ratiocination

This is a genre, after all, invented by Edgar Allan Poe, for whom the boundaries between his “tales of terror” and his “tales of ratiocination” were porous.

In the midst of all the postmortem ratiocination, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that climbing mountains will never be a safe, predictable, rule-bound enterprise.

Mr. Sharpe addressed him directly, asking if the boy were capable yet of ratiocination, or was become dumb.

Those cases — and Sherlock Holmes’s ratiocinations — are fated to remain forever untold, mentioned in Dr. Watson’s chronicles but never explained beyond these baroque references, with their nearly comic grotesqueries.

After vain and vexatious jugglings with the dry tissues of unchastened ratiocination, simplicity and even ignorance brought their solace.