Now that these studies have been written, I must, following Pascal, decide what should be put first. I must say something about what has been done here and why. Originally trained as a physical chemist, I was equally interested in the study of history and historical explanation. I turned out to be inadequate in both domains. Dissatisfied with theories of explanation in disciplines that were held to employ opposing methods of analysis of facts, I have not come up with some universally applicable method that is more satisfying. But in devoting myself to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the middle ages, I have, over twenty years, reaffirmed my conviction that alien patterns of thought can be investigated to some degree of satisfaction, without my ever believing that the way medieval authors described their world was the way I described mine. It has never been clear to me that there is a single truth about living, that the world is indubitably one way for all of us or throughout history, except in trivial ways. With language one crosses and intersects other ways of describing how it is in the world for human experiencers without ever quite hitting on an expression which encapsulates how it really is for this one. Some expressions come close but only just: language is limited. I think it has always been thus.