Past as progress
Calvino’s instincts had been pragmatic at first. Born in Cuba in 1923, he was the child of two botanists and had been raised to place reason above all else. He took it as axiomatic that the truth of all things existed independent of the observer, and that it could be apprehended. The laws which governed the growth of flowers, the productivity of crops, even the colour of petals, were there for the taking. And the same was true of history. Provided you approached the past in a suitably ‘scientific’ manner, its essential truths could be discovered and the ‘laws’ of society disclosed.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/portrait-author-historian/italo-calvino-traveller-world-uncertainty