Counterfactual Thinking, Counterfactual Writing (PDFDrive)

Counterfactual Thinking - Counterfactual Writing
linguae & litterae 12

linguae & litterae
Publications of the School of Language & Literature
Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies
Edited by
Peter Auer · Gesa von Essen · Werner Frick
Editorial Board
Michel Espagne (Paris) · Marino Freschi (Rom)
Erika Greber (Erlangen) · Ekkehard König (Berlin)
Per Linell (Linköping) · Angelika Linke (Zürich)
Christine Maillard (Strasbourg) · Pieter Muysken (Nijmegen)
Wolfgang Raible (Freiburg)
Editorial Assistant
Aniela Knoblich
12
De Gruyter
Counterfactual Thinking -
Counterfactual Writing
Edited by Dorothee Birke, Michael Butter,
Tilmann Köppe
De Gruyter
ISBN 978-3-11-026858-4
e-ISBN 978-3-11-022904-2
ISSN 1869-7054
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen
Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet
über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar.
쑔 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

Druck: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen
⬁ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
Contents V
Contents
Dorothee Birke/Michael Butter/Tilmann Köppe

Introduction: England Win . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Andrea Albrecht/Lutz Danneberg

First Steps Toward an Explication of Counterfactual Imagination . 12
Tobias Klauk
Thought Experiments and Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Daniel Dohrn
Counterfactual Explanation in Literature and the Social Sciences . 45
Miko Elwenspoek
Counterfactual Thinking in Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Patrizia Catellani
Counterfactuals in the Social Context:
The Case of Political Interviews and Their Effects . . . . . . . . . 81
Martin Hilpert
A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective on Counterfactuality . . . . . . 95
Bernhard Kleeberg
Significance and Abstraction: Scientific Uses of Counterfactual
Thought Experiments in the Early 20th Century . . . . . . . . . . 112
Georg Christoph Berger Waldenegg

What-If ? Counterfactuality and History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Richard Ned Lebow

Counterfactuals, Contingency, and Causation . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Andreas Martin Widmann

Plot vs. Story: Towards a Typology of Counterfactual
Historical Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
VI Contents
Birte Christ
“If I Were a Man”: Functions of the Counterfactual
in Feminist Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Rüdiger Heinze
Temporal Tourism: Time Travel and Counterfactuality
in Literature and Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Robyn Warhol
“What Might Have Been Is Not What Is”:
Dickens’s Narrative Refusals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Richard Saint-Gelais
How To Do Things With Worlds:
From Counterfactuality to Counterfictionality . . . . . . . . . . . 240
List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Introduction 1
Michael Butter, Dorothee Birke (Freiburg), and Tilmann Köppe (Göttingen)
Introduction: England Win
On June 26, 2010, the German soccer team beat England 4–1 in the first
knockot stage of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Afterwards, the
international media hailed this victory as the inevitable triumph of a young,
inspired, and well-organized side over an aged and spiritless opponent.
However, there were also voices that stressed that despite the German su-
periority throughout most of the match the result could have been quite
different if England’s second goal had not been disallowed by the referee,
who did not see that Frank Lampard’s shot in the 39th minute had crossed
the line. “[I]f it was a draw that would have been very important for us”, the
enraged England manager Fabio Capello complained afterwards, reminding
journalists that the goal would have leveled the score at 2–2 and suggest-
ing that his team might then have gone on to win the match.1 Based on
the premise of “what if …”, Capello’s complaint is a wonderful example of
counterfactual thinking, which the social psychologist Keith Markman and
his colleagues define as “the imagination of alternatives to reality”.2
We have chosen this example not only because it allows for the playful
reversal of the most prominent illustration used in introductory texts on
counterfactual thinking – what if Germany had won World War II – but be-
cause it captures two important aspects of developing such scenarios. First,
it shows that mentally constructing alternatives to what really happened is
indeed a wide-spread human practice, “something familiar to everyone”,
even if they have never heard about the concept, as Neal Roese and Jim
Olson have pointed out.3 After all, it was not only Capello who harbored the
thought that things could have turned out differently but everybody who had
watched the game.
1 Capello quoted in Sachin Nakrani, “Fabio Capello Says ‘Little Thing’ behind Eng-
land Exit”, in: The Guardian, June 27, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/
2010/jun/27/world-cup-england-germany1 (July 15, 2010).
2 Keith D. Markman/Igor Gavanski/Stephen J. Sherman/Matthew N. McCullen,
“The Mental Simulation of Better and Worse Possible Worlds”, in: Journal of Ex-
perimental Social Psychology 29/1993, pp. 87–109, p. 93.
3 Neal Roese/James M. Olson, “Preface”, in: Neal Roese/James M. Olson (eds.),
What Might Have Been: The Social Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking, Mahwah, NJ,
1995, pp. vii–xi, p. vii.
2 Dorothee Birke, Michael Butter, and Tilmann Köppe
Second, the example of the disallowed goal illustrates nicely the two major
effects that counterfactual thinking achieves according to psychologists. To
begin with, counterfactuals achieve a “contrast effect”, as they sharpen the
awareness of an actual state or outcome through the mental juxtaposition
with a possible one. As Roese and Morrison put it: “[A] factual outcome may
be judged to be worse if a more desirable alternative outcome is salient, and
that same outcome may be judged better if a less desirable alternative out-
come is salient”.4 Capello feels the sting of defeat all the more because he can
easily imagine a match in which England equalize and eventually win. He thus
constructs what psychologists call an “upward” counterfactual. For the Ger-
man side, the situation is more complicated. The players and the coach may
mentally construct a “downward” counterfactual in which they lost the game
and therefore feel especially relieved that they haven’t. But they may also con-
struct an upward counterfactual in which there is no disallowed goal so that
their otherwise convincing victory shines all the brighter. Thus, the phantom
goal may increase or decrease their joy. By contrast, what psychologists de-
scribe as the “causal inference effect” refers to the power of counterfactual
scenarios to yield insights into the causes of the actual outcome.5 If FIFA had
been using the video proof, the goal would have been allowed and all subse-
quent discussions about the effect of disallowing it mute, all sides agreed after
the game. And in fact, due to the public outcry over the referee’s mistake,
FIFA announced its intention to reconsider its stance on this issue. Counter-
factual thinking, then, can at least potentially influence future decisions.6
4 Neal Roese/Mike Morrison, “The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking”, in:

Historical Social Research 34.2/2009 (Special Issue: Counterfactual Thinking as a
Scientific Method, ed. Roland Wenzlhuemer), pp. 16–26, p. 19.
5 Cf. Roese/Morrison, “Psychology”, pp. 19–20.
6 On the influence on future decisions, cf. also Orit E. Tycocinski/Thane S. Pittman,
“The Consequences of Doing Nothing: Inaction Inertia as Avoidance of Antici-
pated Counterfactual Regret”, in: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75/1998,
pp. 607–616. Moreover, the example highlights that counterfactual scenarios and
the probability ascribed to them are very often closely connected to, and in fact
dependent on, the ideological position of those who develop them. Driven by the
motivation to justify his team’s performance, to shield them against criticism, and
maybe to protect his job, England manager Capello stresses that the disallowed
goal was the turning point of the game. He thus ascribes a high probability to
the counterfactual scenario that England would have won if the goal had counted.
Unsurprisingly, his German counterpart, keen to play down the significance of the
scene and to praise his own team, argued that his side would have won even if the
goal had been allowed. Most of the English media supported this reading of events,
because the journalists did not want to provide Capello with an opportunity to dis-
tract from the poor performance of his team throughout the tournament.
Introduction 3
We have begun with an example that illustrates what psychologists have

to say about counterfactual thinking, since their take on the concept is the
most easily accessible one. As pointed out above, the discipline operates with
a common-sense notion of what constitutes “counterfactuality”. Moreover,
the many studies that psychologists have conducted over the past two dec-
ades have surely impacted heavily on the use of the concept in various other
disciplines such as economics, historiography, or political science.7 However,
we believe that Roland Wenzlhuemer – in the introduction to a recent col-
lection of essays on “Counterfactual Thinking as a Scientific Method” –
is only presenting part of the picture when he argues that the research in psy-
chology “has paved the way for the current revival of the issue [of counter-
factual thinking] in other disciplines”.8 There are a number of disciplines
where the concept is currently en vogue too, but which operate with notions of
counterfactuality very different from the one prevalent in psychology and
other social sciences. Whereas, for example, psychologists and historians
alike hold that “[a]ll counterfactual conditionals are causal assertions”,9 cog-
nitive linguistics rejects this idea. And while this branch of linguistics regards
counterfactual thinking as a very common feature of human cognition and
language, analytical philosophy inquires into the intricate logical and sem-
antic features of counterfactual conditionals and puts them to use for ana-
lyzing various objectives in metaphysics or the philosophy of science.
The aim of this volume, therefore, is to provide an overview of the current
definitions and uses of the concept of counterfactuality across the disciplines
of philosophy, historiography, political sciences, psychology, linguistics,
physics, and literary studies. Although Andrea Albrecht and Lutz Danne-
berg’s essay as well as the contribution by Bernhard Kleeberg investigate the
history of counterfactual thinking, it is not our objective here to provide a
genealogy of this mode of reasoning. Rather, we wish to map the field as it
currently is. A basic distinction that we wish to propose – one that organizes
the volume – is between disciplines such as psychology, for which counter-
7 Cf. Roland Wenzlhuemer, “Editorial: Unpredictability, Contingency and Counter-

factuals”, in: Historical Social Research 34.2/2009 (Special Issue: Counterfactual
Thinking as a Scientific Method, ed. Roland Wenzlhuemer), pp. 9–15, p. 12.
8 Wenzlhuemer, “Editorial”, p. 12.
9 Neal Roese/James M. Olson, “Counterfactual Thinking: A Critical Overview”,
in: Neal Roese/James M. Olson (eds.), What Might Have Been: The Social Psychology
of Counterfactual Thinking, Mahwah, NJ, 1995, pp. 1–55, p. 11. For the historian’s
perspective, cf. Roland Wenzlhuemer, “Counterfactual Thinking as a Scientific
Method”, in: Historical Social Research 34.2/2009 (Special Issue: Counterfactual
Thinking as a Scientific Method, ed. Roland Wenzlhuemer), pp. 27–54, pp. 30–33.
factuals constitute an object of study, and disciplines such as historiography

that employ counterfactual thinking as a method. In the former case, re-
searchers investigate the thought experiments undertaken by others; in the
latter they engage in thought experiments themselves.10 While the former
seems to be fairly uncontroversial, the latter is a highly contested practice.
With such different notions and uses of counterfactuality in circulation,
it is obviously impossible to synthesize the various definitions and deploy-
ments in a fashion that all disciplines can agree on. This, however, we would
like to suggest, should not be regarded as a problem that needs to be solved,
but rather as a starting point for interdisciplinary exchange. The controversy
that is bound to arise when irreconcilable definitions of a concept are put
next to each other can, as cultural theorist Mieke Bal has argued, be seen as
“an asset rather than a liability” – as long as we openly reflect and discuss
them.11 Bal suggests that scholars who use such concepts within the bound-
aries of their own disciplines are often tempted to take their understanding
of them for granted. This is no longer possible once we encounter other
ways of understanding and using them. As Bal puts it: “Concepts are sites
of debate, awareness of difference, and tentative exchange. Agreeing doesn’t
mean agreeing on content, but agreeing on the basic rules of the game: if you
use a concept at all, you use it in a particular way so that you can meaningfully
disagree on content”.12
For example, the definitions of counterfactuality in cognitive linguistics
and analytical philosophy are obviously at odds with each other. However,
putting these different notions into a dialogue with each other brings to the
fore the differing assumptions about the nature of language and cogni-
tion that inform their mutually exclusive usage. The common reference to
counterfactuality thus enables a discussion about the larger issues at stake.
This is not to say, of course, that there are no similarities in the ways counter-
factuality is theorized by several disciplines, and we have explained above
that disciplines such as psychology, historiography, or political sciences de-
fine the concept almost exactly alike. What we wish to emphasize, though,
is that interdisciplinary exchange is not only possible in cases where several
disciplines more or less agree on a definition of counterfactuality, but that it
might be of particular interest if they do not.
10 Our volume thus covers considerably more ground than the recent special issue
of Historical Social Research dedicated to “Counterfactual Thinking as a Scientific
Method”.
11 Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto, 2002, p. 25.
12 Bal, Concepts, p. 13.
Introduction 5
In arranging the articles in this volume, we opted for a roughly discipli-

nary ordering of the articles. Starting with three contributions with a broadly
philosophical orientation, including the philosophy of literature and the phi-
losophy of science, we will then move on to physics, psychology, cognitive
linguistics, history of science, history, political science, and, finally, various
historical as well as systematic investigations of different kinds of counter-
factuality in literature. Surveying the articles, however, one quickly notices
that the idea of a neat disciplinary classification ought to be taken with a grain
of salt. Scholars inquiring into counterfactuals seem to have a predilection for
poaching in neighboring fields. Therefore, not only is the ordering of the
disciplines themselves somewhat arbitrary, but the very idea of disciplinary
boundaries seems to be under attack when it comes to counterfactuals. We
certainly feel that this must be welcomed rather than bemoaned.
The first three articles share philosophical points of reference. Starting
with a semi-formal definition of counterfactual imagination, Andrea Albrecht
and Lutz Danneberg enquire into its various types, cognitive functions, and
criteria of success, emphasizing that both the functions and criteria of suc-
cess are highly context-sensitive aspects which have to be studied on a case-
by-case basis. The bulk of their paper is then devoted to differentiating
counterfactual imaginations from neighboring notions, namely metaphors,
fictions, ceteris-paribus clauses, abstractions, idealizations, presumptions, and
models. In doing this, they are setting the stage for both Tobias Klauk’s more
extended comparison of possible-worlds accounts of fiction and Daniel
Dohrn’s discussion of counterfactual aspects of abstraction and idealization
in scientific experiments. Finally, Albrecht and Danneberg employ their in-
sights for the analysis of two extended historical case studies.
Tobias Klauk’s paper carefully examines the thesis that in writing and read-
ing fiction we typically conduct counterfactual thought experiments. Based
on an account of philosophical thought experiments according to which they
consist of three consecutive steps, namely the imagining of a scenario, its
evaluation concerning a certain question, and its argumentative utilization, he
concludes that this thesis is, ultimately, false. This does not mean, however,
that we cannot gain insight from comparing fiction to counterfactual scen-
arios as they are employed in thought experiments. Two domains that prove
especially fruitful in this respect are the possible-worlds theory of fiction and
the cognitive significance of fiction. As Klauk shows, the philosophical the-
ory of counterfactuals can shed considerable light on both of these contested
fields of inquiry.
Daniel Dohrn takes up the issue of the cognitive significance of fiction.
He argues that in reading fiction, we typically explain fictional facts (“Why
does Ahab chase Moby Dick?”) in ways analogous to our explanations of

actual facts. In order to do so, we employ counterfictional thoughts, for
which the world of the fiction plays the role that the actual world plays for
counterfactual thought as we know it. What is more, for some fictions, we
can relate our counterfictional explanations of fictive facts to the real world
in just the way in which we transfer the results of counterfactual thought ex-
periments to the real world. Fiction, therefore, can be said to have the same
cognitive value as scientific thought experiments. In order to substanti-
ate this claim, Dohrn develops and discusses various accounts of scientific
thought experiments as well as models of explanation in natural and social
science.
Miko Elwenspoek carries on this theme and explains in how far counterfac-
tual thinking is a core research tool in physics. When physicists evaluate their
theories, they often have to confront them with situations which for sev-
eral reasons cannot be found in nature or reconstructed in the laboratory. In
these cases, counterfactual thinking proves indispensible for evaluating these
theories, as Elwenspoek illustrates using two examples from astronomy and
the theory of electromagnetic forces. In the remaining part of his paper, he
poses counterfactual what if-questions concerning the so-called cosmologi-
cal anthropic principle, which states, roughly, that the fact that human beings
exist tells us something about certain cosmological conditions. By contrast,
any alteration of the expansion rate of the universe, its three-dimensionality,
its gravitational force, or the stability of atomic nuclei would make human
life impossible.
Patrizia Catellani introduces counterfactual thinking from the perspective
of social psychology. Here, different types and patterns of counterfactual
thinking are distinguished and analyzed with regard to the different effects
and functions they fulfill, such as their impact on our affective system and
their use in preparing future actions as well as in explaining past actions and
events. Her own research focuses on the uses and effects of counterfactual
claims in political discourse. By way of qualitative and experimental studies,
Catellani and her team have shown that the employment of counterfactual
claims in Italian political discourse exhibits particular patterns, depending on
parameters such as speaker, target, direction of the change imagined in the
counterfactual, or controllability of the behavior addressed by the counter-
factual. Understanding these patterns, she suggests, can heighten our politi-
cal awareness and especially sharpen our sensibility to manipulative strat-
egies employed by politicians as well as journalists.
Martin Hilpert’s paper adds to the psychological perspective by focusing
on the mental operations involved in counterfactual thinking. His field of re-
Introduction 7
search, cognitive linguistics, is one of the most important branches of con-

temporary linguistics. It is concerned with the analysis of linguistic struc-
tures conceived of as direct reflections of human cognition. Counterfactual
reasoning is thus explained by Hilpert as involving conceptual blending, that
is, the ability to mentally overlap two conflicting situations. There is a large
number of linguistic devices that involve blending mechanisms; these in-
clude grammatical phenomena of sentence length, negation, modality, cau-
sation, attributive constructions, and compounding. In closing, Hilpert sug-
gests that, due to their fundamental character, the study of the mechanisms
of conceptual integration can also shed some light on problems tackled in
disciplines other than linguistics, thus foreshadowing the themes of several
papers from literary studies.
Bernhard Kleeberg’s exploration of Ernst Mach’s and Max Weber’s respect-
ive takes on thought experiments, a contribution to the history of science,
moves the volume into the realms of the social sciences and humanities.
Mach and Weber, he argues, endorsed thought experiments as powerful
means of abstraction that allow researchers to understand the causal connec-
tions they are investigating. As Kleeberg demonstrates, they tried to define
criteria that would prevent the counterfactual scenarios constructed in these
thought experiments from turning into mere fantasy. In this regard, both of
them, but Weber in particular, did not completely dismiss but heavily caution
against the use of counterfactual thinking as a means of historical inquiry, as
scholars are especially prone to let their imagination run wild and thus pro-
duce “grotesque results”, as Weber puts it, when discussing how history
could have taken a different course.
As Kleeberg observes in his conclusion, most historians have so far
heeded Weber’s warning and abstained from imagining, let alone writing
counterfactual history. In recent years, however, an increasing number of
historians, among them highly renowned scholars such as Alexander De-
mandt and Niall Ferguson, have begun to challenge the view that histori-
ography should be concerned with what happened and not with what might
have been. Georg Christoph Berger Waldenegg does not embrace counterfactual
scenarios in historiography as wholeheartedly as these scholars have done,
but he emphasizes that historians engage in counterfactual thinking all the
time, although they are only seldom aware of it. His article sets out by sum-
marizing extreme positions on the value of counterfactual thinking held by
historians, gives an overview of the different definitions of counterfactuality
employed by these scholars, and addresses the heavily debated question of
whether only those possible courses of history that contemporaries contem-
plated should become the object of a historian’s counterfactual reasoning.
After proposing a preliminary typology of the counterfactuals discernible

in historiography, Berger Waldenegg provocatively concludes by suggesting
that historians should reflect more deeply on their methods in general and
that they must face the challenges posed by counterfactual historiography.
If Berger Waldenegg carefully weighs the pros and cons of constructing his-
torical counterfactuals, Richard Ned Lebow’s article makes a powerful argument
in favor of counterfactual thinking in international relations and insists on the
necessity of using counterfactuals in all social sciences. By way of two case
studies of 20th-century history, Lebow demonstrates the shortcomings of the
traditional approach taken in international relations, which rests on Humean
causation and searches for regularities, and makes the case for counterfactual
thinking as a way to recognize the importance of agency, immediate causes,
and non-linear confluences. Lebow thus employs counterfactual scenarios in
order to stress the pitfalls and limits of large-scale structural approaches and to
insist on the contingencies of historical developments. For him, then, counter-
factuals are a means both of historical inquiry and of further theorizing the
field he is working in.
The last five contributions in the volume all come from the field of liter-
ary studies, and convey some idea of the broad scope of the uses of counter-
factuality in literary texts – as well as of the concept of counterfactuality
within this discipline. The most obvious of these uses (and, to date, the one
that has been most extensively considered in research) is represented by
a genre that can be seen as a fictional treatment of the historical “what if ”
scenarios as they are also looked at by Berger Waldenegg and Lebow: the
so-called “alternate history” or “counterfactual historical novel”. Andreas
Martin Widmann’s contribution outlines a typology of novels which deliber-
ately deviate from accepted versions of historical events. Drawing on the
narratological distinction between “plot” and “story”, as it was proposed by
the English novelist E.M. Forster, Widmann identifies two distinct types: the
first is the “story-type”, which presents a fictional world in which an im-
agined event alters the course of history as we know it. While this is the kind
of historical novel that is usually described as “counterfactual”, Widmann ar-
gues that there is also a second type, which has so far not been incorporated
into studies on counterfactuality: the “plot-type”, in which the events stay
the same, but the explanation for their causal connection is altered. He offers
two case studies from contemporary German literature: Thomas Brussig’s
Helden wie wir (1995), in which a new explanation is offered for the fall of the
Berlin wall, represents the plot-type, while Christian Kracht’s Ich werde hier
sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten (2008), in which a counterfactual alteration
of Lenin’s biography has led to a drastically altered world order, is read as
Introduction 9
an example of the story-type. Among the major functions that Widmann as-
cribes to counterfactual historical novels are the foregrounding of contin-
gency in historical developments, but also the critique of dominant national
self-images, which are exposed as ideological constructs.
In the feminist fictions that Birte Christ analyzes in her article, counterfac-
tuality is also employed for social critique. Whether these works project al-
ternate societies in which the hierarchy between male and female has been
reversed or abandoned altogether, or imagine individuals who change their
gender, they use counterfactual patterns to expose traditional gender roles
as arbitrary and unjust. Christ shows how the binary logic of “fact” and
“counterfact” serves to playfully reverse and thus question the kind of think-
ing that structures and hierarchizes society according to the binarism of
“male” and “female”. Her analysis of four American feminist works from
the 1910s and the 1970s, respectively, illustrates how these achieve both
contrast effects and causal inference effects, which contribute to two over-
arching functions: “analytical”, i.e. offering an investigation and evaluation
of existing structures of thought and power in American society, and “syn-
thetic”, i.e. offering ways of rethinking or abandoning these structures.
Both Christ and Widmann emphasize the different ways in which novels
with counterfactual plots can achieve the contrast effect: They can either
explicitly compare counterfactual aspects to the actual reality of the reader,
or they can rely on the recipient’s ability to spot the discrepancies. A genre
that typically offers an explicit comparison between two levels of reality, or
worlds, is the time travel narrative that Rüdiger Heinze treats in his contribu-
tion. Counterfactuality becomes central to time travel narratives either when
a protagonist travels back in time and his behavior changes the course of his-
tory, or when she travels forward and is faced with a version of “what might
happen if ”. Heinze looks at three prominent examples – two 19th-cen-
tury novels, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and
H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, and the film trilogy Back to the Future from the
1980s. He shows how the time travel trope is, for one thing, used for social
commentary – especially Wells’ and Twain’s works are, in this respect, com-
parable to the works looked at by Widmann and Christ. Moreover, he fo-
cuses on the different notions of temporality and causality that are implicitly
or explicitly endorsed by the texts.
While the previous three articles feature examples where counterfactual
scenarios are in some sense presented as storyworlds in which characters
interact, Robyn Warhol looks at the phenomenon from a different angle: She is
interested in the way in which texts evoke counterfactual alternatives that are
not acted out. Warhol focuses on the level of narrative mediation and traces
the use of what she calls “narrative refusals” – references to “what might
have been and yet is not” – in the narrators’ commentaries in Charles Dick-
ens’ novels. She demonstrates how by drawing the reader’s attention to
events that are left out (“unnarration”) or that did not happen (“disnar-
ration”), the novels create counterfactual storyworlds that prompt us to
evaluate the world that is actually represented. Moreover, narrative refusals
referring to characters’ actions contribute to an impression of psychological
complexity. As in the examples analyzed by Daniel Dohrn, in these works
the “factual” to which the “counterfactual” is opposed is no state in the ac-
tual world of the reader, but a fictional reality. Like Dohrn, Warhol proposes
the term “counterfictionality” to clearly distinguish these cases from the
kind of counterfactuality in fiction as it is described by Widmann or Christ.
“Counterfictionality” is also at the center of Richard Saint-Gelais’ contribu-
tion. What distinguishes his use of the term from Warhol’s, however, is that
he uses it in a more specific way, to describe the phenomenon of one fic-
tional text changing the events told in a pre-existing one – as for example
in Jacques Cellard’s novel Emma, oh! Emma!, which retells the story of Mad-
ame Bovary with a different ending. Saint-Gelais examines a wide scope of
texts which feature this kind of counterfictionality, with a special focus on
the question of how they foreground or, conversely, conceal their status as
fiction. As he shows, counterfictionality can be employed to very different
ends. In some cases it may be employed to remind the reader of the artificial-
ity of the textual universe, which can be rewritten. The notion that counter-
fictionality is a quintessentially postmodernist strategy, however, would be
mistaken: In other cases, it serves to strengthen narrative illusion, for
example when the original fiction is “exposed” as a lie and the counterfiction
presented as “what really happened”.13
All five articles on literary studies proceed from an understanding of
counterfactuality that does not conflate it with the general notion of “fic-
tionality”. In other words: the essays do not operate with the notion that all
fictional literature should be regarded as “counterfactual” because it repre-
13 These findings parallel one of the points made by Hilary P. Dannenberg in Coinci-
dence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction (2008): Far from
being limited to the realm of science fiction or postmodernist fiction, counterfac-
tuality has played an important role in the history of narrative fiction. It has often
contributed to a reality effect: When characters or narrators speculate about what
could have happened, this may “strengthen the impression that the narrative
world is ‘real’ by constructing a further, contrastive ‘less real’ sequence of events
that reinforces the apparent reality of the narrative world” (p. 54). Characters may
appear more complex, narrators more trustworthy.
Introduction 11
sents invented scenarios. At the same time, however, they also show how
productively literary texts employ the interplay between fictionality and
counterfactuality in order to involve the reader in their fictional world, to
make him or her think about the state of his or her actual world, or about the
way in which texts themselves shape out thinking about “reality”. As a con-
sequence, from the perspective of literary studies there are many ways of
looking at counterfactual thinking as an “imagination of alternatives to real-
ity”. Literary scholars may use counterfactual patterns to explore the ways in
which our notions of ‘the real’ are engendered – a concern they share with
historians and social scientists. Or they may, like psychologists, be interested
in the impact of counterfactuals on our emotions and evaluations. For liter-
ary studies, then, ‘counterfactuality’ should prove a particularly valuable con-
cept in the foreseeable future, one that will require and enable scholars inter-
ested in literature to enter into dialogues with colleagues from a broad variety
of disciplines.
12 Andrea Albrecht and Lutz Danneberg
Andrea Albrecht (Freiburg) and Lutz Danneberg (Berlin)
First Steps Toward an Explication

of Counterfactual Imagination
I. What Is a Counterfactual Imagination?
Max Weber warns in Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences that “[t]he
attempt to construct in a positive way what ‘would’ have happened can, if it
is made, lead to monstrous results”.1 In recent years, such attempts have re-
ceived increasing attention, usually less critical than Weber’s, to the extent
that one could speak of a veritable boom of what would now be termed
“counterfactual imaginations”. There exists now a considerable number of
studies in philosophy and in the methodology and history of science on the
functions counterfactual thinking can perform in argumentative contexts,
as well as on the understanding and analysis of concrete examples from
intellectual history and the history of knowledge. Counterfactual imagin-
ations are most often considered in connection with thought experiments,2
1 Max Weber, “Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences”, in: Edward A.
Shils/Henry A. Finch (eds.), The Methodology of the Social Sciences, Illinois 1949,
pp. 113–187, p. 180. We have slightly modified the translation.
2 Cf. Tamara Horowitz/Gerald J. Massey (eds.), Thought Experiments in Science and
Philosophy, Pittsburgh 1991; Wulf Rehder, “Versuche zu einer Theorie von Gedan-
kenexperimenten”, in: Grazer Philosophische Studien, 11/1980, pp. 105–123; Tyler
Burge, “Two Thought Experiments Reviewed”, in: Notre Dame Journal of Symbolic
Logic, 23/1982, pp. 284–292; David Cole, “Thought and Thought Experiments”,
in: Philosophical Studies, 45/1984, pp. 432–444; C. Mason Myers, “Analytical
Thought Experiments”, in: Metaphilosophy, 17/1986, pp. 109–118; David Gooding,
Experiment and the Making of Meaning. Human Agency in Scientific Observation and
Experiment, Dordrecht 1990; Antoni Gomila, “What Is a Thought Experiment?”,
in: Metaphilosophy, 22/1991, pp. 84–92; Roy A. Sorensen, Thought Experiments,
Oxford 1992; Roy A. Sorensen, “Thought Experiments and the Epistemology of
Laws”, in: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 22/1992, pp. 15–44; D. H. M. Brookes,
“The Method of Thought Experiment”, in: Metaphilosophy, 25/1994, pp. 71–83;
Sören Häggqvist, Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Stockholm 1996; Martin Bunzl,
“The Logic of Thought Experiment”, in: Synthese, 106/1996, pp. 227–240; James
W. McAllister, “The Evidential Significance of Thought Experiment in Science”,
in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 27/1996, pp. 233–250; James W. McAl-
lister, “Thought Experiments and the Belief in Phenomena”, in: Philosophy
of Science, 71/2004, pp. 1164–1175; Verena Mayer, “Was zeigen Gedanken-
First Steps Toward an Explication of Counterfactual Imagination 13
i.e. mental arrangements that, according to the classical definition of Albert

Einstein and Leopold Infeld, cannot be realized.3 Galilei’s thought experi-
ment leading to a reductio ad absurdum of the Aristotelian kinematics is a
particularly popular example,4 supposedly even the “greatest example of
all”.5 What is addressed as a thought experiment, however, is often a cogni-
tive formation that merely has some overlap with a counterfactual imagin-
ation. In a certain sense, counterfactual imagining can indeed be understood
as experimentation. But not all thought experiments are counterfactual
in the sense of being based on assumptions that are a priori unsatisfiable
and, thus, unrealizable. Despite the differences that have to be taken into ac-
count for the classification of thought experiments (including counterfactual
ones), the first step toward an explication of a concept of counterfactual
experimente?”, in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 106/1999, pp. 357–378; Richard Arthur,

