[H]istorical 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).

All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But …

The divine tape recorder holds a million scenarios, each perfectly sensible. Little quirks at the outset, occurring for no particular reason, unleash cascades …

The legends of fieldwork locate all important sites deep in inaccessible jungles inhabited by fierce beasts and restless natives, and surrounded by miasmas of …

I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses;' for whatever is not deduced from the phen…

'The issue of 'science' does not intrude itself directly upon the occasion of the performance of a musical work, at least a non-electronically produced work, s…

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many wa…