What if counterfactual

Additionally, the predetermined nature of the past or determinism is a controversial issue for Evans and Ferguson when evaluating counterfactuals use and value in history. However, Evans ignores that the unpredictable nature of human actors and that chance itself can both be significant factors in historical outcomes. Consequently, study into alternative outcomes will always remain important and relevant for deepening the reconstruction of history.

Furthermore, throughout time counterfactuals have been used and will be continued to be used to reconstruct and understand history. What if no fog? An interesting argument regarding the human quality of counterfactualism is put forward by Gavriel D. Therefore, counterfactual history gives insight into the evolution of historiography which makes it very useful to historians as documents of attitudes, values, perspectives and belief systems of individuals from that particular time.

Further, counterfactual claims can be valid through utilising the pre-existing conditions of the event developed over time. The battle ended with a Greek victory, in which the swifter and far more numerous fleet of the Persian emperor Xerxes was destroyed. Had Alexander not lived to build a Macedonian Empire, no one and nothing else could have replaced him.

Consequently, the individualist culture that flowered in Greek city-states could not have emerged anywhere else. Thus, through the utilising existing circumstances and conditions, the counterfactual hypothesis can be valid in historical practice. The contentions and potential regarding counterfactual history are illustrated by examining the conflicting views of historians Ferguson argues is necessary for holistic understanding and Evans argues it is imaginary and thus futile.

Furthermore, influential historians such as E. These plausible counterfactual scenarios can then provide a deeper understanding of history. Moreover, counterfactual questioning and has been used by historians throughout time e.

Consequently, counterfactual claims give insight into the memory and belief systems of individuals throughout time. Finally, through utilising existing circumstances and conditions counterfactual hypothesis can be valid historical practice. Therefore, counterfactual history has important value in the reconstruction of history, as questioning and rethinking the past reinvigorates and opens history; to not simply a set of predetermined contingencies but rather an examination of the causation of events and the role of human agency.

She is interested in the philosophical nature of history. View all posts by camdenhistorynotes. You must be logged in to post a comment. What if? What might have been? What could have been? These are interesting questions when considering the big questions about the past. Does she misunderstand the meaning of the evidence, in historical context? Or should she have taken another related group of sources into account?

For the professional historian, these sources are not incidental to interpreting history; they are the lifeblood of doing so. In a counterfactual speculation, the usual standards for the use of evidence are upended, and the writer can find herself far afield from the record — a distance that leaves too much room for fancy and interpretation, making a supposedly historical argument sound more and more like fiction.

What is worse, counterfactual speculations spring naturally from deeply conservative assumptions about what makes history tick. Like bestselling popular histories, counterfactuals usually take as their subjects war, biography or an old-school history of technology that emphasises the importance of the inventor.

Women — as individuals, or as a group — almost never appear, and social, cultural, and environmental history are likewise absent. Despite all these criticisms, a few historians have recently been making persuasive arguments that counterfactualism can be good — for readers, for students, and for writers. Historical speculation, they say, can be a healthy exercise for historians looking to think hard about their own motives and methods.

Counterfactuals, if done well, can force a super-meticulous look at the way historians use evidence. And counterfactuals can encourage readers to think about the contingent nature of history — an exercise that can help build empathy and diminish feelings of national, cultural, and racial exceptionalism.

Was the US always destined as its 19th-century ideologues believed to occupy the middle swath of the North American continent, from sea to shining sea? Or is its national geography the result of a series of decisions and compromises — some of which, if reversed, could have led to a different outcome?

One of the fundamental premises of the new pro-counterfactualists is this: just as there are good and bad ways to write standard histories, so too there are good and bad ways to put together a counterfactual. The experience shows students how to use both direct and contextual evidence from our own timeline to support counterfactual assertions.

The closer the counterfactual can hew to actual historical possibility, the more plausible it can be judged to be. The end result should be a counterfactual that is relatively close to the given historical record, and offers a new way to think about the period under discussion. Looked at this way, the exercise of constructing a counterfactual has real pedagogical value.

Historians who refuse to engage with counterfactuals miss an opportunity to talk about history in a way that makes intuitive sense to non-historians, while introducing theories about evidence, causality and contingency into the mix. The best characteristic of well-done counterfactuals might, in fact, be the way that they make the artfulness inherent in writing history more evident. After all, even the most careful scholar or author employs some kind of selective process in coming up with a narrative, a set of questions or an argument.

They might not flag those in their text, but the implicit question is there. And yet this simply isn't the case, as many a tyrant in history, from Napoleon to Hitler, has found to his cost. To suppose otherwise is to regress into a "great man" view of history that the historical profession abandoned decades ago. It's also a form of intellectual atavism in another sense: "what-ifs" are almost invariably applied to political, military and diplomatic history: they represent a "kings-and-battles" view of the past that the education secretary Michael Gove and his friends might want to shove down schoolchildren's throats, but which historians know is thoroughly outdated — outdated because it is crudely simplistic and desperately unsophisticated.

That's not to say we shouldn't study these things, but it's also important to recognise that they form only a tiny part of the past I almost said "the rich tapestry" of the past, but I remember that someone recently said anyone who used that particular cliche should be shot.

You seldom find counterfactuals about topics such as the transition from the classical sensibility to the Romantic at the end of the 18th century, or the emergence of modern industry, or the French revolution, because they're just too obviously complicated to be susceptible of simplistic "what-if" speculation.

Why are we so prone in the early 21st century to approaching history in this way? The fashion for counterfactuals, after all, only began around the mid 90s: before that, they were few and far between, and seldom taken seriously even by those who indulged in them. Now you find them everywhere. No sooner has the New Statesman brought a part series of them to an end than Prospect begins another. Books pour off the presses imagining what Britain might have been like under Prime Minister Heseltine or Portillo.

Armchair generals refight hundreds of battles to show they could have done better than Napoleon or Montgomery. Perhaps it's because we're living in a postmodern age where the idea of progress has largely disappeared, to be replaced by uncertainty and doubt, and where linear notions of time have become blurred; or because truth and fiction no longer seem such polar opposites as they once did; or because historians now have more licence to be subjective than they used to.

But it's time to be sceptical about this trend.