“With the historicization of the heavens the age-old idea of discovering universal laws of behavior applicable everywhere and always seems to have lost plausibility, whether for sub-atomic particles or for human beings. …all such patterns and regularities, it seems to me, should be understood to be limited, local, evanescent — including, now, even the laws of physics.”

— William H. McNeill

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

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William H. McNeill43

Canadian historian 1917–2016

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