Experiment gives a quality of understanding that is impossible in historical science. Historical experiment is impossible so what we have instead.has a hard time raising above a just so story.

In paleontology one can lay out a series of fossils and make arguments about lineage. bird-hipped dinosaurs -> birds

In intellectual history Hegel -> Marx

these are extremely defensible views but are qualitatively different than an observation of gravity or magnetism.

My claim that history is impotent when looking beyond recorded history is not unreasonable but a known limitation of the field. It is embedded in the word prehistoric.

Non-literate cultures are similarly outside the scope of a Historian. Or least he is diminished in the historical tool-set his can employ. What can a historian do with the Sentinelese? He can cite historical records of contact then what?

I would never accuse history of being a collection of facts.

tldr; When a historian uses the language of causality without qualification he is invariably talking out his ass.