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Topic: Counterfactual history

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Point of divergence

Revisionist history

Counterfactual conditionals

Divergence

	Counterfactual conditional - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		A counterfactual conditional, or subjunctive conditional, is a conditional statement aimed at capturing the meaning of if-then statements in natural languages.
		The semantic of the counterfactual conditional A > B cannot be defined in terms of the truth value of the conditions A and B, as it is done for the logical conditional.
		Counterfactual conditionals can be evaluated using the Ramsey test: A > B holds if and only if the addition of A to the current body of knowledge has B as a consequence.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Counterfactual (757 words)

	History - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		A form of historical speculation known commonly as virtual history ("counterfactual history") has also been adopted by some historians as a means of assessing and exploring the possible outcomes if certain events had not occurred or had occurred in a different way.
		From history we may learn factors that result in the rise and fall of nation-states or civilizations, motivations for political actions, the effects of social philosophies, and perspectives on culture and technology.
		Winston Churchill alluded to another philosophy of history when he quipped, "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." Churchill's joking comment is a variant of the famous: "History is written by the victors." In this view, the winners in human conflicts get to put their own spin on historic events.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/History (1792 words)

	History
		History is often used as a generic term for information about the past, e.g., as in "geologic history of the Earth".
		Different approaches may be more common in some periods than others, and the study of history has its fads and fashions (see historiography, the history of history).
		A form of historical speculation known commonly as virtual history (also called "counterfactual history") been adopted by some historians as a means of assessing and exploring the possible outcomes if certain events had not occurred or had occurred in a different way to that which they did.
	www.ebroadcast.com.au /lookup/encyclopedia/wo/World_History.html (359 words)

	Counterfactual Salamis (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-07-22)
		One approach to the study of history is the use of counterfactual history.
		Counterfactual history has the benefit of stimulating the historian’s imagination and giving him a chance to look at the wider picture.
		Counterfactual history is criticised as there can seem little point in speculating on what might have happened, as at the end of the day what is important is what did happened.
	www.herodotuswebsite.co.uk /Counterfactual.htm (2444 words)

	Virtual history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Virtual history, also referred to as counterfactual history, is a form of history which attempts to answer "what if" questions.
		It seeks to explore history and historical processes from the point of view of extrapolating a position in which certain key historical events did not happen or had an outcome which was different to that which did in fact occur.
		Although there are Victorian examples of virtual history, it was not until the 20th century that the exploration of counterfactual positions was to begin in earnest.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Virtual_history (356 words)

	Neil Munro: Essay 4
		E H Carr dismisses counterfactual history as a parlour game, one which may provide consolation to those who have suffered from some great historical event (in his case it will have been the Russian revolution), and who then let "their imagination run riot on all the more agreeable things which might have happened".
		E P Thompson is even cruder in his objection to counterfactualism, but both Carr and Thompson may be described as determinist historians and as such should perhaps not be expected to have a great deal of sympathy with alternative accounts to what actually, and from their point of view presumably inevitably, did happen.
		So although we should probably concede that counterfactual history of the purely "might have been" kind may be more suited to fiction than to serious historiography, its main benefit lying in its entertainment value, we should still maintain that there are forms of counterfactual thinking which are of very real value to the historian.
	www.philosophypathways.com /essays/munro4.html (2176 words)

	Conversation with Niall Ferguson, p. 2 of 6
		You are associated with a way of thinking about history that has another dimension to it, and it's called "counterfactual history." Tell us what that is, and how it adds another layer, another dimension, to this holistic view.
		Counterfactual history is a mouthful, and rather off-putting, and some people might find a more accessible idea if one said, "It has to do with 'what if' questions: What if the United States had never intervened in the First World War and even the Second World War?" -- just to take a single example.
		Virtual history -- and this is a very, very important point, which isn't understood by many people who dabble in "what if" questions -- is only legitimate if one can show that the alternative that you're discussing, the "what if" scenario you're discussing, was one that contemporaries seriously contemplated.
	globetrotter.berkeley.edu /people3/Ferguson/ferguson-con2.html (1829 words)

	Digital History
		History is no longer simply a subject that students study; it becomes a mode of intellectual exploration.
		History is full of fascinating "what ifs" and "what might have beens." Today, we refer to such speculations as "counterfactual history." It is always interesting to speculate how differently events might have worked out.
		History is an intellectual battleground, challenging, exciting, and of inherent relevance to students.
	www.digitalhistory.uh.edu /bsol/bsol_in_classroom.cfm (442 words)

	History (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-07-22)
		Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" in a higher sense than that of an annalist or chronicler, who merely record events as they occur, is attested from 1531.
		In recent years, postmodernists have challenged the validity and need for the study of history on the basis that all history is based on the personal interpretation of sources.
		We may learn from history factors that result in the rise and fall of nation-states or civilizations, motivations for political actions, the effects of social philosophies, and perspectives on culture and Technology.
	abcworld.net /history.html (1428 words)

