(no subject)

When Plato expressly opposes reminiscence and innateness, he means that the latter represents only the abstract image of knowledge, whereas the real movement of learning implies a distinction within the soul between a 'before' and an 'after'; in other words, it implies the introduction of a first time, in which we forget what we knew, since there is a second time in which we recover what we have forgotten.

-- Giles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition.

The before and after technique works extremely well in trying to understand quantitative differences, i.e. recognize a difference maker, within a chain of events.