“On Thought Experiments as a priori Science”, in: International Studies in the Phil-
osophy of Science, 13/1999, pp. 215–229; Eduard Glas, “Thought-Experimentation
and Mathematical Innovation”, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science,
30/1999, pp. 1–19; Alisa Bokulich, “Rethinking Thought Experiments”, in: Per-
spectives on Science, 9/2001, pp. 285–307; Lawrence Souder, “What Are We to Think
About Thought Experiments?”, in: Argumentation, 17/2003, pp. 203–217; Nicho-
las Rescher, What If ? Thought Experimentation in Philosophy, New Brunswick 2005;
Kirk Ludwig, “The Epistemology of Thought Experiments: First Person versus
Third Person Approaches”, in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 31/2007, pp. 128–159;
Marco Buzzoni, Thought Experiment in the Natural Sciences, Würzburg 2008.
3 Cf. Albert Einstein/Leopold Infeld, Die Evolution der Physik [The Evolution of
Physics], Vienna/Hamburg 1950, pp. 18–22.
4 Cf. Ernan McMullin, “Galilean Idealization”, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science, 16/1985, pp. 247–273; Gad Prudovsky, “The Confirmation of the Super-
position Principle: On the Role of a Constructive Thought Experiment in Gali-
leo’s Discorsi”, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 20/1989, pp. 453–468;
Tamar Szabó Gendler, “Galileo and the Indispensability of Scientific Thought
Experiment”, in: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49/1998, pp. 397–424;
Paolo Palmieri, “Mental Models in Galileo’s Early Mathematization of Nature”,
in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 34/2003, pp. 229–264; Paolo Palmieri,
“‘Spuntar lo scoglio più duro’: Did Galileo Ever Think the Most Beautiful
Thought Experiment in the History of Science?”, in: Studies in History and Philos-
ophy of Science, 36/2005, pp. 223–240; James W. McAllister, “Das virtuelle Labor:
Gedankenexperimente in der Mechanik des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts”, in: Hel-
mar Schramm/Ludger Schwarte/Jan Ladzarzig (eds.), Kunstkammer – Labora-
torium – Bühne. Schauplätze des Wissens im 17. Jahrhundert, Berlin/New York 2003,
pp. 35–55; see also Alexandre Koyré, “Galileo’s Treatise ‘De Motu Gravium’:
The Use and Abuse of Imaginary Experiment”, in: Revue d’Histoire des Sciences,
13/1960, pp. 197–245.
5 James R. Brown, “Thought Experiments: A Platonic Account”, in: Horowitz/
Massey (eds.), Thought Experiments, pp. 119–128, p. 125.
imagination must determine a condition of adequacy which addresses its

counterfactuality.6
We assume that a simple type of counterfactual imagination consists of
assumptions – the antecedent a – and implications – the consequent b – so
that its structure is: If a then b, where the antecedent a and the consequent
b are more or less elaborate verbal expressions. We have a counterfactual
imagination only when at least one of the assumptions is, at the moment they
are made and relative to a certain (shared) knowledge, obviously false to both
the author and the addressee of the imagination.7 This means, in particular,
that this kind of imagination has neither an uncertain nor an arguable epis-
temic status. Nor does it have anything to do with the opinion that our
knowledge lacks a specific relation to reality, or that all knowledge is “uncer-
tain” and “facts are no objective things”.8 In this respect, counterfactual im-
aginations are perfectly unambiguous – however epistemically questionable
this unambiguity may be.
Therefore, counterfactual imaginations are a propositional disposition.
Something is assumed which is known or believed to be obviously false.
Since there has never been doubt that any true proposition can be deduced
from a false one, our first condition implies that every counterfactual imagin-
ation is a priori trivial, inasmuch as its truth value is always true. But counter-
factual imaginations are clearly meant to state something that, within con-
crete situations of its application, cannot be trivialized in this way. This leads
to a second condition of adequacy for counterfactual imaginations: In spite
6 For a concept of explication and the conditions of adequacy, cf. Lutz Danneberg,
“Zwischen Innovation und Tradition: Begriffsbildung und Begriffsentwicklung
als Explikation”, in: Christian Wagenknecht (ed.), Zur Terminologie der Literaturwis-
senschaft, Stuttgart 1989, pp. 50–68.
7 Cf. Lutz Danneberg, “Überlegungen zu kontrafaktischen Imaginationen in argu-
mentativen Kontexten und zu Beispielen ihrer Funktion in der Denkgeschichte”,
in: Toni Bernhart/Philipp Mehne (eds.), Imagination und Innovation, Berlin 2006,
pp. 73–100; Lutz Danneberg, “Säkularisierung, epistemische Situation und
Autorität”, in: Lutz Danneberg/Sandra Pott/Jörg Schönert/Friedrich Vollhardt
(eds.), Säkularisierung in den Wissenschaften seit der Frühen Neuzeit, vol. 2, Zwischen
christlicher Apologetik und methodologischem Atheismus, Berlin/New York 2002,
pp. 19–66.
8 Cf. Gregor Weber, “Vom Sinn kontrafaktischer Geschichte”, in: Kai Brodersen
(ed.), Virtuelle Antike. Wendepunkte der Alten Geschichte, Darmstadt 2000, pp. 11–23,
p. 14: “Dabei ist der Begriff ‘kontrafaktisch’, also gegen die historisch-wissen-
schaftlich eruierten Fakten, insofern nicht unproblematisch, als diese Fakten
selbst ja keine objektiven Gegenstände sind, sondern aus einer zufällig auf uns ge-
kommenen Überlieferung herauspräpariert und durch Interpretation in den Rang
eines Faktums erhoben wurden”.
of being obviously false, they are claimed to perform a cognitive function

within the context of argument or discourse.
Intellectual history and the history of knowledge since antiquity and the
middle ages reveal that cognitive functions are attributed to counterfactual
imaginations in varying epistemic situations.9 That this relevance has been
recognized historically is apparent from the terminology: While in some
instances the imaginations that may be called counterfactual appear under
the name of quaestiones, the most common terms are argumentum per experimen-
tum secundum imaginationem10 or positio impossibilis.11
9 Cf. Lutz Danneberg, “Kontrafaktische Imaginationen in der Hermeneutik und in

der Lehre des Testimoniums”, in: Lutz Danneberg/Carlos Spoerhase/Dirk Werle
(eds.), Begriffe, Metaphern und Imaginationen in Philosophie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte,
Wiesbaden 2009, pp. 287–449.
10 For the procedures of secundum imaginationem, cf. John E. Murdoch, “The Devel-
opment of a Critical Temper: New Approaches and Modes of Analysis in Four-
teenth-Century Philosophy, Science, and Theology”, in: Siegfried Wenzel (ed.),
Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Proceedings of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, Chapel Hill 1978, pp. 51–79, p. 53: “Philosophers and theolo-
gians repeatedly remind us of the fact that they are reasoning secundum imagin-
ationem and appealing to God’s absolute power. And they frequently, and appro-
priately, connect these two factors: God furnishes them a warrant to argue and
to make their points imaginative as they wished”. Cf. also John E. Murdoch,
“Philosophy and the Enterprise of Science in the Later Middle Ages”, in: Yehuda
Elkana (ed.), The Interaction Between Science and Philosophy, Atlantic Highlands 1974,
pp. 51–74, pp. 64–70; John E. Murdoch/Edith Sylla, “The Science of Motion”,
in: David C. Lindberg (ed.), Science in the Middle Ages, Chicago/London 1978,
pp. 206–264, pp. 246–247.
11 For the positio impossibilis, cf. Christopher J. Martin, “Impossible Positio as the Foun-
dation of Metaphysics or, Logic on the Scotist Plan?”, in: Costantino Marmo (ed.),
Vestigia, Imagines, Verba: Semiotics and Logic in Medieval Theological Texts (XII th–XIV th
Century), Turnhout 1997, pp. 255–276. The theory of obligationes, combined with
the construction of Sophismata, is also seen as instruction for (counterfactual)
thought experiments – more generally speaking: as arguments or representations
which function secundum imaginationem per impossibile. Cf. Mikko Yrjönsuuri, “Obli-
gations as Thought Experiments”, in: Ignacio Angelelli/Maria Cerezo (eds.),
Studies on the History of Logic, Berlin/New York 1996, pp. 79–96; Paul Spade, “Three
Theories of Obligationes: Burley, Kilvington and Swyneshed on Counterfactual Rea-
soning”, in: History and Philosophy of Logic, 3/1982, pp. 1–32; Peter King, “Medieval
Thought-Experiments: The Metamethodology of Medieval Science”, in: Horo-
witz/Massey (eds.), Thought Experiments, pp. 43–64, pp. 53–54: “The general con-
clusion I want to draw should be apparent: the literature on obligationes express the
mediaeval theory of thought-experiments, including various forms of reasoning
which at first glance appear to have little to do with one another”.
It is obvious that counterfactual imaginations can have different functions

relative to the context of their usage. When the context changes, a given
counterfactual imagination can change its status as such only if the knowl-
edge with respect to which the imagination is counterfactual is re-evaluated.
Hence, it can easily be deprived of its function and, over time, even lose
its persuasiveness entirely. This may or may not happen. In any case, it sug-
gests that the cognitive function a counterfactual imagination can have is ex-
tremely context-sensitive.
What may be achieved by counterfactual imaginations is neither limited to
the reductio ad absurdum, nor to imagined argumenta probantia or illustrantia for
the thinkable and representable. Depending on the context, their function
can be critical, affirmative, explanatory, heuristic, illustrative, or pedagogical.
Counterfactual imaginations can be used to solve problems, analyze notions,
and facilitate conclusions. However, the question is rarely asked wherein the
general scientific utility and cognitive value of counterfactual imaginations
lies, or whether they serve a distinct (scientific) cognitive purpose. And, even
if it is asked, there is hardly an answer that is specific to counterfactual im-
aginations alone. Attempts to find a general answer quickly show that, unlike
for thought experiments, a closer analysis of counterfactual imaginations has
not yet been carried out. The reason for this is probably that such a ques-
tion cannot be answered in general; instead, the general question has to be
resolved in concrete cases and local situations. For instance, what purpose
could or did particular counterfactual imaginations have in particular epistemic
situations in intellectual history and the history of knowledge, and wherein
lies the cognitive value in each concrete case of actual usage? The reconstruc-
tion and analysis necessary to answer these questions, however, is a much
more involved and time-consuming endeavor than the friends of counterfac-
tual thinking are generally willing to undertake.
With such complex and obviously false cognitive formations as those
which counterfactual imaginations prove to be, a considerable added value
should certainly be expected from their cognitive functions. One might
rather suspect that the relevance or value of the cognitive function should in-
crease proportionally to the self-evidence of the falseness of a counterfactual
imagination. In spite of their falseness, counterfactual imaginations can dem-
onstrate something “true”, but also something false or misleading. In cases
of counterfactual imagining the problem of arbitrariness is always at hand.
With the exception of those imaginations that are absurd in a given epistemic
context, the possibilities for cognitive imagination seem to be unlimited –
and this, one might suspect, does not speak in favor of their cognitive value
and, even less, in favor of the possibility of a meaningful critical discussion of
their adequacy. Only if their type and range of application open the possibil-
ity of a critique, counterfactual imaginations do not seem arbitrary. A condi-
tion for this seems to be a minimal understanding of their characterization
that makes the arguments based on them comprehensible. However, typical
of the discussion of the criteria that can be used to evaluate the quality of
counterfactual imaginations are statements as the following, which is taken
from a recent contribution to scholarly discourse by Richard Ned Lebow:
At the outset, I advance a novel and provocative epistemological claim: that the
difference between so-called ‘factual’ and counterfactual arguments is more one
of degree than of kind. Both rest on assumptions about the world and how it
works and connect hypothesized causes to outcomes by means of a chain of logic
consistent with available evidence.12
Unfortunately, the content of the subsequent elaborations of the subject fails
to live up to the audacity of this far-reaching claim. Lebow thus concedes:
The fundamental similarity between the structure of counterfactual and factual ar-
guments means that many of the criteria for assessing the plausibility of one kind
of argument are appropriate to the other. There are nevertheless additional crite-
ria for good counterfactual arguments, and here we must be careful to distinguish
good from valid counterfactuals. The criteria for a [sic] good counterfactuals says
a lot about their utility for purpose of analysis but nothing about their external
validity.
What and which exactly these “criteria” are, is left to the imagination of the
reader – even in the elaborate example of a counterfactual Mozart imagin-
ation. The conclusion offered is: “External validity can sometimes be tested
on the basis of evidence. Like all propositions, counterfactuals can be fals-
ified but never validated”.13 Even for non-counterfactual propositions this
seems to be a bold assertion.
Although for the multifaceted phenomenon of counterfactual imagin-
ations there is no standard function, although their arbitrariness is not easily
controlled, and although for their variety of forms and usages there can
be no simple answer to the question of what has to be considered a good
counterfactual argument,14 there is still something to be said about their
12 Richard Ned Lebow, “Counterfactuals, History and Fiction”, in: Historical Social
Research, 34/2009, pp. 57–73, p. 67.
13 Richard Ned Lebow, “Counterfactuals”, pp. 67–68.
14 Cf. Philip E. Tetlock/Aaron Belkin, “Counterfactual Thought Experiments in
World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives”, in: Tet-
lock/Belkin (eds.), Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Metho-
dological, and Psychological Perspectives, Princeton 1996, pp. 3–38, p. 16: “Given the
diverse goals that people have in mind when they advance counterfactual argu-
achievements and their comparative evaluation. Time and again, critical lit-
erature offers six criteria for the evaluation of counterfactual imaginations:
(1) clarity – mostly with regard to the specification of the antecedent and the
consequent of the imagination; (2) logical consistency or cotenability – this
refers to the assumptions that connect the antecedent and the consequent;
(3) historical consistency – this means that there is a minimal deviation of the
shared knowledge claims (“minimal-rewrite rule”); (4) theoretical consist-
ency – this means primarily that the knowledge necessary for the impli-
cations of the counterfactual imagination ought to be consistent with gen-
erally accepted theoretical knowledge claims; (5) statistical consistency –
here the same requirement as in (4) is made with respect to well-established
statistical generalizations; and finally, (6) projectability – informed by a con-
cept of Nelson Goodman, this means that the applied rules of inference are
not contingent, arbitrary generalizations, but essentially law-like operations
that can support projections to the past as well as to the future.15 While these
criteria offer an impetus for the discussion of requirements for the quality of
counterfactual imaginations, they remain geared to certain types of such im-
aginations. Once again, we are relegated to the reconstruction and analysis of
concrete cases.
To sum up: Counterfactual imaginations (1) appear in different types that
can and shall (2) perform different cognitive functions in (3) diverging argu-
mentative contexts. In addition, there are (4) the overarching assumptions of
the respective epistemic situation. The aptitude and quality of counterfactual
imaginations depend on such an epistemic context, and only in relation to
their contexts can imaginations avoid the suspicion of arbitrariness. For the
analytic reconstruction of concrete cases of counterfactual imaginations,
several levels have to be considered: the reconstruction must start with
(i) the counterfactual imagination itself – at whatever point in time –, then
(ii) continue with the assessment of the act of such an imagination, its re-
ception, but also its criticism relative to the given standards of the respective
time, and finish with (iii) the retrospective reconstruction from the present
time. Here, we must distinguish whether the reconstruction is made (iii1) with
a historically given instrument of analysis alone, or (iii2) with an application
of present standards of plausibility, adequacy, and quality for counterfactual
imaginations.
ments – from hypothesis generation to hypothesis testing, from historical under-

standing to theory extension – our contributors convinced us that the quest for a
one-size-fits-all epistemology is quixotic”.
15 Tetlock/Belkin, “Counterfactual Thought Experiments”, pp. 16–31.
Perhaps one end of a potential scale for measuring the quality of counter-
factual imaginations is not only marked by the requirement that counterfac-
tual imaginations must make a contribution to the acquisition of new knowl-
edge, but also that they are unique in this respect, i.e. that they alone can
make this very contribution. The other end of the scale may be marked by
apologetic usages as mere quasi-argumentative trickeries to fabricate the ex-
post justification of their authors’ claims to knowledge, because a concrete
form of counterfactual imaginations often follows individual or collective
predilections, fantasies, or ideologies. In which form their functions are per-
formed depends, not least, on the shared knowledge and the epistemic situ-
ation of their usage. Hence, it is decisive how they are tied to the respective
knowledge, not only for the historical access to counterfactual imaginations
in intellectual history and the history of knowledge, but also for their present
usage, because this actually determines when a counterfactual imagination
acquires any value by performing a cognitive function. The epistemic situ-
ation ensures that not just any arbitrary counterfactual imagination is pos-
sible and that, perhaps with regard to a given cognitive function, competing
counterfactual imaginations possess different degrees of plausibility.
II. Counterfactual Imaginations in Relation to Neighboring Notions
The adequacy condition that a counterfactual imagination must be obviously

false is only a necessary and certainly not a sufficient condition. There are
other cognitive formations that are obviously false in one regard or another,
but that do not tend to be identified as counterfactual imaginations. An expli-
cation of the concept of counterfactual imaginations is, therefore, meaning-
ful only in conjunction with and delimitation to neighboring notions. Among
those are – beside the already mentioned thought experiments – metaphors,
fictions, ceteris paribus clauses, abstractions, idealizations, presumptions, and
models. While a relatively clear line can be drawn for metaphors, fictions, and
presumptions, some overlap between the other notions and counterfactual
imaginations is possible.
The difference between a metaphor and a counterfactual imagination can
be determined rather easily. For a metaphor, the obvious contradiction to
shared knowledge (at a given moment) suggests a transition of meaning
which can be characterized as follows. A meaning first attributed to the ex-
pression is obviously false, but it does not yet need to be clear what the
second, more appropriate meaning of the metaphorical usage of language
should be. Here, the character of obvious falseness is to be eliminated. Thus,
when counterfactual imaginations are treated as metaphorical speech, they

lose their status and significance.
Counterfactual imaginations are sometimes addressed as fictions or
counted among them. Here, the delimitation is less apparent than for the
metaphorical use of language. For the purpose of explication, it suffices that
the counterfactual imaginations which are of interest to us are those that
appear in argumentative contexts, and that fictional texts themselves do not
“argue”, although arguments or even counterfactual imaginations may ap-
pear in them (e.g. in what characters say). While we do not want to dwell on
the controversy about fictionality and factuality, we note that the appearance
of a sentence that has a literal meaning which can be related to a world distin-
guished as real where it represents a true assertion does not make a fictional
text a factual one or even a mixed fictional-factual text.16 Just as little does
the appearance of a counterfactual narrative in an argumentative text trans-
form it into a fictional one;17 furthermore, it does not make sense to speak of
a semi-factual or semi-fictional imagination without a special clarification.
Ceteris paribus is a clause to identify certain factors, meaning as much as:
under the assumption that all basic conditions, except the ones given pre-
viously, remain the same. Here, it is not particularly clear what ceteris paribus
clauses are for scientific laws, and it is, moreover, questionable which
role they play within the sciences:18 whether there are ceteris paribus laws at
16 Cf. Lutz Danneberg, “Weder Tränen noch Logik: Über die Zugänglichkeit fik-
tionaler Welten”, in: Uta Klein/Katja Mellmann/Steffanie Metzger (eds.), Heuris-
tiken der Literaturwissenschaft. Einladung zu disziplinexternen Perspektiven auf Literatur,
Paderborn 2006, pp. 35–83; Lutz Danneberg/Carlos Spoerhase, “Wissen in Lite-
ratur als Herausforderung einer Pragmatik von Wissenszuschreibungen: sechs
Problemfelder, sechs Fragen und zwölf Thesen”, in: Tilmann Köppe (ed.), Lite-
ratur und Wissen. Theoretisch-methodische Zugänge, Berlin/New York 2010, pp. 29–76.
17 A recent, but unsatisfying attempt to describe counterfactuals as short stories and
to associate them with Kendall Walton’s concept of truth in fiction is offered by
Seahwa Kim and Cei Maslen: “Counterfactuals as Short Stories”, in: Philosophi-
cal Studies, 129/2006, pp. 81–117. More illuminating is David Davies, “Thought
Experiments and Fictional Narratives”, in: Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 7/2007,
pp. 29–45.
18 John Earman/John Roberts/Sheldon Smith argue against the common view that
ceteris paribus clauses play a significant role in physics and are, therefore, also jus-
tified within other contexts of less exact disciplines (cf. “Ceteris Paribus Lost”, in:
Erkenntnis, 57/2002, pp. 281–301). They also point to the fact that Hempel’s provi-
sos are not to be confounded with ceteris paribus clauses (cf. Carl Gustav Hempel,
“Provisos: A Problem Concerning the Inferential Function of Scientific The-
ories”, in: Adolf Grünbaum/Wesley Salmon [ed.], The Limitations of Deductivism,
Berkeley 1988, pp. 19–36; John Earman/John Roberts, “Ceteris Paribus, There Are
all,19 and which types can be distinguished.20 Nonetheless, the condition for
an overlap of ceteris paribus clauses with counterfactual imaginations can be
stated independently: It is given when it can be excluded beforehand that
these clauses cannot be satisfied by already existing, shared knowledge.
The problem of the delimitation and overlap of abstractions and idealiz-
ations, on the one hand, and counterfactual imaginations, on the other, is
complicated by the fact that there is a multitude of definitions for abstrac-
tions and idealizations and no generally accepted classification. In addition,
we have to take into account historical definitions. In particular, the various
abstractiones, including the separatio, have a long conceptual history that be-
gins, at the latest, with the Early Middle Ages (admittedly being of antique
descent). Whatever the definition of abstraction turns out to be in each case,
it is always a disregard of something, with the intention not to deceive the
other (abstrahentium non est mendacium), as much as it is the case for counter-
factual imaginations, when the truth is disregarded for a non-deceptive ex-
position. But abstraction is not based on an intentionally false statement, and
this marks its difference to counterfactual imaginations.
Like counterfactual imaginations, idealizations are, in some sense, based
on a disregard for the truth. Here, though, it is for the purpose of simplifi-
cation that something viewed as irrelevant can be disregarded. Although
idealizations are, strictly speaking, neither verifiable nor falsifiable, attempts
to determine their cognitive functions are always viewed as constituents of
a complex scientific modus operandi with respect to which performed or ex-
pected cognitive functions are determined – for example, for the explanation
or prediction of empirical phenomena. At this point, a difference to counter-
factual imaginations can already be seen, for neither unverifiability nor
unfalsifiability imply obvious falseness; and in the case of counterfactual
imaginations, obvious falseness does not just include unverifiability or unfal-
sifiability. What is more, idealizations must either represent the properties of
real entities that are considered to be essential, or they must approximately
reflect real circumstances. Therefore, establishing the cognitive functions of
No Provisos”, in: Synthese, 118/1999, pp. 439–478). See also Nancy Cartwright,
“In Favor of Laws That Are Not Ceteris Paribus After All”, in: Erkenntnis,
57/2002, pp. 425–439; Clark Glymour, “A Semantics and Methodology for Ceteris
Paribus Hypotheses”, in: Erkenntnis, 57/2002, pp. 395–405.
19 Cf. Jim Woodward, “There Is No Such Thing as a Ceteris Paribus Law”, in: Erkennt-
nis, 57/2002, pp. 303–328.
20 Different types of ceteris paribus clauses are distinguished by Gerhard Schurz,
“Ceteris paribus Laws: Classification and Deconstruction”, in: Erkenntnis, 57/2002,
pp. 351–372.
idealizations usually means establishing their relations to scientific assertions

of a certain methodological quality, for example, by embedding the idealiz-
ations into sequences of theories. Or one could try to specify the relations
that explain the relationship to assertions considered to be methodologically
sound – relations like concretization, factualization, specification, or ap-
proximation – so that for such entities a piecemeal improvability may be given.21
A further difference can be added: For certain idealizations, it may be poss-
ible to establish, ex post, that a certain assertion really is an idealization. For a
counterfactual imagination, however, this is not possible.
In a certain respect, a presumption is a special case of an idealization.
A certain assumption is presumed, as long as there are no hints that it is not
valid in a certain case – e.g., for the explanation of human action by presum-
ing the principle of rationality. This definition confirms that counterfactual
imaginations which continue to be false are not presumptions and vice versa.
Closely connected to abstractions and idealizations are models. Models
usually offer an idealized simplification or abstraction with regard to an in-
tended purpose. The relation of modeling is at least quaternary and is based
on one or more relations of resemblance. Depending on the type of resem-
blance, we can distinguish, for example, visual models, theoretical models,
and simulations. Implied are assumptions concerning which resemblances
are to be preserved as relevant, and these assumptions of relevance are de-
termined by the cognitive functions the modeling is designed to achieve.
What is crucial here is the claim that the resemblance between the model and
the modeled leads to true assertions. The disregard of certain properties may
also lead to the obvious falseness of a model, but it is justified by the assump-
21 The discussion of these questions started in the middle of the 1970s in the Poznan
School, first and foremost led by Leszek Nowak and Izabella Nowakowa, who sum-
marize their results in: Idealization X. The Richness of Idealization, Amsterdam/
Atlanta 2000. Since then, the number of studies has been exponentially growing;
cf., for the more recent discussion, the series Idealization: Craig Dilworth (ed.),
Idealization IV : Intelligibility in Science, Amsterdam/Atlanta 1992; Martti Kuokkanen
(ed.), Idealization VII : Structuralism, Idealization and Approximation, Amsterdam/
Atlanta 1994. Cf. also Hans Lind, “A Note on Fundamental Theory and Ideal-
izations in Economics and Physics”, in: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science,
44/1993, pp. 493–503; Michaela Haase, Galileische Idealisierung. Ein pragmatisches
Konzept, Berlin/New York 1995; Andreas Hüttemann, Idealisierungen und das Ziel der
Physik. Eine Untersuchung zum Realismus, Empirismus und Konstruktivismus in der Wis-
senschaftstheorie, Berlin/New York 1997; Chang Liu, “Approximation, Idealization,
and Laws of Nature”, in: Synthese, 118/1999, pp. 229–256; Michael J. Shaffer,
“Bayesian Confirmation of Theories That Incorporate Idealizations”, in: Philos-
ophy of Science, 68/2001, pp. 36–52.
tion of irrelevance. This distinguishes modeling from counterfactual imagin-

ing and leads, at most, to overlaps.
In general, models can be criticized with regard to the dissimilarities be-
tween the model and the modeled by evaluating a negative analogy, i.e. their
dissimilarities. In this way, wrong models as parts of theories can be a means
to better theories.22 A difference between models and counterfactual imagin-
ations becomes apparent when we assume an evolutionary process for the
modeling:23 It starts with a metaphorical insight that is false when taken lit-
erally but, at the same time, insinuates a more or less vague similarity be-
tween two areas; the insinuation leads to a “reasoned analogy”, where the
metaphorical insight is made precise by an explicit analogy between the two
fields; it eventually ends with empirical modeling that transforms the initial
metaphorical insight into a precise scientific model. What characterizes such
a process – where the scientific model still describes only a relation of anal-
ogy and resemblance –, does not, or at least not necessarily, apply to counter-
factual imaginations. It would translate into the prospect that an obviously
wrong but also vague counterfactual imagination – and falseness need not
imply vagueness – can be transformed into a still false but more precise
imagination. In other words, parallels and overlaps between models and
counterfactual imaginations would exist, if there were a given function of
counterfactual imagination for which a cognitive gain could be achieved by
increasing the precision.
Due to the variety of concurrent definitions of abstraction, idealization,
and modeling, general delimitations to counterfactual imaginations can be
given only hypothetically. For an abstraction, the generated entity – as al-
ready seen – need not be obviously false. For an idealization and a model this
is already more likely to be the case. An idealized law, for example, can always
be reformulated in such a way that it contains, explicitly or implicitly, an un-
satisfied and, therefore, false antecedent. In fact, one can take the point of
view that all scientific theories, the constituents of which are natural laws, are
idealizations in this sense, inasmuch as they are true only under the condition
that they are just not realized in the world viewed as real. From this point of
view, they can always be reformulated as a counterfactual statement: If the
idealized object, say, an ideal gas, were given, then the theory of the ideal gas
22 Cf., among others, William C. Wimsatt, “False Models as Means to Truer The-
ories”, in: Matthew H. Nitecki/Antoni Hoffman (eds.), Neutral Models in Biology,
New York/Oxford 1987, pp. 23–55.
23 Cf., for example, Karl H. Pribram, “From Metaphors to Models: The Use of Anal-
ogy in Neuropsychology”, in: David E. Leary (ed.), Metaphors in the History of Psy-
chology, Cambridge 1990, pp. 79–103.
would be true (and no other). At the same time, the possibility of concretiz-
ation or approximation of abstractions, idealizations, and models marks
a central difference to counterfactual imaginations, especially with regard
to their amenability to criticism. Abstractions, idealizations, and models can
be criticized or evaluated by viewing them as gradual and, hence, demand-
ing concretizations. For most counterfactual imaginations such an approach
would be without merit.
III. Two Examples
After these first steps toward an explication of counterfactual imaginations,

we would like to give two concrete examples to demonstrate the necessity
but also the complexity of judging the merits of their cognitive functions. It
goes without saying that these considerations are only preliminary and can-
not do justice to the variety of counterfactual imaginations.
That identifying an imagination as counterfactual can already be contro-
versial shall be demonstrated with regard to the economic concept of the
homo oeconomicus or, as Walter Eucken and Fritz Machlup wrote derisively,
the “homunculus oeconomicus”.24 Introduced by John Stuart Mill as an “abstrac-
tion”,25 the economic man remains to this day, in changing conceptualiz-
ations,26 a constitutive part of economic theory. As such, the homo oeconomicus
is not in contradiction to the shared knowledge about economies and econ-
omic behavior. The concept is not consciously false, but stands in a compli-
cated relation to what is factually known. In this case, it is the presumed econ-
omic reality from which the homo oeconomicus is derived by way of abstraction,
idealization, ideal typization, or to which it is juxtaposed as counterfactual
imagination. “[No] political economist was ever so absurd as to suppose that
mankind are really thus constituted”, Mill states,27 knowing about the only
24 Fritz Machlup, “The Universal Bogey: Economic Man”, in: Fritz Machlup, Method-
ology of Economics and Other Social Sciences, New York 1978, pp. 283–301; Walter
Eucken, Die Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie, Jena 1940, p. 251.
25 John Stuart Mill, “On the Definition of Political Economy; and on the Method of
Investigation Proper to It”, in: John M. Robson (ed.), Collected Works of John Stuart
Mill: Essays on Economics and Society, Toronto 1963–1991, vol. 4, pp. 309–339, p. 321.
26 Cf. Mary S. Morgan, “Economic Man as Model Man: Ideal Types, Idealization
and Caricatures”, in: Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 28/2006, pp. 1–27;
Manfred Tietzel, “Die Rationalitätsannahme in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften
oder Der homo oeconomicus und seine Verwandten”, in: Jahrbuch für Sozialwissen-
schaft, 32/1981, pp. 115–139.
27 Mill, “On the Definition”, p. 322.
partial agreement of his abstraction with the economic reality. At the same
time, he insists on the adequacy of the psychological factors that enter in iso-
lated and abstract form into his concept, namely: “desire of wealth”, “aver-
sion to labor, and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences”.28
It is exactly this characterization that stimulated Mill’s critics to denounce
his theory as counterfactual. From the ongoing controversy surrounding
the homo oeconomicus we can only highlight a few exemplary positions. Carl
Menger’s theory of marginal utility, for example, in which the homo oeconomicus
plays a decisive part, is criticized by Karl Knies on the grounds that it takes
into account only self-interest but neither “Gemeinsinn” (sense of commu-
nity) nor a “sense for justice and equitability”, even though the latter are
also “facts” rather than “fiction”.29 Menger replies to this criticism that no
national economist ever claims that “men are actually guided only by self-in-
terest”.30 The concept is just supposed to represent “one of the most import-
ant sides of human life”.31 With this argument, Menger does endorse self-in-
terest as an actual motive for economic behavior, but, at the same time,
legitimizes the concept under criticism by referring to the essentiality of the
abstracted factor. Shifting the perspective to the methodology, i.e. the choice
of the aspect under which an economic theorist considers his object, he pre-
pares for a new, formal conceptualization of the homo oeconomicus that com-
petes with Mill’s abstraction as well as with the holistic model of the historical
economists. According to the formal conceptualization, the homo oeconomicus
is, as, for example, Max Weber argues, a “constructed economic agent” that
is deliberately “in opposition to the empirical man” because he is ascribed
“feigned” qualities such as “economic omniscience”, “absolute ‘efficiency’”,
and “leisureless productivity”. This “mathematical ideal type”32 has little
in common with Mill’s “instinct-driven” economic man. Conceptualized as
homo rationalis, he acts rationally in a formal sense, that is, guided by a rational
strategy that can, in principle, be reconstructed by the economic theorist
without prior need for a closer psychological or materialist specification.33
28 Mill, “On the Definition”, p. 321.

29 Karl Knies, Die politische Ökonomie vom geschichtlichen Standpunkte, Brunswick 1883,
pp. 240–241.
30 Carl Menger, Untersuchungen über die Methode der Socialwissenschaften, und der Politischen
Ökonomie insbesondere, Leipzig 1883, p. 80.
31 Menger, Untersuchungen, p. 78.
32 Max Weber, Grundriss zu den Vorlesungen über allgemeine (“theoretische”) Nationalökono-
mie, Tübingen 1990, p. 30.
33 Cf. Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 2nd ed.,
London 1945, pp. 94–95.
But this conceptualization does still not meet the demands of the historical
school for a holistic, empirically saturated consideration and can, thus, again
be disqualified as a counterfactual assumption. It is the “naive doctrine that
needs”34 “the silly and objectionable fiction of the homo oeconomicus”,35
Friedrich Gottl-Ottlilienfeld quips in 1931 against Weber and his followers.
According to Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, such a conceptualization curbs “Mr. Every-
man” until “his soul withers in the pursuit of that highest profit, presented by
this principle” – a “vain act of violence against reality”.36 Or, as Götz Briefs
writes, it is a disregard of the German reality of 1915, a time of pronounced
Anglophobia, claiming that Mill’s point of view is a factually correct descrip-
tion, albeit only of English society:
The old classics believed to have solid ground under their feet, when they assumed
self-interest and the other basic premises, which in their eyes were corroborated
by experience, as foundation of their inquiries; premises, the partly subtle, partly
coarse and brutal realities of which everybody had experienced in the England of
their time.37
For the contemporary German economy, however, this description is alleged
to be false – an argument that saved the dignity of the English economic
theorists, while confirming the image of the English “folk character” (“Volks-
charakter”) and separating it from the German one. The “pallid ‘homo oe-
conomicus’”, as Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz suggests one year later,
must be adjusted to the German situation, that is, the model must be plural-
ized and adapted to historical and cultural differences.38
But a further twist complicates the controversy: Beyond the criticism of
its reality and validity, the homo oeconomicus has also been criticized as a model
that was used to promote a certain ideological agenda, insofar as the counter-
factual assumptions about the (self-interested, rational) behavior of the
economic agents shape the factual (altruistic, instinctive-folkish) behavior,39
and thus advance a liberal, capitalistic economic order. This form of criti-
34 Friedrich von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft, Jena 1931, vol. 1,

p. 200.
35 Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft, p. 204.
36 Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft, p. 201.
37 Götz Briefs, Untersuchungen zur klassischen Nationalökonomie, Jena 1915, pp. 280–281.
38 Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz, “Wirtschaftswissenschaft?”, in: Theodor
Heuss/Lujo Brentano (eds.), Festschrift für Lujo Brentano zum siebzigsten Geburtstag,
Munich 1916, pp. 401–427, p. 423.
39 Cf. Markus Haller, “Mixing Economics and Ethics: Carl Menger vs. Gustav von
Schmoller”, in: Social Science Information, 43/2004, pp. 5–33.
cism was still en vogue after World War II . Similarly, notions analogous to the
homo oeconomicus (e.g. the homo sociologicus) are often criticized or denounced
with regard to their alleged ideologically-inspired counterfactuality. Friedrich
Tenbruck, for example, complains about sociology’s “unprecedented new
form of dehumanization”40 that replaces the individual with the homo sociologi-
cus: “Person and culture are – it must be said poignantly – annihilated by the
social sciences”.41
In summary, it becomes clear that the identification of a cognitive
formation as abstraction, model, fiction, or counterfactual imagination is
highly context dependent and based, within its epistemic situation, on the-
oretical premises and argumentative strategies that must, in each case, be re-
constructed and evaluated, if the cognitive functions are to be determined
and taken seriously.
Let’s move on to the second example. In his “Letter to Mr. Werner in
Gießen, concerning the Newtonian theory of light” [“Schreiben an Herrn
Werner in Gießen, die Newtonische Theorie vom Licht betreffend”] Lich-
tenberg writes quizzically: “These are dreams, novels, that in effect are best
refuted by writing another novel […] therein they equal the Maybe of some
philosophers which by a single maybe is not immediately knocked over”.42
The conflicting counterfactual imaginations to which Lichtenberg alludes are
those in which the antecedent and the cognitive function essentially agree
but in which the consequent differs. Counterfactual imaginations can be criti-
cized and improved directly, but they can also be confronted with an oppos-
ing imagination. As it is the case with thought experiments, they can enter
into a competition against each other.
In his 1935 retrospective of “Goethe Veneration in Five Decades”
[“Goetheverehrung in fünf Jahrzehnten”] the German scholar Julius Pe-
tersen (1878–1941) maintains that “the day of Potsdam”, when Hitler sym-
bolically bowed before the Prussian tradition, meant “a rejection of the false
spirit of Weimar, but not a defection from Goethe”. Instead, Goethe stays
“in honor as purest and richest embodiment of the German character, as
greatest custodian and keeper of our primordium, as Alfred Rosenberg calls
40 Friedrich H. Tenbruck, Die unbewältigten Sozialwissenschaften oder Die Abschaffung des

Menschen, Graz/Vienna/Cologne 1984, p. 23.
41 Tenbruck, Die unbewältigten Sozialwissenschaften, p. 238.
42 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, “Schreiben an Herrn Werner in Gießen, die New-
tonische Theorie vom Licht betreffend”, in: Lichtenberg/Friedrich Kries (eds.),
Vermischte Schriften, vol. 2, transl. Lichtenberg/Kries, Göttingen 1801, pp. 363–432,
pp. 366–367.
him”.43 And yet, Petersen must also mention the irksome circumstance that
Goethe “has not led the way into battle”.44 In Petersen’s assessment “we
cannot avoid the question of what Goethe’s position would have been on
the enormous transformations his people has undergone in recent years”45 –
a welcome occasion for a counterfactual imagination. But what knowledge
of Goethe would be relevant answering such a question? To what knowl-
edge can we take recourse in order to imagine Goethe not merely as a con-
temporary of a certain time, but to deduce a specific Goethean reaction? Pe-
tersen relies on Goethe’s “patriotic feeling”, determining this “feeling” by
an anecdote that describes Goethe’s behavior in a particular situation that,
after being decontextualized, gives a hint about how he would have “felt”
after 1933:
As in the spring of 1813 at the Elbe, when he blessed the weapons of the Lützow
rangers who were to move into the battle for freedom, he would not have denied
the salute to the black-clad companions and brown-clad comrades [SS and SA ],
who were ready to sacrifice themselves 120 years later for the inner liberation of
Germany. As back then, when he was converted by the miracle of the uprising of
the people and saw in the liberation of Germany things he had not thought to be
possible but hoped for deep down in his heart, he would have stood in awe before
the awakening of the people’s force reaching a goal that lay in his farthest hopes.
He had himself not believed to ever witness the day when all Germans would feel
as one and they too would achieve what other peoples had long been granted: the
building of a nation.46
A contribution written in exile in 1937–38 by Ferdinand Lion (1883–1963)

offers a number of counterfactual imaginations that can be read as counter-
imaginations to those of Petersen, even though there is no evidence for a di-
rect reference. While Lion’s imaginations are in better accord with today’s
view, their justification is not sound any more. In the section “Goethe and
today” of his essay “Goethean Politics”, Lion presents a survey of counter-
factual imaginations entitled “League of nations”, “Federalism”, “Parlia-
43 Julius Petersen, “Goetheverehrung in fünf Jahrzehnten: Ansprache zur Feier des

