Stephen Gaukroger

"Such knowledge [of contemporary physicists] is clearly not the same as that derived by abstraction from individual cases: abstraction can provide us with knowledge of accidents but not necessary attributes as such. If we find that the search for essences can in fact only take the form of abstraction from individual cases then Aristotle's account of what counts as an explanation in physics is an unrealisable ideal."

"If you don't think explicitly about big history, you are condemned to making all kinds of assumptions that may be unfruitful, counterproductive, or just plain ignorant. It is something that every historian has to think about at some stage, and it distinguishes history from antiquarianism."

"Gaukroger believes that contemporary physicists concern themselves with a kind of mathematical knowledge that“ is clearly not the same as that derived by abstraction from individual cases.” Indeed, he goes goes so far as to claim that true scientific knowledge, “cannot be attained, at least in Aristotelian physics and cosmology."