S1 Ep 5 - Greg Radick on 'Counterfactual History of Science'
The HPS Podcast - Conversations from History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science
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The Importance of Counterfactual Language
I was struck by how often counterfactual language comes up when people try to express what's really important. When we think about something like the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan at the end of the second world war they'll tend to go counterfactual. Richard Evans underscore the causal significance of Darwinian language for what happens in Nazi Germany by going counterfactual that's how he underscores what's important for him and what he thinks is important for us right if not for social Darwinist language being as pervasive as it was men and women who found themselves doing awful things would not have been able to tell themselves they were on the side of nature and history and science.
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