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Your search keyword '"convergence"' showing total 2 results
2 results on '"convergence"'

1. Counterfactuals and history: Contingency and convergence in histories of science and life.

Author

Hesketh, Ian

Subjects
*HISTORY of science, *COUNTERFACTUALS (Logic), *HISTORIANS, *CONTINGENCY (Philosophy)
Abstract

This article examines a series of recent histories of science that have attempted to consider how science may have developed in slightly altered historical realities. These works have, moreover, been influenced by debates in evolutionary science about the opposing forces of contingency and convergence in regard to Stephen Jay Gould's notion of “replaying life's tape.” The article argues that while the historians under analysis seem to embrace contingency in order to present their counterfactual narratives, for the sake of historical plausibility they are forced to accept a fairly weak role for contingency in shaping the development of science. It is therefore argued that Simon Conway Morris's theory of evolutionary convergence comes closer to describing the restrained counterfactual worlds imagined by these historians of science than does contingency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2016
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2. DARWINIAN WE ARE NOT: COUNTERFACTUALISM AS THE NATURAL COURSE OF HISTORY.

Author

Hesketh, Ian

Subjects
*BIOLOGICAL evolution, *NONFICTION
Abstract

ABSTRACT This article considers Peter Bowler's recent contribution to the genre of counterfactual history as exemplifying a 'restrained' counterfactual framework, one that must downplay the role of contingency in the historical process in order to present what Bowler calls a more 'natural course' of historical development. This restrained counterfactual methodology is discussed with reference to analogous debates within evolutionary science about the competing roles of contingency and convergence in the history of life, along with recent work done within the humanities about the more subtle nuances of counterfactual reasoning. Although there is little doubt that Bowler's study will help legitimize the genre of counterfactual history, it is argued that the role of contingency-once thought to be integral to the counterfactual-has been necessarily minimized in order to construct a narrative that is a plausible counterfactual history of science. It is in this way that Bowler's world without Darwin sheds light on our historiographical preconceptions about what makes for a plausible historical narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2014
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