 The distinction between the historical past and the natural past corresponds to the distinction between the subject matters of the sciences of mind and nature: the former study actions, in so far as they explain what happens as an expression of thought, the latter study events insofar as they approach their subject matter as instantiating certain observable patterns. As such “actions” and “events” are the correlatives of different kinds inferences. Collingwood captured the distinction between actions and events by claiming that the former have an inside which the latter lack (IH 1993: 118). The point of this claim was to draw attention to the fact that the meaning or significance of an action eludes nomological explanations which account for what happens by subsuming their explanandum under general laws. A historian might, for example, observe certain empirical regularities (in the past every time that white smoke emanated from the Sistine chapel in Rome, large crowds of people cheered), without understanding “why” in a particular sense of “why” the crowds cheered. If a social scientist suggested that the crowds cheered because white smoke emanated from the Sistine Chapel, this kind of “because” would singularly fail to address the question that the historian wants answered. The kind of explanation that would satisfy the curiosity of the historian is one which states something along the lines of “the crowds cheered because a new pope was elected” but such an explanation would not be possible without invoking the “context of thought” within which alone one can understand the symbolic significance of the white smoke. Words like “cause” or “because”, Collingwood claims, are not necessarily