The epistemology of history has been ridden by one-property-essentialism. Many philosophers and some historians have tried to reduce historical writing to one and only one trait that has been treated both as the signifier of the fundamental difference between history and all other forms of inquiry, and as the essential mechanism generating all epistemologically interesting properties and structures of historical writing (or historical knowledge). Historical inquiry has been essentially reduced by past philosophers to Verstehen, or to ideographic treatment of valued individuals (persons or states-of-affairs), or to re-enactment. The numbers of writers who have been opposed to simplistic reductionism, either explicitly or implicitly, have been few.¹