COMBINE Index

Analyze your evidence carefully:

• Determine what characteristics the examples have in common.
• Retain the characteristics that are common to all the examples, but omit the particular measurements of these characteristics.
• If you can't complete this analysis, there is no basis for the examples to be combined into a single concept.

Note:

Don't let the apparent simplicity of this formulation fool you! 'Omit the particular measurements' was a key part of Ayn Rand's brilliant solution to a 2000 year old unsolved problem in philosophy, known as the 'problem of universals'.