50jährigen Bestehens der Goethe-Gesellschaft am 27. August 1935”, in: Jahrbuch
der Goethe-Gesellschaft, 21/1935, pp. 1–25, p. 23 (translations are ours).
44 Petersen, “Goetheverehrung”, p. 23; cf. Paul Fechter, “Vom Wilhelm Meister zur
SA”, in: Deutsche Rundschau, 59/1933, pp. 1–7.
45 Petersen, “Goetheverehrung”, p. 23.
46 Petersen, “Goetheverehrung”, p. 23. After 1933 Petersen’s behavior is difficult
to evaluate, cf. Wolfgang Höppner, “Wissenschaft und Macht. Julius Petersen
(1878–1941) und Franz Koch (1888–1969) am Germanischen Seminar in Berlin”,
in: Zeitschrift für Germanistik, 20/2010, pp. 324–338.
mentary matters”, “Social matters”, “German History” – containing, among

others, the surprising claim that “most of all he [Goethe] would have
been captivated by the new physics”47 –, “Mythology”, “Dictators”, “Cel-
ebrations”, “Armament”, “Fate of the Faustian”, “Politicizations”, and
“Mediations”. Lion is of the opinion that the veneration of Goethe “cannot
content itself with the philological and aesthetic interpretation”, but must be
an “active following”.48 Although he does warn that such exegesis cannot
“lay claim to determine something authentic”, this almost seems to be within
reach. He suggests that “a circle of Goethe connoisseurs ought to continu-
ally deliberate and ponder what his hypothetical statements could have been
on a case-to-case basis”.49
Imaginations such as these, which appear in intellectual history and the
history of knowledge in all conceivable varieties, seem only to be put forward
in order to authorize the author’s own opinion by transferring it to a con-
temporized authority: Goethe is promoted to a contemporary guide in all
matters of the present world, although, in this generality, there can hardly be
a counterfactual imagination the contrary of which is not equally implaus-
ible. It is the sign of an impoverished present when an age needs the fore-
bears as authorities secundum imaginationem to justify what is considered as
right and good, or to protect the authorities themselves against a present that
has limited appreciation for them.
These cases also demonstrate that Max Weber’s caveat quoted at the be-
ginning of this essay must be taken seriously. More often than not the at-
tempts “to construct in a positive way what ‘would’ have happened […] lead
to monstrous results”. As our provisional analyses and reconstructions have
shown, the enormous, but interesting problems that arise in the study of
concrete historic examples need more than just the first steps toward an ex-
plication of the concept of counterfactual imagination that we have given
here. This shall be done elsewhere.50
47 Ferdinand Lion, “Goethesche Politik”, in: Maß und Wert, 1/1937–38, pp. 764–782,
p. 775 (and cf. Lion, Geist und Politik in Europa. Verstreute Schriften aus den Jahren
1915–1961, Heidelberg 1980, pp. 174–192). Translations are ours.
48 Lion, “Goethesche Politik”, p. 771.
49 Lion, “Goethesche Politik”, p. 771.
50 We would like to thank Matthew Handelman for his assistance in the translation
of this article.
30 Tobias Klauk
Tobias Klauk (Göttingen)
Thought Experiments and Literature
I. Introduction
In this paper, I will be concerned with the thesis (LT ) that in writing and read-
ing literature we typically conduct thought experiments as well as with the
consequences of comparing literature and philosophical thought experi-
ments. Part II of the paper is designed to show that (LT ) is false, despite many
interesting similarities between literature and thought-experimental scen-
arios. Parts III and IV will explore two of the similarities that might prove
valuable for scholars. But first, I will start by explaining what is meant by (LT ).
Many people in literary studies believe that writing and reading literature
has something to do with conducting thought experiments. After all, what
could be more self-evident? In reading, it seems, we are imagining scenarios
that are quite different from the way things actually are. And to imagine a
counterfactual scenario is simply to conduct a thought experiment. To argue
this way is perfectly all right. However, such an argument hinges on a very
broad understanding of the term “thought experiment”. If by a thought ex-
periment we understand any cognitive action that somehow includes de-
scribing or imagining things differently than they actually are, (LT ) is surely
true. Sadly, it then turns out to be a fairly uninteresting thesis. Not only does
everyone believe it anyway, it also does not shed light on any interesting
topic. Accordingly, to sharpen the thesis, I will take “thought experiments”
to mean something more specific. Roughly, my use stems from philosophical
discourse, and I will explain it below. Again, this is not to say that it is wrong
to use the term “thought experiment” in the wider sense. But if we are will-
ing to engage in the more specific use of the term, we might actually learn
something. Unfortunately, even the sharpened thesis is, in and of itself, still
uninteresting – a characteristic it shares with most classificatory theses. The
trick is to put the thesis to good use. Therefore, parts III and IV will exploit
(LT ) – or what is still left of it by then – to transport ideas from philosophy
over to literary theory.
In order not to get confused, it will be important to distinguish between
two types of phenomena that are frequently described as counterfactual
thinking. One phenomenon is using counterfactual conditionals, the other
imagining a counterfactual scenario. Let me make the difference clear: When
Thought Experiments and Literature 31
using a counterfactual conditional, we utter, or think, or rely on a sentence

with a counterfactual conditional in it. Examples include “If Paul had come
to the party, then Petra would also have come”, and “If there had been more
beer, everybody would have stayed longer”. Notice that we typically use
counterfactual conditionals if we think that the antecedent is false, but that
it can turn out to be true. For instance, consider the following case: We are
driving home and I say “It’s a good thing I turned off the oven. If I had not
turned it off, the house would have burned down”. Then we arrive in our
street and see the smoking ruins. Sadly, we found the antecedent of the
counterfactual to be true; I really forgot to turn off the oven. Still, I used a
counterfactual conditional.
By contrast, in imagining a counterfactual scenario, we imagine a situation
that is not the case. At the moment of writing this, Angela Merkel is chancel-
lor of Germany. But I can easily imagine a scenario in which somebody else
is chancellor right now. A counterfactual scenario cannot turn out to be true.
If it did, it would not have been counterfactual in the first place.
Counterfactual conditionals and imagining a counterfactual scenario
often go hand in hand, and this is why people tend to conflate the two. In
imagining counterfactual scenarios we typically draw conclusions by using
counterfactual conditionals. But a counterfactual scenario can come without
any counterfactual conditionals attached. Again, using counterfactual condi-
tionals and imagining counterfactual scenarios is not the same thing.
Let us now turn to philosophical thought experiments. I said that I would
like to sharpen (LT ) by taking “thought experiments” to roughly mean
“thought experiments as we find them in philosophy”. Why not speak of
scientific thought experiments here? I believe that scientific thought experi-
ments generally do not work any differently than philosophical thought ex-
periments. If I am right, nothing is lost by concentrating on the philosophi-
cal case. What if I am wrong? The main reason for distinguishing between
scientific and philosophical thought experiments probably lies in the wish to
link scientific thought experiments to proper experiments. The idea, going
back to Ernst Mach, is that we first let experiments run in our heads before
taking them to the laboratory.1 This simulation idea has taken many forms
since, although I think it is wrong at least for the more interesting scientific
thought experiments. But let us for a moment imagine the theory were true.
Then (LT ) is obviously false, since literary texts are quite certainly not some
kind of experiment we run in our head. We do not let a simulation go on and
1 For Ernst Mach’s take on experiments and thought experiments, see his chapter on
thought experiments in Erkenntnis und Irrtum, 4th ed., Leipzig 1920, pp. 183–200.
32 Tobias Klauk
find out what happens. So even if the simulation idea was fruitful for scien-
tific thought experiments, it still would not translate to literature. But if it
does not apply to thought experiments in the first place, it is of no relevance
for (LT ). Either way it does not help us in understanding literature, and we
should look for a more fruitful idea.
I also refrain from talking about experiments that are thought experi-
ments only by name. The following is a good example from a popular,
though not scientific, linguistic book: David Crystal states that speakers of
English like two- or three-syllable words with m, n, l, and r in them better
than one-syllable ones with p, k, and g in them.
You can do linguistic thought experiments to see whether these tendencies work.
Imagine you are in a space-ship approaching a new planet, Xarg. All you know
about Xarg is that it contains two races, one friendly towards Earth-people, the
other antagonistic. One race is called the Lamonians. The other is called the Ga-
taks. Which do you think is the friendly race?2
Despite Crystal’s explicit statement to the contrary, this is not a thought
experiment at all. It is not enough to ask yourself if you think whether the
Lamonians are friendlier than the Gataks. Only a “real” experiment that con-
fronts a significant number of speakers of English with a significant number
of examples can establish the thesis mentioned above. Crystal relies on the
assumption that his readers find an answer for themselves and that every
reader finds the same answer. Again, reading or writing literature obviously
does not work like conducting experiments and (LT ) would become trivially
false if we defined “thought experiments” as “real experiments that have
been labelled thought experiments”.
Philosophical thought experiments are diverse, and one might easily
despair when confronted with the sheer mass of phenomena we tend to call
“thought experiments”. But it is not impossible to find some general rules
that will allow us to find out if (LT ) is true or not. Philosophical thought ex-
periments typically have three steps:3
(a) We imagine a scenario.
(b) We judge the scenario concerning a certain question.
(c) We make use of this judgement.
2 David Crystal, By Hook or by Crook: A Journey in Search of English, London 2008,

p. 158.
3 For a more complete but also more complex view of the three steps, as well as an
overview of different kinds of thought experiments, see chapters 1 and 3 of my Ge-
dankenexperimente in der Philosophie: Eine Familie philosophischer Verfahren, Diss. Univer-
sity of Göttingen 2008, http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl/?webdoc-1924
(May 26, 2011).
To imagine a scenario at the least means to describe the scenario consist-

ently or to understand such a description. In most cases it is not necessary to
actually have a picture in mind. That might be helpful or distracting, but typi-
cally it is just irrelevant. The scenario is then judged concerning a certain
question. The judgement and the question always take the form of a counter-
factual conditional: If the scenario were the case, what else would be the
case? If the scenario were the case, what would be the morally right thing to
do? The judgement then will be used to argue for a philosophical point. It
might be used as a counterexample, as an analogy, or in any other way.4 But
it is important to see that we only have a complete thought experiment if the
third step is present.
The following may serve as an example: There are theories of knowledge
that define knowledge as justified true belief. With a simple thought experi-
ment we can show that this kind of theory cannot be true.5 Jan walks by the
library and looks through a window. He sees the back of someone whom he
identifies as his friend Julia. He comes to believe that Julia is in the library
and enters, since he wants to talk to Julia. As he walks through the door,
Julia comes down the stairs. Although Julia actually is in the library, the per-
son Jan has seen through the window cannot have been Julia. So Jan believed
that Julia was in the library, he was justified (he had good reason, because he
thought he saw her), and it was true (she was in the library). This concludes
step (a). Step (b): If this situation were the case, would Jan (after looking and
before entering) know that Julia was in the library? No, he would not. Step
(c): If this is possible, then the definition of knowledge as justified true belief
is false, since we found a counterexample.
Note how the scenario is designed for a special purpose, in this case giving
a counterexample. Without this third step, we would have talked about
a scenario, we even would have evaluated it concerning some question, but
we would not have completed the thought experiment. There are no thought
experiments without step (c). Note also that even in the special case of
a thought experiment in which step (a) is missing since we fail to imagine
a scenario, this failure will be used philosophically in step (c). Philosophers
often throw a scenario at us because they think it is obvious what to do with
it. But unless we actually do something with the scenario, i.e. proceed to
4 In fact, it need not be the judgement that is used in a subsequent argumentation.

It might be the impossibility of imagining a certain scenario; it might even be the
comparison between two different scenarios.
5 Thought experiments of this kind have been made famous bei Edmund L. Gettier,
see his “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, in: Analysis, 23/1963, pp. 121–123.
34 Tobias Klauk
steps (b) and (c), we do not have a thought experiment. This is especially
important since there is a loose way of talking about philosophical thought
experiments where a scenario alone counts as a thought experiment. The
situation is quite similar to what we encounter in the case of literature. But
although we sometimes talk that way, it is not helpful for our project at hand.
On the contrary, it obscures two important elements of thought experi-
ments, namely steps (b) and (c).
II. Finding the Three Steps in the Case of Literature
Let us now take a look at fictional literature. If it is true that we conduct

thought experiments in literature we should be able to find the three steps.
Step (a) looks promising. We often find especially rich and complex scenarios
in literature. This is true at least for prose and drama, so let us forget about
poetry for the moment, where it is much harder to determine what a scenario
consists in. The problem will return with the subsequent steps sure enough.
Things are not as easy when it comes to step (b). At first glance, it just seems
to be missing. A text rarely discusses the consequences of its content in the
sense that it asks what would be the case if “p” were the case, or what should
have been done if “p” were the case. Notice that it is not enough for a text to
contain passages like “If only she had known then, things would have turned
out differently”. Though this is a counterfactual conditional, there is still a
difference to philosophical thought experiments: In philosophy, there is al-
ways a special reason why someone is conducting a thought experiment.
People are not inventing scenarios for the fun of it, and their scenarios are
found useful by other philosophers. A philosophical thought experiment
comes with a question directed at the scenario, a question that carries a
special interest. In our example it was the question whether Jan knew that Julia
was in the library. And the whole thought experiment was built in order to
find out about the nature of knowledge. “If only she had known then, things
would have turned out differently” does not transport such a special interest.
In literature, questions related to the purpose of the text normally do not
occur in the text. Most texts do not ask questions regarding the text itself.
It is up to the reader to find a special interest in the text. Of course, there is
always the question what the intention of the author might have been. But
we are free to ignore the author’s intention and question the text for com-
pletely different reasons. Literary texts are polyvalent.
There is, therefore, a slight difference between philosophical thought
experiments and literary texts. But the difference is not important enough to
justify giving up on (LT ) already. Firstly, something like polyvalence can be

found in philosophy, too. Anybody can take a thought-experimental scenario
and use it for a different thought experiment. In fact, people have taken up
scenarios to show exactly the opposite of what the author of the original
thought experiment wanted to show.
Secondly, step (b) is sometimes hidden in philosophy. The question might
not be put clearly; the evaluation of the scenario might be only implicit or
even be left to the reader. Therefore, one could try to argue that certain con-
ventions in literature just dictate not mentioning step (b), but that it is never-
theless always implied and intended. In any case, this is certainly true: In
reading a text, we can, and do, judge if some behaviour was moral, if the de-
tective was clever, if a choice was wise, etc. In fact, without such reasoning,
our reading experience would be rather shallow and dull. I will exploit this
feature of our reading behaviour in part IV.
The real problems begin with step (c). In philosophical thought experi-
ments the judged scenario will be used to argue some point. But this is
normally not the case in literature. Again, there are counterexamples. In his
children’s books, Erich Kästner sometimes explicitly declares what he thinks
can be learnt from the text, and Jean Paul sometimes explains to the reader
what he thinks the point of the story is, but all in all these cases are rather
rare. When talking about step (b) I mentioned that it might be enough for
step (b) to be present, that somebody could judge the literary scenario con-
cerning a certain question. But this will not do here. Philosophers often use
examples from literature as scenarios for philosophical thought experiments.
But that does not make the literary texts thought experiments; it just makes
them a quarry for thought-experimental scenarios.
What would be needed to establish step (c) is a literary way of exploiting
the judgement about the literary scenario. But there do not seem to be any
examples and counterexamples, analogies, explorative thought experiments,
etc., in literature, all the things, that is, scenarios are used for in philosophy.
Step (c) is just missing. But this is no defect of literature. It just means that
however reading literature works, it typically does not work in the same way
that conducting a thought experiment works. As always, there are excep-
tions. David Lewis, for example, has the idea that “fiction might serve as a
means for the discovery of modal truth”.6 He thinks a literary text might help
establish, for example, if it is possible to be a dignified beggar. Such a text,
he says, “serves the same purpose as an example in philosophy, though it
6 David Lewis, “Postscripts to ‘Truth in Fiction’”, in: Philosophical Papers I, Oxford

1983, pp. 276–280, p. 278.
36 Tobias Klauk
will not work unless the story […] is more fully worked out than our usual
examples”.7
Establishing a possibility clearly counts as step (c) of the thought-experi-
mental schema I have given above. In fact, some philosophical thought ex-
periments work just that way. Establishing a possibility is not as easy as re-
futing one, where we could come up with a counterexample. Instead, one
promising way to proceed is to explore the counterfactual consequences of a
scenario and show that we cannot establish contradictions where they seem
most probable. If a story was written or read with the aim of showing that
something is possible, we would have a literary thought experiment. But
again, this seems to be the exception, not the rule. Therefore, as long as we
do not want to claim that one of literature’s central aims is to provide other
disciplines with scenarios, we should not say that literature usually conducts
thought experiments. Step (c) is – most of the time – just missing. There are
certainly texts that are intended by their authors to be literary thought ex-
periments in the strict sense we are concerned with here. And it is always
possible to take a literary scenario and turn it into a thought experiment. But
the idea that in reading or writing literature we typically conduct thought ex-
periments has proven false. (LT ) is wrong.
Where does this leave us? We can already see that one should be care-
ful about linking literature to thought experiments. As soon as we define
“thought experiment” more precisely in the sense that only nonfactual scen-
arios are involved, differences between literature and thought experiments
begin to show. As I mentioned in the beginning, apart from this cautious
note, an answer to the question if (LT ) is true or not has limited cognitive
value. But we did find similarities between philosophical thought experi-
ments and literature in steps (a) and (b). And we can now start to exploit these
similarities. I will give two examples of how to make the comparison fruitful.
III. Learning from Step (A):

Defending the Possible-Worlds Theory of Fiction
We know a lot more about the three steps of thought experiments than
I have revealed so far. The comparison of thought-experimental scenarios
and literary texts allows us to transport ideas from one area to the other. Let
us forget about step (c), since we generally find it missing in literature. The
matter is different with steps (a) and (b).
7 Lewis, “Postscripts”, p. 278.

Take a second look at step (a). Imagining a scenario might involve feeling
how it is to be in the scenario. This is an element that is sometimes involved
in ethical thought experiments, and it is certainly present in our reading of
many literary texts. Exploring this similarity and explaining how feeling with
somebody can be an essential element in understanding a scenario seem to
be interesting projects to me, but I will not concern myself with such aspects
here.
Imagining a scenario might also involve seeing something before the
mind’s eye. Other senses might be involved, though typically to a lesser
extent, since we are rather visual beings. If I am not mistaken, there is a
further distinction between philosophical thought experiments and litera-
ture that goes back to these “pictures in the mind”. In philosophy, the inner
pictures are almost always unimportant, as a test going back to Descartes
shows: He imagines seeing a polygon with 1000 angles. Then he imagines
seeing a polygon with 1001 angles. The pictures before the mind’s eye, he
says, look exactly the same.8 What distinguishes imagining those two things
is just our understanding of the two phrases “1000 angles” and “1001
angles”. Therefore, inner pictures do not add to our understanding of the
difference, since the two pictures are the same. Philosophical thought
experiments mostly are similar to this case. Inner pictures play a minor role,
if any.
It seems to me that literature works differently. The power of literature
often consists exactly in letting us live through certain events, to conjure up
pictures, sounds, emotions. It is a major difference for most people if they
read a scientific book on some phenomenon, or read a novel in which
the phenomenon is described. Literature can give a feeling of “this could
happen to me”, which can be a joyful or even a very disturbing experience.
Again, to explain how exactly this aspect of reading literature works is
not my project. Instead, let us focus on a similarity between philosophical
thought experiments and literature. To conceive of a scenario at the least
means, as I pointed out above, to describe the scenario consistently or to
understand a consistently described scenario. No inner pictures need to be
involved in this process. Conceiving of a scenario in this sense can still fail.
I cannot imagine a scenario in which I have just one body (of roughly its ac-
tual size) and am in Göttingen and at the same time in Freiburg. Such a scen-
ario is not consistently describable. As one can see, consistency here means:
8 The passage can be found in Descartes’s Meditations (René Descartes, Oeuvres de

Descartes, Charles Adam/Paul Tannery [eds.], Paris 1897–1910, VII , 6, 2).
38 Tobias Klauk
possible, as far as the description goes.9 A scenario might turn out to be

impossible not because its description directly leads to a contradiction but
because counterfactual consequences turn out to be contradictory. None-
theless, we can analyse thought-experimental scenarios by talking about
possible worlds.
Let us apply all this to literature. There is a well-known, and by now a bit
rusty, theory that tries to explain fiction in terms of possible worlds – and
there is a well-known reply to this theory: Scenarios in literature are some-
times impossible; their descriptions are sometimes even inconsistent. Call
this the impossibility argument. It is one of two arguments that have led
to the current unpopularity of the “fiction-in-terms-of-possible-worlds”
theory. But the argument does not suffice, and we can show that it does
not suffice with the help of the comparison to philosophical thought experi-
ments.10
Before we do so, let us refute the other important argument. Worlds, it
claims, are complete insofar as every fact is determined. Literary scenarios
are not complete in this sense. There always will be things left undecided by
the text and any interpretation. Call this the completeness argument. It looks
like a crushing argument, but there are two rather obvious ways to save the
theory, or at least its spirit. Firstly, one might adopt some many-valued logic.
If we allow sentences to be not only true or false but, e.g., neither true nor
false, we can again attempt to model literary scenarios as possible worlds in
which anything that is left open by the text counts as neither true nor false.11
The details of how to make such an account work are, of course, delicate,
but however things work out in the end, it is not the incompleteness argu-
ment that brings down the possible-worlds theory of fiction. Secondly, we
can switch from possible-worlds to possible scenarios, which are thought of
as incomplete in the sense introduced above. This solution might not be as
elegant as the first one, but in principle it does the trick: Why not think of lit-
erary scenarios as possible scenarios?
9 I leave aside the further complications that arise when we acknowledge that there
are different kinds of possibility. For example, a scenario might be logically pos-
sible, but still nomologically impossible, i.e. impossible according to the laws of
nature. The general point I am trying to make is not affected by this.
10 To avoid misunderstanding and confusion: I do believe that the possible-worlds
theory of fiction has serious flaws. The main question is if the theory can be made
fruitful at all. Here, I am only concerned with the rather technical question if the
spirit of the theory can be saved against the two main arguments.
11 For an excellent introduction into non-classical logic, see Graham Priest, An Intro-
duction to Non-Classical Logic, 2nd ed., Cambridge 2009.
So the burden of proof lies heavily on the impossibility argument. Unfor-

tunately (or fortunately, if you are an adherent of the possible-worlds theory)
this argument does not suffice. That does not mean that the possible-worlds
theory is without problems. As we will see, these are just not the problems
that brought people to regard the theory as false.
What could we possibly learn from philosophical thought experiments
about the impossibility argument? It is a strange feature of philosophical
examples that, often enough, they are inconsistent. We allow for mistakes in
a scenario as long as the relevant judgement is not corrupted. Sometimes it
is enough that we believe the scenario to be repairable, i.e. believe that there
are similar scenarios without the defect. There exist many examples of such
problematic scenarios. Putnam’s twin earth scenario (at least in some ver-
sions) operates with the idea of humans who are, molecule for molecule,
identical while water is not H2O.12 Or take Plato’s thought experiment
The Ring of Gyges.13 In the dialogue, Glaukon constructs a thought experi-
ment in order to show that people act justly only because they are forced to
behave that way. He introduces the idea that there is a ring which makes
its bearer invisible and thereby allows him to evade punishment. Glaukon
thinks that a person acting justly under normal circumstances would, if given
the ring, act like a person that is unjust under normal circumstances. People
have argued that the scenario does not allow Glaukon’s judgement since it is
underdetermined and physically impossible.14 Does the ring really allow its
bearer to evade punishment? Could he be caught by accident and would
therefore still be motivated to behave justly? If he could not be caught by
accident, does that also mean he could not be touched? But then how can
he pick up something he wants to steal, for example? And would not a ring
that makes its bearer invisible also make him blind, again rendering him
incapable of stealing something? We can easily put all these questions aside.
Philosophers who try to address these questions are usually ignored – and
rightly so. We understand that the story of Gyges is just an example of a
general kind of situation in which people do not have to fear social correc-
tion of their behaviour. It does not matter that the scenario itself is probably
12 Cf. Hilary Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, in: Hilary Putnam, Mind, Lan-
guage and Reality, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Cambridge 1975, pp. 215–271.
13 Platon, Politeia, sec. 359b–360c. Socrates dissociates himself from the thought
experiment given by Glaukon in the dialogue; a complication we can safely ignore
here.
14 Cf. for example Kathleen V. Wilkes, Real People: Personal Identity without Thought
Experiments, Oxford 1988, p. 11.
40 Tobias Klauk
physically impossible, since there are enough scenarios of its type which are
not.15 We can even invent logically inconsistent scenarios. Imagine Hume
proving that (p f Gp). Would that have made him famous? How would the
scientific community have reacted? The scenario is logically impossible and
therefore inconceivable. Nobody can prove that (p f Gp). But we can take
the scenario as a stand-in for some other, consistent scenario in which
Hume made a spectacular logical or mathematical discovery, and we have a
good notion of what would have happened then. So we need to distinguish
between scenarios for which there exist similar possible or actual scenarios
and scenarios for which there do not exist such substitutes. As long as we
believe that there are consistent substitute scenarios, we might as well keep
working with the flawed scenario.
How does this apply to literature? It is quite a triviality that in literature we
are especially interested in scenarios that bear resemblance to our life in rel-
evant aspects. But that is just another way of saying that in literature there
often is a consistent substitute scenario that is in relevant aspects similar to
the scenario of the literary text. And if we allow ourselves to use the instru-
ment of possible-world analysis in philosophy when such inconsistent but
repairable scenarios are used, why not in literature? In the light of this, it
seems to me that the impossibility argument against the possible-worlds the-
ory of fiction loses much of its appeal.
Now someone could grant all that, but still insist on the impossibility ar-
gument. Saving the possible-worlds theory of fiction against this argument,
one could say, is not a matter of showing that some inconsistent scenario can
be exchanged. The original idea of the theory was that fictional scenarios are
possible worlds. And that is still wrong, no matter how much substitution we
perform.
I think this reminder is correct. Under standard logic, fictional scenarios
are not possible worlds, although there might be ways to make even this the-
sis work by using non-standard logic with impossible worlds. I will not pur-
sue that strategy here. Instead, I want to point out something else that is
strange about the possible-worlds theory of fiction as its opponents (and
possibly many of the theory’s adherents) understand it: That something is a
possible world is not much of an explanation at all, since there is a constant
philosophical discussion about what exactly possible worlds are. Such an
15 The thought experiment fails because of a different kind of underdetermination.

It ignores that humans have very complex combinations of reasons for their ac-
tions. Without knowing about the motivations, wishes, hopes, beliefs, and plans of
the ring bearer, it is very difficult to predict how he would act.
explanation of fictionality just substitutes one complicated concept for an-

other. It is therefore better to state the thesis this way: Fictional scenarios are
analysable in terms of possible worlds, where we understand possible worlds
as research tools whose features are well known without even touching the
extra question what possible worlds are. This strategy also evades the objec-
tion. Moreover, the possible-worlds theorist of fiction should not state that
all literary scenarios are analysable in terms of possible worlds but that typi-
cally literary scenarios are.
If all this is correct, we can also explain another phenomenon. When you
listen to people talking about impossible scenarios you will find that they are
very good at making sense of those scenarios. One reason for that, I think,
lies exactly in our ability to substitute impossible scenarios for possible ones
or to understand the impossible scenario as just one element of a class of
scenarios that also contains possible scenarios. Here is an example: Fables
typically contain animals which are talking, thinking, and behaving just like
humans. Animals cannot do all these things, and therefore fables contain
scenarios that are nomologically impossible, i.e. impossible given the laws of
nature. But of course nobody reacts to fables by saying how weird it is to hear
about talking foxes and bears. Fables do not interest us because we want to
learn about talking animals. They are supposed to reveal something about
humans. The animals depicted may talk, and that is nomologically impos-
sible. We know that fables are not about animals; they are about humans.
Since we know that fables are about humans we could say that the scenario
really is one in which, for example, a strong but dumb person interacts with a
clever and cunning person, not a scenario in which a bear and a fox interact.
But this scenario is not impossible at all. As in the philosophical case, we can
work with the impossible scenario because we know that there are scenarios
of this type which are possible.
The possible-worlds theory of fictionality surely has its flaws. But I do not
think that they lie in the impossibility argument. Our comparison between
thought experiments and literature has given adherents of the theory argu-
mentative resources against such an attack.
I would like to mention one further complication. It seems to me that lit-
erary texts often contain two levels, which we could both call the scenario.
When confronted with a text, which at face value describes something im-
possible, we normally do not despair. To the contrary: We are very good
at making sense even of the weirdest impossibilities. I believe that many of
these cases share one similarity. In reading and interpreting texts we are not
content until we have found a scenario that is not impossible. Sometimes we
only need to understand that the animals in fables are stand-ins for humans.
42 Tobias Klauk
Sometimes we need to go to a very abstract level and say that what is shown
in a play, seemingly full of impossibilities, are really the fears and wishes of
the protagonists. So there is one level at which the text describes an impos-
sible scenario. But, on a different level, we can always find a perfectly pos-
sible scenario. As soon as we think that a text really is just inconsistent, we are
not interested in it anymore. I think this is another feather in the hat of the
possible-worlds theorist. What a text really is about, it seems, will always be
possible in some sense.
IV. Learning from Step (B):

Gaining Knowledge from Literature?
In philosophy, the thought-experimental scenario is judged using a counter-

factual conditional. The material conditional (p f q) does not suffice,
because it is already true if the antecedent is false. But we do not want
every consequence of the counterfactual scenario to be true. Lewis’s classical
example to illustrate the difference between the two conditionals compares
“If Oswald did not kill Kennedy, then someone else did” with “If Oswald
had not killed Kennedy, then someone else would have”.16 While the first
sentence is true, the second might turn out to be false.
Typically we also do not aim for the strict conditional ( Y (p f q)). We do
not want to know what necessarily is the case. Remember the Gettier case in-
cluding Jan and Julia. We do not want to know if there are any circumstances
under which Jan would know that Julia is in the library. The story leaves open
many possibilities that we automatically sort out. Jan might have sufficiently
awkward background beliefs for us to subscribe the relevant knowledge to
him. What we do want to know is if Jan knows in those worlds in which the
scenario is true and which are then closest to us. And that is exactly what the
counterfactual conditional (p Y f q) captures.
It seems to me that the same is true for literature. In evaluating literary
scenarios we are interested in the counterfactual question, not in the material
or the strict conditional. It is not the material conditional, since the counter-
factuality of a scenario would suffice to make any material conditional true.
“If Sherlock Holmes orders Watson about, then he is silently in love with
Watson” is just as true as “If Sherlock Holmes orders Watson about, then
he is not silently in love with Watson”, and the only reason is that “Sher-
lock Holmes orders Watson about” is false. There is not even a Sherlock
16 Cf. David Lewis, Counterfactuals, Oxford 1973, p. 3.

