Everyone wants to be the cat hunting mice. But is it possible to have a mouse-eye view of the world? I take historical reconstruction to be the task of finding and understanding the mouse-eye view of the world. That doesn't mean the cat is wrong; just that there is value is understanding the world from the mouse's view as well. Who knows, we might find that the mouse roars. Gani's approach sounds a lot like the one that Frank Knight articulated in the first sentence of "The Ricardian Theory of Production and Distribution": "On the assumption that the primary interest in the 'ancients' in such a field as economics is to learn from their mistakes, the principal theme of this discussion will be the contrast between the 'classical' system and 'correct' views." Ross B. Emmett