This book studies how knowledge changes. What enables epistemic shift, and what constrains it? How do historians recognize such a shift? If it is not a full rupture with the past, how should we weigh the relative import of continuity and difference? What impact do conceptual loyalties have on the possibility of new thought, or the articulation of unique and particular experience? Do norms function differently when they are enshrined in writing and when they are construed by the senses? Under what circumstances may norms be jettisoned? What role do deference, prestige, and rhetoric have in the formation of knowledge?