Editing Counterfactual history (section)

==Criticism==
Most historians regard counterfactual history as perhaps entertaining, but not meeting the standards of mainstream historical research due to its speculative nature. Advocates of counterfactual history often respond that all statements about [[causality]] in history contain implicit counterfactual claims—for example, the claim that a certain military decision helped a country win a war presumes that if that decision had not been made, the war would have been less likely to be won, or would have been longer.

Richard Evans provides a systematic critique of the concept in his book ''Altered Pasts''. In his view most counterfactuals are written by right wing historians engaging in wishful thinking either describing a hoped for present or to discredit left wing ideology.  He claims that reducing outcomes to a single cause ignores the complexity of influences on outcomes.  In contrast Christopher Prendergast believes that counterfactuals have the important role of testing explanations of historical causality by exploring the implication of alternatives. <ref name="Evans">{{cite book |last=Evans |first=Richard |date= 4 February 2014|title=Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History  |publisher=Brandeis University Press |page=34,58 |isbn=9-781611-685381}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Shook |first=Karen |date=27 March 2014 |title=Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History, by Richard J. Evans |url=http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/altered-pasts-counterfactuals-in-history-by-richard-j-evans/2012202.article |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220227163809/https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/altered-pasts-counterfactuals-in-history-by-richard-j-evans/2012202.article |archive-date=27 February 2022 |website=[[Times Higher Education]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Prendergast |first=Christopher |date=May 16, 2019 |title=Counterfactuals: Paths of the Might have Ben |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |page=12|isbn=978-1350090095 }}</ref>

Aviezer Tucker has offered a range of criticism of this approach to the study of the past both in his review of Ferguson's ''Virtual History in History and Theory''<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Tucker |first=Aviezer |date=May 1999 |title=Historiographical Counterfactuals and Historical Contingency |journal=[[History and Theory]] |volume=38 |pages=264–276 |doi=10.1111/0018-2656.00090 |number=2}}</ref> and in his book ''Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography''.  Tucker rejected the use multi-causal counterfactuals stating that every counterfactual should be posed as ''"[[ceteris paribus]]"'', everything else remaining the same.{{r|Evans|page=115}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tucker |first=Aviezer |url=http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item1171466/?site_locale=en_GB |title=Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-521-83415-5}}</ref>