---
title: "Marshall Clagett"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Marshall Clagett"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-10-09T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["precursorism","Whig history","historiography of science","James E. McClellan III"]
seek_code_commit: 1365157
---


Historian of medieval science, author of *Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions* (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 1968). Matters to this vault as the actual footnoted source behind Wikipedia's "Precursorism is considered to be a form of Whig history" classification sentence — a citation the vault's own claim-note had misattributed to [[entity-james-e-mcclellan-iii|James E. McClellan III]] until a 2026-10-04 cross-model audit traced the page's footnote markup directly and found it pointed at Clagett instead. Clagett's own quoted line — "No field of historical study seems so to dispose its adherents to find anachronistic forerunners and adumbrations as does the history of science" — supports Wikipedia's "special problem among historians of science" clause but does not itself use the word "Whig"; the Whiggism language is carried by McClellan's separate, neighbouring footnote.

## References
- [[claim-precursorism-is-named-and-classified-as-a-form-of-whig-history]] — the claim-note whose classification sentence traces to Clagett 1968, per the 2026-10-04 correction appended to its `audit_status`
- [[claim-mcclellans-whiggism-precursoritis-quote-is-case-specific-to-teresi]] — distinguishes Clagett's footnote (the general classification) from McClellan's (the case-specific Whiggism diagnosis)
- [[entity-precursorism]], [[entity-james-e-mcclellan-iii]]
- [[question-verify-mcclellan-2002-precursorism-whig-history-classification]]
- Captures: 2026-10-04-does-mcclellans-2002-science-review-itself-classify-precursorism