More generally, since motivations drive all economic behavior for both individuals and firms, and since motivations vary from culture to culture, it is not possible to assume that the laws of economic behavior are invariant across space. Invoking this aspect of methodological uniformitarianism, then, is likely to remove explanations of behavior some distance from reality and, in at least some cases, lead to error. To argue the inappropriateness of substantive uniformitarianism and of the form of methodological uniformitarianism relating to the constancy of laws through time, a distinction is made between logical time and historical time. Logical time, which may, although it is not necessary to do so, be thought of in reference to philosophical materialism, requires only the sequencing of events in order of their intertemporal occurrence without regard to the manner in which those events are experienced as past events, present events, and future events. Both substantive uniformitarianism and the form of methodological uniformitarianism relating to the constancy of laws through time are linked to logical time.
Historical time refers to time as it is actually experienced by individuals.
Each moment of history is unique. As historical time passes, human beings change in the knowledge they possess, and in their perceptions of both their external environments and of the possibilities of action taken by others. Moreover, from an historical time perspective, actual rates of change and the laws of economic behavior are likely to exhibit sufficient variation over time as to render substantive uniformitarianism and the form of methodological uniformitarianism relating to the constancy of laws through time irrelevant in economic analysis. Thus, invoking substantive uniformitarianism and the form of methodological uniformitarianism relating to the constancy of laws through time precludes the very real and common possibility that experience produces so much change that substantially different models are actually required to explain economic behavior at each moment or instant of time. Second, this is especially true with respect to future possible outcomes and events that are unknowable because they are of a kind that have never been observed before.