What If Historians Started Taking The What-If Seriously?
One reason professional historians disdain counterfactuals is that they swing so free from the evidence. The work of academic historical writing depends on the marshalling of primary and secondary sources, and the historian is judged on her interpretations of the evidence that’s available. Did she try hard enough to find the kind of evidence that would answer her questions? Does she extrapolate too much meaning from a scanty partial archive? 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.
Aeon Magazine, December 8, 2015