Analysis has stalled on something people love: the lovers may know things the ledger can't.

Piranesi's method is the inversion of the skeptic's ledger: trust first, and let the trust produce knowledge suspicion never could. He knows things about the House no detached observer could learn, because the observer never stays long enough, never loves it enough, to be taught. The book proposes that some realities only open to the devoted, that suspicion is not always rigor; sometimes it is just distance. He still keeps the catalog (he records everything), but the catalog is kept by a lover, and that changes what the catalog can see.