The Carlsen Question

The folks at Facebook's Chess Club Live frequently come up with new angles to explore the royal game. A few months ago we saw Play Against Bobby Fischer?, and recently they tackled Magnus Carlsen on a new Facebook page titled New Chess Agnosticism. Under a photo of GM Carlsen contemplating a Knight, the introduction says,

New Chess Agnosticism is a method of ascertaining our chess reality based on proven and evidence led thinking. There is an awareness that assumptions are used to make a framework for reality and it's an attempt to minimise this.

Having wrapped up my Carlsen game collection last week with Early Carlsen Games, and looking for somewhere to go with it, I liked the implicit question, 'What makes him so good?' Even if I end up not agreeing with the agnosticism aspect, I'll continue the Carlsen work and spend the next few posts in the series looking at answers to that question.