So close no matter how far: counterfactuals in history of science and the inevitability/contingency controversy

Tambolo, Luca

doi:10.1007/s11229-018-1787-7

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Forty-year periods for structure determinations as for strychnine ( 2 , Figure ) seriously delayed progress in chemistry. In terms of counterfactual history of chemistry, , in the absence of the growth of instrumental analysis and modern purification techniques, I believe that resources would not have continued to flow into chemistry had its rate of progress been that of even the 1940s while other sciences were roaring along. Chemistry would have become a much slower growing science.…”

Section: Candidate 1: the “Instrumental Revolution”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Revolutions in Chemistry: Assessment of Six 20th Century Candidates (The Instrumental Revolution; Hückel Molecular Orbital Theory; Hückel’s 4n + 2 Rule; the Woodward–Hoffmann Rules; Quantum Chemistry; and Retrosynthetic Analysis)

Seeman

2023

JACS Au

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Six 20th century candidates for revolutions in chemistry are examined, using a definitional scheme published recently by the author. Six groupings of 13 characteristics of revolutions in science are considered: causes and birthings of revolutions, relationships between the old and the new, conceptual qualities of the candidate revolutions, instrumental and methodological functions, social construction of knowledge and practical considerations, and testimonials. The Instrumental Revolution was judged to be a revolution in chemistry because of the enormous increase in community-wide knowledge provided by the new instruments and the intentionality in the identification of specific target instruments, in the mindfulness in their design, manufacture, testing, use, and ultimately commercialization. The Woodward–Hoffmann rules were judged to precipitate the Quantum Chemistry Revolution because of theoretical, practical, and social construction of knowledge characteristics. Neither Hückel molecular orbital theory nor Hückel’s 4n + 2 rule was considered an initiator of a revolution in chemistry but rather participants in the Quantum Chemistry Revolution. Retrosynthetic analysis was not judged to initiate a revolution in chemistry.

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Section: Candidate 1: the “Instrumental Revolution”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Revolutions in Chemistry: Assessment of Six 20th Century Candidates (The Instrumental Revolution; Hückel Molecular Orbital Theory; Hückel’s 4n + 2 Rule; the Woodward–Hoffmann Rules; Quantum Chemistry; and Retrosynthetic Analysis)

Seeman

2023

JACS Au

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“…Contesting the truth of an event, even hypothetically, is clearly a political act, and therefore such experiments are to be used with a certain caution (Tambolo 2018). But they have seen significant use, particularly in political and economic history, where they are used to form hypotheses about the explanatory value of different narrative projects, or to weigh the contributions of particular individuals or groups (Nolan 2016;Ben-Menahem 2016).…”

Section: Contemporary Music and Its Futures Patrick Valiquetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contemporary Music and Its Futures

Valiquet¹

2020

Contemporary Music Review

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extraterrestrial colonisation. The miraculous tesseract turns out to be the work of the future people whose advanced intelligence is the implied result of that colonisation process. Note that, despite the prominent thematisation of inter-dimensionality here, linear causality and intentionality in the universe of Interstellar still seem to work as humans would normally expect: without at least some basic abstractions it would be difficult to produce fiction at all. 1 The film's message seems to be that the solution to the catastrophe of global degradation is to be found not in the knowledge we have now, but 'out there' in one of many possible futures. Justice and peace, the trope implies, are matters outside of history: all humanity can do now is try to stay competitive and keep up the appearance of progress. The power of this plot device lies in the way it politicises the present. In Octavia Butler's 1979 novel Kindred, for example, a mysterious force shuttles the protagonist inexplicably between past and present. The book's narrative follows what is in effect a kind of fold in history, linking relationships of care and moments of trauma across two intersecting plot trajectories. The fragmented present forces the reader to confront the horror of slavery not as a bounded, finished historical event but as a process working at the level of the protagonist's genetic code; slavery transposed to the level of metaphysics. Hypothetical changes enacted in the past enable the reader to encounter an apparently harmonious present in the subjunctive, to consider the ways that things could be going differently, and thus arrive at a better understanding of the necessities and contingencies which constitute the now of everyday experience. The name for this imaginary time of hypothetical resolution in French is uchronie. The term comes from the title of an 1876 novel by Charles Renouvier, a central philosopher of history, religion and law under Napoleon III, and an important influence on the pragmatist thinking of William James (Renouvier 1988). In a lengthy preface, Renouvier leads his reader to understand that the core of the text has been passed down in secret by a scholar fleeing the inquisition in the years following the execution of Giordano Bruno. The fictional author of this text finds himself intellectually hamstrung by the church's failure to reconcile the new empirical science with its metaphysical commitment to a single, personalised Absolute. If Europeans in the past had chosen to remain polytheistic, he asks, would they today be better equipped to accept the pluralist metaphysics that the new sciences seem to demand? What, for example, would have happened to philosophy if the Roman empire had chosen not to back Christianity? Renouvier's novel is both the answer to that question and an experiment in the kind of critical history that he saw his pluralist metaphysics as making possible. It treats the Absolute as an event like any other, a specific node in a chain of relations with no necessary outcome at any given time...

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Empiricism Reformed

Chirimuuta

2024

Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science

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So close no matter how far: counterfactuals in history of science and the inevitability/contingency controversy

Cited by 7 publications

References 69 publications

Revolutions in Chemistry: Assessment of Six 20th Century Candidates (The Instrumental Revolution; Hückel Molecular Orbital Theory; Hückel’s 4n + 2 Rule; the Woodward–Hoffmann Rules; Quantum Chemistry; and Retrosynthetic Analysis)

Revolutions in Chemistry: Assessment of Six 20th Century Candidates (The Instrumental Revolution; Hückel Molecular Orbital Theory; Hückel’s 4n + 2 Rule; the Woodward–Hoffmann Rules; Quantum Chemistry; and Retrosynthetic Analysis)

Contemporary Music and Its Futures

Empiricism Reformed

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