Holmes.17 This shows that in reading we are typically not interested in the
material conditional.
But the same holds for the strict conditional. “Necessarily, if Sherlock
Holmes orders Watson about, then he is silently in love with Watson” is false.
We can think up many scenarios in which Sherlock Holmes orders Watson
about and is not secretly in love with him. What we want to know is if,
given that in the stories of Conan Doyle Holmes orders Watson about, those
worlds in which he is silently in love with Watson are closer to ours than
those in which he is not. And those are precisely the truth conditions of the
counterfactual conditional.
If that is true, then a point about literature follows. In order to know if
a counterfactual is true, it is not enough to know the scenario. We also
have to know many things about our world. In this case, we need to know
something about psychology and how people who are secretly in love typi-
cally act.
The reason for our need for background knowledge is that we do not get
single counterfactual premises. Here is an example: If I was not here, lots of
other things would also change. The space where I am now would be filled
by air molecules. People looking at the space where I am now would be look-
ing at the wall behind me. Maybe somebody would miss me, wonder where
I am, or bemoan my sudden illness. In any case, people would have lots of
different beliefs.
What exactly would have to be different, if I were not here? When we
judge what would be the case, given that I am not here, we try to stay as close
as possible to our world, i.e. we try to hold as many sentences true as pos-
sible. That is what we call a conservative judgement, and it means that
in using counterfactuals we always rely on background knowledge. David
Lewis brought up the question if in evaluating fictional truths we try to stay
as close as possible to our background knowledge, to the background beliefs
of the author, or the background beliefs of his intended readers. Actually,
I believe that there is no fixed set of background beliefs that would be ap-
propriate to all interpretations, since I believe the polyvalence thesis to be
right. But no matter which kind of background beliefs you choose, the point
remains that we use counterfactual conditionals to evaluate literary scenarios
17 You might want to argue that the sentence is not false but has no truth value,
since a precondition for its being true or false is not fulfilled, namely that Sherlock
Holmes exists. Indeed this idea has some advantages. But the point stands: We do
not use material conditionals in answering questions about the text, since no ma-
terial conditionals then would have truth value.
44 Tobias Klauk
and that in order to use counterfactual conditionals we have to rely on some

kind of background knowledge.
We can now use this piece of information to learn something about the
question of knowledge acquisition through literature. Putnam, for example,
seems to say, and certainly was read by some to say, that we cannot acquire
knowledge through literature but only hypotheses.18 Only when those hypo-
theses are tested by science do they become knowledge or are refuted. Such
a position is especially plausible if the question of knowledge acquisition
through literature is put this way: Can we learn something from literature
alone, without the help of other disciplines? It is this question that makes
the whole matter seem urgent and important. There are different sources of
knowledge; the question is if literature is one of them. And one might then
reasonably claim that we do not acquire knowledge from literature since the
author could be falsely informed, could be lying, or could simply err, etc.
But as plausible as such a position might seem at first glance, it ignores
how we evaluate literature. For we use counterfactual conditionals and, as
we have seen, in using counterfactual conditionals we always rely on back-
ground knowledge. Therefore the whole picture of literature as one source
of knowledge totally isolated from other sources is wrong from the very
start. If we rely on background knowledge to evaluate literature, we already
bring in scientific and other disciplines while reading. Therefore, the idea
that what we gain through literature are mere hypotheses that only after-
wards may be tested for their truth is false.
Of course the story does not end here. One can still ask how reliable the
knowledge is that we gain from literature. One can ask if it is different from
knowledge gained by other means. One can discuss the problems of testi-
mony and knowledge by hearsay, of unreliable authors and propaganda. But
one cannot go back to the simple picture of literature leading only to hypo-
theses. We can learn that much from our comparison between literature and
thought experiments.
18 Cf. Hilary Putnam, “Literature, Science, and Reflection”, in: New Literary History,
7/1976, pp. 483–491, p. 488.
Counterfactual Explanation in Literature and the Social Sciences 45
Daniel Dohrn (Aachen)
Counterfactual Explanation in Literature

and the Social Sciences
Some philosophers doubt that artistic fiction can contribute to knowledge:

“A story therefore enables its audience to assimilate events, not to familiar
patterns of how things happen, but rather to familiar patterns of how things feel ”.1
But in feeling a familiar “Aha. Of course”,
[…] the audience of narrative history is subject to a projective error. Having made
subjective sense of historical events, by arriving at a stable attitude toward them,
the audience is liable to feel that it has made objective sense of them, by under-
standing how they came about.2
The audience of a fictional narrative is liable to projective error.3 My aim is to
cope with these doubts, therefore I develop an account of explanation in
literary fiction. This account is based on a special variant of counterfactual
thinking, counterfictional thinking. Elaborating on the idea that literary fic-
tion may convey thought experiments, I draw a parallel to scientific thought
experiments. One cognitive function of literature is to represent explanatory
relationships under idealized circumstances. These relationships can be ex-
pressed by counterfictionals. I use this account to counter doubts about the
cognitive function of fiction and narrative in general.
I. Explanation in Fiction
When reading literary fiction, it is natural to ask such questions as “Why does
Ahab chase Moby Dick?” The right kind of answer is “because Moby has
hurt him”. In some accounts, this explanatory “because” must be sustained
by a counterfactual: “If Moby had not hurt Ahab, Ahab would not pursue
Moby”. However, this intuitively true counterfactual does not fit the stan-
dard analysis of counterfactuals:
1 J. David Velleman, “Narrative Explanation”, in: The Philosophical Review, 112/2003,

pp. 1–25, p. 19.
2 Velleman, “Explanation”, pp. 21, 20.
3 By “narrative history” Velleman here means a fictional narrative; it is not completely
clear whether he wants his misgivings to apply to historical narratives as well.
46 Daniel Dohrn
A counterfactual of the form ‘If it were that , then it would be that ’ is non-
vacuously true if some possible world where both and are true differs less
from our actual world, on balance, than does any world where is true but is
not true.4
It is completely open whether a world in which Moby has not hurt Ahab
and Ahab does not pursue Moby differs less from the actual world than any
world in which Moby has not hurt Ahab and Ahab pursues Moby. What
seems relevant to evaluating the counterfactual is closeness not to the actual
world but to the world(s) which make(s) the fiction true.5 I propose to define
counterfictionals in the same way as counterfactuals, with the difference that
the worlds which make the fiction true play the role the actual world plays in
counterfactuals:
A counterfictional of the form ‘According to the fiction F, if it were that , then it
would be that ’ is non-vacuously true if some possible world where both and
are true differs less from the world of F (i.e. the world in which every sentence Y is
true that figures in a true sentence of the form ‘in the fiction F, Y’) than does any
world where is true but is not true.6
Counterfictionals are not confined to explanation. Normally, a subjunctive
conditional in a piece of fiction is a counterfictional. And some fiction, for
instance rewriting Moby Dick so that Ahab is saved from drowning, may be
interpreted as a piece of counterfictional reasoning with regard to the world
of a fiction, in this case Moby Dick.
However, what interesting facts can be learnt from explanation in fiction?
How do we proceed from explaining in fiction to explanation by fiction?
There must be some mechanism of transferring explanation in fiction to the
actual world. Counterfictional explanatory relationships may make us aware
of corresponding counterfactual relationships. I want to draw a parallel to
the way counterfictionals in scientific thought experiments relate to counter-
factuals which figure in explanations of actual facts. In some pieces of fic-
tion, which I would like to refer to as cognitive fictions, counterfictionals re-
late to actual-world counterfactuals in just this way.
4 David Lewis, “Truth in Fiction”, in: Philosophical Papers 1, Oxford 1983, pp. 261–280,
p. 269.
5 Cf. Lewis, “Truth”, pp. 270–273, and Daniel Dohrn, “Counterfactual Narrative
Explanation”, in: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 67/2009, pp. 37–47,
pp. 41–42.
6 An intricate issue is whether in evaluating a counterfictional we interpret words
like “water” according to our use in non-fiction or according to how they are used
in the world of the fiction. For instance, if water in the world of the fiction is not
H2O, the first alternative in contrast to the latter yields that water stands for H2O.
II. Cognition by Fiction: Literature as Thought Experiment
Noël Carroll draws a parallel between “wheels of virtue” in narrative litera-

ture and philosophical thought experiments:
A virtue wheel or virtue tableau comprises a studied array of characters who both
correspond and contrast with each other along the dimension of a certain virtue
or package of virtue – where some of the characters possess the virtue in question,
or nearly so, or part of it, while others possess the virtue, but only defectively […].
Thought experiments […] by systematically varying possibly contributing factors
enable us to identify conceptual dependencies and other relations.7
Literary thought experiments like E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End imaginatively
manipulate certain variables such as, in Forster’s case, the opposite virtues of
imagination and practicality in order to consider which changes in certain de-
pendent variables result, in Forster’s case, in a more or less “complete and
virtuous way of living”.8 Our concepts of virtues and vices are thus shar-
pened: “a virtue wheel can provide the opportunity for initiating a guided
conceptual analysis or grammatical investigation”.9 Conceptual analysis may
proceed by considering purely fictional cases: “Since the knowledge in ques-
tion is conceptual, it makes no difference that the cases are fictional”.10
Carroll enumerates several functions of fictional thought experiments:
Some of the primary functions of philosophical thought experiments include: de-
feating alethic claims concerning possibility or necessity or deontic claims, […]
advancing modal claims about what is possible, and, finally motivating conceptual
distinctions.11
By varying instantiations of virtues and corresponding vices, virtue tableaux
uncover necessary or relevant conditions of applying concepts despite the
vagueness of language use in literature:
in determining whether we have found an invariant condition for some concept
or a reminder of an important variable in certain contexts – the worry about the
vagueness of literary implications can be allayed somewhat.12
Without conveying new empirical data, thought experiments advance by
reorganizing tacit knowledge in order to achieve new explicit propositional
7 Noël Carroll, “The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge”, in:
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 60/2002, pp. 3–23, p. 12.
8 Carroll, “Wheel”, p. 12.
48 Daniel Dohrn
knowledge: “philosophical thought experiments, examples, and counter-

examples function by mobilizing and reorganizing what the listener already
knows”.13
Some caveats, however, are in order here:
(i) It is not a matter of course that fictional cases are suited to solve con-
ceptual issues.
(ii) Since philosophy, according to Carroll, consists of conceptual analysis,
in order to answer philosophical questions, a literary thought experi-
ment must form part of a piece of conceptual analysis. But recently the
idea that philosophy consists of conceptual analysis has come under
severe attack.14
(iii) Carroll does not answer how we come to appreciate ideal situations like
the virtue tableau. Imagining a set of characters and actions cannot be re-
duced to conceptual analysis. Rather, a host of cognitive capacities, sen-
sory, imaginative, and conceptual, are involved. Reducing the cognitive
function of fiction to conceptual knowledge unduly narrows it down.15
So we should rather analyse Carroll’s wheel of virtues along the lines of
counterfactual and counterfictional thinking respectively: In an experimental
setting, certain variables are imaginatively manipulated in order to substanti-
ate a certain functional relationship which specifies how certain other vari-
ables change. In order to spell out such an analysis, I elaborate on the parallel
to thought experiments in the natural sciences.
III. Scientific Thought Experiments: Galilei’s Lesson
The discussion of scientific thought experiments centres on Galilei’s famous

experiment on free fall. James McAllister elucidates the dialectical situation
of Galilei’s reasoning “by which he claimed simultaneously to discredit the
Aristotelian account of free fall and establish his own law that the rate of fall
of a body is independent of the body’s mass”.16 Galilei imagines two bodies,
14 Cf. Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy, Oxford 2007.
15 “What one gets from a text is not a concept (‘justice’) or a claim (‘justice is for the
weak’) but the experience of what it would be like to be a specific individual suf-
fering a specific injustice. This is a cognitive gain.” (Scott R. Stroud, “Simulation,
Subjective Knowledge, and the Cognitive Value of Literary Narrative”, in: Journal
of Aesthetic Education, 42/2008, pp. 19–41, p. 32).
16 James McAllister, “Thought Experiments and the Belief in Phenomena”, in: Phil-
osophy of Science, 71/2004, pp. 1164–1175, p. 1168.
B1 and B2, with the masses m1 and m2, and m1 > m2, joint together so as
to yield one body B12 with mass m1 + m2. In the Aristotelian view, if B12 is
dropped under ideal conditions, it falls faster than B1 and B2 as its mass is
bigger, but its speed ranges in the middle between B1 and B2 because B12
combines their natural velocities. The problem this poses can be avoided by
regarding speed as independent of weight.17
Comparable with Carroll’s view that philosophy deals with conceptual
analysis, Tamar Gendler contends that scientific thought experiments are,
like philosophical thought experiments, designed to test our tacitly known
conceptual commitments in imaginary cases:18
What the Galilean does is provide the Aristotelian with conceptual space for a
new notion of the kind of thing natural speed might be: […] there was no room on
the Aristotelian picture for the thought that natural speed might be constant, not
varying […], that it might be dependent not on some specific features of the body
in question, but only on the fact that it is a body at all. After contemplation of the
case, there seems to be no conceptual space for the view that it might be variable.19
The disagreement between Galilei and the Aristotelian pertains to a fact
about speed: Does natural speed depend on the specific features of the body
in question or not? If Gendler is right, Galilei and the Aristotelian must take
this issue to be decided by our concept of speed. But Gendler gives no further
argument for her conceptual interpretation.
For this reason, I prefer McAllister’s analysis. The Aristotelians’ aim of
minutely describing how physical bodies behave in actual situations conflicts
with Galilei’s metaphysical background convictions:
The world contains causal factors of two kinds: phenomena and accidents. Phe-
nomena are universal and stable modes in which physical reality is articulated. Ac-
cidents, by contrast, are local, variable, and irreproducible. Whereas phenomena
account for the underlying uniformities and invariances of the world, accidents
are responsible for the great variability of natural occurrences […]. Mechanics, for
Galileo, aims solely to identify and describe phenomena; no scientific knowledge
of accidents is possible in his view.20
17 Cf. Tamar Szabó Gendler, “Galileo and the Indispensability of Scientific Thought
Experiment”, in: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49/1998,
pp. 397–424, p. 403.
18 For competing accounts cf. John D. Norton, “Are Thought Experiments Just
What You Thought?”, in: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 26/1996, pp. 333–366,
pp. 341–342; James Robert Brown, The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in
the Natural Sciences, London 1991, pp. 76–77.
19 Gendler, “Galileo”, p. 412.
20 McAllister, “Thought Experiments”, p. 1167.
50 Daniel Dohrn
The aim of a scientific experiment is to eschew the accidents and to elucidate

the phenomena:
if the influence of accidents could be reduced to zero, it would be possible to read
off the properties of the phenomenon from an occurrence. Any such occurrence,
of course, would have to be produced artificially.21
However, when this goal proves unattainable, thought experiments come

into play:
In other cases, however, […] it proved impossible to reduce the influence of acci-
dents sufficiently to exhibit a phenomenon […]. Thought experiments represent a
continuation of the process of polishing and smoothing […]. If a phenomenon is
so subtle that no concrete occurrence can be produced in which the phenomenon
is displayed in accident-free form, the phenomenon may be displayed only in an
abstract occurrence.22
Sometimes, disturbing influences cannot be completely extinguished. But

the empirically-based competence of performing “polishing and smooth-
ing” procedures of extinguishing accidents can be continued in the imagin-
ation in order to see what would happen if all accidents disappeared. The
result is a counterfactual claim which results from a – suitably constrained –
creative act of the imagination. Given the counterfactual account of fiction,
it may legitimately be called a piece of regimented fiction.
This account of thought experiments can be supplemented by what Bors-
boom, Mellenbergh, and van Heerden call “functional” thought experiments
(due to the idealizing function of thought experiments in science):
The thought experiment […] is implicitly present in many applications of frequen-
tist statistics. A long run of independent observations on the same unit does
not exist anywhere in the real world. Almost independent, yes; practically inde-
pendent, yes; truly independent, no. The notion of independent observations is
an idealization, although it often is a useful assumption (it would certainly be a
pathological case of hair-splitting to criticize the assumption of independent trials
in throwing dice). In virtually every application of inferential statistics, however,
the thought experiment is needed.23
The actual scientific practice of doing frequentist statistics with actual cases
inevitably contains an element of thought experimentation, which allows to
implement suitable idealization.

23 Denny Borsboom/Gideon J. Mellenbergh/Jap van Heerden, “Functional Thought
Experiments”, in: Synthese, 130/2002, pp. 379–387, p. 383.
One main task of thought experiments thus emerges: idealization. Thought

experiments serve as implicit or explicit definers of explanatory scientific re-
lationships as far as the latter rest on idealization.24 Behind Galilei’s thought
experiment looms Newton’s law of gravitation:
F = G m1 m2/r2
F is gravitational force, m are the masses of the bodies attracting each other, r is
distance.
This holds only for certain ideal situations which are putatively never actually
realized. The factors we “idealize away” from must be taken into account in
order to apply Newton’s law to real-life situations. But sometimes properly
appreciating an explanatory relationship requires appreciating it in an ideal
situation. We cannot always derive it from real-life situations by an explicit
and transparent procedure of subtracting the possibly infinitely many fea-
tures of these situations which interfere with it such as to yield the ideal case.
We must be able to distinguish interfering conditions from ideal conditions,
those, that is, obtaining in the ideal situation. Among the latter are those that
are explained by the relationship at stake.
Without exerting abilities which guide our sense of what to polish away
and what to retain, what to count as interfering conditions or as ideal back-
ground conditions, and what to count as intrinsic to the explanatory rela-
tionship at stake, we often would not be able to establish the latter. What is
usually labelled ceteris paribus conditions is intimately related to thought ex-
periments, which allow us to deal with these conditions without completely
spelling them out. One cannot be required to specify ideal background con-
ditions completely in a thought experiment. But perhaps one must be dis-
posed to specify, if challenged, any single ideal condition and the ways it
could be missed. For instance, in the case of Newton’s law, one could cash
in the requirement that the masses m1 and m2 concentrate in mathematical
points and so on.
But in how far can thought experiments provide an advantage compared
to using tacit knowledge to deal with explanatory relationships in real situ-
ations? Explicit thought experiments are only the tip of an iceberg consisting
of implicit thought experimenting. When striving for knowledge, we con-
24 This result contrasts with Gendler’s concession: “Even if the development of

Newtonian mechanics relied on a series of crucial thought experiments, its text-
book presentation might well establish particular conclusions on the basis of more
conventional forms of argument” (“Galileo”, p. 399). It may be impossible to even
understand principles like the gravitational law without performing thought ex-
periments.
52 Daniel Dohrn
tinuously exert the idealizing and discriminating abilities I described. A

thought experiment is not merely a result of polishing. Imaginative polishing
already is exerting a thought experiment. Explicit thought experiments only
make these processes available to public discourse. Sometimes this is neces-
sary in order to trigger a process of publicly recalibrating certain disposi-
tions – abilities which allow to distinguish interfering conditions, idealized
background conditions, and the features which directly make up a certain ex-
planatory relationship. The explicit thought experiment serves as a bench-
mark for calibration.25
The calibration process shows how we adapt implicit abilities of thought
experimenting, although it cannot show how we arrive at them in the first
place. They can be trained in the normal way of gathering inductive evi-
dence: Upon encountering series of slightly varying real cases, we come to
appreciate certain patterns by imaginatively continuing them. Whence do we
know what accidents must be polished away and what features must be re-
tained? I suggest that upon empirically encountering a series of slightly vary-
ing real cases, we develop a certain sense of similarity, which is exerted and
trained by continuing the series in imagination until an ideal situation is
reached.
If explanatory relationships are confined to ideal situations, how can they
be confirmed by evidence which does not come from such situations? And
how can they in turn apply to other situations which are not ideal? It must
be required that they apply to non-ideal situations, but only among many
other factors. In order to vindicate them, their role in non-ideal situations
must be distinguished from the role of other factors. The process of smooth-
ing and polishing must allow one to discern and to anticipate the role of an
explanatory relationship in non-ideal situations. This is best achieved in a
continuous series of slightly changing non-ideal situations, which is continued
by the idealization process. This series allows to feed empirical evidence into
the thought experiment. For an explanatory relationship to play its role in
explaining real situations, the process of smoothing and polishing must be
reversible in order to get back from the ideal situation, in which a relationship
holds perfectly, to real situations, in which it yields one explanatory factor
25 There is a parallel to Daniel Cohnitz’s “view that, in fact, the function of thought
experiments in philosophy is to prepare the common ground upon which theories
to resolve philosophical puzzles are to be constructed” (“Poor Thought Experi-
ments. A Reply to Peijnenburg and Atkinson”, in: Journal for General Philosophy
of Science, 37/2006, pp. 373–392, p. 389). Cohnitz, however, restricts his view to
coordinating philosophical concepts, whereas I also emphasize coordinating
implicit dispositional knowledge.
among others. Again, this is best achieved in a series of slight changes from
ideal conditions to non-ideal ones. Both series must be guided by the implicit
abilities which guide idealization.
IV. Scientific Thought Experiments, Interventionism,

and Counterfactuals
According to the interventionist theory of explanation, an explanatory rela-

tionship must hold over a certain range of interventions, manipulating an
explanans variable which can be stated by counterfactuals.26 For instance, my
car going faster can be explained thus: The car allows a certain range of vel-
ocities depending on a certain range of interventions on the gas pedal. The
car goes faster because I press the gas pedal more strongly. If I did not press
the gas pedal more strongly, the car would not go faster.27 However, these
counterfactuals must usually relate to the ideal situation in which the rela-
tionship obtains. Of course, there must be counterfactuals specifying with
sufficient accuracy what would happen if some real situation were somehow
different to allow for fruitful and testable interventions. But still, counterfac-
tual thought pertaining not only to real-life situations but to ideal conditions
may play an indispensable role in scientific theory-building: “Heuristically,
we might think of interventions as manipulations that might be carried out
by a human being in an idealized experiment”.28
According to McAllister,
Galilei’s thought experiment merely establishes that, if the rate of fall of simple and com-
pound bodies were a function of their total mass alone, then the rate of fall of bodies would neces-
sarily be independent of their mass. Ours is not such a world: the rate of fall of bodies in
our world is a function of many variables.29
Galilei merely establishes what would be the case in the ideal situation. Thus,
there are three difficulties which are solved by my account of thought experi-
ments:
(i) Often descriptions of real-life situations and counterfactuals pertain-
ing to interventions in real-life situations will leave underdetermined
26 Cf. Christopher Hitchcock/James Woodward, “Explanatory Generalizations,

Part I: A Counterfactual Account”, in: Nous, 37/2003, pp. 1–24, p. 1.
27 The notion of intervention employed here is very broad: The change does not
have to be brought about by the experimenter. Within limits, it may even violate
natural laws.
28 Hitchcock/Woodward, “Generalizations”, p. 9.
29 McAllister, “Thought Experiments”, p. 1171, italics added here for emphasis.
54 Daniel Dohrn
what would happen in ideal circumstances. If a theory is formulated

with regard to such ideal circumstances, it is necessary to have a pro-
cedure of figuring out what would happen under such circumstances.
(ii) Since ideal situations usually do not really obtain, some counterfactuals
describing interventions with regard to them must rather be counter-
fictionals. For instance, I imagine an ideal situation in which Newton’s
law perfectly holds: The masses m1 and m2, given their distance r1,
attract each other with force F1. I have suggested that the result of this
imagination is a piece of fiction. Interventionism might require me to
imagine what would happen in this ideal situation upon an interven-
tion that changed the distance from r1 to r2. To evaluate this, we need a
counterfictional: The possible world in which the ideal initial conditions
hold must play the role the actual world plays in evaluating normal
counterfactuals.
(iii) I disagree with McAllister. In order to attain explanations of actual facts,
Galilei’s experiment does not only have to reveal what would happen
under ideal circumstances but to give rise to a procedure which leads
from scientific counterfictionals to counterfactuals. The polishing
process yields a continuous series of real-life experimental situations,
which is further traced in the imagination in order to ultimately attain
an ideal situation. In the same vein, a continuous series of slightly var-
ied scenarios leads back from possible idealized situations to real-life
situations. Abilities which guide the polishing process must also allow
to reverse this process. Idealized situations give rise to counterfic-
tionals, which describe variations relative to idealized situations, real
situations to corresponding counterfactuals, which describe variations
relative to real situations. The resulting correspondences between
counterfictionals and counterfactuals allow for the former to sustain
the latter. We might devise a continuous series of counterfictionals
with regard to less and less ideal worlds until counterfactuals are
reached which bear explanations of actual facts.
V. Thought Experiments from Science to Fiction and Philosophy
The virtue tableau Forster presents by Carroll’s lights can be described as an

ideal situation for testing a certain relationship between virtue, i.e. the bal-
ancing of imagination and practicality, and human flourishing. Forster’s indi-
vidual protagonists may be seen as the values an input variable assumes upon
intervention in a thought experiment. The better the balance an individual
strikes, the greater the value of the explained variable human flourishing; the
more an individual inclines to one extreme, the farther the explained variable
diverges in one direction from its maximum. Note that it would be prepos-
terous to claim that such a relationship lies in our concept of virtue. As in
science, Forster starts from an empirical observation – his experience of life
and society – and smoothes and polishes away interfering conditions in
order to achieve an ideal relationship which explains human behaviour under
suitable background conditions. He invites us to adapt our capacities of
smoothing and polishing in our apprehending social situations and to re-
verse his thought experiment so as to apply to real situations.30
Philosophical thought experiments can also be interpreted along these
lines: Carroll’s virtue tableau is an ethical thought experiment. As an alter-
native, consider Gettier examples. The definition of knowledge as justified
true belief can be seen as an explanatory relationship. One knows that p in
virtue of justifiably and truly believing that p (of course, the relationship is
not a causal one and it does not compete with a causal explanation). This
relationship allegedly holds over all normal cases of true belief and justifi-
cation.31 The intervention variable is the justification.32 Gettier’s example
can be described by a counterfactual which states a case of true belief which
is clearly justified under suitable background conditions, but which does
not amount to knowledge: For instance, I know that the faculty’s dean pos-
sesses a Ford because I have seen her buying one. But consider the following
counterfactual variation: If, unbeknownst to me, she had bought the Ford
for her daughter but happened to possess another one herself, I would have a
justified belief without knowledge.
But is there a polishing procedure comparable to Galilei’s? It is easy
to add surrounding conditions which destroy the evidential achievement
30 Dostoevsky’s literary refutation of deterministic hedonist psychology is an

example of a destructive thought experiment in fiction.
31 Two cases must be distinguished: Firstly, take away justification, and knowledge
will be taken away. Secondly, however ways of justification change, when there is
justification, there will be knowledge.
32 This squares nicely with Sorensen’s general definition of the thought experiment:
“An experiment is a procedure for answering or raising a question about the
relationship between variables by varying one (or more) of them and tracking any
response by the other or others” (Roy Sorensen, Thought Experiments, New York/
Oxford 1992, p. 186). Sorensen also states that “[a] thought experiment is an ex-
periment […] that purports to achieve its aims without the benefit of execution”
(Sorensen, Thought Experiments, p. 205). However, it seems doubtful that thought
experiments are not executed. They are executed in the mind by conceiving a situ-
ation in which the respective variable is varied.
56 Daniel Dohrn
of Gettier cases that previously were in good standing: “In philosophy,

examples can almost never be described in complete detail. An extensive
background must be taken for granted”.33 In order to eschew such condi-
tions, some idealized thought-experimental setting might be required. Philo-
sophical thought experiments proceed by way of polishing, too. They repre-
sent an individual case, a concrete experimental setting, but without actually
performing the experiment. This might be the reason why Gettier, like Gali-
lei, presented his reasoning with regard to a concrete case and not as a gen-
eral argument. So far, we do not have to assume that when we perform a
thought experiment, we embark on analysing our concepts. Of course, re-
shaping concepts of virtue or knowledge may go hand in hand with devising
a thought experiment. Yet, in any case, it is by no means clear that mere con-
ceptual knowledge is sufficient for evaluating scenarios like virtue tableaux
or Gettier cases.
VI. Fact, Fiction, and Narrative in the Social Sciences
The role of explanation in the social and historical sciences is beset by two
main problems:
(i) the problem of laws,
(ii) non-cognitivism about narrative form.
I argue that these problems can be assuaged by the account proposed.
I begin with outlining how interventionism allows to cope with the problem
of laws.
Interventionism and the Problem of Laws in the Social Sciences

An advantage of the interventionist account of explanation is that it allows to
avoid the problem of laws. While laws usually are formulated as universally
quantified statements “All A are B”, interventionist explanatory relationships
can be confined to a particular object, provided there is a suitably stable func-
tional relationship specifying how this very object behaves under different
33 Williamson, Philosophy, p. 185. When students are asked to consider the numbers
problem (faced with the tragic choice to either save one person or three other per-
sons from death, how are we to decide?), they tend to bring in additional assump-
tions about the individual persons at stake: What if one person were Jack the
Ripper and another Florence Nightingale? It proves difficult to convince them
that that this obscures the original problem.
interventions.34 The interventionist account is also flexible concerning the

range of interventions within which a relationship must be stable.35
Consider Dray’s famous example: “At the end of his life, Louis XIV be-
came unpopular because he pursued policies which were detrimental to the
national interests of France”.36 Dray doubts that a suitable covering-law
explanation can be devised. According to the interventionist, we do not have
to tailor a law. We merely have to consider a suitable range of counterfactual
variations of the following sort: “Had Louis XIV not pursued politics which
were detrimental to the national interest of France, he would not have been
unpopular”.
The high road to evaluating this counterfactual is the following thought
experiment: Imagine an intervention on the policy of Louis XIV under suit-
able conditions. Now his policy did not damage the national interest of
France. Ask yourself if Louis is likely to be unpopular in this scenario. If he
is not, this might be sufficient to substantiate the claim that his detrimental
policies were crucial to his loss of popularity. No laws have to be invoked.
Narrative (Non-)Cognitivism
According to the “naïve” notion of science, it represents things as they are,
and it provides true explanations of them. Especially in the aftermath of
Hayden White and Louis Mink’s influential metahistorical studies, the role of
narratives has served to question to the validity of this view for the historical
and social sciences. Like Velleman, White insists that the emplotment of his-
torical facts in a narrative serves to create a feeling of familiarity.37 It is com-
pletely open whether this feeling correlates with a cognitive achievement. One
problem is that White views historical narratives only as convincing if they
seem true: “The rhetorical force of historical prose usually depends upon the
single solution, the true presentation of the past”.38 When we look through
the mechanisms of historical prose and realize that it is not true, we should
come to deem it unsatisfying. For this reason, White’s view is not reflection-
proof. Once we adopt it, we should cease to accept historical narratives.
I want to use this account to counter non-cognitivism by exposing the
cognitive function of narrative. Conjoining facts and well-regimented fiction

36 William Dray, Laws and Explanation in History, Oxford 1957, p. 25.
37 Cf. Björn Eriksson, “Understanding Narrative Explanation”, in: Croatian Journal of
Philosophy, 13/2005, pp. 317–344, pp. 337–338.
38 Hans Kellner, Language and Historical Representation, Madison 1989, p. 45.
58 Daniel Dohrn
is part and parcel of much work in science. Uncovering elements of fiction

and artistic writing in history and the social sciences as such does not destroy
their credence, for elaborating explanatory relationships is partly fictional in
that it draws on idealizing thought experiments. Drawing on the distinction
of basic and thick narratives, I demonstrate the cognitive function of basic
narratives. Then I show how this function is transmitted to thick narratives.
VII. Basic and Thick Narratives
“Basic narrative” refers to whatever we would recognize as a story told.

Probably a necessary but not sufficient condition is that a narrative renders
a causal connection between at least two events.39 “I went to the bakery in
order to buy a piece of bread” links two events: my going to the bakery, and
my buying a piece of bread. It is a basic but not a thick narrative. My going
to the bakery is a causal condition of my buying a piece of bread. Thick nar-
ratives are basic narratives enriched and embellished by the ways of story-
telling established in our culture.
Drawing on psychological evidence, I suggest a naturalistic view of basic
narratives. They are privileged as they serve the cognitive task of processing
information about one’s environment in order to efficiently deal with it.
It is a fact well-established by developmental psychology that we are better in
dealing with information if it conforms to typical basic narrative structures.40
Arguably, one main cognitive task in human development is to develop
a sufficiently comprehensive mental map of causal networks to deal with
surrounding macroscopic objects, especially other people.41 Narratives are
natural forms of storing and processing certain informational input, namely
facts of individual and social life. They make salient what is relevant to acting
and anticipating the actions of others. They impose a relevance structure on
causal maps. In doing so, they simplify these maps. This is why they may oc-
casionally mislead.
This point does not as a matter of course transfer to the more ambitious
thick narratives which are culturally shaped. Yet, narratives in the historical
and social sciences achieve their persuasive force mainly due to embedding
39 Cf. Noël Carroll, Beyond Aesthetics, New York 2001, pp. 118–133.
40 Cf. Rolf Zwaan, “Situation Models: The Mental Leap Into Imagined Worlds”, in:
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8/1999, pp. 15–18.
41 Cf. Alison Gopnik/Clark Glymour/David Sobel/Laura Schulz/Tamar Kushnir/
David Danks, “A Theory of Causal Learning in Children: Causal Maps and Bayes
Nets”, in: Psychological Review, 111/2004, pp. 3–32.
basic narratives. We may ask why the conventions guiding thick narratives
have developed. One answer is that they try to capture what is especially rel-
evant from a human standpoint. To put it with Lewis Coser citing Henry
James: “there is no impression of life, no manner of seeing it and feeling it, to
which the plan of the novelist may not offer a place”.42
The novelist’s plan may serve to organize impressions of life, seeing, and
feeling.43 To be sure, I do not want to deny that literature often liberates
us from the bounds of cognitive tasks and rationality. Often artistic form
may be used as a tool of such liberation. And often it may be used to convey
prejudice or satisfy a simplifying sense of fit. But so far nothing rules out
that thick narratives may serve, among others, objective cognitive tasks. This
rudimentary account gives rise to a classification of narratives along the de-
marcation between fact and fiction.
VIII. Factual, Facto-Fictional, and Fictional Narratives
Mink insists that thick narratives are usually underdetermined by evidence:

just as evidence does not dictate which story is to be constructed, so it does not
bear on the preference of one story to another. When it comes to the narrative
treatment of an ensemble of interrelationships, we credit the imagination or the
sensibility or the insight of the individual historian.44
However, we praise the successful historian’s “imagination or sensibility or
insight” as giving rise to a cognitive achievement. Thick narratives may insert
pieces of fiction into historical knowledge. These pieces of fiction usually
invest facts with further structure. In doing so, they may feed these facts into
a thought experiment. One function of the latter is to fill the gaps in our
historical knowledge by ideal conditions. To be sure, the situation is differ-
42 Lewis Coser, Sociology through Literature, Englewood Cliffs 1972, p. xv.

43 Consider Eriksson’s example, the murder of Olof Palme: “The murder lacks
explanation […]. Nevertheless many Swedes are in agreement that the event was
part of a tragedy. But this means that we have, in White’s sense, an explanation of
the tragedy. This is unsatisfactory” (Eriksson, “Understanding”, p. 337). Consider
someone who only knows about the murder of Palme that many Swedes regard it
as a tragedy. Even this sparse information allows her to infer a lot about Palme’s
role in Swedish social life, potential causes of the murder, and so on. Otherwise
tragedy would not be the appropriate form to render the murder.
44 Louis Mink, “Narrative Form as a Cognitive Instrument”, in: Robert Canary/
Henry Kozicky (eds.), The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understand-
ing, Madison 1978, pp. 129–149, pp. 144–145.
60 Daniel Dohrn
ent from the Galilei case. We want to understand an individual event, but in
order to do so, the individual event must be considered as normal as possible
within the constraints imposed by known fact. Normality here is character-
ized with regard to a process of polishing those features that distinguish the
case from a paradigmatic application of folk causal reasoning. The filling
procedure allows to match actual facts on the one hand and candidates for
explanatory relationships and the ideal conditions of their obtaining on the
other hand. In filling the gaps in the situation of Louis XIV as we know it
with ideal conditions, we assess how probable it is under such circumstances
that his detrimental behaviour caused his unpopularity. Given basic nar-
ratives are supplemented so as to correspond to further, more demanding
explanatory relationships.
The historical narratives I have discussed combine fact and fiction. There
is another sort of narrative which eschews fictional parts: “purely factual
narrative”, as in a protocol. There are also “pure” thought experiments in the
social sciences, which are not strictly bound by actual facts but partially revise
them so as to yield ideal conditions, as Galilei’s thought experiments did.
To R. G. Collingwood, historiography as opposed to fiction is bound by evi-
dence and consistency.45 I suggest to somewhat blur Collingwood’s distinc-
tion. There may be fiction which revises evidence and nevertheless con-
tributes to understanding history. And as scientists may consider different
polishing procedures leading to inconsistent explanatory relationships, his-
toriographers may supplement given facts by several mutually inconsistent
pieces of fiction in order to explore by thought experiment how putative ex-
planatory relationships fare. The inconsistency arises from supplementing
the same facts by diverging ideal conditions. All these seemingly disparate as-
pects – a keen strive for accuracy, fictional elements, mutually inconsistent
fictions – can be found combined in historiography, for instance in the work
of the ancient Chinese historian Ssu-ma Ch’ien.46
A salient contemporary example is Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, which arguably
“has contributed to wider public understanding of development in ways that
no academic writing ever has”.47 Ali acknowledges her direct inspiration by
45 Cf. Robin George Collingwood, The Idea of History, Oxford 1946, p. 246.
46 Grant Hardy, “Can an Ancient Chinese Historian Contribute to Modern Western
Theory? The Multiple Narratives of Ssu-ma Ch’ien. History and Theory”, in:
Studies in the Philosophy of History, 33/1994, pp. 20–38, p. 34.
47 David Lewis/Dennis Rodgers/Michael Woolcock, “The Fiction of Development:
Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge”, in: Journal of
Developmental Studies, 44/2008, pp. 198–216, p. 208.
social research about Bangladeshi women workers.48 We may see Ali’s nar-
rative as a thought-experimental supplementation of empirical developmen-
tal science. Ali describes the counterfactual ideal-typical fates of two sisters
working in Dhaka and London. Picturing two sisters makes one prone to im-
agine their fates switched. It allows to abstract from certain background and
personal differences and to focus on the general social structure.49
48 Cf. Lewis/Rodgers/Woolcock, “Fiction of Development”, p. 208.

