Periodization is the methodological foundation of modern historical study.

A period gives past events intelligibility through context, and periods nor­mally designate the scope of any historical argument. In 1932, Michael Oakeshott wrote, “To Lord Acton's advice - ‘Study problems in preference to periods' - we must reply first, that there is no difference.”^{[85] [86]} Historians today would surely agree, especially those working in world history.

This chapter sets world historical study within a larger history of period­ization, showing the relation between its methodological difficulties and its immense historiographical significance. It starts with the systemization of disciplinary practice in Ranke, who inherited from the eighteenth century a paradox concerning global time. For him, chronology and the individual period could never be fully reconciled. Much notable historiography that followed him dispensed with this problem thanks to the identity it posed between the spiritual nation and the worldly state. Darwinian evolution might have threatened this identity, but was inverted instead to strengthen the bond. Still, nationalist historiography could not easily meet the global complexities of the twentieth century, and two major alternatives emerged. They each drew a contrasting half from Ranke's dyad. Starting with Toynbee through McNeill and to the present, world history has sought a basis in evolution, and therefore chronology. Starting with Heidegger through post­modernism and to the present, the critique of historical thought has sought a basis in distinct horizons of meaning, and therefore rupture. The limits of both return to us today the antinomy of history.