Eternal Vigilance, As They Say, Is The

Facts Do Not 'speak For Themselves'; They Are Read In The Light Of Theory.

The Origin Of Homo Sapiens, As A Tiny Twig On An Improbable Branch Of A Contingent Limb On A Fortunate Tree, Lies Well Below The Boundary.

Historical Science Is Not Worse, More Restricted, Or Less Capable Of Achieving Firm Conclusions Because Experiment, Prediction, And Subsumption Under Invariant Laws Of Nature Do Not Represent Its Usual Working Methods. The Sciences Of History Use A Different Mode Of Explanation, Rooted In The Comparative And Observational Richness In Our Data. We Cannot See A Past Event Directly, But Science Is Usually Based On Inference, Not Unvarnished Observation (you Don't See Electrons, Gravity, Or Black Holes Either).

Antiessentialist Thinking Forces Us To View The World Differently. We Must Accept Shadings And Continua As Fundamental. We Lose Criteria For Judgment By Comparison To Some Ideal: Short People, Retarded People, People Of Other Beliefs, Colors, And Religions Are People Of Full Status.

Something Deep Within Us Drives Accurate Messiness Into The Neat Channels Of Canonical Stories.