However, it is unusual for historians to question what constitutes a historical explanation.
I've listened to great thinkers describe in lofty tones how it constitutes a historical necessity.
This in no way detracts from the country's impressive growth record, which, at about 10% per year for three decades, constitutes a historical miracle.
One element, the plane, constitutes a historical constant in all pictures, while on the ground fragments of different times creep into the frame: a pebble-dashed house from the 50s or 60s, a post-modern 80s housing development, the British motorway signage, a Victorian brick railway bridge, a 90s Audi car.
An ice core - formed by compaction of previous snowfalls - constitutes a historical record of the local climate and atmosphere stretching back over thousands of years.
These high energy flows subsequently promoted bank erosion and lateral channel migration, and the formation of a historical meander belt whose alluvial surface constitutes a new historical floodplain inset against the earlier historical floodplain.
Here the interest is in the characteristics of historical knowledge: how we know facts about the past, what constitutes a good historical explanation, whether explanations in history require general laws, and whether historical knowledge is underdetermined by available historical evidence.
In this case, the connection is constituted by a historical chain of speakers going back to the initial users of the name 'Aristotle', or its Greek equivalent, in baptism-like circumstances.
The letters constitute a primary historical source such as exists for no other part of the ancient world.
Although he and his benefactor agreed never to meet, they engaged in a voluminous correspondence that constitutes a remarkable historical and literary record.
