Ceteris Paribus
Change one thing at a time, and hold all others equal - ceteris paribus. It’s a core of science - to do an experiment, you look at cause and effect by making a cause happen and observing for effect. Except, just about anything that happens in the real world is not easily explained by a single cause, and so we work backwards from effect to try to puzzle out the causes, because that’s the way that gives you the most truth - the effect is observable and known, but the cause isn’t always clear, not until you repeat and retry and figure out how many strings you need to be tugging on at any one time to get the puppet to dance. ...