The early period of the journal was a time for discovery and adven ture. The relation between history and the social sciences conforms very well to the project outlined by Simiand a generation earlier. But, on may ask, did have the same significance? In 1930, Lucien Febvre devoted a long critical note full of praise to Simiand's Cours d'économie politique which concluded thus: "What is in it for us historians? Findings to be used as is? Methods of investigation to be transferred from the present to the past without modification, or at least taking care to change as little as possible? Obviously not. One can and should read this text as a reminder of the heuristic function accorded to historical experimentation and the project of a unified social science. Would I be betraying its meaning to read into this a claim to preeminence on behalf of a history which would take its place as the very center of the social sciences?