Wow, we're really closing in on the "mystery": how to connect the dots between rhetoric and science / technology. Walzer and Gross' discussion of social constructionism, particularly their assertion that knowledge is a function of time, makes perfect sense. It not only helps to explain historic events in terms of the level of understanding at the time, rather than filtered through the revisionist understanding that we, as creatures of the present moment, cannot help but have.
On a more personal level, this idea helps me to put events in my own life into better perspective. For example, it's easy to look back on egregious mistakes I made in my youth and wonder what the hell I could have been thinking. But if knowledge is a function of time, the wisdom I have gained since those days makes it easy to see today where I went wrong, even though I honestly could not have known any better at the time. Whoever it was who said "we're too soon old and too late smart" really knew what s/he was talking about!
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