I’m occasionally asked (by people who haven’t yet read the Preface) how I came to write INSIDE THE LIBERAL ARTS.  Well, causality is complicated. There’s an origins story (what triggered the book) and a backstory (why it was triggered). Causality, and how it differs from causation, are a subject for a later post.  Here, to further introduce the blog, I’ll resort to the desperate strategy of a more or less straightforward narrative.