49 This view of narrative as continuous with fiction does not have to be opposed to
more scientific tendencies in the social sciences, for instance in economics. The
openness of narrative for such tendencies can be seen in the concept of analytic nar-
rative (cf. Avner Greif, “Self-Enforcing Political Systems and Economic Growth:
Late Medieval Genoa”, in: Robert Bates/Avner Greif/Margaret Levi/Jean-Laurent
Rosenthal/Barry Weingast (eds.), Analytic Narratives, Princeton 1998, pp. 23–63).
62 Miko Elwenspoek
Miko Elwenspoek (Freiburg/Enschede)
Counterfactual Thinking in Physics
Counterfactual thinking plays a key role in research in physics, and, I believe,

in research in all natural sciences. In this contribution I will describe a
few examples of counterfactual thinking: how it is used, the power of this
method of inquiry, and the types of results that it can achieve.
A brief account of the way physicists carry out research will be given, and
three main types of questions will be identified. Two of them will be used to
illustrate the value of counterfactual thinking: one example regarding astron-
omy, and another example dealing with electromagnetic forces. The latter
might be quite tough for non-physicists. The last and longest part of this
paper gives an analysis of counterfactual situations; it deals with the question
of what the world would look like if the constants of nature had different
values. This discussion leads to the conclusion that even minor changes in
these constants would lead to uninhabitable worlds.
I. How Physicists Work
Before I discuss counterfactual thinking in physics, I want to describe what

it is that physicists actually do. Physicists have a method of inquiry that puts
them, in a sense, into a most comfortable position. They have equations that
can be used to examine a situation and predict what would happen in this situ-
ation. The results of these examinations are constantly compared to what can
be seen in the real world. This is most often done in experiments, but there are
many cases when the experiments are impossible because of current technol-
ogy, because they are impossible in principle, or even undesirable. The gen-
eral method in physics and in other so-called “exact sciences” is to develop a
quantitative theory (that is why these sciences are called “exact”) and to com-
pare the predictions of the theory with what can be seen in the real world.1
1 This situation also has uncomfortable aspects, in particular, not everything that
we find interesting can be cast into equations, and not everything can be quanti-
fied or measured in a sensible manner. Physics deals only with those aspects of
the world for which the quantitative method is adequate. It appears, however, that
the realm of physics is expanding, and that the method can now be applied to situ-
ations that had been thought inaccessible earlier.
Counterfactual Thinking in Physics 63
The power of this method lies in the possibility of quantitative comparison:

The theory does not only predict that – as an example – there is light, but
how much light there is, its color, its polarization, its speed, the interrelation
between speed, wavelength and frequency, its interaction with matter, and so
on. Comparisons can be done very precisely, and if the results of the theory
do not match the observation, something is wrong: the theory, the observa-
tion, or both. Theory and observation go hand in hand. Observations give
rise to changes of a theory, to further refinements of it, or to its abandon-
ment. Moreover, the theory helps to design experiments, to interpret the ob-
servations, and it calls for new observations.
There are three exciting situations for physicists:
(i) When a critical test of a theory is possible. The theory results from a
large number of experiments and observations and makes predictions
about previously unknown facts (if the theory does not predict new
facts it just describes what has been observed and is not very interest-
ing). In the next section there is an example involving a comparison of
Kepler’s empirical laws and Newton’s theory of gravitation.
(ii) When the critical tests yield a result that shows that the theory is
wrong, that is, when all possible errors from the tests have been exam-
ined and eliminated, but a discrepancy remains between the theoretical
prediction and the observational results. This situation is encountered
constantly in physics. The real world is so complex that in nearly all
situations the theory cannot be used directly because the complexity
makes exact calculations impossible. Therefore one has to rely on ap-
proximations. In most situations it is not clear beforehand what the
best route and the most appropriate approximation is.
(iii) When one detects internal inconsistencies within a theory. Below I will
describe one of the most famous examples in the history of physics.
The interesting point here is that counterfactual thinking is a key method to
tackle the problems in all these situations – albeit, or, maybe, because it is
usually not really known in physics what is counterfactual and what is not.
Counterfactual Thinking as a Method of Inquiry

Generally, scientists try to make sense of the world, and they go to great
lengths to be as precise and critical as possible. They collect all available data
and try to find rules that fit all data. To do this, they work with experiments,
measurements, mathematical theories, and computer simulations. Counter-
factual thinking is an indispensable tool for their analysis. Basically, it
consists of confronting the consequences of our ideas with observations,
64 Miko Elwenspoek
extending our ideas over the domain where observations are technically
possible with current technology, and searching for inconsistencies of vari-
ous aspects in the whole set of our ideas. To set the stage, counterfactual
thinking of several types can be defined here as pondering a problem in
physics by asking the “what if ” question in the sense that the “if ” refers to a
statement believed to be incorrect, outside the range where ideas are thought
to be applicable, or outside the range accessible for observation.
A meteorologist once told me that he would like to stop the revolution
of the earth just to see how the climate would change. This is physically
impossible, but a simulation on a computer, or the examination of the
equations that describe the climate, is possible, although quite challenging.
Of course, meteorologists work with simulations – which are counterfactual,
because the earth is spinning – since they are very curious as to whether their
theories (e.g. no cyclones on a non-spinning world) yield reasonable results,
and they want to test the predictions. In this example we see that counterfac-
tual thinking can, in principle, be used to test theories. The theory is thought
to be valid generally. For a certain situation, when a certain aspect of the situ-
ation is changed, the theory accurately predicts the results of the change:
One can test this prediction in an experiment.
In a sense, every experiment is in itself counterfactual, as in an experiment
an environment is constructed that does not actually exist. When Galileo
performed his experiments on free fall, he tried to eliminate all forces
(except the force we now call gravity) acting on a mass which was dropped
from some height. He was lucky because the drag of air becomes appreci-
able only at rather high speeds and for small masses. Galileo’s experiments
studied the free fall of heavy bodies from a small height. He inferred that all
masses at any speed are accelerated by gravity in the same way. When masses
fall from a given height, they all attain exactly the same speed, and the fall
takes exactly the same time for all masses. His claim was that this would
happen if only gravity worked on the mass in question. However, to perfectly
conduct the experiment, the air around the mass has to be removed in order
to eliminate friction. Galileo could not do this, but now we can: We can
prepare an artificial world to perform the experiment in. In this example we
also see that a rule can be discovered (all masses tested attain the same
acceleration) and extended to situations where the test cannot be performed.
Since the formulation of the rule extrapolates beyond what can be seen in
practice – the “factual” –, the rule itself in its strict formulation is literally
counterfactual.
II. Kepler’s Laws and Newton’s Theory of Gravitation
A famous example of the first situation in the list above is Newton’s theory
of gravitation (shown in fig. 1).2 Newton was able to reproduce Kepler’s ob-
servations about the motion of the planets. Kepler found that planets move
along ellipses around the sun, with the sun located in one of the two focuses
of the ellipse. Newton’s theory made a similar prediction: Planets do revolve
along an ellipse, but so does the sun. The figure schematically represents how
the orbits of earth (top left, dark) and sun (right, light) move along ellipses
(the large one is the earth’s, the small one is the sun’s orbit) with a common
center of mass (the black dot inside the sun). A well-defined mathematical
point, the center of mass – not the sun – is at the focus. Because of the enor-
mous difference in masses between the sun and the planets, the sun is very
close to the center of mass. It was quite difficult to confirm this particular
prediction, but we know now that it – and many other predictions which
neither Kepler nor Newton thought of – is correct. The precision of the
measurement of the position of stars is now such that the slight wobble
of those stars having planets can be detected. This way several hundred so-
called exoplanets have been found. In this example, the aspect of counter-
factual thinking lies in the extension of the theory of gravitation beyond ob-
servations technologically possible in Newton’s time.
Figure 1: © Miko Elwenspoek
III. Maxwell’s Theory of Light
Sometimes counterfactual thinking leads to more than the test of a theory,

namely to the discovery of elements of a new theory. We are held together
by so-called electromagnetic forces. These forces are described by a set of
2 Cf. Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, London 1992.

66 Miko Elwenspoek
equations James Clerk Maxwell wrote down for the first time, which is why
they are named after him.3 In fact, Maxwell added only one little piece to
equations that had been found earlier, but this piece turned out to be essen-
tial. To get the flavor of the story some explanation of these equations is
necessary – although it is not necessary to actually write them down.
All matter is the source of gravitational forces and all matter feels these
forces. Additionally, visible matter is the source of a second fundamental
force. Visible matter is composed of atoms which have a very compact nu-
cleus surrounded by electrons. Electrons repel each other as do nuclei, but
nuclei and electrons attract each other. We say, quite arbitrarily, that electrons
carry a negative, and nuclei a positive charge.4 Charges cause two types of
forces to which they also react. There is a force between two charges that
works in a straight line connecting the charges. When the charges are at rest,
this force is called the electrostatic force. A moving charge additionally causes
magnetic forces, which in turn act only on moving charges. In general, both
forces are present, and what is seen as the magnetic and what is seen as the
electric force depends on the observer. The phenomena of electric and mag-
netic forces are so interlinked that the whole subject area is called electro-
magnetism.
Mathematically, these forces are described by an abstract concept called a
field. In figure 2 two types of fields are shown: On the left is a field with field
lines starting at a source (a mass or a charge); on the right is a field with lines
without an end. In this case, a current through a straight wire coming out of
the page (in the center) is surrounded by a magnetic field similar to the one
shown.5 One can envision a field as something which changes the proper-
ties of space everywhere: If there is an electromagnetic field at some point
in space then a charge at this point would feel a force. A familiar field is the
gravitational field at the surface of the earth. I expect that a mass falls down
whenever I let it go. To visualize a field one draws lines parallel to the direc-
tion of the field. In principle, there are two kinds of such lines: those that
begin and end somewhere, and those that do not begin or end anywhere.6
The latter ones form closed loops.
3 Cf. David J. Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics, Upper Saddle River 1999.

4 We could also have called the charges white and black, high and low, a and b. Inciden-
tally, plus and minus turns out to be handy.
5 The arrows represent the field strength at the points where they start; their length
represents the strength, and the orientation shows the direction of the field.
The lines are everywhere parallel to the field, and the density of the lines is related
to the field strength.
6 Fields may “end” at infinity, but infinity is not somewhere.
Maxwell’s equations describe these aspects of the electric and magnetic

fields in relation to the charges and their velocities. There is one aspect of a
force field in which a field starts at a charge and ends at a charge. This is quite
analogous to a machine gun: bullets start at the gun and end where they hit.
Loosely speaking, an electric field made by a charge (at rest or moving) starts
at a positive charge and ends at a negative charge. (The field shown at the
left-hand side of figure 2 is that of the positive spherical charge in its vicinity,
all other charges are very far away.) A magnetic field is very different. It is
generated by a moving charge, and the field starts and ends nowhere; the
field forms closed lines. A wire through which a current flows creates a mag-
netic field that winds in circles around the wire (see right-hand side of fig. 2).
However, electric fields can also be generated by changing the value or di-
rection of a magnetic field. This happens in generators, where a magnet is
forced to rotate (e.g. by connecting the magnet to the wheel of a bicycle).
The resulting electric fields are similar to magnetic fields, as they have no be-
ginning and no end. In some cases they form closed circular loops. In order
to let the lamp of the bicycle glow, a wire is wrapped around the rotating
magnet, the charges in the wire are forced by the electric field which is gen-
erated by the changing magnetic field, a current flows, and the lamp glows.
Maxwell discovered that, in order to get a consistent theory, a chang-
ing electric field must also generate a magnetic field in the same way that
a changing magnetic field generates an electric field. Inconsistency occurs
when the magnetic field is calculated in a situation where a current carrying
wire is interrupted. Then there are two ways to calculate the magnetic field,
which have different results.
68 Miko Elwenspoek
The equations he published in 1864 can be put into words as follows:

– Ending electric field lines are connected to charges.
– Not ending electric field lines are connected to changing magnetic
fields.
– Ending magnetic field lines do not exist.
– Not ending magnetic field lines are connected to moving charges and to
changing electric fields.
Maxwell’s addition is printed in italics. This little addition has enormous
consequences. Most importantly, it predicts the existence of light, and it de-
scribes all the properties of light that had been detected at the time when
Maxwell was working. When combined with quantum mechanics, it predicts
even properties of light that had not yet been detected at that time. All mod-
ern inventions made long after Maxwell’s death – including radio, TV, wire-
less mobile phones, optical telecommunication – are based on these four
equations. In all cases where a precision experiment is possible, the predic-
tions hold true. For example, the theory says that the speed of light is inde-
pendent of the speed of both the source and the receiver, and, in a vacuum,
the speed of light is independent of its color. These predictions turn out
to be true with an experimental uncertainty of one in one hundred billion
(1020).7 Figure 3 shows a graphic representation of an electromagnetic wave.
The arrows indicate the orientation and the magnitude of the fields. The
electric field (solid lines) points in the vertical direction, the magnetic field
(dashed lines) in the horizontal direction.
7 For a discussion, cf. John David Jackson, Classical Electrodynamics, Hoboken

1999.
Let me stress that there was no experimental evidence that forced Max-
well to add the extra term. On the contrary, the first reactions of his col-
leagues were skeptical, and, at this time, it was experimentally very difficult
to measure the effects of the extra term. It took until 1887 for Heinrich
Hertz to show that Maxwell’s theory was correct in its description of elec-
tromagnetic waves. Actually, Maxwell’s addition was not based on anything
known: it was a counterfactual theory at that time. The theory is the result of
the critical analysis of the ideas on electric and magnetic forces, which turned
out to be inconsistent.
There is an oddity in the equations in that they are asymmetric. There
is no fundamental reason known to us why ending magnetic field lines do
not exist. To put it differently, there are no magnetic charges. Magnetic poles
only exist in pairs. A piece of iron has a magnetic north pole and a magnetic
south pole. Cutting the iron into pieces does not deliver isolated poles.
Instead all newly created pieces have north and south poles. Maxwell’s
equations provide a neat explanation of this fact: The magnetic fields are the
result of current loops, analogous to a current-carrying wire in a closed loop.
The poles are located on either side of the loop. In this analogy cutting the
loop into pieces must be done along the loop (otherwise the loop would not
be closed anymore). This delivers two thinner loops with two poles. Thus,
the poles will always come in pairs.
If there were magnetic charges, the equations would look like this:
– Ending electric field lines are connected to charges.
– Not ending electric field lines are connected to moving magnetic charges and
to changing magnetic fields.
– Ending magnetic field lines are connected to magnetic charges.
– Not ending magnetic field lines are connected to moving charges and
by changing electric fields.
This is a counterfactual theory. It is deliberately counterfactual. It explores
the consequences of what would change in our world if the theory were dif-
ferent. One of the great physicists who investigated these ([wrong] counter-
factual) equations was Nobel laureate Paul Dirac. He discovered that if there
was one single magnetic charge somewhere in the universe, both electric and
magnetic charges would occur only in lumps. This means that both types of
charge would be composed of elementary charges that could not be divided.
Without magnetic charges Maxwell’s equations say nothing about lumped
charges. But charges do come in lumps. Dirac assumed something counter-
factual, and reached a factual result that had been previously unexplained.
Physicists like magnetic charges because they explain something very basic.
No one has ever found a magnetic charge. Once, in a balloon experiment,
70 Miko Elwenspoek
something was found with the right signature,8 but only once, so it is very
probable that this event was an error.9 Very recently it was found that in a
certain type of material, called spin ice, the magnetic properties are such that
it is as if there were magnetic monopoles.10 However, these are not elemen-
tary particles but the result of the collective behavior of moving electrons.
Magnetic charges play a part in the theory of elementary particle physics,11
and theories beyond the so-called standard model. These theories predict
that magnetic charges were generated in the early universe in enormous
numbers and with large masses (for elementary particles). It would have
been impossible to miss them if they were around, and yet, they do not exist
now. Allan Guth came up with a brilliant idea of a brief period of very fast
expansion in the very early universe that diluted the density of the magnetic
charges so that now there is, maybe, a single magnetic charge in the observ-
able universe. Guth’s idea has other attractive consequences for cosmology
and is, therefore, taken quite seriously. In fact, all the data we have now sup-
ports the idea of a period of extremely fast expansion. This idea is now
known by the name of cosmic inflation. This will be discussed further in the
next section. So Dirac possibly was right: Magnetic charges might exist, but
are just too few to be found.
IV. The Cosmological Anthropic Principle:

A Short History of the Cosmos
The properties of space, time, matter, and interaction are combined in the
standard model. There are two aspects of the standard model: One is related
to the types of material particles and their interactions, the other relates to the
beginning and evolution of the universe as a whole. This aspect states that the
universe began 13.8±0.1 billion years ago with the so-called big bang.12 The
8 Cf. P.B. Price/E.K. Shirk/W.Z. Osborne/L.S. Pinsky, “Evidence for Detection of

a Moving Magnetic Monopole”, in: Physical Review Letters, 35/1975, pp. 487–490.
9 A review regarding the present state of affairs is given by Kimball A. Milton,
“Theoretical and Experimental Status of Magnetic Monopoles”, in: Reports on
Progress in Physics, 69/2006, pp. 1637–1711.
10 Cf. I.S. Bramwell/S.R. Giblin/S. Calder/R. Aldus/D. Prabhakran/T. Fennell,
“Measurement of the Charge and Current of Magnetic Monopoles in Spin Ice”,
in: Nature, 461/2009, pp. 956–959.
11 Cf. Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins,
New York 1997.
12 The phrase “big bang” was coined by Fred Hoyle, who curiously never believed in
this idea. Instead, he supported the steady state theory, which states that the uni-
picture we have of the big bang is that the universe started with an infinitely
large temperature and density, and experienced a brief period of inflation
during which it expanded by the enormous factor of about 1050. When this
period ended, after a tiny fraction of a second, our currently observable uni-
verse had a size of 1m. The universe continued to expand at a much slower
pace, closer to the rate that is currently observed. In doing so, it cooled down,
and the density of matter decreased. Once it was cool enough, protons
(the positively charged nuclei of the lightest element, hydrogen) and neutrons
(neutral particles a little heavier than protons) formed. From these a certain
amount of helium (the second lightest element) and tiny amounts of heavier
nuclei were synthesized within the first few minutes after the big bang. About
400,000 years after the big bang, the free electrons and nuclei combined to
form atoms of hydrogen and helium. From this time on, the universe was
transparent for light. This light can still be seen as a cosmic microwave back-
ground. It comes from all directions with the same intensity and uniformly
pervades the universe. It has the signature of a body in perfect thermal equi-
librium at a temperature of 3.7°K, with tiny fluctuations in intensity of 1 in
100,000.
A common misunderstanding regarding the big bang is that it was an ex-
plosion that happened at some location and from which material is flying
away. Actually, the big bang theory describes a space filled with matter
and radiation, and it is the space itself that is expanding. A helpful analogy
is the increase of the surface of a balloon or an expanding checkerboard
(see fig. 4).13 The checkerboard’s surface increases by homogeneous and
isotropic stretching.14 The increase does not start from a spot on the surface;
instead, the surface itself becomes larger. While the balloon is inflated at a
constant rate, spots on the surface drift apart with some velocity. The greater
the separation between the spots, the larger is the velocity. Sitting at any spot,
one would see all other spots drift away and it would appear as if one was sit-
ting in the center. This is not the case of course, this is just what is observed,
and one would have this impression from every spot. All but a few spots –
notably the Andromeda nebula – move away from us with a velocity that in-
creases with distance. We are not at the center of the universe.
verse is infinitely old. The steady state idea has generally been abandoned by cos-
mologists because existing observations do not support it, but they do support the
idea of a big bang.
13 The galaxies shown do not expand since their internal parts (stars, dust) are held
together by gravitational forces.
14 “Homogeneous” means “everywhere the same”; “isotropic” means “in all direc-
tions the same”.
72 Miko Elwenspoek
The cosmic background radiation contains a great amount of information.

This information, together with a host of other measurements and observa-
tions, enables scientists to determine, quite precisely, the age of the universe,
its current expansion rate, and the global geometry (the universe is “flat”,
which means that it is infinitely large and that Euclidean geometry applies).
Quite disturbingly, we also know that only 4 % of all matter in the universe
is made of “ordinary” visible matter, the rest is made up of “dark matter”
(ca. 30 %) and “dark energy” (ca. 70 %). Scientists have only vague ideas as to
what dark matter could be, and no good ideas at all as to the nature of dark
energy. All that is known are the gravitational effects of these types of matter.
Dark matter is thought to be composed of elementary particles which inter-
act, like all other matter, by ordinary gravitation alone. There is little doubt
that dark matter really exists. Dark energy has the effect of pushing space
apart. Einstein introduced into his theory of gravitation, known as the “The-
ory of General Relativity” (1916), a quantity that he called the cosmologi-
cal constant. This constant pushes space apart in the same manner as dark
energy.
For ca. 400 million years the cosmic background radiation was the only
light in the universe. It was around this time that the first stars were born.
According to current theory, these stars were much bigger than our sun, and
exploded in gigantic cataclysms a few million years after their birth (for com-
Figure 5: © NASA
parison, our sun has a life span of ca. ten billion years, some thousand times
longer). At the same time, visible matter started to organize into small gal-
axies which grew, over time, into the gigantic galaxies with up to 100 billion
stars that can be seen today.
All elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were formed in stars – we
are literally made of star dust! It took approximately seven billion years
before enough matter made from heavy elements was available for the
formation of planetary systems with rocky planets that were able to sustain
life. In the centers of galaxies this happened earlier; however, galactic centers
are not friendly for living organisms because of high radiation levels and fre-
quent supernovae explosions which sterilize their neighborhood. Only at a
safe distance, such as our current location, organic life is able to develop and
thrive over extended periods of time. It is an interesting fact that life on earth
originated close to the earliest possible cosmic time. The evolution of the
universe is shown schematically in figure 5.15
15 Note the increase in the expansion rate starting about 5 billion years ago.
74 Miko Elwenspoek
V. Dark Energy
A serious hint at the existence of dark energy was found only ten years ago.16
This result was supported a few years later by the measurements of the
Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP ). This probe measured the
tiny ripples in the cosmic background radiation mentioned above. All obser-
vational results seem to support the conclusion that today, about 70 % of all
energy in the universe is dark energy. Dark energy pushes space apart. The
expansion of the universe under the influence of dark matter is exponen-
tial,17 and there is no known mechanism that could halt it.
To fully appreciate the consequences of dark matter, an explanation of a
special type of horizon is needed. On earth, the horizon is the line beyond
which one cannot see due to the curvature of the earth. In cosmology there
is a horizon beyond which one cannot see due to a much more fundamental
reason: The velocity of galaxies seen drifting away from us increases with the
distance. There is no limit to this velocity because the galaxies are not mov-
ing in space, while space itself expands. Thus, at a certain distance, called the
Hubble distance, space and everything in it moves away from us with a vel-
ocity greater than that of light.18 The value for this distance is given by the
velocity of light divided by the expansion rate. A large expansion rate leads
to a small Hubble distance. Only events within the Hubble distance can be
causally related to each other. Beyond this distance, signals characterizing the
event never reach that far. Exponential expansion means that the expansion
rate will increase beyond all limits, therefore the Hubble distance, which is
the diameter of the causally connected space (in other words, the observable
universe) will decrease beyond all limits.
16 Cf. Craig J. Hogan/Robert P. Kirshner/Nicholas B. Suntzeff, “Surveying Space-

Time with Supernovae”, in: Scientific American, January 1999, pp. 45–51, and Law-
rence M. Krauss, “Cosmological Antigravity”, in: Scientific American, January 1999,
pp. 52–59.
17 Exponential growth means that the scale of the universe doubles within a certain
time interval and this will continue. As a consequence, the rate of expansion will
also grow exponentially and double within the same time interval.
18 Special relativity forbids the motion of masses in space with a velocity higher than
the speed of light. However, the expansion of space at a speed faster than light is
not in conflict with the theory of relativity.
VI. The Cosmological Anthropic Principle
Life as we know it would be impossible without hydrogen and stars to syn-

thesize the other materials which we are made of, walk on, eat, etc. As we
have seen, it took a certain amount of time to produce sufficient amounts of
the required materials, and for the development of life. There is also a mini-
mum amount of time required for the emergence of creatures that can ad-
mire their own existence. So the following question could be posed: What
are the essential conditions the cosmos must meet for our existence? Or
to put it differently: What conclusions can we reach about the properties of
the cosmos from the fact that we exist? The latter question is related to the
cosmological anthropic principle. It states that the fact that we exist tells us some-
thing about the world. There are several formulations. One of them is the
so-called strong anthropic principle, which claims that the world is such that
we (or life) must emerge. The method used to tackle the question above is
generally counterfactual thinking: What would the universe look like if this
or that were different?
This inquiry yields some astonishing results, and I want to discuss a few of
them. I refer the interested reader to John Barrow and Frank Tippler’s rather
technical book;19 but there is also a popular science book by Martin Rees,
which is a much easier read.20
VII. Expansion Rate
Three effects control the expansion of the universe: dark energy (which is of
no importance for the following point), the global curvature, and the energy
content. These turn out to be balanced in such a way that the curvature in
today’s universe is very small. Astonishingly, it is as if the density of our uni-
verse is fine-tuned so that the expansion is slow enough to allow sufficient
time for the formation of stars and galaxies before they drift apart. This
would not be the case if the density of the universe was a little bit smaller
than it is. On the other hand, if the density was greater, the universe would
have ceased expanding, and instead it would have collapsed to an infinite
density again a long time ago. A schematic representation of the scale of the
19 Cf. John D. Barrow/Frank J. Tippler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, New York
1986.
20 Cf. Martin J. Rees, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe, New York
2000.
76 Miko Elwenspoek
universe as a function of time is shown in figure 6. The shading indicates the

region in which star formation is possible. Note that the curves are very simi-
lar early on. This means that in the very beginning of the universe the density
and the expansion rate must have been extremely fine-tuned in order to end
up in the shaded region. Outside the shaded region, there are no stars in the
universe and therefore there is no life comparable to our life.
In the region in the lower right, the expansion of the universe is so slow
that it collapses; this situation is analogous to a rocket shot into the sky with
a speed too small to escape earth. In the upper left region, the expansion
is too fast to allow stars and galaxies to form; space is ripped apart so that
the density of matter quickly becomes too diluted for the star formation pro-
cess. It can be seen that all lines merge into a single line at the lower left of
the figure. Extremely small deviations from the actual evolution of the uni-
verse in the beginning would lead to either a too fast collapse or a too fast ex-
pansion.
VIII. Three Dimensions
Our world is three-dimensional. It seems to be silly to contemplate a world

with four or two dimensions, but only at first sight. Why are there three
dimensions instead of two or four? The anthropic principle says: because we
can exist only in three dimensions. If the world had two or four dimensions
we would not be here to pose silly questions. The equations of physics are all
easily extended to greater or fewer dimensions.
The case of the two dimensions is simple: There is no interesting world in
two dimensions. Maxwell’s equations work only in three dimensions – there
is no light in two dimensions. Light waves come about because a changing
magnetic field creates an electric field and vice versa. These fields are inti-
mately connected with each other. There are no electric fields without mag-
netic fields, and no magnetic fields without electric fields. In light waves
these fields are oriented regularly to each other and the propagation of the
light is in the third direction. Three dimensions are needed for light. The
world in two dimensions would be dark. There would be no electromagnetic
interaction possible, and therefore no atoms, no molecules, no life – only
darkness.
In four dimensions there are neither stable atoms, nor stable planetary
systems, nor stable galaxies. Gravitational forces between masses would not
depend on the distance between them as in our actual world, but would
decay faster. One of the consequences of this is, as a second year student of
Figure 6: Checkerboard analogy of the expanding universe © Miko Elwenspoek
physics would be able to calculate, that Kepler’s laws would be very different.
The orbits would no longer form closed ellipses, and they would be much
more complicated; they would look rather similar to ellipses but such that
the ellipses themselves would rotate in space. In Kepler’s laws the orientation
of the ellipse is fixed in space. In four dimensions, the planets would con-
stantly sweep through each other’s orbits, giving rise to an unstable system.
Similarly, the electrons in atoms would not be in fixed stable orbits. Having
more than four dimensions does not improve this situation.
These equations have also been analyzed for the case that time was two-
dimensional instead of one-dimensional.21 Again, no stable systems would
exist in such a world. We might say: I am, therefore the world has three spa-
tial dimensions and one temporal dimension.
IX. Gravitational Forces
Gravitational forces are much weaker than the other forces. The repulsive
electromagnetic force between two electrons is much, much larger than the
attractive gravitational force.22 Yet, if gravitation was 1,000 times weaker,
21 Cf. Max Tegmark, “Parallel Universes”, in: Scientific American, May 2003, pp. 40–51.
22 The factor between these forces is 1046. No one is able to imagine such a large
number. The ratio of the circumference of the earth to my length is 2x107, 1039
78 Miko Elwenspoek
the light that is created when matter condenses in the star-forming process
would blow the matter apart. If it was stronger by a similar amount, black
holes would form instead of stars: massive objects that release no light since
gravitation is so strong that light cannot escape from the object. The uni-
verse would be dark.
X. Stability of Atomic Nuclei
Atomic nuclei are formed by protons and neutrons. There is a delicate bal-
ance of forces; there are attractive nuclear forces and repulsive electromag-
netic forces. This balance leads to the stable elements we have in our world.
One might ask what would happen if the balance of these two forces
changed. The consequences would be disastrous. If the nuclear force was a
tiny amount stronger, two protons would stick together forming the element
helium – without the two neutrons that we have in our real world. Helium is
stable because the two neutrons push the two protons a little bit farther away
from each other. Therefore, the repulsive electromagnetic force is insuffi-
cient to rip the nucleus apart; the neutrons make helium stable. A nuclear
force 1 % stronger is sufficient to stabilize a helium nucleus without neu-
trons. This (not existing) nucleus is called the diproton. Assuming a stronger
nuclear force during the period in which helium was formed, during the first
few minutes, all protons in the universe would have formed diprotons, and
some would have included neutrons. There would be no free protons left.
There would be no hydrogen, and, accordingly, no water, no organic chem-
istry, no life. Helium is an inert, chemically inactive element. On the other
hand, if the nuclear force was a little bit weaker, oxygen, carbon, and all the
heavier elements would be radioactive. There would be an abundance of hy-
drogen but, again, no water, no organic chemistry, no life.
There are many more of these remarkable facts. For example, to form
heavier elements in stars, there must be a collision between three helium
nuclei. This would be a very ineffective process, were there not a so-called
resonance, an energy state of the nucleus of carbon, which makes the triple
collision effective enough for the production of heavy elements. The reson-
ance is a consequence of the value of the forces in the nucleus. The synthesis
times smaller! The ratio of the diameter of the milky way (100,000 light-years)
to my length is 1021, unimaginably large but still vastly smaller. The visible universe
is believed to be as large as 13 billion light years, 1026 times larger than me, still not
close to 1046 – a factor of 1020 to go.
of heavy elements would have stopped if this resonance was not at this par-
ticular energy.
Water is so important for life because it is very special compared to other
molecules. This is related to the position of the two protons that form a
triangle together with the oxygen. This special form causes an unusual in-
teraction of water molecules that makes many molecular processes possible
which are essential for life. It is also the cause of the fact that solid water
(ice) is less dense than liquid water, therefore ice drifts on the ocean’s surface.
Otherwise it would sink down to the bottom of the ocean, and most of the
water in the ocean would be frozen.
Counterfactual thinking in physics leads to an amazing conclusion: If one
mapped possible worlds in a space spanned by the values of fundamental
constants, our world would be found on an isolated, tiny island in this space
that supports complex structures. Deviate a little from the constants of
nature, and no complex structures are possible. These universes would be
mostly dark, dull places. The few where light existed would be without inter-
esting chemistry. These universes would either be too small, or they would
exist for too short a time to develop interesting structures, or matter would
be too diluted to form stars leading to an interesting chemistry.
XI. Why Does Life Exist at All?
If we can agree that life is necessarily complex, we arrive at the conclusion

that life is impossible everywhere except in the close neighborhood of this
small island.23 This property of our world begs for explanation. However,
the explanations proposed are quite speculative, or even outside science.
There is a line of argument related to cosmologic inflation, the physical
mechanism of which is also the subject of speculation.24 The laws of physics
(to be precise: the standard model) give no hint as to why the constants of
nature have these particular values. It could be that these values are the re-
sult of processes during inflation – what is known about physics does not ex-
clude this possibility. It could very well be that the values emerged through
an erratic, random process, and that they are not the same everywhere in the
23 Current state of research cannot strictly exclude the existence of other islands
(cf. Alejandro Jenkins/Gilad Perez, “Looking for Life in the Multiverse”, in: Scien-
tific American, January 2010, pp. 42–49).
24 Cf. Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent
Design, New York 2006.
80 Miko Elwenspoek
universe. If this was the case, it is no coincidence that we happen to live in a

region where the constants enable the emergence of life, because in other re-
gions where life is impossible there simply are no observers. An alternative
speculation (put forward by Robbert Dijkstra, for example) is that some, as
yet unknown, physics forces the constants to assume the values they actually
have, and that there is no possibility for other values.
Some authors (for instance, Cees Dekker25 ) conclude that the universe
must have been made by some superior being. This must be a cruel kind
of god who has equipped the universe with a small density of dark energy,
which causes exponential expansion of space. Due to dark energy the ob-
servable universe shrinks exponentially, making causally connected regions
of space smaller and smaller, until galaxies, planetary systems, plants, conti-
nents, and finally molecules, atoms, and nuclei are ripped apart. The pros-
pects of life are bleak.26
Freeman Dyson has shown that some form of thinking will stay possible
in an expanding universe without dark energy.27 The demiurge created a uni-
verse made fit for life only for some time. He condemned life to death even
before it came into existence.
XII. Conclusions
Counterfactual thinking is one of the physicist’s core tools, and, given its im-
portance in physics, it would be astonishing if this was not the case for all
other natural sciences. The “what if ” question stands at the beginning of
many scientific inquiries. Here, only some highlights in physics have been de-
scribed, but much more mundane examples would have led to the same con-
clusion. In particular, we have seen that in cosmology the “what if ” question
leads to quite remarkable consequences: The laws of nature seem to be fine-
tuned to make possible the existence of life and the existence of observers.
Slight changes in the laws and the values of the basic constants would lead to
uninhabitable universes.
25 Cees Dekker/Ronald Meester/Rene van Woudenberg (eds.), Schitterend ongeluk of

sporen van ontwerp? Over toeval en doelgerichtheid in de evolutie, Kampen 2005.
26 Cf. Lawrence M. Krauss/Glenn D. Starkman, “The Fate of Life in the Universe”,
in: Scientific American, November 1999, pp. 58–66.
27 Cf. Freeman Dyson, “Physics and Biology in an Open Universe”, in: Reviews of
Modern Physics, 51/1974, pp. 447–460.
Counterfactuals in the Social Context 81
Patrizia Catellani (Milan)
Counterfactuals in the Social Context:

