>Collingwood held that history could not be studied in the same way as natural science because the internal thought processes of historical persons could not be perceived with the physical senses, and past historical events could not be directly observed. He suggested that a historian must "reconstruct" history by using "historical imagination" to "re-enact" the thought processes of historical persons based on information and evidence from historical sources.
Collingwood pointed out a fundamental difference between knowing things in the present (or in the natural sciences) and knowing history. To come to know things in the present or about things in the natural sciences, “real” things can be observed, as they are in existence or that have substance right now.
The problem with coming to know things about history is that while past human actions actually or really happened, they took place in the past. The actions, then, have no real existence or substance at the point in time that the historian is studying them. Based on the understanding that the events and actions that historians study have already happened, they are finished and so cannot actually be observed. Collingwood maintained that historians must use their imaginations to reconstruct and understand the past. Because human events that have already taken place cannot be observed, he argued that they must be imagined.
Is it just me, or have the wikipedos written this in a really weird way?