	EVOLUTIONARY ECONOMICS AND THE COUNTERFACTUAL THREAT (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-07-22)
		Counterfactuals also appear in another place which is germane to this discussion: philosophical discussions of causation have often employed counterfactual conditionals as the key concept.
		Given the history of the world to some point, 1840 say, it must be possible to trace a feasible history which includes no logical or physical impossibilities, from that point to the one in which the antecedent--railroads do not exist in 1890--obtains.
		Even more generally, weak counterfactual analysis is restricted to understanding the major events and chains of decisions which, coupled with processes that magnified rather than damped their effects, can be considered as having played a role in disconnecting some sub-regions of the tree from the branches followed by actual history.
	www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca /~racowan/counter.html (9426 words)

	The Chronicle: 2/13/2004: Counterfactual History: Not 'What If?' but 'Why Not?'
		Counterfactual history has always lurked near the margins of what is considered respectable historical scholarship.
		Because counterfactual inquiry deals in conjecture, the temptation to apply present values and perspectives is even greater than in writing conventional history.
		The history of genocide in the world since the Allies turned their backs on Auschwitz seems pretty clear confirmation of that.
	chronicle.com /prm/weekly/v50/i23/23b01001.htm (1631 words)

	Martin Bunzl \| Counterfactual History: A User's Guide \| The American Historical Review, 109.3 \| The History Cooperative
		The difference between plausible and implausible counterfactuals might be thought to be a function of the degree to which we are able to discipline our imagination, and there is a case to be made that one of the effects of being a good (and specialized) historian is that one's imagination is just so disciplined.
		The plausibility of the counterfactual is carried by the plausibility of the laws of mechanics from which it is derivable.
		The seeming distinction between the historian's interest in the plausibility of the antecedent of a counterfactual and the philosopher's attention to the plausibility of the assertion that the consequent of the counterfactual follows from that antecedent is really specious—the first is just a special case of the second.
	www.historycooperative.org /journals/ahr/109.3/bunzl.html (6981 words)

	Patahistory: A Hot & Infinitely Dense Blog: More Patahistory (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-07-22)
		In this sense patahistory is a subset of counterfactual history.
		Similarly, patahistory is to metahistory as metahistory is to history.
		History in the wider sense is all that has happened, not merely all the phenomena of human life, but those of the natural world as well.
	students.ou.edu /D/David.M.Davisson-1/2005/09/more-patahistory.html (1118 words)

	Giampietro Stocco's english home page
		History would have developed in a different way resulting in an alternative timeline.
		Now, we are obviously not talking about the history we were taught in school; this new approach introduces us to a wealth of raw material for novels and fiction in general.
		Alternate history, allohistory, counterfactual history are all terms indicating, for an author, the exciting chance to explore infinite possible worlds and, for the historian, the stepping stone towards gaining a better understanding of the cause and effect relationship.
	www.giampietrostocco.it /english.html (304 words)

	Historically Speaking - March 2004
		One of the interesting conclusions of colonial legal histories is that pressure for the creation of colonial states came sometimes from indigenous actors rather than from the metropole, which in many cases labored to limit its own jurisdictional claims and minimize administrative costs.
		I would begin with a distinction between two types of counterfactual history, “restrained” and “exuberant.” “Restrained” counterfactual history involves an explicit canvassing of alternative possibilities that existed in a real past, whereas “exuberant” counterfactual history deals in past historical outcomes that never in fact came to be.
		Counterfactual history is just a tool of historical analysis, as Cowley says, and has to be used with caution.
	www.bu.edu /historic/hs/march04.htm (7351 words)

	For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga
		In this history, the British commander John Burgoyne is reinforced at the last minute by the garrison in New York City.
		Its history is chiefly a tale of social reform and quixotic experiments in economic equality.
		The problem is that this history has a single author, while real history is an anthology; the contributors are all the people who live during that history.
	www.johnreilly.info /fwoan.htm (1977 words)

	What If? The Ice Ages Had Been A Little Less Icy?
		Counterfactual history is the attempt to envision history as it might have been if some key event had played out differently.
		Counterfactual histories, of course, cannot be tested experimentally, but they serve to illustrate the significance of events by speculating how history might have been different had the event not happened as it did.
		Frequently counterfactual histories are used to underscore the importance of a relatively small but crucial event.
	www.uwgb.edu /dutchs/Research/What-If/WhatIf.HTM (2215 words)

	For Want of a Nail: If Burgoyne Had Won at Saratoga
		In this history, the British commander John Burgoyne is reinforced at the last minute by the garrison in New York City.
		History in that region does not really diverge very much until a few years later, however, when Jefferson intervenes in a Mexican Civil War.
		The problem is that this history has a single author, while real history is an anthology; the contributors are all the people who live during that history.
	pages.prodigy.net /aesir/fwoan.htm (1977 words)

