INCLUSION CRITERIA
An entry belongs in this collection if and only if it is a method: a procedure someone can follow, together with the account of why it works and the conditions under which it stops working.
Required: All of the following:
- A procedure — the steps, in order, specific enough to act on without interpretation
- A mechanism — why the procedure works; a method without a mechanism is a ritual
- Stated limitations — the conditions outside which the procedure fails
Not sufficient: A principle, which is true but too vague to act on ("understand the problem before solving it"). A heuristic, which usually works but specifies no conditions under which it does. A framework, ontology, taxonomy, or conceptual scheme, however sophisticated — these provide a way of seeing, not something to do. If it does not tell you what to do next, it is not a method.
Boundary: A formal system with an explicit consequence relation belongs in Logical Systems, even where it is also practised; the same name may carry an entry in each, as with Kolmogorov complexity, which is recursion-theoretic metatheory there and a design heuristic here. A tradition that regulates and evaluates argument as a practice belongs in Argumentation and Rhetoric. General holds cognitive operations that recur across independent traditions; Specific holds their tradition-bound instances.