"We can but find out what its significance was, and this is the work of historians"

"Philosophies of history attempt to capture the future without realizing that if we knew the future, we could control the present, and so falsify statements about the future, and so such discoveries would be useless. We capture the future only when it is too late to do anything about the relevant present, for it is then past and beyond our control. We can but find out what its significance was, and this is the work of historians: history is made by them."

Arthur C. Danto, Narration and Knowledge at 284 (1985).