	Bright Weavings - Scholarship: Guy Gavriel Kay and the Psychology of History
		An alternate history constructs its counterfactual history by a strategic change of one past event, so that its story diverges from actual history and can be understood as a possible replacement for it.
		Kay's treatment of history in his fantasies rejects the idea that human beings can ever by their own rational ingenuity escape subjection to the weight of their personal and cultural pasts: the forces of historical change are more powerful than any person.
		Alternate history, by engaging deeply with the details of the world but challenging their necessity, becomes a proper vehicle for profound artistic vision, because history is both the source of that vision and its end.
	www.brightweavings.com /scholarship/psychologyhistory.htm (5988 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-07-22)
		Theory-guided counterfactuals are the }{\plain \ul sine}{\plain }{\plain \ul qua}{\plain }{\plain \ul non}{\plain for all serious assessments of historical causality: \par }{\plain \par }{\plain \'93the net effect of such things on development involves a comparison between what actually happened and what would have happened in the absence of the specified circumstance.
		For their claim itself rests on a counterfactual thought experiment to which they have supplied the answer in advance: a thought experiment in which they ask us to imagine that whenever accomplished scholars are asked to think counterfactually about historical processes, they will invariably fail to discover something both new and noteworthy.
		Others may "discover" that history is remarkably robust to minor variations in antecedent conditions and that, try though they may, it was remarkably difficult to identify hypothetical histories that strayed long or dramatically from what we know as reality.
	www.psy.ohio-state.edu /social/tetlock/tetleb~2.doc (10937 words)

	Blog Them Out of the Stone Age » Counterfactuals and Contingency (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-07-22)
		Likewise, without counterfactual history we all too easily slip into the habit of hindsight bias, forgetting, as soon as we learn what happened, how unpredictable the world looked beforehand, and closing our minds to all the ways the course might have changed.
		Lebow wrote his essay on counterfactual arguments as part of a forthcoming book that is the fruit of a conference, held at the Mershon Center in 2000, which explored the utility of counterfactual history.
		Counterfactual history is a good corrective to the tendency to see developments as “overdetermined.” “Few predicted World War I,” writes Prof.
	warhistorian.org /wordpress/?cat=5 (4719 words)

	Guardian \| What happens in history
		This kind of "structural" counterfactual should be distinguished from the "contingent" - the familiar what-if - which posits conceivable alternatives (conceivable in the sense that only some minor, plausible "accidental" deviation, usually involving a key individual, is hypothesised; eg Hitler being killed on the western front, which he nearly was).
		Such counterfactualism also lays the groundwork for the most interesting section of Marx's article, in which he presents a brilliant structural analysis of French society, delineating the "material conditions which made the feudal peasant a smallholding peasant and Napoleon an emperor".
		Indeed, in a counterfactual (in Politico's Prime Minister Portillo and Other Things That Never Happened) that imagines Thatcher not becoming Tory leader in 1975, Philip Cowley and I use the approach to remove the figure who overshadows much contemporary history.
	www.guardian.co.uk /print/0,3858,4899118-103683,00.html (804 words)

	James (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-07-22)
		This page has some stuff about counterfactual history, while this link leads to a section on Bulgarian History.
		Counterfactuals are the academic term for what we might call 'What if's.
		If you have an interest in history or if you are interested in counterfactuals check it out (you can also view it if you do not have a newsreader or your ISP does not support groups by clicking on this link to Google).
	homepage.ntlworld.com /griffany/james/history.htm (362 words)

	What if? Exploring alternative scientific pasts - opinion - 20 August 2005 - New Scientist
		And that is just as true of world history as it is of your personal life.
		Counterfactual history might sound like a frivolous exercise, fit only for airport potboilers and lowbrow TV drama-documentaries.
		These were regrettable on a number of counts, but they had the salutary effect of rousing scientists and science-watchers alike from their dogmatic slumbers concerning counterfactual history.
	www.newscientist.com /article/mg18725131.500.html (1104 words)

	smh.com.au - The Sydney Morning Herald-
		That's from the "Afterword" of Virtual History, by Niall Ferguson, who is professor of political and financial history at Jesus College, Oxford.
		If the study of history is ever to have any predictive value, he argues, it's important to analyse what might have happened and what should have happened, as well as what did.
		It's a tour de force of allohistory, full of fabulous in-jokes (he has Kennedy discredited by a Vietnam war in which America is backing Ho Chi Minh's efforts to drive out a Japanese puppet government), but it raises the perennial problem in all of this material: the level of knowledge required of the reader.
	www.smh.com.au /articles/2002/03/22/opalthistory.htm (1712 words)

	History News Network
		History News Network Because the Past is the Present, and the Future too.
		Oscar's counterfactual about indian removal tells you that Jackson was just a vehicle for anti-Native American sentiment rather than its creator.
		It is a reliance on the counterfactual that could drive a history borne more of ideology than reality.
	hnn.us /readcomment.php?id=33319 (816 words)

	Counterfactual History - History Teachers' Discussion Forum
		The artistry of a good history teacher is tell a rip rousing story of sex, blood and gore that holds the attention of their students whilst trying to impart a sense of identity, morality and citizenship.
		I was involved in the development of counterfactual ICT games in the 1980s, and came across a lot of opposition to non-factual history.
		Whereas I can;t stand the 'made up' histories that are bcomeing vogue, I think the context in which you are proposing to use them is spot on.
	www.schoolhistory.co.uk /forum/index.php?act=findpost&pid=45601 (1671 words)

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