Thanks for posting this. That essay is fantastic. It's actually a perfect complement to that article and the discussion happening in this entire thread.
It beautifully highlights the modern historian's crisis.
You cannot distill history into a framework because any unique set of events seem to be reproduced somewhere else in history with different outcomes.
You must distill history into a framework otherwise it's impossible to reason about and understand.
This seems like a good spot to link to one of my favorite essays on the theme you've raised here - the historian and philosopher Isaiah Berlin (of the hedgehog and the fox fame) on "The Concept of Scientific History." (Short version: he argues that there's no such thing). By the way, I'm happy to see such an interesting discussion of my favorite historical topic on HN - thanks.
https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/pers...