The Peculiarities of Historical Knowledge: Time and Path Dependency Ferdan Ergut Historical knowledge has its own peculiarities which differentiate it from other forms of knowledge, such as philosophy, mathematics, logics, physics etc. The time is the most crucial element of this peculiarity. After discussing some of the intricate problems related to the perception of “time”, the article attracts our attention to “path dependency” and warns us to resist “presentist” temptations. It argues and illustrates through several examples that the temporal and spatial dimensions of a particular phenomenon are crucial to understand its basic characters and dynamics. In order to understand “how it happened”, we have to understand “when and where it happened”.