NP, but reminded me of Inherent Vice

[Robert Mahnke]

I came across this in a different context
(http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/twitters-fifth-beatle-tells-his-side-of-the-story/237326/):

The past in the hands of expert historians becomes a different world,
a complicated world that requires considerable historical imagination
to recover with any degree of accuracy. The complexity we find in that
different world comes with the realization that the participants were
limited by forces that they did not understand or were even aware
of--forces such as demographic movements, economic developments, or
large-scale cultural patterns. The drama, indeed the tragedy, of
history comes from our understanding the tension that existed between
conscious wills and intentions of participants in the past and the
underlying conditions that constrained their actions and shaped their
future.

Gordon Wood, The Purpose of the Past