ‘proof’ itself is rooted in an Axiom. But people try all the time.] But in most cases we have to settle for the Assumption. In a fogged-in world it is the reasonable man’s truth.
Unlike its ancestor the Monastery where Meditation Practice involved sustained inquiry into assumptions, every subject taught at a Modern University begins with implicit, mostly unstated assumptions called ‘First Principles’.
Every known ‘First Principle’, in Philosophy, in Logic, in Language, in Science, is granted legitimacy, takes life, atop the Binary-Platform, the ‘First Presumption’ that there is an ‘Independent [hence separated] Inquirer’.
These range from the thoughtful to the fearlessly flippant. The professors, busy folks, are unlikely to remember what they are. Ask the lady at the front-desk for the ‘First Principles List’. And wreck her day.
Not-Two 