The Case of Political Interviews and Their Effects
On April 6, 2009, a tremendous earthquake stroke Abruzzo, a central south-

ern Italian region. In the following days, the earthquake became one of the
main issues of political discussion in Italy. On April 30, Antonio Di Pietro,
one of the major antagonists of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, stated in
a public declaration, among other things: “All these deaths could have been
avoided, if only the government had listened to those who warned of the im-
minent danger”. This statement is an example of counterfactual communi-
cation, evidently aimed at attacking the government’s performance.
For some time now, my colleagues and I have been studying how politi-
cians employ counterfactuals in political discourse, comparing what (alleg-
edly) happened with what might (or should) have happened. Our basic
assumption is that politicians can use counterfactual communication to pro-
mote their own representations of past political events, to defend themselves,
to attack their adversaries, and, more generally, to influence citizens’ repre-
sentation of political reality and of politicians.
In particular, we focus on two main questions: a) What counterfactuals do
politicians use in discourse? b) What effects do these counterfactuals have
on voters? In addressing these questions, we build on what previous psycho-
logical research has shown regarding counterfactual thinking and its
relations with other psychological processes, such as causal reasoning, emo-
tional reactions, and decision making. In the two following sections, I will
briefly deal with the functions and the activation conditions of counterfac-
tual thinking. Taking these notions as a background, I will then describe the
method and the results of two studies aimed at investigating counterfac-
tual communication in the political context, as well as its effects on citizens’
evaluations.
82 Patrizia Catellani
I. The Functions of Counterfactual Thinking
Previous research has shown that counterfactual thinking serves several psy-
chological functions, which may come down to three main ones:1
Affective function. Counterfactuals influence emotional reactions. For
example, after being involved in a car accident, thinking that things might
have gone better (an upward counterfactual) is likely to trigger a negative
emotion such as discomfort or regret. On the contrary, thinking that things
could have gone worse (a downward counterfactual) is likely to trigger a
positive emotion like relief. This seems to be due to a “contrast effect”.2
An outcome, even a negative one, triggers more positive emotions when an
even less desirable outcome is made salient to one’s mind. After a negative
event, people have been shown to spontaneously generate more upward
than downward counterfactuals.3 However, people may also react to the
spontaneous upcoming of upward counterfactuals through intentionally
focusing on the generation of downward counterfactuals. Actually, the
more frequent generation of downward counterfactuals after an unsuc-
cessful outcome has been shown to distinguish optimistic from pessimistic
people.4
Preparatory function. Besides cognitively restructuring the past, counterfac-
tuals “construct” the future, that is, they can favor the preparation of future
actions. Past research has shown that the best way to plan an action consists
in mentally simulating both the process (i.e., the various steps) leading to an
expected goal and the goal itself.5 Similarly, counterfactual thinking is a form
of “post hoc” simulation, including both the process leading to an expected
outcome and the outcome itself. Thus, it may serve as “correction” of an un-
1 Cf. Neal J. Roese, “The Functional Basis of Counterfactual Thinking”, in: Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology, 66/1994, pp. 805–818.
2 Cf. Norbert Schwarz/Herbert Bless, “Constructing Reality and Its Alternatives:
Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Social Judgment”, in: Leonard L. Martin/
Abraham Tesser (eds.), The Construction of Social Judgment, Hillsdale 1992,
pp. 217–245.
3 Cf. Keith D. Markman/Igor Gavanski/Steven J. Sherman/Matthew N. Mc-
Mullen, “The Mental Simulation of Better and Worse Possible Worlds”, in: Journal
of Experimental Social Psychology, 29/1993, pp. 87–109.
4 Cf. Lawrence J. Sanna, “Defensive Pessimism, Optimism, and Simulating Alter-
natives: Some Ups and Downs of Prefactual and Counterfactual Thinking”, in:
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71/1996, pp. 1020–1036.
5 Cf. Lien B. Pham/Shelley E. Taylor, “From Thought to Action: Effects of Pro-
cess- Versus Outcome-Based Mental Simulations on Performance”, in: Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25/1999, pp. 250–260.
satisfying past outcome, increasing the probability of getting a more satisfy-

ing outcome in case similar events occur again in the future. For example,
Morris and Moore demonstrated that, in a training program including a
series of virtual landings, pilots who had generated counterfactuals regard-
ing their past performances offered better performances than those who had
not generated counterfactuals.6
Some counterfactuals have been shown to serve a preparative function
better than others. This is the case for upward counterfactuals as compared
with downward counterfactuals.7 In stating that things might have gone
better if one or another element of a past event had been different, upward
counterfactuals stress the negativity of the actual event, but at the same time
they may serve a preparatory function, suggesting what might be done in the
future to increase the possibility for similar events to have a better outcome.
The subtractive versus additive nature of counterfactuals has also been
shown to matter with regard to their preparatory function. When we gener-
ate a subtractive counterfactual we remove an element which was present in
the real scenario. For example: “If the government hadn’t approved that
budget, the economic conditions of the country would be better now”. By
contrast, when we generate an additive counterfactual we introduce elements
that were not present in the real scenario. For example: “If the government
had taken special measures to reduce the inflation rate, the economic condi-
tions of the country would be better now”. While subtractive counterfactuals
are constrained to what already happened, additive counterfactuals are cre-
ative regarding what happened in the past, introducing new elements that
were not part of reality in the past but might become real in the future. As
such, they have been shown to contribute to preparing future action better
than subtractive counterfactuals.8
Explanatory function. Previous research has shown that generating and
being exposed to counterfactuals regarding a given event may have conse-
quences in terms of the explanation of the event and the perception of the
event’s actors, especially the attribution of responsibility and blame. The
actor focused on as the person who might have changed the outcome if he
or she had acted differently is often considered responsible for the obtained
6 Cf. Michael W. Morris/Paul C. Moore, “The Lessons We (Don’t) Learn: Counter-

factual Thinking and Organizational Accountability after a Close Call”, in: Admin-
istrative Science Quarterly, 45/2000, pp. 737–765.
7 Cf. Lawrence J. Sanna/Kandi J. Turley-Ames, “Counterfactual Intensity”, in:
European Journal of Social Psychology, 30/2000, pp. 273–296.
8 Cf. Roese, “Basis”.
outcome.9 For example, after listening to the above-mentioned counterfac-

tual by Antonio Di Pietro, one might think that the government was at least
partly responsible for the terrible consequences of the earthquake. In fact,
when faced with a negative event, people have been shown to be more likely
to attribute counterfactuals to individual actors rather than to external con-
ditions, even when these conditions may have played a relevant role in caus-
ing the event.10 Focusing attention on actors who are perceived as capable of
exerting some control on the event, instead of on fortuitous or uncontrol-
lable external circumstances, would well serve the consolatory function of
convincing people that the same negative event could be prevented from
happening again in the future.
II. Reference to Norms in Counterfactual Thinking
What elements of the real event are more likely to trigger counterfactuals?
According to the so-called Norm Theory,11 elements perceived as “excep-
tional” are more likely to trigger counterfactual thinking because “normal”
alternatives are easily available to the person’s mind. But what are “normal”
alternatives or, in other words, what norms do we refer to when generating
counterfactuals?
Early research on counterfactual thinking was mainly focused on labora-
tory studies where participants were presented with events in which excep-
tionality consisted in deviation from routine. For example, a man has a car
accident after having changed his usual way back home from work. Faced
with this event, participants were likely to generate the counterfactual “If the
man had followed his usual route home, the accident would not have hap-
pened”.12 More recently, research has been extended to more ecological, that
9 Cf. Michelle R. Nario-Redmond/Nyla R. Branscombe, “It Could Have Been

Better or It Might Have Been Worse: Implications for Blame Assignment in Rape
Cases”, in: Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 18/1996, pp. 347–366; Gary L. Wells/
Igor Gavanski, “Mental Simulation of Causality”, in: Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 56/1989, pp. 161–169.
10 Cf. John I. McClure/Denis J. Hilton/Robbie M. Sutton, “Judgments of Voluntary
and Physical Causes in Causal Chains: Probabilistic and Social Functionalist Crite-
ria for Attributions”, in: European Journal of Social Psychology, 37/2007, pp. 879–901.
11 Cf. Daniel Kahneman/Dale T. Miller, “Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to Its
Alternatives”, in: Psychological Review, 93/1986, pp. 136–153.
12 Cf. Daniel Kahneman/Amos Tversky, “The Simulation Heuristic”, in: Daniel
Kahneman/Paul Slovic/Amos Tversky (eds.), Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics
and Biases, New York 1982, pp. 201–208.
is, less artificial, scenarios and this has led to focusing attention on how
counterfactuals may be triggered not only by deviations from routine-based
norms, but also by deviations from social-based norms, such as stereotypical
expectations regarding the behavior of people involved in a given event.
Let us consider the following event. A woman who usually goes to work
by train decides to go by car for a change. Her car has a breakdown and she
accepts a lift from a male stranger who afterwards rapes her. Faced with this
event, a juror might generate a counterfactual like: “If only she had taken
the train, things would have been different”. In this case, the reference norm
would be a routine-based or intrapersonal norm. The woman’s behavior is com-
pared with her own standard behavior, and the element showing low consist-
ency with this standard is mutated in the counterfactual.13
However, in a socially embedded context the actor of an event may be
perceived not only as an individual, but also as a member of a given social
category (for example, a woman, an old person, or a gipsy). As a conse-
quence, the actor’s behavior may be compared not only with intrapersonal
norms, but also with social norms triggered by the social category the actor
belongs to. Thus, faced with the same event, our juror might also generate
a counterfactual like: “If only she had not accepted a lift from a stranger,
things would have been different”. In this case, the reference norm would be
a stereotype-based or social norm. The woman’s behavior is compared with the
perceived standard behavior of a (non-raped) woman, which includes not ac-
cepting lifts from strangers.14
Trying to assess what kind of norm violations are more likely to trigger
counterfactuals is especially relevant if we take into account the already men-
tioned relationships between counterfactual thinking, responsibility attribu-
tion, and blame. In the above example, a juror generating the counterfactual
“If the woman had not accepted the lift …” is more likely to perceive her as
responsible for what happened, than a juror who did not generate the same
counterfactual. Some research has indeed demonstrated that reference to
social norms (such as the one of not accepting lifts from strangers) may in-
13 Cf., among others, Karl C. Klauer/Thomas Jacobsen/Gerd Migulla, “Counter-

factual Processing: Test of a Hierarchical Correspondence Model”, in: European
Journal of Social Psychology, 25/1995, pp. 577–595; Gary L. Wells/Brian R. Taylor/
John W. Turtle, “The Undoing of Scenarios”, in: Journal of Personality and Social Psy-
chology, 53/1987, pp. 421–430.
14 Cf., among others, Patrizia Catellani/Augusta I. Alberici/Patrizia Milesi, “Counter-
factual Thinking and Stereotypes: The Nonconformity Effect”, in: European Jour-
nal of Social Psychology, 34/2004, pp. 421–436; Patrizia Catellani/Patrizia Milesi,
“Counterfactuals, Stereotypes, and Suspicion”, in preparation.
fluence jurors’ judgments even if these norms do not have any correspon-
dence in legal norms.15
So far, we have made reference to how single individuals generate
counterfactuals, but counterfactuals may also be conveyed through interper-
sonal and public communication. The dynamics underlying counterfactual
communication have not been widely investigated so far.16 Our research on
counterfactuals in political discourse is aimed at deepening our knowledge
of how counterfactuals are employed in communication and what effects
they have on receivers.
Our basic assumption is that, through the evocation of given counterfactual
scenarios a speaker is likely to enhance the salience of given reference norms
to the receiver’s mind, and thus to influence the receiver’s perception of the
real scenarios. For example, through the above-mentioned sentence “Things
would be better if the government had listened to warnings of danger”,
Antonio Di Pietro presumably made the reference norm “a government
should listen to warnings of danger” salient to the mind of the citizens.
Very likely, he also highlighted that the government did not respect a shared
norm, and thus enhanced the likelihood that the government would be held
responsible for the negative outcome of the event the counterfactual re-
ferred to. In other words, through counterfactuals speakers may communi-
cate that shared expectations or reference norms have been violated. In this
way, those norms that might otherwise have gone unnoticed are made more
salient to receivers’ minds. For example, when reconstructing past political
events, politicians may compare the actual events with a variety of possible
alternatives. Very likely, politicians will choose one or another alternative in a
way that may be functional to their discursive goals, among which are the de-
fense of a positive image of themselves and their group as well as the attack
against their adversaries.17 For example, in replying to Di Pietro’s “counter-
factual attack” regarding the government’s inadequate reaction to the danger
of an earthquake, Berlusconi might employ a “counterfactual defense” by
saying something like: “If the opposition had taken care of the interests of
15 Cf. Patrizia Catellani/Patrizia Milesi, “Juries in Italy: Legal and Extra-Legal

Norms in Sentencing”, in: Martin F. Kaplan/Ana M. Martin (eds.), Understanding
World Jury Systems through Social Psychological Research, New York 2006, pp. 125–145.
16 An exception is Nurit Tal-Or/David S. Boninger/Amir Poran/Faith Gleicher,
“Counterfactual Thinking as a Mechanism in Narrative Persuasion”, in: Human
Communication Research, 30/2004, pp. 301–328.
17 Cf. William L. Benoit/Joseph R. Blaney/P.M. Pier, “Acclaiming, Attacking, and
Defending: A Functional Analysis of Nominating Convention Keynote Speeches,
1960–1996”, in: Political Communication, 17/2004, pp. 61–84.
the country, they would have made the government action easier”. In this
way, Berlusconi would suggest that the opposition had violated the widely
shared reference norm according to which “politicians should act in the
interests of the country”, thus shifting the responsibility for the negative
consequences of the event from himself to the opposition.
III. Our Research
Our research on counterfactual communication in political discourse has

two main aims: a) identifying what types of counterfactuals politicians are
more likely to evoke in their political discourses; b) assessing what effects
these counterfactuals may have on receivers. To reach these two aims we
adopt two different research approaches in an integrated way, both of them
widely employed in social psychological research. The first is an ecological
and qualitative research approach. We look for counterfactuals embedded in
actual political discourses and interviews, we code them according to a series
of criteria, and finally we analyze them through the application of non-para-
metrical statistic analyses. Building on the results of these qualitative studies,
we develop a series of experimental studies. They consist in the creation of a
research setting in which different versions of fictitious political discourses
and interviews, including different types of counterfactuals, are individually
submitted to separate groups of participants. After reading the text, partici-
pants are required to answer a series of questions in order to assess the
degree of persuasiveness of what they have read and their perception of the
speaker.
In the remaining sections of this paper, I will briefly outline the research
questions and the results of two studies, one for each of the main aims
pursued by our research program. The first study consists in the analysis of
counterfactuals embedded in a sample of actual political discourses by the
two leaders who were competing in the 2006 Italian general election, Ro-
mano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi.18 The second study consists of an experi-
mental simulation, including fictitious political discourses, and aims at as-
sessing the effects on receivers of counterfactuals employed by politicians.19
18 Cf. Patrizia Catellani/Venusia Covelli, “Group-Protective Bias in Counterfactual

Communication: The Case of Politicians”, submitted.
19 Cf. Patrizia Catellani/Mauro Bertolotti/Venusia Covelli, “Counterfactuals in
Political Interviews: The Effects of Self-Defending Through ‘If Only …’
Thoughts”, in preparation.
These two studies offer examples of the theoretical and methodological ap-
proach adopted by social psychology when studying counterfactual thinking
in applied domains.
IV. Counterfactuals in Political Discourse
In the two months preceding the 2006 Italian general elections, we recorded
and fully transcribed a number of televised pre-electoral broadcastings with
Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi as main guests. Transcribed texts were
then analyzed by two independent coders, who looked for the presence of
counterfactuals, in either an explicit or an implicit form. Counterfactuals can
be expressed in discourse explicitly, through the use of hypothetical periods
of unreality. More often, however, counterfactuals are conveyed implicitly,
through linguistic indicators alluding to scenarios that have never occurred
in reality. Linguistic markers of counterfactuals include, among others,
adverbs such as even, at least, without, or besides.20 In our study, implicit counter-
factuals were turned into their explicit form (e.g., the sentence “The euro
was introduced too quickly, without taking the necessary precautions” was
turned into “If the necessary precautions had been taken, things would have
been better”).
After having identified all counterfactuals, the two coders independently
classified them according to a series of criteria, the main ones being listed
below:
a) The speaker who produces the counterfactual, either the incumbent leader
(Silvio Berlusconi) or the challenging leader (Romano Prodi).
b) The target on which the counterfactual antecedent is focused, distin-
guishing among antecedents focused on the government (e.g., “If the govern-
ment had checked more strictly the transformation of prices from lira into
euro, things would have been better”), the opposition (e.g., “If the opposition
had not thwarted the government …”), and others, including political actors
and events of the national or international political/economic context (e.g.,
“If the terrorist attacks of September 11 had not happened …”).
20 Cf. Patrizia Catellani/Patrizia Milesi, “Counterfactuals and Roles: Mock Victims’

and Perpetrators’ Accounts of Judicial Cases”, in: European Journal of Social Psychol-
ogy, 31/2001, pp. 247–264; Christopher G. Davis/Darrin R. Lehman/Camille B.
Wortman/Roxane C. Silver/Suzanne C. Thompson, “The Undoing of Traumatic
Life Events”, in: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21/1995, pp. 109–124;
Sanna/Turley-Ames, “Intensity”.
c) The direction of the change imagined in each counterfactual, distinguish-

ing between upward counterfactuals, in which it is imagined how things might
have gone better (e.g., “If I had had 51 % of the votes, reforms would have
been made much more quickly”), and downward counterfactuals, in which it is
imagined how things might have gone worse (e.g., “If the government hadn’t
increased minimal pensions, things would have been worse”).
d) The structure of the counterfactual antecedents, distinguishing between
additive counterfactuals, in which an antecedent is hypothetically added in the
counterfactual scenario (e.g. “If the government had given the needed re-
sources to the local authority …”), and subtractive counterfactuals, in which
an antecedent of the real scenario is hypothetically deleted in the counterfac-
tual one (e.g., “If the euro had not been introduced …”).
e) The controllability of the behavior quoted in the counterfactual anteced-
ent, distinguishing between controllable counterfactuals, in which behavior
under the target’s control is imagined (e.g., “If the opposition had voted in
favor of this law …”) and uncontrollable counterfactuals, in which behavior
out of the target’s control is imagined (e.g., “If I could have counted on more
financial resources …”).
All counterfactuals were also coded according to other criteria, such as
whether they appeared in a text following the intervention of either a jour-
nalist or the opposing leader, or whether they were generated during a given
program instead of another. Here, however, we will not take into account
these further criteria, because they turned out not to have a strong influence
on the frequency and type of counterfactuals generated by the two leaders.
As already mentioned, both the identification of counterfactuals in the texts
and their classification were carried out separately by two coders, who turned
out to have a high agreement rate. Any discrepancy was resolved through
discussion.
Overall, our analyses showed that both Silvio Berlusconi and Romano
Prodi employed a consistent number of counterfactuals in their discourses
(periods including counterfactuals amounted to 6 % of the global number
of periods in the texts analyzed), in either an explicit (27 %) or an impli-
cit (73 %) form. Besides, analyses carried out separately on each coding cri-
terion showed that some categories of counterfactuals were more frequent
than others, independent of the speaker who generated them. First of all, the
government was the most frequent target of the counterfactuals, followed by
the opposition and by other political actors. This is not surprising, since the
performance of the incumbent government is usually one of the main issues
on which both politicians’ and citizens’ attention is focused during electoral
campaigns.
As to the other coding criteria, upward counterfactuals prevailed over

downward counterfactuals, additive counterfactuals over subtractive counter-
factuals, and counterfactuals focused on controllable behaviors over counter-
factuals focused on uncontrollable ones. These results are consistent with
what was found by previous research as regards the categories of counter-
factuals that tend to prevail in spontaneous counterfactual generation.21
Moreover, more refined analyses of our data (the application of hierarchi-
cal log-linear models) allowed us to take into account several coding criteria
at the same time (target, direction, controllability, etc.) and to compare
the characteristics of counterfactuals employed by the two leaders. Results
showed that some combinations of criteria were more frequent than others
and that there were significant differences in the counterfactuals employed
by the incumbent leader as compared to the challenging leader.
First of all, each leader showed a marked tendency to employ upward con-
trollable counterfactuals that targeted his adversary. For example, Berlusconi
stated that “If Prodi had defended Italy’s interests, things would have been
better” (March 8, 2006). Conversely, Prodi stated that “If Berlusconi had
carried out reforms in the country’s general interest, the process of growth
wouldn’t have been arrested” (March 7, 2006). As mentioned above, pre-
vious research has shown that the targets of upward controllable counterfac-
tuals are more likely to be perceived as responsible of negative events.22 Evi-
dently, the two leaders employed these types of counterfactuals as a way of
charging their adversary with the responsibility for what was wrong in the
country.
Conversely, both leaders employed more upward uncontrollable counter-
factuals that targeted themselves (and not their adversary). In this case, it is
as if the two leaders said that “getting better results was simply impossible
for them”. For example, Berlusconi said: “If the government had been able
to counter the negative actions of the Left, things would be better now”
(March 8, 2006). In his turn, Prodi said: “If our party had had the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, as we had proposed, we would have a common foreign
politics within Parliament now” (March 7, 2006). Downward controllable
21 Cf., among others, Markman/Gavanski/Sherman/McMullen, “Mental Simu-

lation”; Seymour Epstein/Abigail Lipson/Carolyn Holstein/Eileen Huh, “Ir-
rational Reactions to Negative Outcomes: Evidence for Two Conceptual Sys-
tems”, in: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62/1992, pp. 328–339; Vittorio
Girotto/Paolo Legrenzi/Antonio Rizzo, “Event Controllability in Counterfactual
Thinking”, in: Acta Psychologica, 78/1991, pp. 111–133.
22 Cf. Nario-Redmond/Branscombe, “Blame Assignment”; Wells/Gavanski, “Men-
tal Simulation”.
counterfactuals were also more frequently focused on the speakers them-

selves than on their adversary. In this case, it is as if the politician said some-
thing like: “Had I acted in a different way, things would have been worse”.
For example, Silvio Berlusconi stated: “If we hadn’t intervened on tax
evasion with the Budget, the tax system would be worse now” (April 3, 2006).
Other characteristics of counterfactuals, such as their additive or subtract-
ive structure, did not significantly differ as a function of the counterfactual
speaker or target, nor were any significant differences found between the
leaders as regards the frequency and the characteristics of counterfactuals
having other actors as targets.
To conclude, this study offered an overview of how politicians em-
ploy counterfactual communication. We found that counterfactuals show up
rather frequently in politicians’ discourse (in either an implicit or an explicit
form) and that some types of counterfactuals are generally more frequent
than others. Most importantly, however, we also found that the two politi-
cians preferably employed specific types of counterfactuals to either attack
their adversary (upward controllable counterfactuals having their adversaries
as target) or to defend themselves (upward uncontrollable or downward con-
trollable counterfactuals having themselves as targets).
V. The Effects of Counterfactuals Employed by Politicians
Starting from the results of qualitative studies such as the one presented
above, we have designed a series of experimental studies in which different
versions of fictitious political discourses and interviews are submitted to dif-
ferent groups of participants. These texts vary as to the types of counter-
factuals embedded in them in order to assess whether and how far the use of
specific counterfactuals may influence the receivers’ perception of the politi-
cian employing them. It may well be the case that some types of counter-
factuals are more effective than others. Besides, counterfactuals may have a
differential influence according to some characteristics of the citizens who
are exposed to them, such as their degree of political sophistication or their
sharing or not sharing the ideology of the speaker.
It should be mentioned that an in-depth investigation of the effects of
counterfactual communication requires a number of experimental studies,
because only a few independent variables may be taken into account in one
single study at the same time. In one of these studies, 203 university students
were presented with an excerpt of an interview of a hypothetical incumbent
politician. In the interview, a journalist told the politician that he had not
done enough to improve the bad financial conditions of the country. The in-
tervention of the journalist ended with the following sentence: “Voters are
skeptical regarding your intervention on public expenses. Many of them
think you could have done much more”. In his reply, the politician employed
some counterfactuals, such as: “Surely, the situation would be better if I had
firmly stated my position within the coalition and if I had insisted in putting
forward my ideas”. Four different versions of the politician’s reply were pre-
pared, differing according to the target (either the politician or the adversary)
and the direction (either upward or downward) of the counterfactuals em-
bedded in it. For example, the sentences quoted above are examples of politi-
cian-focused upward counterfactuals. But we also employed examples of politi-
cian-focused downward counterfactuals such as: “Sure, but the situation would
be worse if I had hesitated in stating my position within the coalition and if
I had given up my ideas”. The remaining versions included adversary-focused
upward counterfactuals and adversary-focused downward counterfactuals. The
four versions of the politician’s reply were submitted to four different sub-
groups of participants.
After reading the interview, all participants were asked to evaluate the
politician according to a number of criteria in order to assess whether the
evaluations would vary as a function of the characteristics of the counterfac-
tuals employed by the politician. First of all, participants rated the politician
with regard to a series of personality traits that past research has shown to
be crucial in voters’ judgment of political leaders. These traits can be linked
back to two larger dimensions: the leadership dimension, measured through
personality traits such as “dynamic”, “energetic”, and “decided”, and the
morality dimension, measured through personality traits such as “honest”,
“loyal”, and “sincere”. Results showed that participants attributed differ-
ent traits to the politician according to the different characteristics of the
counterfactuals he employed in his reply to the journalist. The politician
employing downward counterfactuals having himself as target (“the situation
would be worse if I …”) was perceived as more energetic than the politician
employing upward counterfactuals still having himself as target (“the situation
would be better if I …”). In both cases the politician was perceived as fairly
moral. By contrast, the politician was perceived as less moral, but still very
energetic, when he employed upward counterfactuals having the opposition
as target (“the situation would be better if they …”).
Overall, evaluations of the politician were significantly more positive
when the politician’s reply included downward counterfactuals than when
it included upward counterfactuals. These results suggest that politicians,
when required to account for a negative outcome of their performance, may
successfully preserve their credibility by stressing how things could have

been worse than they actually have been, rather than focusing on what they
could have done to get a better outcome. Figuring out a scenario where
things “went bad, but could have been worse” seems more rewarding for the
incumbent politician than openly recognizing the presence of a negative out-
come and figuring out a better scenario. Also, shifting responsibility from
themselves to the adversary seems, at least from the point of view of leader-
ship evaluations, a rewarding defensive strategy for a politician.
If the study described above has shown the effects of counterfactual di-
rection on citizens’ judgments, other studies of ours have investigated the ef-
fects of other characteristics of the counterfactuals employed by politicians.
For example, we observed that politicians employing additive counterfac-
tuals are perceived as more likely to act successfully in the future and as de-
serving more trust than politicians employing subtractive counterfactuals.
As mentioned above, additive counterfactuals serve a preparatory function
better than subtractive ones. It is therefore likely that politicians employing
additive counterfactuals are perceived as more inclined to prepare future
action. Interestingly, people with a high degree of political sophistication
appear to be more sensitive to the additive versus subtractive structure of
counterfactuals, as compared with people with a lower degree of political
sophistication. High sophisticates give a better evaluation of politicians em-
ploying additive counterfactuals (e.g., “Certainly, if I had imposed my ideas
and my proposals, some decisions would have been made more easily”) than
of politicians employing subtractive counterfactuals (e.g., “Certainly, if I had
not given up my ideas and my proposals, some decisions would have been
made more easily”). Such a difference between high and low sophisticates
may probably be ascribed to the fact that high sophisticates are more in-
clined to make plans for future political activity, and are therefore more likely
to prefer politicians who appear to be doing the same.
VI. Conclusion
Our studies have demonstrated that politicians make wide use of counterfac-
tuals in their discourses. When publicly accounting for political events and
their performance, politicians focus not only on what they, or other political
actors, actually did, but also on what they (or others) could/should (or could
not/should not) have done. These comparisons between reality and its pos-
sible alternatives are made in a way that is consistent with politicians’ discur-
sive goals, specifically the ones of presenting a positive image of themselves
and their party and a negative image of their adversaries. Accordingly, oppos-
ing politicians differ with regard to the characteristics of the counterfactuals
they employ in discourse, mainly in terms of their target, direction, and con-
trollability.
Our studies have also shown that counterfactual communication may in-
fluence citizens’ perception of politicians. Some types of counterfactuals
seem to be more powerful than others in influencing the citizen in favor of
the politician who is using them, while the positive influence of other types
of counterfactuals seems to vary according to some characteristics of the
citizens, first of all their degree of political sophistication. Interestingly,
exposure to counterfactual communication has been shown to influence not
only citizens’ evaluations of what the politician did in the past, but also their
expectations regarding what the politician may do in the future. This is con-
sistent with the fact that counterfactual thinking has been shown to serve
not only the psychological function of explaining the past but also that of
preparing the future.
What is left to do in order to fully investigate the effects of counterfactual
communication in the political context? Quite a lot. For example, exploring
of the effects of counterfactuals employed by journalists when they inter-
view politicians. Nowadays, interviews are the most frequent form through
which politicians communicate with citizens, and what journalists say or ask
(including their use of counterfactuals) is very likely to influence citizens’
perceptions of both the journalist and the politician.
We hope this line of research on counterfactual communication in politics
may turn out to be useful both on a scientific and on a more applied level. On
a scientific level, it might help our understanding of how counterfactuals are
conveyed in discourse, as well as of their effects on people who are exposed
to them. On a more applied level, it might help politicians, but also citizens,
to become more aware of the dynamics underlying political communication,
and thus to develop a critical consciousness about it.
A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective on Counterfactuality 95
Martin Hilpert (Freiburg)
A Cognitive Linguistic Perspective

on Counterfactuality
I. Introduction
This paper aims to broaden the scope of the present volume by providing a
cognitive linguistic perspective on counterfactuality. The commonplace idea
of counterfactuality as meaning that is contrary to fact may serve as an initial
working model that captures important central aspects but ultimately falls
short of a satisfactory characterization. It will therefore be re-cast in theor-
etical concepts of cognitive linguistics, in particular the concept of concep-
tual integration.1 The main objective of this paper is to show that counter-
factuality is not an exotic or rare mode of human thought. As will be
explained and exemplified, the cognitive processes that underlie counterfac-
tual reasoning are not only at work in linguistic expressions of counterfac-
tuality, but also in a multitude of other expressions.
This paper is organized as follows: Section II provides the background
for the analysis of counterfactuality by outlining central notions and research
areas of cognitive linguistics. Section III builds on that initial excursus and
explains how cognitive linguistics approaches the issue of counterfactuality.
Section IV concludes by offering a few thoughts on the question how the
proposed approach can contribute to the study of counterfactuality in disci-
plines other than linguistics.
II. What is Cognitive Linguistics?
Cognitive linguistics is a discipline that emerged during the 1970s as an al-

ternative to formal generative grammar. It is commonly associated with the
study of non-literal meaning, especially conceptual metaphor,2 but its frame-
work does in fact encompass all aspects of linguistic inquiry: The areas of
phonology, morphology, and syntax are concerned with formal aspects
1 Cf. Gilles Fauconnier/Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the
Mind’s Hidden Complexities, New York 2002.
2 Cf. George Lakoff/Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, Chicago 1980.
96 Martin Hilpert
of language; semantics and pragmatics address linguistic meaning. Several

works offer book-length introductions into the field;3 the overview that is
given here may serve as a primer for those resources. In a one-line definition,
cognitive linguistics can be characterized as the analysis of linguistic struc-
tures as direct reflections of human cognition. The next paragraphs flesh out
this preliminary definition in more detail.
Linguistic Structures and Human Cognition

The above definition makes references to linguistic structures, which are the
bits and pieces into which linguistic material can be analyzed. Structures
range from the very small to the very large: there are single sounds (the vowel
/a/ in “car”), parts of words (the suffix “-ment” in “enjoyment”), words
(“brunch”, “table”), phrases (“gone with the wind”, “a dime a dozen”), syn-
tactic constructions (“The Spice Girls sang their way into the charts”), con-
versations, texts, and genres. The task of linguistics in general is the descrip-
tion of these structures: Linguists investigate the sound inventories of
languages, catalogue the vocabulary, study the ways in which words and
phrases can be combined into sentences, and how different communicative
settings lead to the use of different linguistic structures. In studying such
structures, cognitive linguists take into account general principles of human
reasoning, trying to establish connections between these capacities and the
characteristics of human language.
What then are the organizational principles of human thought? One of
them is the principle of iconicity,4 which refers to a perceivable similarity be-
tween an expression and its referent. Many linguistic structures are mani-
festly iconic. In the phrase “a looong time”, prolonged duration is expressed
by means of prolonged pronunciation. The sentence “We studied hard,
passed the exam, and celebrated” expresses three events in a sequential order
that maps precisely onto their temporal order of occurrence. Somewhat
more abstractly, the relative closeness of linguistic structures may map onto
degrees of affectedness: The sentence “I taught the students Old English”
suggests that the teaching had a measurable effect on the students. By
3 Cf. William Croft/Daniel A. Cruse, Cognitive Linguistics, Cambridge 2004; Vyvyan

Evans/Melanie Green, Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction, Edinburgh 2006; and
Friedrich Ungerer/Hans-Jörg Schmid, An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics, 2nd
ed., New York 2006.
4 Cf. John Haiman, “The Iconicity of Grammar: Isomorphism and Motivation”, in:
Language, 56/1980, pp. 515–540; Haiman, “Iconic and Economic Motivation”, in:
Language, 59/1983, pp. 781–819.
contrast, in “I taught Old English to the students”, the words “taught” and
“students” are further apart, and the sentence allows the interpretation that
little or no learning took place. Another important cognitive capacity that
permeates many linguistic structures is metaphorical reasoning.5 The general
point of conceptual metaphor theory is that abstract issues are understood
and talked about in terms of things that can be experienced directly through
the body. It is thus no coincidence that for instance technological inno-
vations are talked about in terms of simple spatial language: People download
files from a server, have trouble getting into their email accounts, leave one
webpage to go to another, and log out once they are done. The systematicity of
these expressions is pervasive; the evidence suggests that the internet is not
only talked about in terms of space, it is in fact comprehended as a spatially
organized entity. A third fundamental characteristic of human cognition
is its embodied nature – how we perceive and describe the world is greatly
influenced by the way our bodies function within their physical and social
environments.6 There is now substantial empirical evidence that the activity
of producing and understanding language draws on the same cognitive re-
sources that are responsible for perception,7 motion,8 social cognition,9 and
emotion.10 For example, when participants are asked to make a sad face dur-
ing an experiment, they will be faster to process and understand language ex-
pressing sad events.
5 Cf. George Lakoff/Mark Johnson, Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind and
its Challenge to Western Thought, New York 1999; Lakoff/Johnson, Metaphors, p. 22,
passim.
6 Cf. Andy Clark, Supersizing the Mind, Oxford 2008.
7 Cf. Rolf A. Zwaan/Robert A. Stanfield/Richard H. Yaxley, “Language Compre-
henders Mentally Represent the Shapes of Objects”, in: Psychological Science,
13/2002, pp. 168–171.
8 Cf. Benjamin Bergen/Kathryn Wheeler, “Sentence Understanding Engages
Motor Processes”, in: Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science So-
ciety, 2005, pp. 238–243.
9 Cf. Laura Staum Casasanto, “Does Social Information Influence Sentence Pro-
cessing?”, in: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2008,
pp. 799–804.
10 Cf. David Havas/Arthur M. Glenberg/Mike Rinck, “Emotion Simulation Dur-
ing Language Comprehension”, in: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14/2007,
pp. 436–441.
98 Martin Hilpert
Issues in Cognitive Linguistics

Research in cognitive linguistics is thus driven by the question how these and
other general principles of human cognition are reflected in the structures
of grammatical and lexical items. Given this general outlook, how does ac-
tual work in cognitive linguistics proceed? Central issues include the analysis
of meaning, the relation of form and meaning, the relation of language and
thought, language understanding, and the cognitive capacities underlying
language use. Each of these issues is illustrated below with a brief example.
Meaning in cognitive linguistics is not studied in terms of truth condi-
tions,11 but rather as the outcome of human-scale reasoning. The theory of
frame semantics holds that human experience is organized in terms of re-
current situations, such as “going to a restaurant” or “working a day job”.12
These situations are called frames. Linguistic expressions evoke frames and
denote parts of those frames; each part gets its meaning only by virtue of be-
longing to a larger frame. To give a simple example, the frame of “running a
risk” involves the elements of a protagonist, an action, an asset, and a poten-
tially bad outcome. In a sentence such as “Publish that paper and you run the
risk of hurting your career”, the phrase “run the risk” prompts the addressee
to map the remaining parts of the sentence onto the elements of the frame:
“publish that paper” is mapped onto the action, “hurting your career” is
mapped onto the bad outcome. Frame elements that are not overtly ex-
pressed will nonetheless be evoked; the protagonist in this case is the ad-
dressee, who is not mentioned explicitly. Linguistic meaning is highly contin-
gent on framing – two otherwise identical situations will be understood very
differently if they are viewed through the respective frames of “theft” or
“forgetting to pay”.
A core issue in cognitive linguistics is the relation of form and meaning. In
accordance with what has been said above, the form of linguistic structures
is seen as motivated by their meanings, as in the phrase “a looong time”.
Motivation does not only pertain to isolated examples such as this one, but
also to more abstract formal issues concerning the composition of syntactic
constructions. An example from English syntax is the phenomenon of sub-
ject auxiliary inversion. Whereas the default order in English declarative sen-
11 Cf. Donald Davidson, “Truth and Meaning”, in: Synthese, 17/1967, pp. 304–323.
12 Cf. Charles J. Fillmore, “Frame Semantics and the Nature of Language”, in: Annals
of the New York Academy of Sciences: Conference on the Origin and Development of Language
and Speech, 280/1976, pp. 20–32; and Fillmore, “Frame Semantics”, in: Linguistics
in the Morning Calm, edited by The Linguistic Society of Korea, Seoul 1982,
pp. 111–137.
tences is that the auxiliary follows the subject (1a), a number of construc-
tions invert this sequence (1b–e).
(1a) I[SUB ] will[AUX ] order you a taxi.
(1b) Do[AUX ] you[SUB ] like Sushi?

