The history of how philosophers have dealt with thought experiments in science is the main focus of this special issue. Counterfactual analysis is an interesting feature of thought experiments, because it requires the imagination of alternative states of the world (see also publications by Fearon, Lebow and Stein, Reiss, and Tetlock and Belkin, who suggest the same). In historical analysis, the use of imagination is often the focus of criticisms of such counterfactual analysis. In this article, I consider three strategies for constraining imagination: making limited counterfactual changes, limiting counterfactual changes to decisions of important figures, and using evidence to restrict the scope for imagination. Given the focus of this special issue, I will relate this discussion to Lewis’s and Woodward’s analyses of counterfactuals in the philosophy of science. I show that counterfactual analysis in historical cases has some resemblance to Lewis’s and Woodward’s analyses, but that what Lewis calls “transition periods” cannot be left entirely vague, as Lewis suggests, nor can counterfactual changes be seen simply as interventions, as Woodward suggests. I propose that efforts to limit imagination in historical counterfactuals are ultimately problematic, but that imagination can nevertheless play a useful role in counterfactual analysis.
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James W. McAllister;
(2012)
Thought Experiment and the Exercise of Imagination in Science
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Char Brecevic;
(2021)
The Role of Imagination in Ernst Mach’s Philosophy of Science: A Biologico-economical View
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Ierodiakonou, Katerina;
(2011)
Remarks on the History of an Ancient Thought Experiment
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Book
Brown, James Robert;
(1991)
The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences
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Hadzidaki, Pandora;
(2008)
The Heisenberg Microscope: A Powerful Instructional Tool for Promoting Meta-Cognitive and Meta-Scientific Thinking on Quantum Mechanics and the “Nature of Science”
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Axel Gelfert;
(2014)
Observation, Inference, and Imagination: Elements of Edgar Allan Poe’s Philosophy of Science
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Ierodiakonou, Katerina;
Roux, Sophie;
(2011)
Thought Experiments in Methodological and Historical Contexts
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Milena Ivanova;
Steven French;
(2020)
The Aesthetics of Science: Beauty, Imagination and Understanding
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Adrian Currie;
(2017)
Hot-Blooded Gluttons: Dependency, Coherence, and Method in the Historical Sciences
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Thomas S. Kuhn;
Bojana Mladenovic;
(2022)
The Last Writings of Thomas S. Kuhn: Incommensurability in Science
(/isis/citation/CBB418530960/)
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Daniela K. Helbig;
(2019)
Life without Toothache: Hans Blumenberg's Zettelkasten and History of Science as Theoretical Attitude
(/isis/citation/CBB837512068/)
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Luca Tambolo;
(2020)
So close no matter how far: counterfactuals in history of science and the inevitability/contingency controversy
(/isis/citation/CBB732121930/)
Article
Ian Hesketh;
(2016)
Counterfactuals and history: Contingency and convergence in histories of science and life
(/isis/citation/CBB385183310/)
Article
Joachim L. Dagg;
(2019)
Motives and merits of counterfactual histories of science
(/isis/citation/CBB710171767/)
Article
Joachim L. Dagg;
(2017)
How counterfactuals of Red-Queen theory shed light on science and its historiography
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Thierry Hoquet;
(2021)
Pluralizing Darwin: Making Counter-Factual History of Science Significant
(/isis/citation/CBB581465929/)
Article
Luca Tambolo;
(2020)
An unappreciated merit of counterfactual histories of science
(/isis/citation/CBB925918030/)
Article
David Sepkoski;
(2016)
“Replaying Life's Tape”: Simulations, metaphors, and historicity in Stephen Jay Gould's view of life
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Article
Reiss, Julian;
(2009)
Counterfactuals, Thought Experiments, and Singular Causal Analysis in History
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Chapter
Nicholas S. Popper;
Anna Marie Roos;
Gideon Manning;
(2023)
Planks from a Shipwreck: Belief and Evidence in Sixteenth-Century Histories
(/isis/citation/CBB087736587/)
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