The American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2007 Call for Proposals points out the need for researchers in education to look beyond their usual sources to other fields that have extensive experience in relevant theories and methods. In transitioning from a response to AERA's Call for Proposals to the text of these articles on Assessing Measures of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching, one cannot help but be struck by (1) the heavy and repeated emphasis on interpretive arguments, their structure, and the relation of interpretation to validity; and (2) the complete lack of any use of, or even reference to, the decades and volumes of research and theorizing that have been invested in these issues in philosophy, history, anthropology, literary studies, sociology, psychology, and, most pointedly, the philosophy, history, and social studies of science. The papers presented in this journal issue provoke precisely the reaction that the authors of AERA's Call for Proposals must also have often experienced when reading research in education. The authors are trying to reinvent concepts, methods, and tools that already have long-standing histories of success and failure in other fields. In this article, the author offers his critique to the papers presented in this journal issue.