  Thoughts and actions can be explained, but only historically, not scientifically. Oakeshott is here deliberately breaking with the view that explanations are always “causal” explanations that invoke scientific laws. Historical explanations presuppose a distinctively historical conception of causation. An argument, choice, or judgment made by a particular agent at a particular moment is an individual performance, an event. Scientific psychology can generalize about how people are likely to act but it cannot explain particular choices, which may fail to illustrate the generalizations. And the reason for this limitation is not only the categorial impossibility of explaining meanings in terms of statistical patterns or natural processes but also the gap between observed generalizations and particular acts. The generalizations about human nature or social conditions found, confirmed, and relied upon by social scientists, though often illuminating, cannot explain the occurrence of particular acts, which viewed as intelligent human conduct are always performances in relation to some practice. The social sciences aim to find causal relationships between variables such as age or income, and to offer explanations in terms of these relationships rather than intelligent choice. Such explanations are possible, but what they explain is variance in the data, not particular performances. 