(1c) Had[AUX ] I[SUB ] known this earlier!
(1d) Never would[AUX ] I[SUB ] leave you.
(1e) May[AUX ] he[SUB ] return safely!
On a cognitive linguistic perspective, a difference in form always implies a

difference in meaning. Conversely, similarities in form should be motivated
by semantic similarities. The examples in (1b–e) seem to challenge this as-
sumption: Questions, exclamatives, and wishes clearly do convey different
meanings. Still, it can be argued that these structures share the semantic trait
of non-factuality, which unites them in a contrast with (1a) and which thus
motivates the shared use of subject auxiliary inversion.13
Another concern of cognitive linguists is the complex relation of language
and thought, which is often discussed in connection with the so-called Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis.14 In its strong form, the hypothesis holds that language
has an influence on thought that speakers cannot escape: People who speak
different languages will inevitably perceive and think about the world in dif-
ferent ways. While a strong version of the hypothesis is clearly problematic,
a number of recent experimental findings suggest that language does in-
fluence thought in measurable ways: One such study compares speakers of
English with speakers of Russian in an experiment that investigates the per-
ception of color.15 Importantly, the neural circuitry that allows human beings
to perceive color is the same for everyone, regardless of one’s native lan-
guage. However, languages do encode colors in different ways. Russian for
instance distinguishes between light blue and dark blue; there is no overarch-
ing color term that would subsume both. In the experiment, subjects were
asked to perform a matching task on displays such as the one shown in fig-
ure 1 (which has shades of gray, whereas subjects saw shades of blue). Sub-
13 Cf. Adele E. Goldberg, Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Lan-

guage, Oxford 2006.
14 Cf. Benjamin L. Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings, Cambridge,
MA , 1956.
15 Cf. Jonathan Winawer/Nathan Witthoft/Michael C. Frank/Lisa Wu/Alex R.
Wade/Lera Boroditsky, “Russian Blues Reveal Effects of Language on Color Dis-
crimination”, in: PNAS, 104/2007, pp. 7780–7785.
100 Martin Hilpert
Figure 1: Which of the two bottom squares matches the square at the top? © Martin Hilpert
jects had to decide which one of two bottom squares matched the square
at the top. Reaction times were measured. Interestingly, a behavioral differ-
ence emerged between speakers of English and speakers of Russian. Russian
speakers were slower to respond when the two bottom squares were from
the same linguistic category, i.e. both were either “light blue” or “dark blue”.
No such difference was found for the English speakers, who lack such a lin-
guistic distinction. This finding suggests that language actually does have an
effect on non-linguistic thought. Current work thus goes beyond the debate
whether or not the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds true. Instead, it investi-
gates in what areas of cognition and to what extent it holds true.
Moving on to another issue, a cognitive approach to linguistic structures
must have an account of how language is processed and understood. Draw-
ing on the theory of perceptual symbols,16 current work in cognitive linguistics
subscribes to the notion that language is understood through mental simu-
lation. A simple sentence such as “I missed the bus this morning” prompts the
hearer to mentally simulate such a scenario, envisioning a departing bus, em-
pathizing with the person left behind, considering consequences of arriving
late at work, etc. This imaginative activity is not the result of understanding;
rather it is thought to be the act of understanding itself. Again, there is recent
16 Cf. Lawrence W. Barsalou, “Perceptual Symbol Systems”, in: Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, 22/1999, pp. 577–609; Barsalou, “Simulation, Situated Conceptualization,
and Prediction”, in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Biological
Sciences, 364/2009, pp. 1281–1289.
Fig. 2: Setup of the ACE experiment © Martin Hilpert
experimental evidence to support this view. The so-called action-sentence

compatibility effect (ACE ) constitutes an important piece of the evidence.
The central idea behind this research is that understanding a sentence about
an action should facilitate the actual performance of that action. To illustrate,
Glenberg and Kaschak asked subjects to read test sentences on a computer
screen and assess the meaningfulness while pressing down a “start” button.17
The assessments were given by pressing “yes” and “no” buttons which were
either closer to the subjects or farther away. This order was varied among par-
ticipants (Figure 2 shows the “yes is near” condition).
Crucially, the example sentences that Glenberg and Kaschak used implied
movement towards or away from the body. A sentence such as “Give Andy
the pizza” denotes movement away from one’s body; “Open the drawer”
denotes movement towards the body. Glenberg and Kaschak found that
subjects were faster to identify towards-sentences such as “Open the
drawer” as meaningful if indicating the correct response required a move-
17 Cf. Arthur M. Glenberg/Michael P. Kaschak, “Grounding Language in Action”,

in: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9/2002, pp. 558–565.
102 Martin Hilpert
ment towards the body, as in the “yes is near” condition. Compatibility be-
tween the meaning of a test sentence and the required action thus had a fa-
cilitating effect. This result receives a natural explanation in a model of
language understanding that is based on the notions of mental simulation
and embodiment of meaning.
Before the next section finally gets to the topic of counterfactuality, a few
remarks are in order on the relation of language use to other human cognitive
capacities. Whereas the program of generative linguistics was founded on the
premise that language was a cognitive module that could be analyzed without
reference to other systems, cognitive linguistics seeks to understand language
as a human behavior that is rooted in a number of other capacities that
closely interact with it. An example of such a system would be gesture,18
which is ubiquitous in spoken-language interaction and which human beings
share as a communicative strategy with certain primates.19 Another crucial
ability concerns the so-called phenomenon of joint attention,20 in which two
communicative partners engage in a triadic unit with a shared object of atten-
tion. Of course, language would not be possible without the ability to use and
interpret symbols,21 which allow human beings to communicate aspects of
the world that are not present in the immediate environment. Lastly, language
affords the communication of completely new and original states of affairs. A
finite set of linguistic structures can be rearranged and combined in a multi-
tude of ways. The ability to understand familiar items in new contexts draws
on a process known as conceptual integration,22 which is of central import-
ance to the discussion of counterfactuality that follows in the next sections.
III. How Does Cognitive Linguistics Approach Counterfactuality?
This section focuses on the phenomenon of conceptual integration, which is

also known as “conceptual blending”.23 Counterfactual reasoning draws on
the human ability to mentally overlay two mutually conflicting situations:
18 Cf. Alan Cienki/Cornelia Müller, “Metaphor, Gesture, and Thought”, in:

R.W. Gibbs Jr. (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge
2008, pp. 483–501.
19 Cf. Michael Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication, Cambridge, MA , 2008.
20 Cf. Michael Tomasello, Constructing a Language, Cambridge, MA , 2003.
21 Cf. Charles F. Hockett, “The Origin of Speech”, in: Scientific American, 203/1960,
pp. 88–96.
22 Cf. Fauconnier/Turner, Conceptual Blending, p. 42, passim.
23 Cf. Fauconnier/Turner, Conceptual Blending, p. 42, passim.
A sentence such as “Had I been at the bus stop five minutes earlier, I would
not have missed the bus” is understood by mentally simulating the scenario
of being on time and experiencing the discrepancy by overlaying that scen-
ario with the actual state of affairs. It is explained in more detail below how
exactly this overlay can be modeled. While conceptual integration is a cogni-
tive capacity that is crucial for the comprehension of counterfactual condi-
tionals, it actually runs much deeper than that. Conceptual integration is not
only at work in counterfactual thought, but it permeates many aspects of
human cognition and numerous domains of grammar. In order to give some
substance to this argument, the next paragraphs briefly outline several the-
oretical notions that are of importance in conceptual integration, specifically
input spaces and blends, vital relations and compression, selective projec-
tion, and emergent structures.
Input Spaces and Blends

The term “conceptual integration” presupposes the involvement of at least
two distinct conceptual entities that are being integrated. These entities are
called input spaces and can be thought of as semantic frames. The example
sentences in (2) illustrate different pairings of frames that can serve as input
spaces.
(2a) The Germans might not have elected Obama.

(2b) If Clinton had been the Titanic, the iceberg would have sunk.
(2c) What if computer operating systems were airlines?
UNIX : Each passenger brings a piece of the airplane
and a box of tools to the airport.
(2d) I wonder if my brother and I would get along if he were still alive.
In (2a), the two frames that are overlaid are American politics and German
politics. These frames exhibit some differences, such as the respective roles of
president and chancellor, but on the whole, they afford a far-reaching analogy.
By contrast, many examples of conceptual integration involve the overlay of
highly dissimilar frames, as in (2b), which integrates the frames of American
politics and seafaring. Example (2c) is similarly creative, blending air traffic
with computer operating systems. Pre-existing similarities between frames is
thus not a precondition for conceptual integration – human beings are cre-
ative enough to see connections between the most disparate of things. On
the other hand, conceptual integration is also applied to near-identical frames
such as being at the bus stop on time and being there five minutes too late.
104 Martin Hilpert
Example (2d) illustrates the blending of near-identical scenarios, which in this

case differ only in the presence or absence of a family member and the attend-
ant consequences that the hearer is invited to simulate mentally. The product
of a mental overlay of frames is called a blend. In example (2a), the blend is
a version of the German political system with an Obama-like candidate run-
ning for a leading position. The blend thus exhibits characteristics that are in-
herited from both of the input spaces, but crucially, as will be explained below,
the blend also has characteristics that go beyond the input spaces.
Vital Relations and Their Compression

Fauconnier and Turner use the term “vital relations” to refer to correspon-
dences between elements of different frames.24 The most important types of
vital relations are time, identity, space, role, and cause-effect, among several
others. An element of one frame corresponds to a certain element in an-
other, by virtue of a vital relation. Conceptual integration involves the so-
called compression of these vital relations: For instance, frames that are re-
mote in time may be compressed into a single counterfactual blend. The sen-
tence “Had Beethoven lived today, what music would he have composed?”
achieves a compression of time that integrates a protagonist from the late
18th century with the frame of present-day culture. Compression of identities
is involved in example (2b), which maps Clinton from the politics frame
onto the Titanic of the seafaring frame. In counterfactuals, the compres-
sion of distinct or incompatible frame elements generates meanings that are
manifestly “contrary to fact”: Beethoven died in 1827; Bill Clinton is not a
shipping vessel. In other cases of conceptual integration, the evoked com-
pression of frame elements may be less noticeable: an utterance such as
“Bob’s girlfriends get younger and younger” does not mean that Bob has
several girlfriends, all of whom experience a reversed ageing process. Rather,
the example compresses a sequence of girlfriends into a single conceptual
entity, which then literally has the characteristic of getting younger as time
goes on. Another compression of identities is achieved in the above-men-
tioned example of the Germans not electing Obama. In this case time, an un-
specified present, is the same across the two inputs, but the blend includes a
political candidate that unifies the identity of the actual Barack Obama with
his counterfactual German equivalent.
24 Fauconnier/Turner, Conceptual Blending, p. 89.

Selective Projection
The principle of selective projection captures the insight that not all el-
ements of an input frame necessarily have counterparts in the second input
frame, and that not all elements of the input frames are projected into the
blend. To take the Clinton-Titanic example, some frame elements clearly
correspond to one another across the two input frames and also represent an
identifiable element of the blend. Bill Clinton corresponds to the Titanic;
a political career corresponds to a sea journey; a scandal corresponds to a
grave accident that may put an end to the sea journey. These elements are
mapped into a blend that unites aspects of political life and sea voyaging in
a new and creative way. An important characteristic of this creativity is the
fact that many aspects of both input frames are not mapped into the blend.
The Titanic frame centrally involves passengers, but these do not directly
correspond to any aspect of American politics, and they do not matter in
the blend. The Clinton-Titanic does not have any passengers. Conversely,
the process of impeachment is not easily mapped onto the Titanic frame.
Correspondences for these frame elements may be conjured up, but such
mappings are not strictly necessary to get the point of the blend. These
asymmetries show that conceptual integration is a creative, non-determin-
istic act. It exhibits a number of regularities and recurring tendencies, but
there can be no algorithm that would automatically derive the meaning of a
certain blend from the characteristics of its input frames.
Emergent Structure
The term “emergent structure” describes a notion that is converse to the
idea of selective projection. While not all aspects of the input frames are
mapped into the blend, it is also true that the blend contains meanings that
are not present in either of the input frames. Emergent structure in blends
thus shows that conceptual integration is not the mere addition of two input
spaces: There is a surplus of meaning. The above-mentioned example “Bob’s
girlfriends get younger and younger” illustrates this. Neither of Bob’s girl-
friends is actually getting any younger; this meaning only arises as an emerg-
ent property of the blend, which compresses girlfriends of different ages
into a single entity. Another example that carries emergent meaning is the ut-
terance “I’d really like to meet myself at age 90”. This sentence evokes the
science-fiction scenario of time travel. The conceptual integration of present
and future has the emergent property that the time traveler can have a con-
versation with his older self: The “same” person corresponds to two dif-
106 Martin Hilpert
ferent individuals in the blend. The emergent structures of a blend can be

highly suggestive and hardly noticeable at the same time. A sales pitch such
as “Buy two shirts and save $25!” is designed to convince a customer that
buying the shirts will be equivalent with putting away $25 for future use.
This is at odds with the reality in which the customer is actually parting with
money, not saving it. The sales pitch creates this powerful cognitive illusion
by evoking a counterfactual frame in which the two shirts are available at the
full price. The customer is invited to blend his own situation with the frame
of a hypothetical customer who is willing to buy the shirts at the full price. If
these two frames are blended, the actual customer is in fact $25 richer, if only
in comparison to his hypothetical alter ego. It is only in the emergent struc-
ture of the blend that any money is being saved.
Is Counterfactual Thought a Restricted Grammatical Phenomenon?

In the examples above, conceptual integration is illustrated with sentence-
length examples, many of which conform to the general “if-then” schema
of counterfactual conditional clauses in English. This may be taken to mean
that counterfactual thought is a phenomenon that is evoked only by a small
set of grammatical structures. Quite to the contrary, conceptual integration,
the process that underlies counterfactual thought, is at work in many gram-
matical domains. The following sections discuss some of these domains,
spelling out the meanings that they encode and pointing out the relations to
counterfactuality.
Negation
The first grammatical category to be discussed here is negation, which is il-
lustrated by the example in (4):
“I see nobody on the road”, said Alice. “I only wish I had such eyes”, the King
remarked, in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody. And at that distance, too!
Why, it’s as much as _I_ can do to see real people, by this light!”25
In this passage from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the King’s re-
mark exposes the cognitive complexity that underlies a simple grammatical
category such as negation. A full understanding of Alice’s utterance involves
the conceptual overlay of two scenes that differ in the presence or absence
25 Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass [Oxford
World’s Classics], Oxford 2009 [1871], pp. 198–199.
of a visible person. It is only the counterfactual positioning of a non-existent

person on an empty road that results in the concept of a road with nobody
on it.
Modality
A further grammatical domain that requires conceptual integration is the
category of modality, which encodes meanings such as obligation, possibil-
ity, or necessity. In English, a grammatically distinct set of modal auxiliaries
expresses these meanings. Each of the examples in (5) evokes two conflict-
ing scenarios, requiring the hearer to simulate the consequences of integrat-
ing the two.
(5a) I would attend your talk, but I have a class to prepare.

(5b) They have to score one more goal to win.
(5c) You may now kiss the bride.
Example (5a) evokes a counterfactual scenario in which the speaker does not
have any prior commitments. The second scenario is the actual situation, in
which the addressee’s talk is taking place. In the blend, the speaker’s counter-
factual alter ego is able to attend the talk. Similarly, examples (5b) and (5c)
evoke two almost parallel scenarios. The hearer is prompted to imagine an al-
ternative scenario, in which a single event (scoring a goal, being pronounced
husband and wife) leads to a complete transformation of the situation that
holds at the moment of speech.
Causation
In many of the world’s languages, the meaning of causation is expressed by
grammatical means, for instance by a suffix that attaches to a verb. English
does not have such structures, but it has a number of constructions with
verbs such as “cause” that serve the same purpose. The examples in (6) illus-
trate some of these.
(6a) Warning: Smoking causes impotence!

(6b) My inner 3-year old made me do it.
(6c) Experiences, not possessions, lead to greater happiness.
The ability to reason about cause and effect crucially draws on conceptual
integration. Understanding the cause of an event always involves the mental
108 Martin Hilpert
simulation of an alternative counterfactual scenario that has a different out-

come. In order to understand (6c), it is hence necessary to imagine several
scenarios of happy and unhappy people and their respective histories with
regard to material and experiential affluence.
Clause Linkage
Complex sentences can be simply juxtaposed, but speakers can also resort
to a range of grammatical structures that indicate the semantic relation that
holds between the components of such sentences. English has a set of con-
junctions that have the grammatical function of clause linkage, and, at the
same time, the semantic function of guiding the conceptual integration of
the frames that are described in each clause. The relations between events are
manifold; the examples in (7) offer some illustrations.
(7a) Bob speaks excellent French, even though he has never lived there.
(7b) You only won because you cheated.
(7c) I will believe that when I see the evidence.
In concessive clause linkage (7a), the speaker expresses the opinion that the
co-occurrence of two frames is in some way surprising. The example thus
invites the hearer to consider the French proficiency of other people who
have not lived in France and to draw a comparison with Bob. The speaker
states that in a mental simulation of this kind, Bob compares rather well.
Example (7b) is another illustration of grammatically expressed causation,
which was discussed above. The third example prompts the conceptual inte-
gration of two scenarios that differ in time and in the presence of visible evi-
dence.
Attributive Constructions
In English, nouns can be modified through a preceding attributive adjective,
as in “a red apple”. Since adjectives encode properties, it is not surprising
that such attributive constructions are understood as assigning a property to
the referent of the head noun. This could be thought to happen in a strictly
compositional fashion: “a red apple” is simply a red thing that is an apple.
The examples in (8) show that the conceptual integration of nouns and their
attributive adjectives can be much more complex.
(8a) a likely candidate

(8b) a safe distance
(8c) a guilty pleasure
(8d) an intellectual desert
To single out just one of these examples for discussion, the expression “a
safe distance” blends a frame of danger with a second frame of physical lo-
cation, denoting the distance between a protagonist and a source of danger
at which the protagonist is no longer at risk. Understanding the example
necessitates the counterfactual simulation of what would happen to the pro-
tagonist were he any closer to the source of danger.
Compounding
Categories such as negation, causation, adjectival modification, or clause
linkage reflect relatively complex grammatical matters. It is important to
realize that conceptual integration is also at work in comparatively simpler
linguistic structures, for instance in lexical formations. The phenomenon of
noun-noun compounding serves as an example. Given a compound such as
“apple juice”, the resultant meaning is derivable from a simple algorithm
such as “A compound XY denotes a kind of Y that is made out of X”.
This nicely accounts for examples such as “leather jacket”, “chocolate bar”,
or “gold watch”. However, many compounds follow different patterns, as a
comparison of “steel knife” and “butter knife” reveals. The expectable point
made here is that the meaning of any given compound is the result of con-
ceptual integration. The examples below show three particularly ingenious
blends.
(9a) fire station

(9b) money problem
(9c) one-hit wonder
In these examples, the two respective components clearly relate to one

another, but the relations are non-trivial and different in each case. To point
out the relation to counterfactuality, a “money problem” is understood
as the undesirable scenario of not having enough money. The compound
evokes a counterfactual state of affairs in which enough money is available
and the problem disappears.
110 Martin Hilpert
Interim Summary
The preceding sections have presented a cognitive linguistic perspective on
counterfactuality. The mainstay of such a perspective is that conceptual inte-
gration makes use of general input frames and that counterfactual scenarios
result from the fusion of several input frames into a blend. The process of
blending involves the compression of vital relations such as time, space, iden-
tity, role, and others. The elements that are projected into the blend are drawn
from the input frames in a selective, non-deterministic fashion. By the same
token, conceptual integration creates emergent structure in the blend, which
conveys meaning that is not present in either of the input spaces. The brief
survey of grammatical categories has made the case that conceptual inte-
gration and counterfactual reasoning are not limited to counterfactual condi-
tional clauses. Instead, these processes extend over a multitude of grammati-
cal domains and even permeate the meaning of lexical elements. Importantly,
Fauconnier and Turner do not see conceptual integration as a cognitive pro-
cess that is only at work in language.26 They make the much stronger claim
that conceptual integration, and hence the ability to reason counterfactually,
is a prerequisite for human culture. This claim will not be further explored
here; instead, the next section briefly explores the implications of conceptual
integration for work on counterfactuality in disciplines other than linguistics.
IV. What Can the Theory of Conceptual Integration Offer

to Other Disciplines?
Fauconnier and Turner’s theory of conceptual integration has been sub-

ject to the criticism that it does not make any falsifiable predictions, which
renders it difficult to apply in experimental psychological work.27 Despite
this drawback, blending theory has attracted a fair amount of attention,
inspiring work not only in cognitive linguistics, but also in literature studies,28
human-computer interaction,29 musicology,30 and other fields. The particu-
26 Cf. Fauconnier/Turner, Conceptual Blending, p. 389.

27 Cf. Raymond W. Gibbs, “Making Good Psychology out of Blending Theory”, in:
Cognitive Linguistics, 11/2000, pp. 347–358.
28 Cf. Vera Tobin, “Ways of Reading Sherlock Holmes: The Entrenchment of Dis-
course Blends”, in: Language and Literature, 15/2006, pp. 73–90.
29 Cf. Manuel Imaz/David Benyon, Designing with Blends: Conceptual Foundations of
Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering, Cambridge 2007.
30 Cf. Lawrence Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory, and Analy-
sis, New York 2002.
lar value of blending theory lies in its usefulness as an analytical heuristic:

it can open up original perspectives on works of art or other products of
human imagination.
With regard to the study of counterfactuality, blending theory seems
a particularly conspicuous analytical framework because it reveals that
counterfactual thought is basic, not ornamental. As was argued above, the
conceptual mechanisms that underlie counterfactuality fully permeate lan-
guage. While counterfactual thought thus cannot be avoided, it can be made
explicit and exposed for analysis. For instance, given a theme such as time
travel in science fiction literature, blending theory provides a descriptive ap-
paratus that allows the researcher to capture a number of basic insights:
What frames are being used as inputs? What correspondences exist across
those frames? Which correspondences are compressed? What is projected
into the blend? What is not? What emergent structures appear in the blend?
Answering these questions and thereby spelling out the component parts of
a blend will yield a new and perhaps surprising understanding of the time
travel scenario, which can then inform a subsequent literary analysis. Simi-
larly, dissecting the structure of counterfactual blends may prove useful in
analyses of ethical dilemmas, visual art, or advertising.
Summing up, it was the goal of the present paper to show that the theory
of conceptual integration is fruitfully applied to the study of counterfactual-
ity. In order to do so, it was necessary to provide a brief survey of the general
cognitive linguistic enterprise. If at least some of these ideas appeal to the
non-linguist reader, this paper has met its objectives. Any misappropriation
is highly encouraged.
112 Bernhard Kleeberg
Bernhard Kleeberg (Konstanz)
Significance and Abstraction: Scientific Uses

of Counterfactual Thought Experiments
in the Early 20th Century
I. Introduction
The historian […] must always maintain towards his subject an indeterminist
point of view. He must constantly put himself at a point in the past at which the
known factors still seem to permit different outcomes. If he speaks of Salamis,
then it must be as if the Persians might still win […]. Only by continually recog-
nizing that possibilities are unlimited can the historian do justice to the fullness of
life.1
Though counterfactuals come easily to historians of science, they have only
recently started to systematically reflect on the epistemic status and analyti-
cal uses of counterfactuals.2 Thus it does not come as a surprise that the
history of systematic reflection on counterfactuals has been largely neglected
as well – although the subject has been touched on in accounts of the history
of causality and the history of experiments in particular. The attention
focused on the natural sciences and on how they modeled reality by means of
counterfactual thought experiments in order to gain knowledge about natu-
ral laws and to design real experiments, whilst the humanities seemed to be
of lesser interest since they followed the approach of verstehen and therefore
put less emphasis on causal explanations of reality.3 Yet, in historiography,
the question of reality and its representations seems to be particularly chall-
enging. Unaided by direct observation or experimental tests, historians face
a range of epistemological and methodological problems when trying to
1 Johan Huizinga, “The Idea of History”, in: Fritz Stern (ed.), The Varieties of History:
From Voltaire to the Present, New York 1973, pp. 290–303, p. 292. All translations are
mine except where indicated otherwise. I would like to thank Florian Ernst for
corrections and bibliographical assistance.
2 See the special edition of Isis (99/2008) on Counterfactuals and the Historian of Science,
ed. by Gregory Radick.
3 The German term “Wissenschaft” applies to the natural sciences and the hu-
manities. In this article, the term “science” is generally used as a translation for
“Wissenschaft”, while “natural science” is equivalent to the German “Naturwis-
senschaft”.
Scientific Uses of Counterfactual Thought Experiments 113
establish accounts of historical facts and developments, proposing general

concepts to describe the past, or creating historical narratives. If deductive
reasoning and causal explanation cannot be regarded as core practices in his-
toriography, if “[k]nowing in the historical sense rarely if ever means indicat-
ing a strictly closed causality”, and indeterminacy rules, as Johan Huizinga
put it – how can historical fact and fiction be kept apart?4
The problem points to a long history of debates about the epistemologi-
cal status and cultural impact of scientific theories, which have been fought
along the alleged opposition between the natural sciences and the hu-
manities – the former associated with realism, objectivity, and truth, the
latter with constructivism, subjectivity, and opinion. This dichotomization
points to the late 19th-century opposition between the practices of erklären
and verstehen in the natural sciences and humanities: While the natural
sciences dealt with empirical data, which they explained by means of obser-
vation and experiment, by relating facts to natural laws, the humanities dealt
with the meaning of culture, which they tried to understand on the basis of
shared experiences. Causality and causal explanations seemed to belong to
the realm of the natural sciences, whilst teleology and hermeneutic interpre-
tations were tied to the humanities.5
It is this historical context that serves as a starting point for the following
remarks on the history of systematic reflection on counterfactuals in the natu-
ral sciences and humanities, because within the processes of epistemological
and methodological self-reflection of the Wissenschaften around 1900, a new
technique was being discussed that seemed to hold an intermediate position:
thought experiments.6 Thought experiments came to be seen as a legitimate
means – both in prognostic and in retrospective analyses – to determine sig-
nificant factors within natural or cultural developments, and to meet concerns
about adequate abstraction from a confusing plenitude of data. With respect
to questions about the relation between the particular and the general,
thought experiments offered an alternative to strictly nomological or induc-
tive reasoning, as well as to hermeneutic interpretations of teleological
action or idiographic restriction to unique events. Heuristically, they could
provide for undisturbed ideal situations in order to simulate the design and
course of real experiments, or offer ideal-typical orientation for the interpre-
4 Johan Huizinga, “The Task of Cultural History”, in: Men and Ideas: Essays by Johan
Huizinga, trans. James S. Holmes/Hans van Marie, New York 1959, pp. 17–76,
p. 39.
5 For recent positions challenging this opposition, cf. Uljana Feest (ed.), Historical
Perspectives on ‘Erklären’ and ‘Verstehen’, Vienna/New York 2009.
6 Cf. Ulrich Kühne, Die Methode des Gedankenexperiments, Frankfurt a.M. 2005.
tation of (historical) contexts of human action; they could serve as tools to

evaluate the significance of actions or events, to logically reconstruct chains
of action or events, and initiate possible changes of perspective.
In this sense, the epistemic status of thought experiments around 1900
was discussed from two allegedly opposite directions: In the positivist
and empiricist view of the natural sciences, thought experiments helped to
explain natural phenomena, whereas in the hermeneutic view of the hu-
manities, they helped to understand historical and social phenomena. These
perspectives can be exemplified by two articles, which both stressed the
necessity of abstracting from concrete multi-causal connections by means of
thought experiments in order to be able to gain knowledge about significant
causal relations: Ernst Mach’s “On Thought Experiments”, and the chapter
on “Objective Possibility and Adequate Causation in Historical Expla-
nation” from Max Weber’s Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences,
both first published around 1900.7 Mach proposed three levels of experience:
basic human experience, physical experiments, and thought experiments. He
considered imagination a legitimate tool for the natural sciences, and thought ex-
periments of vital importance to scientific research, since they helped to pre-
dict possible outcomes. To Weber, in contrast, thought experiments in the
sense of retrospective prognoses about possible outcomes of historical con-
ditions formed a crucial part of research practices in the humanities. Here, they
served as epistemic tools to substantiate historical causality and validate his-
torical narratives. As will be discussed in the following paper, counterfactual-
ity in both cases served as the starting point for epistemological self-reflec-
tion on the relation between reality and scientific imagination.
II. Nomological Imagination
Thought experiments are not real experiments. They merge the mental de-
sign of experiments with the procedure of conducting them, hence their hy-
potheses cannot be validated independently – there is no external resistance
that has impact on their operational sequence and could thus open up the
7 Cf. Max Weber, “Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences”, in: Weber,
The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. and ed. Edward A. Shils/Henry A. Finch,
Chicago, IL , 1949, pp. 113–188; Ernst Mach, “Über Gedankenexperimente”, in:
Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum: Skizze zur Psychologie der Forschung, 2nd ed., Leipzig
1906, pp. 181–197, in part trans. W.O. Price/S. Krimsky, “On Thought Experi-
ments. A Translation and Adaptation of a Work by Ernst Mach (1897) ‘Über Ge-
dankenexperimente’”, in: Philosophical Forum, 4/1973, pp. 446–457.
possibility of arriving at unexpected novel knowledge.8 Hence, only the

plausibility of certain hypotheses as compared to alternative hypotheses can
be canvassed under ideal and undisturbed conditions. Yet, at the same time,
thought experiments cannot simply be regarded as fiction. They are no
products of mere imagination, with their sequences obeying the arbitrary de-
mands of a subjective experimenter. Their design, operational sequence, and
outcome follow presumed logical, causal, or other interdependencies that
serve as a standard for judgments of the validity of the conclusions. Thought
experiments thus neither meet the epistemic ideals of an (aperspectival) ob-
jectivity that requires independent and quantifiable data, nor can they be
relegated to the realm of arbitrary and subjective imagination. Rather, they
form a third technique to substantiate scientific knowledge: They heuristi-
cally serve as “intuition pumps”,9 as epistemological mediators that help to
merge logical or causal sequences in a way suggesting a direct correspon-
dence between models and reality. In addition, they can be used to test a cor-
pus of knowledge, to observe the observer, helping to differentiate between
the actual course of events and its potential alternatives in the sense of “second
order concepts”, as Yehuda Elkana put it.10
Ernst Mach, a protagonist of a positivistic-phenomenological epistemol-
ogy of the sciences, argued that the scientist had to submit his view on real-
ity to a process of clarification if he wanted to differentiate between relevant
causes and irrelevant conditions of natural processes. To this aim, Mach pro-
posed thought experiments as a technique of scientific imagination in order
to predict a course of events. In his essay “On Thought Experiments” he
8 Cf. Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What?, Cambridge, MA , 2000, pp. 71–72.
9 Elke Brendel, “Intuition Pumps and the Proper Use of Thought Experiments”,
in: Dialectica, 58/2004, pp. 89–108; Mary S. Morgan, “Models, Stories and the
Economic World”, in: Journal of Economic Methodology, 8/2001, pp. 361–384, p. 363.
Similar to historical narratives, these thought experiments lead towards a specific
ending (cf. Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical
Representation, Baltimore/London 1987).
10 Cf. Yehuda Elkana, “Das Experiment als Begriff zweiter Ordnung”, in: Rechts-
historisches Journal, 7/1988, pp. 244–271, p. 249; Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft
der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt a.M. 1998, pp. 75–87; Marcus Krause/Nicolas Pethes,
“Zwischen Erfahrung und Möglichkeit: Literarische Experimentalkulturen im
19. Jahrhundert”, in: Krause/Pethes (eds.), Literarische Experimentalkulturen: Poeto-
logien des Experiments im 19. Jahrhundert, Würzburg 2005, pp. 7–18, p. 14. According
to Max Weber, scientific objects, their observer, and the concepts permanently
change, rendering it necessary to permanently rethink them (cf. John Drysdale,
“How are Social-Scientific Concepts Formed? A Reconstruction of Max Weber’s
Theory of Concept Formation”, in: Sociological Theory, 14/1996, pp. 71–88, p. 75).
presented the practice of experimenting and its method of variation as basic anthro-
pological operations. Human beings could either gain experience by pas-
sively observing changes in their environment, or by actively manipulating
their environment, which helped to acquire highly reliable, though vague,
perceptions of reality.11 Finally, experiments directed by reason arranged
settings in reflection of everyday experiences: They intentionally extended
experiences, provided far more details, and thus formed the basis of science.
Still, in order to link detailed experimental knowledge to experiential cer-
tainty, a third kind of experiment was required – thought experiments.12
Thought experiments helped to evaluate expectations about the effects of
specific events or actions without actually carrying them out. Based on a
special kind of experience, “thought experience”, imagination thus could help
form assumptions of the consequences of certain conditions.
The main uses of thought experiments hence lay in “saving” experience
by varying causes and circumstances in a simulated counterfactual scenario
in order to determine significance and facilitate abstraction. Due to their
relatively low cost, as compared to physical experiments, they constituted a
necessary precondition for designing experimental settings and averting fail-
ures. Sometimes a thought experiment could even be so decisive and defini-
tive that the experimenter would not render it necessary to verify it by physi-
cal experiments,13 and even if it did not provide a decisive solution, it could
serve as a starting point and support an educated guess about factors rel-
evant for the real experiment.14 Thus, thought experiments meet Mach’s
ideal of parsimonious cognitive effort – “economy of thought” (“Denköko-
nomie”):
It is the object of science to replace, or save, experiences, by the reproduction and
anticipation of facts in thought. Memory is handier than experience, and often
answers the same purpose. This economical office of science, which fills its whole
life, is apparent at first glance; and with its full recognition all mysticism in science
disappears.15
11 Mach, “Gedankenexperimente”, p. 183. This kind of playful instinctive experi-

ments could be found in animals as well, according to studies in experimental ani-
mal psychology by C. Lloyd Morgan (p. 184).
12 Mach, “Gedankenexperimente”, p. 193.
13 Cf. Mach, “Gedankenexperimente”, p. 188 (pointing to Pierre Duhem); Kühne,
Methode des Gedankenexperiments, pp. 165–224.
15 Cf. Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Exposition of its Prin-
ciples, trans. Thomas J. McCormack, Chicago 1893, p. 481; Kühne, Methode des Ge-
dankenexperiments, pp. 177–178. Unless indicated otherwise, all italics in quotations
from this and other texts are in the original.
In order to gain prognoses from thought experiments, the experimenter – in

this aspect differing from the poet, as Mach points out – was to reflect reality
in a “logico-economic process of clarification” that helped him to determine
causal significance.16 Thus, counterfactual thought experiments provided
valuable aid to the nomological core practices of scientific research: Circum-
stances identified as non-influential could be varied arbitrarily, so that
scenarios might be constructed that differed considerably from the orig-
inal situation, facilitating generalizations. On the other hand, the continuous
variation of influential circumstances helped to get to a “complete synopsis of
possible cases” – and thus to analytically distinguish significant and non-sig-
nificant causes.17 One way to achieve this was by quantitatively reducing one
or more conditions until they disappeared, so that the remaining conditions
had to be regarded as solely relevant. Mach referred to this procedure as
“idealization” or “abstraction”; it provided the foundations to scientific laws
and concepts: “All general physical terms and laws […] are being obtained by
means of idealization”.18
Although Mach offered many useful insights into the scientific uses of
thought experiments, and although he pointed to their general scientific rel-
evance even for mathematics as a purely deductive science, where concepts
took the place of thought experiments after their success was known,19 there
obviously is a difference between using counterfactuals for conceptualizing
future experiments and employing them to assess the causal relation of past
actions or events in a way historians might do. But Mach does not only apply
thought experiments to answer “what if ?”-questions about future possibil-
ities, but to past events as well. Of course, he states, the reliability of prog-
noses depends on the question whether the experimenters stuck to reality.
Whilst project designers, utopists, or poets use their imagination to combine
circumstances and effects that did not coincide in reality, the concepts of
“respectable merchants” or “devoted inventors or researchers” are “apt im-

