Abstract
Bevir?s view that theories are prior to theorists, just in so far as they are prior to any observations which one might make and, by extension, any facts which one might invoke in support of any particular interpretative conclusions, is problematic when applied to intellectual history, for although it is in one sense true that all facts are ineluctably constituted by some or other underlying theory, it is also true that, in a vast number of important situations, all human beings share the same basic theory. The most important implication of this shared stock of concepts, observations and facts, is that we shall often be able to see numerous aspects of a long?dead author?s world in much the same way as he or she saw it