Re:Americans Don't Care About Prison Phone Exploitation, Say...
by shawn-butler on Sunday August 07, 2016 @01:54PM
(#12242888)
Not really but sort of. Counterfactual historiography at best represents a sort of "reproducibility" for historians. They can't conduct experiments on the past.
So, when someone asserts "Hitler caused Holocaust" some enterprising graduate student comes along and writes a thesis on Hitler's willing executioners and argues counterfactually that if Hitler wasn't there, Holocaust still happens.
That doesn't mean at all that Hitler did not cause Holocaust or that the "eliminationist antisemitism" German culture caused Holocaust. I wish you had chose a less value-laden example.
So, when someone asserts "Hitler caused Holocaust" some enterprising graduate student comes along and writes a thesis on Hitler's willing executioners and argues counterfactually that if Hitler wasn't there, Holocaust still happens.
That doesn't mean at all that Hitler did not cause Holocaust or that the "eliminationist antisemitism" German culture caused Holocaust. I wish you had chose a less value-laden example.