There arose some time ago an historical trend. It is one that treats history as a vast field of data and already-attempted experimentation. We want a more just world in which to thrive and we, as reasonable creatures, use history as a way to see precisely how certain policies and political structures emerged and we propose to use those past witnesses in order to make better decisions. It is such a good idea in its simplicity, yet its coming took so very long to arrive. Those who did not trust the senses, but only put faith in reason - those deductionists - handed down a tradition that kept us back because of its influence and a more thorough empirical study of politics, patterns and history waited until only the last one hundred years or so to take hold. It was not so many decades ago that the idea of environmental factors altering the course of history was novel: grass fed to horses and smoot and volcanic ash projected into the sky preventing healthy human emergence. Now, we take that notion of empirical study and use of centuries-long data further and employ the past in order to make more just the future, instead of merely watching as the past and present emerge while those who believe in free will mistakenly think they have a clean slate. A more just world is what one wants, let us assume, and of course that hope or expectation is a precarious perspective, but it is the case that hundreds of years passed before humans recognized what is outside of them as part of the emergence of what continues inside of them.
It is so patently obvious, and so many years passed before humans recognized it. .