Counterfactuals in History and Philosophy of Science

This event kicks off from questions raised by Gregory Radick’s recent University of Chicago Press book, Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology. This book argues that the contemporary study of genetics would be less deterministic without Mendel and his peas as the central figure and case study organizing the field. At the meta-level, Radick defends the legitimacy of such counterfactual imaginings as responsible history of science. Wieten is developing a parallel case study, arguing that without Gates’ Open Letter to Hobbiests, western academic publishing would not have followed the Lexis Nexis pay-to-publish model, instead following the expertly developed, free-to-the-public example of efforts like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Sarah Wieten however remains concerned about the status of this kind of imaginative work in the history and philosophy of technology, worried especially about these stories’ non-responsiveness to evidence.