Article ID: CBB638039701

How counterfactuals of Red-Queen theory shed light on science and its historiography (2017)

unapi

A historical episode of evolutionary theory, which has lead to the Red Queen theory of the evolutionary maintenance of sex, includes two striking contingencies. These are used to explore alternative what-if scenarios, in order to test some common opinions about such counterfactuals. This sheds new light on the nature of science and its historiography. One counterfactual leads to an unexpected convergence of its result to that of the actual science but, nevertheless, differs in its causal structure. The other diverges towards an incompatible alternative, but this requires further contingent choices that also diverge from actual science. The convergence in the first counterfactual is due to a horizontal transfer of knowledge. Similar transfers of knowledge are typical for innovations of actual science. This suggests that contingent choices can merge as well as fork research traditions both in actual research and counterfactual history. Neither the paths of the actual history of science nor those of its counterfactual alternatives will form a tree of exclusively diverging bifurcations, but a network instead. Convergencies in counterfactuals may, therefore, be due to the web-structure of science as much as to the aims of the historians in question. Furthermore, the difference in causal structure between the actual science and its convergent counterfactual might become diagnostic for external factors rather than internal aims forcing a historian towards convergence.

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Authors & Contributors
Tambolo, Luca
Dagg, Joachim
Heidenblad, David Larsson
Dege, Martin
Kharlamova, Vera I.
Jovanovic, Gordana
Concepts
Historical method
History of science, as a discipline
Historiography
Counterfactual history
Historians of science, modern
Contingency (philosophy)
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
Ancient
20th century
Early modern
19th century
Places
Europe
Sweden
Spain
Portugal
Greece
Germany
Institutions
European Society for the History of Science
History of Science Society
American Chemical Society
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