“[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”

—  Stephen Jay Gould , book Wonderful Life

you don't see electrons, gravity, or black holes either
Source: Wonderful Life (1989), p. 279

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Stephen Jay Gould 274
American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

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