Ironically, intelligence testing showed that neither inductive nor deductive logic could determine what underlies “intelligence”. Intelligence just happened to be the “battle ground” for the clarification of validity and validity generalization in the 20th century and you mentioned it in your previous post. First, psychologists attempted to operationally define intelligence (content validity), then they attempted predictive validity which can be either inductive or deductive depending on your preference for Carnap’s verification or Popper’s falsification theorem, then came the era of constructive validity in various forms (Cronbach and Meehl (trait validity), Campbell and Fiske (Mulit-trait-Mulit-method matrices, etc.). Ever since Hume’s support in regards to inductive reasoning, no philosophy of science has ever been able to either get around the subject or to find a solution to it. I assume that your validity goes back to the pragmatist Peirce who coined “adductive validity” (even though I strongly doubt that you’ll subscribe to pragmatism in the American sense … too left-wing for your taste, I assume). However,it is the only validity that historians can come by. This is just methodological jibberish for most (and I expect a clear repudiation for even bringing up the topic given your previous responses , but I just wanted to set the record straight. In any case, I am glad that we have come to a point of civility that may not bring us closer in our views, but at least, it’s better than what’s so prevalent in political discourse today. Imagine that people can actually agree to disagree and have an “intelligent” exchange of ideas. The key question that I still have is: What’s behind your historical quest? I haven’t figured it out yet. It must be more than just the old Roman annalist tradition of the pontifex maximus putting out on a tablet in public view on an annual basis the major events of the Roman year during the early and later Republic. As a matter of fact, I’d be disappointed if there wasn’t an underlying message behind your very strongly held beliefs. So what are they? Maybe I can follow your train of thought better if I understood the message that holds your selection of “facts” together (which are far from being arbitrary) . Thanks in advance!