The Complete Methodology
Six stages. Three cross-cutting principles. One discipline for rebuilding human understanding from evidence — with rigor, honesty, and dignity.
01
Evidence
02
Possible Facts
03
Verified Facts
04
Meaning
05
Story
06
Wisdom
Stage One
Preserve before you interpret.
Evidence is any artifact, record, communication, testimony, or observable pattern that can be traced to a specific source and evaluated for reliability. Evidence includes photographs, documents, emails, messages, videos, audio recordings, physical objects, official records, witness accounts, and oral history.
Evidence is not the same as proof. Evidence is raw material. Proof is a conclusion drawn from evidence. Reconstructography works with evidence — always — and is careful never to present a conclusion as if it were the evidence itself.
Evidence must be collected and preserved in its original form before any interpretation begins. The act of interpretation must never alter the evidence itself. This is not a preference — it is the first law of the methodology.
Preservation means: the original is kept intact. Copies may be made for analysis. Transformations (OCR, translation, enhancement) are logged with full provenance. The original and any derived representations are kept distinct. A derived representation is never a substitute for the original.
Not all evidence is equally reliable. A contemporaneous document is more reliable than a memory recorded decades later. A corroborated account is more reliable than an uncorroborated one. A primary source is more reliable than a secondary source.
Reconstructography requires that every piece of evidence be assessed for reliability — and that the reliability assessment be documented alongside the evidence. High reliability evidence supports high confidence conclusions. Low reliability evidence supports only tentative conclusions.
When two pieces of evidence conflict, both must be preserved and both must be visible. The methodology never resolves contradictions automatically. Contradictions are flagged, documented, and presented for human review.
A contradiction is not a problem to be solved. It is information to be honored. Sometimes contradictions reveal that one piece of evidence is unreliable. Sometimes they reveal that the subject was more complex than any single account suggests. Either way, the contradiction is part of the record.
Stages Two & Three
From candidate findings to human-confirmed truth.
When evidence is analyzed, it first produces Possible Facts — findings the evidence suggests but that have not yet been reviewed and confirmed by a human practitioner. A Possible Fact is a candidate: visible, documented, and clearly labeled as awaiting human review.
Possible Facts are never presented to the public as established. They are working material — the output of evidence analysis, waiting for the judgment that only a human being can provide.
A Verified Fact is a Possible Fact that a human practitioner has reviewed, evaluated against the evidence, and confirmed. The act of verification is logged: who verified it, when, and on what basis.
Verified Facts carry confidence levels — High, Medium, Low, or Open Question — calculated from the quality and quantity of supporting evidence. A Verified Fact is not the same as certainty. It is the most accurate conclusion the available evidence can support, held with appropriate confidence and subject to revision.
The transition from Possible Fact to Verified Fact requires a human being. AI may assist in organizing and surfacing evidence. It may flag patterns, identify contradictions, and calculate preliminary confidence scores. But the act of verification belongs to a human practitioner.
This is not a limitation of the technology. It is a principle of the methodology. AI assists. Humans decide.
Not every Possible Fact becomes a Verified Fact. Some findings cannot be confirmed with available evidence. These become Open Questions — documented, visible, and preserved for future research.
An Open Question is not a failure. It is an honest acknowledgment of what is not yet known. The history of Open Questions in a reconstruction is itself evidence about the limits of the available record.
Stage Four
What the verified facts reveal about a human life.
Meaning is the interpretive layer — the stage where Verified Facts are examined for what they reveal about character, relationships, patterns, and the arc of a human life. Meaning is not imposed on the evidence. It emerges from it.
Meaning requires human judgment. A practitioner who has reviewed the evidence, confirmed the facts, and understood the context is the only one qualified to draw meaning from it.
Like Verified Facts, meaning carries confidence levels. A meaning that is strongly supported by multiple Verified Facts is presented with high confidence. A meaning that is inferred from limited evidence is clearly labeled as interpretive.
The discipline never presents interpretation as fact. The reader always knows what is established and what is the practitioner's reading of the evidence.
Every interpretive decision in a reconstruction is logged in the Review History — a permanent, immutable record of what was decided, when, by whom, and on what basis. The Review History cannot be erased. It can only be added to.
This is not bureaucracy. It is the mechanism by which the methodology holds itself accountable. A reconstruction with a complete Review History is a reconstruction that can be trusted.
Every meaning claim traces back to its Original Source — the specific piece of evidence that supports it. The chain from meaning to source must be unbroken. If a meaning claim cannot be traced to an Original Source, it must be flagged as unverified.
Original Sources are preserved in their original form. They are never altered, selectively omitted, or ranked by convenience.
Stage Five
The human form of verified truth.
Story is the human form of verified truth. It is how understanding is transmitted, remembered, and applied. Reconstructography produces stories — but only stories that emerge from evidence, not stories that are imposed upon it.
The story serves the evidence. The evidence does not serve the story. When narrative and evidence conflict, the narrative must yield.
Every sentence in a Reconstructography narrative is anchored to its source evidence. The reader can trace any claim in the story back to the Verified Fact that supports it. Confidence levels are visible in the narrative — not hidden in footnotes.
This is not a limitation on storytelling. It is a discipline that makes storytelling more honest, more durable, and more trustworthy.
The Story stage includes Book Placement — the decisions about how Verified Facts and their meanings are organized into a narrative structure. Book Placement is a human decision, made by the practitioner, and logged in the Review History.
Book Placement decisions are never made automatically. The practitioner chooses how to arrange the story, what to emphasize, and how to present complexity — always within the constraints of what the evidence supports.
The story stage is where the subject's humanity is most fully expressed. A reconstruction that reduces a human being to a sequence of documented facts has failed at the story stage — even if it has succeeded at every earlier stage.
The story must convey the full complexity of the subject — their contradictions, their growth, their relationships, their character as it emerged across time. This is not sentimentality. It is the purpose of the work.
Stage Six
The purpose of reconstruction.
Wisdom is the purpose of reconstruction. A reconstruction is complete not when all evidence has been gathered, but when it produces understanding that can inform a wiser future.
Wisdom requires honesty about what is known, humility about what is not, and courage to share truth even when it is uncomfortable. Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. Knowledge is what the evidence shows. Wisdom is what we do with it.
A reconstruction passes the wisdom test when it produces understanding that changes how the reader thinks, feels, or acts — in a direction that is more honest, more compassionate, or more just.
A reconstruction that produces only information has not yet reached wisdom. A reconstruction that produces understanding — of a person, a family, a community, a historical event — has reached its purpose.
The wisdom produced by a reconstruction does not expire. A reconstruction of a life lived a century ago can produce wisdom that is relevant today. A reconstruction of a family history can produce wisdom that shapes how the next generation understands itself.
This is why preservation matters. Evidence that is lost cannot produce wisdom. A reconstruction that is never shared cannot produce wisdom.
Wisdom in Reconstructography is always held with humility. The most honest reconstruction is one that acknowledges its own limitations — what it does not know, what it cannot know, and what it might have gotten wrong.
Humility is not weakness. It is the mark of a practitioner who understands that the subject's life was more complex than any reconstruction can fully capture — and who honors that complexity by acknowledging it.
Cross-Cutting Principles
Every claim traces to its source. The chain is never broken. If a claim cannot be traced, it is flagged as unverified.
Every conclusion carries a confidence level calculated from evidence quality and quantity — not from narrative convenience.
When new evidence emerges, the reconstruction is updated. The history of all revisions is preserved with full provenance.
The methodology is governed by the Canon. The Canon is the constitutional center of the discipline.
Evidence · Possible Facts · Verified Facts · Meaning · Story · Wisdom