What if the Persians had won at Salamis? What if Christ had not
been crucified? What if the Chinese had harnessed steam power
before the West? Disparaged by some as a mere parlor game,
counterfactual history is seen by others as an indispensable
historical tool. Taking as their point of inquiry the debate over
the inevitability of the rise of the West, the eminent scholars in
"Unmaking the West" argue that there is no escaping counterfactual
history. Whenever we make claims of cause and effect, we commit
ourselves to the assumption that if key links in the causal chain
were broken, history would have unfolded otherwise. 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.
This collection is thus both an exploration of alternative
scenarios to world history and an exercise in testing the strengths
and weaknesses of counterfactual experiments.
"If ever there was an argument for the usefulness of counterfactual
history, this admirable, and admirably focused, collection has
convincingly made it."
--Robert Cowley, editor of the What If?TM series
"With chapters ranging from politics to war to religion to
economics and to science and technology, this is the most
thematically wide-ranging collection on counterfactuality. An
intelligent, cutting-edge study with important things to
say."
--Jonathan C. D. Clark, Department of History, University of
Kansas
"This volume is likely to become a standard reference in the
literature on historical methodology, and could have adramatic
impact on the way future generations of historians approach
disciplinary inquiry. . . . By allowing readers to share in the
doubts and epiphanies that lead up to the authors' epistemological
revelations, the volume allows readers to grasp the rich potential
of approaching their own research from a counterfactual
perspective."
--Aaron Belkin, Associate Professor of Political Science,
University of California, Santa Barbara
Philip E. Tetlock is Mitchell Professor, Haas School of Business,
University of California, Berkeley, and author of "Expert Political
Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?" Richard Ned Lebow is
James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Government at Dartmouth
College and author of "The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics,
Interests and Orders," winner of the Alexander L. George Award for
the best book in political psychology. Geoffrey Parker is Andreas
Dorpalen Professor of History at Ohio State University, a Fellow of
the British Academy, and author of "The Military Revolution:
Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800," winner of
two book prizes.
General
Imprint: |
The University of Michigan Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
October 2006 |
First published: |
October 2006 |
Editors: |
Philip E. Tetlock
• Ned Lebow
• Geoffrey Parker
|
Dimensions: |
153 x 229 x 20mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
456 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-472-03143-6 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-472-03143-0 |
Barcode: |
9780472031436 |
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