But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

Bloch was trying to reinvent history as a social science but he departed significantly from Durkheim in his refusal to exclude psychology from history; Bloch maintained that the individual actor should be considered along with social forces. [citation needed]
Bloch's most important work centered on the study of feudalism.

Bloch was a quintessential modernist. Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch (French: [maʁk blɔk]; 6 July 1886 – 16 June 1944) was a French historian who cofounded the highly influential Annales School of French social history.