  Explaining particular acts, Oakeshott argues, is “historical” explanation, which as he understands it is categorially distinct from scientific explanation. An observed pattern in the data, a statistical generalization, identifies a type of action. A performance, in contrast, is the choice of an actual agent at a particular moment. Science as a generalizing mode of inquiry aims to explain types of events, not particular occurrences. The humanities and humanistic social sciences, in contrast, are concerned with particular acts or other individual objects. The individuality of an act is explained historically by relating it to antecedent events that led to its occurrence as an act with its particular characteristics. An individual act is one in a series of acts, each of which has meaning in relation to acts that preceded it. It is these antecedent acts, or some of them, that illuminate its unique character. Only explanations of this kind are properly historical, Oakeshott argues. 