17 Mach, “Gedankenexperimente”, pp. 188–191. As Mach claims, these thought ex-
periments led to the most important transformations in human thought and
opened up the most significant new paths for research. Often, rules made from
common sense could be falsified by thought experiments.
19 Mach, “Gedankenexperimente”, p. 198: “Here, we are dealing with a construction
of thought which took the place of previous thought experiments after its outcome
was completely clear and familiar to the author. Any explanation, any proof, any
deduction is a result of this procedure”.
ages of facts”;20 and the more exact our memory of the “involuntary images
of facts” is, the higher are the chances to become aware of details that es-
caped our attention during direct observation, and thus to discover some-
thing new.21
By interfering with the habitual frames of reasoning, Mach argued, invol-
untary variation of details helped create knowledge, especially if triggered
by paradoxes.22 Used in retrospect, successful counterfactual thought experi-
ments initially depended on diligent direct observation that led to an exact
image of facts, but the power of imagination was able to call attention to ne-
glected facts and circumstances, and thus allowed for shifts in perspective:
In the reproduction of facts in thought, we never reproduce the facts in full, but
only that side of them which is important to us, moved to this directly or indirectly
by a practical interest. Our reproductions are invariably abstractions. Here again is
an economical tendency.23
Although Mach did not relate thought experiments to historical investi-
gation, his ideas on significance, abstraction, and perspectivity help to shed
light on the epistemic status of counterfactuals in historiography – even
though he himself placed emphasis on the contingent nature of historical de-
velopments:
The historical investigation of the development of a science is most needful, lest
the principles treasured up in it become a system of half-understood prescripts, or
worse, a system of prejudices. Historical investigation not only promotes the under-
standing of that which now is, but also brings new possibilities before us, by show-
ing that which exists to be in great measure conventional and accidental.24
20 Mach, “Gedankenexperimente”, pp. 186–187: “The dreamer, the builder of castles

in the air, the poet of social or technological utopias all experiment in thought.
Even the respectable merchant as well as the devoted inventor or researcher does
the same thing. Each of them conceives circumstances and associates with these
the idea, expectation, or supposition of certain results; they create a thought ex-
perience” (trans. Price/Krimsky, p. 451).
21 Cf. Mach, “Gedankenexperimente”, p. 187.
22 Cf. Mach, “Gedankenexperimente”, pp. 196–197. Following association psychol-
ogy, Mach points out that paradoxes interfere with the regular and nonreflective
practices of observation and trigger a meta-perspective – the observation of the
observer.
23 Mach, Science of Mechanics, p. 482.
24 Mach, Science of Mechanics, p. 255.
III. Counterfactuals and Idiographic Causality
Highlighting the role of thought experiments as a starting point for abstract-

ing from empirical data and as a means of confining analyses to significant
causes, Mach considerably diverged from one of the principal 19th-century
theories of science – John Stuart Mill’s. As Weyma Lübbe and recently Mi-
chael Heidelberger have pointed out, Mill’s epistemic ideal of causality fol-
lowed Laplace’s determinism, grounded on the idea that in order to explain
effects, comprehensive knowledge was a necessary prerequisite. All condi-
tions, Mill wrote, were “equally indispensable to the production of the con-
sequent; and the statement of the cause is incomplete, unless in some shape
or other we introduce them all”. The cause was the sum total of all condi-
tions that invariably led to the consequent.25 Mill thus denied the possibil-
ity of discerning all conditions relevant for the emergence of complex social
phenomena. We could not clearly assign the cause of an event to one single
sufficient condition, hence the social sciences had to search for regularities
and the “ultimate laws” on which social relations were based. This made
them abstract sciences.26
Unwilling to submit historical development to a Hegelian master nar-
rative, however, Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, Max Weber, and
others at the turn of the 20th century claimed that historiography and the
social sciences had to be understood as experiential sciences. Unlike the ab-
stract nomothetic sciences, the “sciences of reality” (“Wirklichkeitswissen-
schaften”) dealt with real events. Whilst the nomothetic sciences inductively
25 John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of
the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, in: J.M. Robson (ed.),
Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. 7, Toronto/London 1974, III , 3, qtd. in
Michael Heidelberger, “From Mill via von Kries to Max Weber: Causality, Ex-
planation, and Understanding”, in: Feest (ed.), Historical Perspectives, pp. 241–266,
p. 246. Cf. also Heidelberger, “Origins of the Logical Theory of Probability: von
Kries, Wittgenstein, Waismann”, in: International Studies in the Philosophy of Science,
15/2001, pp. 177–188; Weyma Lübbe, “Die Fäden im Gewebe der Natur:
Determinismus und Probabilismus in der Kausalitätstheorie John Stuart Mills”,
in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 47/1993, pp. 370–387; Lübbe, “Die Theo-
rie der adäquaten Verursachung: Zum Verhältnis von philosophischem und juris-
tischem Kausalitätsbegriff ”, in: Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie, 24/1993,
pp. 87–102, pp. 89–93.
26 Cf. John Stuart Mill, “On the Definition of Political Economy”, in: Collected Works,
Vol. 4, Toronto 1967, pp. 321–327; Heidelberger, “From Mill”, pp. 244–248; Mary
S. Morgan, “Economic Man as Model Man: Ideal Types, Idealization and Carica-
tures”, in: Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 28/2006, pp. 1–27.
inferred apodictic knowledge of regularities by means of abstracting from

reality, sciences of reality aimed at assertoric knowledge of the specific and
the unique. In order to do so, they proceeded idiographically, as Windelband
put it, and tried to generate vivid images of a specific event, a series of
deeds, a person, or gestalt.27 Yet, the idiographic sciences did not deal with the
unique as a mere object of curiosity, but rather, like the natural sciences, had
to set it into relation to a more general texture, thus creating meaningful facts as
opposed to plain data.28 Windelband thus addressed a problem similar to the
one Mill had identified with regard to the need for distinguishing between
causally relevant facts and mere data in the natural sciences.
Rickert refined Windelband’s distinction, pointing out that the cultural
meaning of unique scientific objects lay in the significant difference to other
objects, their individuality in contrast to mere differentness.29 The historian
had to direct his attention to these unique objects as media of meaning, and
in a next step select those that, due to their cultural value, were significant
for cultural development: “historical individualities”.30 Historiography thus
had to follow its own logical principles of selection, which had often been
overlooked by historians who aimed at an objective representation of his-
torical facts and claimed to simply describe history “how it essentially was”,
as Leopold von Ranke and his followers demanded. In contrast to the claims
of historism, historical selection was always based on mutual human sym-
pathy and value judgments, which could not be put aside without destroying
the scientificity of historiography because this would result in a “futile mass
of nothing but different formations, which would all in the same way
be meaningful and meaningless, and none of which would be of historical
interest”.31
What Rickert aimed at was the perspectivity of historistic accounts, which
lay hidden behind their alleged value-free objectivity. He thus embraced
Eduard Meyer’s criticism of his distinction between significant and insignifi-
27 Wilhelm Windelband, “Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft (Straßburger Rekto-

ratsrede, 1894)”, in: Windelband, Präludien: Aufsätze und Reden zur Einleitung in die
Philosophie, 3rd ed., Tübingen 1907, pp. 355–379, pp. 363, 369–370.
28 Windelband, “Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft”, pp. 372–373. In this sense,
Windelband understands “facts” as teleological.
29 Cf. Heinrich Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft, 6th/7th ed., Tübingen
1926, pp. 79–81.
30 Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft, p. 81.
31 Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft, p. 84. Thus the scientific status of history had been chal-
lenged by Karl Lamprecht, Herbert Spencer, and others, who claimed it necessary
to implement natural laws into historiography.
cant historical events: Meyer complained that this judgment simply reflected
different interests.32 For Rickert, this is precisely the point: He argues that
the content of historical representations changed with the leading cultural
values the historian relates to. A change in perspective led to different judg-
ments on the historical significance of past events or actions – and accord-
ingly to different stories told. Yet, this did neither imply that history was a
teleological process, as presumed by philosophers of history, nor that his-
toriography did not deal with causality. On the contrary,
[a]n individualizing and value-relating historiography has to analyze the causal
relations between the unique and individual processes it is concerned with, insofar
as they do not coincide with general laws of nature, even though the portrayal of
individual causal relations needs general terms as integral elements of historical concepts.33
The representation of historical development depended on the selection of
significant historical facts and causes: Any incident had an effect, but only
those incidents with significant value-related effects, to which we connect
a meaning we can understand, were of historical efficacy.34 Any “real historical
account” reflected not on general causes and causal laws, but only on indi-
vidual causes for individual effects.35 Unfortunately, Rickert keeps us in the
dark about the concrete techniques for distinguishing between significant and
insignificant causes, relating them to transcendental values, as Daniel Šuber has
argued.36
It was Max Weber who provided a practical solution to this problem, one
that helped to differentiate between significant and arbitrary causal chains
by establishing characteristic phenomena by means of selection and inte-
gration.37 In order to do so, Weber drew upon Gustav Radbruch’s concept of
“objective potentiality” and Johannes von Kries’s “theory of adequate cau-
sation”, as Weyma Lübbe, Fritz Ringer, and most recently Šuber and Hei-
32 Cf. Eduard Meyer, Zur Theorie und Methodik der Geschichte: Geschichtsphilosophische
Untersuchungen, Halle 1902, qtd. in: Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft, p. 89; Rickert, Die
Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung, 2nd ed., Tübingen 1913, pp. 290–291,
370–371, 424–425.
33 Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft, p. 92, my italics.
34 Cf. Rickert, Kulturwissenschaft, p. 93.
35 Rickert, Grenzen, p. 377.
36 Cf. Daniel Šuber, “Social Science Between Neo-Kantianism and Philosophy of
Life: The Cases of Weber, Simmel, and Mannheim”, in: Feest (ed.), Historical Per-
spectives, pp. 267–290, p. 279.
37 Max Weber, “Roscher und Knies und die logischen Probleme der historischen
Nationalökonomie (1903–05)”, in: Johannes Winckelmann (ed.), Gesammelte Auf-
sätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Tübingen 1922, pp. 1–145, p. 5.
delberger have pointed out.38 According to Šuber, Weber “introduced ‘evi-

dence’ as an evaluative criterion for the verstehende approaches to science […],
[which] eventually referred to rules of experience again”.39 Following Rad-
bruch and von Kries, he thus “insisted on criteria that arose from within the
confines of empirical science and would be derived from Erfahrung”.40 Simi-
larly, Heidelberger has called attention to the fact that Weber’s concept of
“interpretative understanding” “is much more distant from the tradition of
Dilthey, Windelband, and Rickert and much closer to the usual conception
of ‘explanation’ in the natural sciences than commonly believed”.41
Relying on the concepts of “objective potentiality” and “adequate cau-
sation”, Weber introduced counterfactual thought experiments as the crucial
technique to establish a sound epistemological basis for historical knowl-
edge. Counterfactual reasoning helped to create patterns of significance
among empirically known historical causes, linking historiography to experi-
ence and causation and thus advancing its status as a Wirklichkeitswissenschaft
in contrast to the writing of historical novels.42 Since they help to discern
significant causes in historical development, counterfactual thought experi-
ments provide the nodal points not only for historical explanations, but also
for the construction of historical narratives – their logical structure or plot –
if it is claimed that their epistemological status has to rely on reference to his-
torical reality: “Obviously […] only those events and conditions belong in a
historical narration which are decisive for historical causal connections”.43
Weber does not, however, explicitly tackle the question of how to con-
struct a historical narrative. He is merely concerned with the causal struc-
38 Cf. Lübbe, “Theorie der adäquaten Verursachung”; Fritz Ringer, “Max Weber on
Causal Analysis, Interpretation, and Comparison”, in: History and Theory, 41/2002,
pp. 163–178, pp. 163–164; Heidelberger, “From Mill”.
39 Šuber, “Social Science”, p. 279.
40 Šuber, “Social Science”, p. 279.
41 Heidelberger, “From Mill”, p. 241; cf. also Šuber, “Social Science”, p. 2; Ringer,
“Max Weber”, p. 163.
42 Cf. Max Weber, “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy”, in: The Method-
ology of the Social Sciences, trans. and ed. Edward A. Shils/Henry A. Finch, New York
1949, pp. 50–112, p. 72.
43 Weber, “Logic of the Cultural Sciences”, p. 138. The term “historical reality” is, of
course, highly problematic. My argument only assumes that historiography claims
epistemic validity as a system of reference that relies on something outside histori-
ography itself. That is, historical narratives can be considered a specific – factual –
mode of narration, a récit factual (Gérard Genette). Cf. Christian Klein/Matías Mar-
tínez, “Introduction”, in: Klein/Martínez (eds.), Wirklichkeitserzählungen: Felder,
Formen und Funktionen nicht-literarischen Erzählens, Stuttgart 2009, pp. 1–13, p. 2.
tures of historical development, which lift descriptions to the level of scien-

tific historical explanations. Following Windelband and Rickert, Weber
distinguished in Roscher and Knies: The Logical Problems of Historical Economics
between the “sciences of reality” and the nomological sciences that induc-
tively inferred laws and regularities by abstracting from the concrete and im-
aginable empirical reality of specific phenomena.44 In the end, they created
unreal representations of quantifiable processes, which could be described by
means of laws of causality. The sciences of reality, on the other hand, tried to
gain knowledge about specific constellations. Since it was impossible to ex-
haustively reproduce even a narrow part of this infinitely differentiated real-
ity, they had to concentrate on constituents of reality significant to us because of
their singularity, exclude the arbitrary, and to classify the particular within the
universal context of causes and effects by developing comprehensive con-
cepts as selections of representative characteristics of reality.
To do so, Weber followed the concept of adequate causation, which assessed
adequacy by means of counterfactuals. He borrowed it from the physi-
ologist, philosopher, and theoretician of probability Johannes von Kries
(1853–1928). On the basis of probability theory, von Kries had identified
conditions that were not accidentally but “intrinsically accountable for the
causal outcome”.45 He thus defined adequate causation as antecedent condi-
tions significantly favoring an outcome. The method von Kries applied was
that of counterfactuals, imagining specific antecedents, absent or altered:
“Asking for the causality of a certain object amounts to the question what
would have happened had this real condition (a particular part) of the com-
plex of conditions been missing, but everything else had stayed exactly the
same”.46
Here, Weber ties in, using counterfactual reasoning for the “conjectural
sorting and ranking of possible causes”, as Ringer put it.47 According to
Weber,
the problem: what might have happened if, for example, Bismarck had not de-
cided to make war, is by no means an ‘idle’ one. It does indeed bear on something
decisive for the historical moulding of reality, namely, on what causal significance is
properly to be attributed to this individual decision in the context of the totality of
infinitely numerous ‘factors,’ all of which had to be in such and such an arrange-
ment and in no other if this result were to emerge, and what role it is therefore to
44 Cf. Max Weber, “Roscher und Knies”, p. 5.

45 Heidelberger, “From Mill”, p. 249.
46 Johannes von Kries, “Ueber den Begriff ”, p. 198, qtd. in Heidelberger, “From
Mill”, p. 257; Ringer, “Max Weber”, p. 164.
47 Ringer, “Max Weber”, p. 166.
be assigned in an historical exposition. If history is to be raised above the level of

a mere chronicle of notable events and personalities, it has no alternative but to
pose such questions. And so indeed it has proceeded since its establishment as a
science.48
Hence counterfactuality – a concept about causation, based on insights from
probability calculus – formed the basis of the scientificity of historiography as
a science that tries to understand the meaning and significance of historical
actions and events: Historical understanding is based on counterfactual explanations.
They help to make “judgments of possibility”, serve as tools to substanti-
ate the significance of certain historical facts, and sustain historical narratives
that combine these facts into a plot. Historical knowledge of the past always
contains an implicit judgment of what is not historically true, what has not
been the course of events, what has not been causally relevant or significant,
but what is still possible: Representations of the factual world have to be
judged against counterfactual possible worlds. Similar to the use of thought
experiments to set up real experiments in the natural sciences, as Mach de-
scribed them, thought experiments in history help to set up the real course
of events, that is, factual historical development, by playing through possible
events in a given historical setting. But although the practice of experiment-
ing in thought depends on the faculty of imagination and thus might lead to
the creation of detailed virtual historical scenarios, counterfactual thought
experiments do not simply link fiction and science. They do, however, help
to detect subjective idealizations of historical reality by playing with the logi-
cal structure of the patterns of historical narrations, that is, they manipulate
those elements on the level of the histoire (in the narratological sense) that
are crucial to the respective master narratives.49 Even more importantly,
counterfactual thought experiments link historical narratives to experience,
since they help to discern significant causal nodes in historical development:
A historical narrative might be considered scientific, as opposed to histori-
cal novels, if its plot structure coincides with a logical structure that follows
along the lines of historically significant causes and effects.
48 Weber, “Critical Studies”, p. 164.

49 Superordinate forms of narration can be seen as ideal types which constitute the
elements and limit the conditions of the narrated world. They are of vital import-
ance because they influence the design of models (cf. Angela N.H. Creager et al.
[eds.], Science without Laws: Model Systems, Cases, Exemplary Narratives, Durham/Lon-
don 2007; Bernhard Kleeberg, “Gewinn maximieren, Gleichgewicht modellieren:
Erzählen im ökonomischen Diskurs”, in: Klein/Martínez [eds.], Wirklichkeitser-
zählungen, pp. 136–159; Mary S. Morgan, “Models, Stories and the Economic
World”, in: Journal of Economic Methodology, 8/2001, pp. 361–384).
When simulating possible historical worlds, counterfactual thought ex-

periments have to obey specific rules of experience in order not to lapse into
pure imagination. Weber argues that “judgments of possibility”, “proposi-
tions regarding what ‘would’ happen in the event of the exclusion or modi-
fication of certain conditions”,50 depend on isolations and generalizations.
We divide the given into components that fit under an “experiential rule”, so
that we can determine what effect each of them (with the others present as
conditions) could be expected to have: A judgment of possibility means the
continuous reference to empirical rules. Possibility judgments are thus not
negative judgments referring to incomplete knowledge or nescience, but re-
late to positive (quotidian) knowledge of laws of events, to our nomological
knowledge.51 Significance, verified by means of counterfactual thought experi-
ments, we might conclude, cannot easily be equated with meaning as some-
thing that is based on empathic understanding. In this respect it seems that
Weber does not follow in the tradition of Wilhelm Dilthey’s distinction be-
tween the natural sciences and the humanities, but holds an epistemology
based on regularities derived from experiments – an epistemology that, ac-
cording to Dilthey, informed the theories of natural-scientific authors like
Ernst Mach.52
IV. Counterfactuals and Concept Formation
With history understood as a “science of reality”,53 the tension between real-

ity and ideal types that serve as points of reference for historical explanations
has to be met. Do ideal types directly refer to reality, or are they nothing but
theory-related hybrid forms that claim to explain historical reality without
relying on direct reference? Can ideal types be understood as models for his-
50 Weber, “Logic of the Cultural Sciences”, p. 173.

51 Weber, “Logic of the Cultural Sciences”, pp. 173–174: The “assertion that certain
components of the historically given situation were objectively present”, Weber ex-
plains referring to Eduard Meyer, meant that “their presence was such as can now
be ascertained with objective validity, and that they were, when we imagine the
Battle of Marathon as not having happened or as having happened differently
(including, naturally, a host of other components of the actual course of events),
‘capable’ according to general empirical rules, of producing such a theocratic-relig-
ious development, as we might say in borrowing for once from criminological ter-
minology”.
52 Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, Frank-
furt a.M. 1981, p. 107.
53 Weber, “Objectivity”, p. 170.
torical narratives, as “cognitive tools” that generate narrative patterns in a

“configurational mode”?54 And if so, do they help to simulate counterfactual
narratives that may in turn help to evaluate historical representations
by relating logical-deductive to chronological sequences? At least, it seems,
counterfactuality and ideal types are connected in that counterfactual
thought experiments are helpful in the process of concept formation:55 His-
torical hypotheses consist of idealizations, ideal types that condense diverse
data from reality into something significant (from a specific perspective)
with which we can compare and against which we can measure historical
data. As Mary Morgan has argued,
Weber’s ideal types are generalizations constructed from experience, but create
abstract, conceptualized fictions. Ideal types don’t necessarily form usable scien-
tific models (Weber’s own ideal type in his historical/sociological work on capital-
ism being one example), just as not all fictions nor analogies do. […] [I]t comes
down to whether the ideal type is exactly and simply enough formed to manipu-
late and use in economic reasoning.56
Referring to Weber, John Drysdale has defined ideal types as our standard
models of plausibility: They “function as indispensable ‘instruments’ in the
service of observation, description, interpretation, and explanation”.57 They
are crucial to the self-reflection of human culture, as Weber put it, since they
form “a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process,
a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance”.58 Ideal
types are the work of the theoretical imagination, constrained by several
factors. To construct them, “objectively possible” traits of phenomena are
being selected and mentally accentuated, leading to an abstract represen-
tation:
54 Referring to Deirdre McCloskey, “History, Differential Equations, and the Prob-

lem of Narration”, in: History and Theory, 30/1991, pp. 21–36; Morgan points to
the counterfactual function of models that configure stories (cf. Mary S. Morgan/
Margaret Morrison, “Models as Mediating Instruments”, in: Morgan/Morrison
[eds.], Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science, Cambridge 1999,
pp. 10–37).
55 Concerning Weber’s first approaches to the problem of concept formation,
cf. Daniel Šuber, Die Begründung der deutschen Soziologie zwischen Neukantianismus und
Lebensphilosophie, Hamburg 2002, p. 152; Friedrich H. Tenbruck, “Max Weber und
Eduard Meyer”, in: Wolfgang Mommsen/Wolfgang Schwentger (eds.), Max Weber
und seine Zeitgenossen, Göttingen 1988, pp. 337–379, p. 341.
56 Morgan, “Economic Man”, p. 8.
57 Drysdale, “Social-Scientific Concepts”, p. 77.
An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of

view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present
and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged ac-
cording to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a unified conceptual
construct.59
Besides the meaning that has been culturally passed on – the “transcendental
presupposition” of cultural science, as Weber calls it –, the significance of these
concepts as scientific tools is judged by scholars. As a tool, the ideal type is
a “conceptual construct” that “offers guidance to the construction of hypo-
theses”, Weber stresses.60 But historians often mistook the logical structure
of knowledge, Weber points out, for the psychological origin of knowledge:
They argued that in the actual practice of their work they relied on their
“sense of the situation” and “intuition” to uncover causal connections, not
on generalizations and reflections of rules.61 The “sense of the situation”,
the “suggestive vividness” allowed the reader to empathize and thus to intu-
itively grasp the historical narration, just like the historian had constructed it
by means of empathy, not ratiocination:
Moreover, it is further asserted, an objective judgment of possibility regarding
what ‘would’ have happened according to the general empirical rules, when a
causal component is conceived as excluded or as modified, is often highly uncer-
tain and often cannot be arrived at at all. Hence, such a basis for the attribution of
causes in history must in fact be permanently renounced, and thus it cannot be a
constitutive element in the logical value of historical knowledge.62
In contrast, Weber affirms the role of counterfactuals to determine the logi-
cal structure of knowledge. In this respect, thought experiments have an ep-
istemic function analogous to physical experiments in the natural sciences,
helping to advance knowledge which has to be formulated in a logically cor-
rect way: The great advances in scientific knowledge
all arise intuitively in the intuitive flashes of imagination as hypotheses which are
then ‘verified’ vis-a-vis the facts, i.e., their validity is tested in procedures involving
the use of already available empirical knowledge and they are ‘formulated’ in a
logically correct way. The same is true in history.63
Counterfactual thought experiments serve to do exactly this, they verify
hypotheses vis-a-vis the facts “in case of doubt or dispute, for it is that [and
not the way in which historical hypotheses are formed in the mind of the his-
59 Weber, “Objectivity”, p. 90. I follow Drysdale, “Concepts”, pp. 79–82.

62 Weber, “Logic of the Cultural Sciences”, pp. 175–176.
torian, B.K.] which determines its [a hypothesis’] logical ‘structure’”.64 Like

Mach, who criticized thought experiments that did not stick to reality as
mere fantasy, Weber criticized historians who, instead of relying on experi-
mental tests of their retrospective prognoses, acted like poets or as if they
had extrasensory powers: “Ranke ‘divines’ the past, and even the advance-
ment of knowledge by an historian of lesser rank, is poorly served if he does
not possess this ‘intuitive’ gift. Where this is so, he remains a kind of lower
rung bureaucrat in the historical enterprise”.65 To proceed in this way meant
to endanger the scientificity of historical knowledge, to merely “suggest” a
course of events. That way, the historian’s
presentation would be a historical novel and not at all a scientific finding, as long
as the firm skeletal structure of established causes behind the artistically formed
facade is lacking. […] The most important phase of historical work […], the
establishment of the causal regress, attains such validity only when, in the event
of challenge, it is able to pass the test of the use of the category of objective possibility which
entails the isolation and generalization of the causal individual components for
the purpose of ascertaining the possibility of the synthesis of certain conditions
into adequate causes.66
Mach had proposed counterfactual thought experiments as a “logico-econ-
omic process of clarification” that helped determine the significance of dif-
ferent elements in a simulated, albeit not outright imagined, setting. Weber
located the difference between literary imagination and science in a logical
substructure, the causal skeleton of a historical account, to which the his-
torian must be able to reduce his narrative in order to validate it. It would
seem that all those scientific approaches that follow a nomological method-
ology could easily stick to this requirement, applying general laws of human
action and economics to the past in a kind of retrospective prognosis.
Yet historiography did not explain development on the basis of deductive
models, but used ideal types to construct plausible sequences of individ-
ual phenomena. These as well could be tested by means of counterfactual
thought experiments, a technique that helped to respond to the question
which historians continuously discussed since the Methodenstreit: “whether
the historian should try to virtually localize himself in the presence of the
past, i.e. make efforts to observe as if nothing is known to him or her about
the future path of development”.67 Thus the alleged lack of nomological rea-
64 Weber, “Logic of the Cultural Sciences”, p. 176; cf. Ringer, “Max Weber”, p. 174.
66 Weber, “Logic of the Cultural Sciences”, pp. 176–177; my italics.
67 Cf. Wolfgang Krohn, “Deliberative Constructivism”, in: STI Studies, 1/2006,
pp. 41–60, p. 46.
soning would not lead to subjective and arbitrary stories about the past if
value-related meaning and causal significance could be correlated by means
of counterfactuality. Still, it only served as a negative heuristic tool to judge
the significance of actions and events, and the validity of conceptual abstrac-
tions – the construction of alternative histories was off-limits.
To this day, most historians have embraced Weber’s warning: “The at-
tempt to hypothesize in a positive way what ‘would’ have happened can,
if it is made, lead to grotesque results”.68 It might be interesting, however, to
apply his considerations about individual counter-facts to counter-scenarios in
order to assess entire frames of historical factuality and trigger shifts in per-
spective of general theories and master narratives: While different facts can
help to change the plot of a story, imagining different scenarios can lead
to a change in genre, to new approaches established on the basis of alter-
nate actors, forces, things, or discourses. Historians of ideas might ask what
would have happened if a prominent theorist like Weber had not written
about objective possibility and adequate causation. The historians’ answer
certainly would not be that Alexander Demandt would not have worked on
“history that never happened” a hundred years later.69

69 Alexander Demandt, Ungeschehene Geschichte: Ein Traktat über die Frage: Was wäre ge-
schehen, wenn …?, Göttingen 2005, pp. 59–74.
130 Georg Christoph Berger Waldenegg
Georg Christoph Berger Waldenegg (Vienna/Heidelberg)
What-If ? Counterfactuality and History
I. Introduction1
According to the philosopher Nancy Cartwright “counterfactuals are a hot

topic in economics today”.2 This assessment resembles a recent judgement
by her colleague Elazar Weinryb regarding counterfactual historiography:3
it “seems now to be flourishing”.4 On the one hand, this judgment appears
to be compelling: Several publications – mostly miscellanies or articles –
testify to the current standing of counterfactual historiography.5 While some
of them focus on the theoretical aspects of such an undertaking,6 a good deal
1 For reasons of space, footnotes have been limited to a minimum. All notes in
square brackets within quotations are mine, and so are all translations from Ger-
man into English unless otherwise noted. With regard to the scholars mentioned
in my paper, in some cases I have provided relevant biographical information.
2 Nancy Cartwright, “Counterfactuals in Economics: A Commentary”, in: Joseph K.
Campbell/Michael O’Rourke/Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation:
Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, 4th ed., Cambridge 2007, pp. 191–216, p. 191.
3 To avoid confusion I use the term “history” with reference to “past events and
processes” and “historiography” with reference to “the results of inquiries about
history”, as suggested by Aviezer Tucker (“Introduction”, in: Tucker (ed.), A Com-
panion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography, Chichester 2009, pp. 1–6, p. 2).
4 Elazar Weinryb, “Historiographic Counterfactuals”, in: Tucker, Companion,
pp. 109–119, p. 109.
5 Cf., in particular, Niall Ferguson (ed.), Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfac-
tuals, London 1997; Robert Cowley (ed.), What If ? The World’s Foremost Historians
Imagine What Might Have Been, New York 1999; Robert Cowley (ed.), More What If ?
Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, New York 2000; Roland Wenzl-
huemer, “Counterfactual Thinking as a Scientific Method”, in: Wenzlhuemer
(ed.), Counterfactual Thinking as a Scientific Method, in: Historische Sozialforschung 34,
2/2009, pp. 27–54; Kai Brodersen (ed.), Virtuelle Antike: Wendepunkte der Alten
Geschichte, Darmstadt 2000; Michael Salewski (ed.), Was Wäre Wenn: Alternativ- und
Parallelgeschichte: Brücken zwischen Phantasie und Wirklichkeit, Historische Mittei-
lungen, Supplement 36, Stuttgart 1999.
6 Cf. Arnd Hoffmann, Zufall und Kontingenz in der Geschichtstheorie: Mit zwei Studien zu
Theorie und Praxis der Sozialgeschichte, Studien zur Europäischen Rechtsgeschichte
184, Frankfurt a.M. 2004, pp. 141–158; Geoffrey Hawthorn, Plausible Worlds: Possi-
bility and Understanding in History and the Social Sciences, Cambridge 1995; Wolfgang
Stegmüller, Probleme und Resultate der Wissenschaftstheorie und Analytischen Philosophie,
Counterfactuality and History 131
more analyse concrete historical what-if scenarios (though mostly in a rather

short fashion), for example putatively “inevitable results” such as “If Lin-
coln Had Not Freed the Slaves”7 or the “consequences” of “Socrates [dying]
at Delium, 424 B. C.”.8 Rather strikingly, quite a few of these authors are
appraised not only as “serious”,9 but also as “eminent” historians,10 and at
times even as “the world’s foremost military historians”.11 These claims,
though, are surely exaggerated and too self-confident, since not all contribu-
tions appear to be the result of “serious academic research”.12 However,
there are more reasons why, on the other hand, Weinryb’s judgment appears
somewhat exaggerated. First of all, to my knowledge, there are hardly any
counterfactual monographs.13 Furthermore, quite a few of the mentioned
publications were not written by historians, but by political scientists.14
Finally, rather many historians would presumably accept that counterfactual
reflections are a nice intellectual game, but still challenge, if not downright
negate, the value of proper counterfactual studies, arguing – amongst other
things – that there are so many fingers in the pie, so many ifs and buts, so
many historical factors and circumstances to consider that one simply can-
not draw sensible counterfactual conclusions.
Adam Wandruszka (1914–1997), the so-called “Doyen of Austrian his-
tory” after 1945,15 expressed this scepticism very bluntly in 1989:
Vol. 1, Erklärung, Begründung, Kausalität, 2nd, revised and extended ed., Berlin/Hei-
delberg/New York 1983, pp. 329–345.
7 Tom Wicker, “If Lincoln Had Not Freed the Slaves: The Inevitable Results of No
Emancipation Proclamation”, in: Cowley (ed.), More What If ?, pp. 152–164.
8 Victor D. Hanson, “Socrates Dies at Delium, 424 B.C.: The Consequences of a
Single Battle Casualty”, in: Cowley (ed.), More What If ?, pp. 1–22.
9 Michael Salewski, “Vorwort”, in: Salewski (ed.), Was Wäre Wenn, pp. 7–12, p. 9.
10 Cf. the subtitle “Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been” of Cowley
(ed.), More What If ?.
11 Cf. the subtitle “The World’s Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have
Been” of Cowley (ed.), What If ?.
12 Paul B. Miller, “Counterfactual History: Not ‘What If ?’ but ‘Why Not?’”, in:
Chronicle of Higher Education, 50/2004, pp. B10–B11, p. B10.
13 The probably “most famous” (Arthur Marwick, The New Nature of History: Knowl-
edge, Evidence, Language, Houndsmill-Basingstoke 2001, p. 128), however contested
exception is: Robert Fogel, Railroads and the American Growth: Essays in the Economet-
ric History, Baltimore 1964.
14 Cf., in particular, the numerous works by Richard N. Lebow, who has just pub-
lished a monograph entitled Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Re-
lations, Princeton 2010.
15 Werner Suppanz, “Maria Theresia”, in: Menschen – Mythen – Zeiten, Memoria Aus-
triae, Vol. 1, Munich 2004, pp. 26–47, p. 28.
In the end the question whether the doom of the Habsburg monarchy could have
been avoided by a thorough remodelling in a federal-democratic sense […] cannot
be answered and is, all things considered, an idle question.16
In other words: historians should “study what actually happened, not what
could have, may have, or would have happened”.17
Yet, despite such scepticism and although “some contemporary histori-
ans still sternly warn us to avoid ‘what-might-have-been’ questions”,18 more
scholars than ever seem to acknowledge the potential value of more or less
detailed counterfactual reasoning. One of them is the German historian
Alexander Demandt (b. 1937), who as early as 1984 published a perti-
nent study (translated into English in 1993)19 which has aptly been labelled
“groundbreaking”20 – at least as far as contributions by professional histori-
ans go.21 Demandt has insistently defended the legitimacy of such reasoning,
regardless of the criticism directed against his book22 (which often must ac-
knowledge the “right of the probable to exist”).23 For instance, he writes:
“Provided we always take into account the relevant prehistory, the actual
16 Adam Wandruszka, “In der heutigen Welt eine Anomalie”, in: Wandruszka/Peter
Urbanitsch (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. VI , Part I, Die Habsbur-
germonarchie im System der internationalen Beziehungen, Vienna 1989, pp. xi–xvi, p. xv.
17 Aviezer Tucker, “Causation in Historiography”, in: Tucker (ed.), Companion,
pp. 98–108, p. 103.
18 Philip E. Tetlock/Aaron Belkin, “Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World
Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives”, in: Tetlock/
Belkin (eds.), Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodologi-
cal, and Psychological Perspectives, Princeton 1996, pp. 1–38, p. 1. A prominent
example is: Marwick, New Nature, p. 128. The sociologist Randal Collins is also
very sceptical (“Turning Points, Bottlenecks, and the Fallacies of Counterfactual
History”, in: Sociological Forum, 3/2007, pp. 247–269).
19 Cf. Alexander Demandt, History That Never Happened: A Treatise on the Question:
What Would Have Happened If …?, trans. Colin D. Thomson, 3rd ed., Jefferson, NC,
1993.
20 Wenzlhuemer, “Counterfactual Thinking”, p. 41.
21 Cf. Alexander Demandt, Ungeschehene Geschichte: Ein Traktat über die Frage: Was wäre
geschehen, wenn …?, 4th ed., Göttingen 2005.
22 Cf., above all, Hubert Kiesewetter, Irreale oder reale Geschichte? Ein Traktat über
Methodenfragen in der Geschichtswissenschaft, Herbolzheim 2002; Gregor Weber,
“Vom Sinn kontrafaktischer Geschichte”, in: Brodersen (ed.), Virtuelle Antike,
pp. 18–22.
23 Frank Müller, “Might-have-been-history: Vom Sinn der Frage ‘Was wäre ge-
schehen, wenn …?’”, in: ungewußt: Zeitschrift für angewandtes Nichtwissen, 12/2005,
pp. 21–40, http://www.ifan-online.de/ungewu/heft12/mueller12.htm, p. 36 (Feb-
ruary 2, 2010).
contemporary history, and the general rules of experience, we arrive in many

cases at lucid hypotheses concerning probabilities”.24
There is, however, also a middle ground between historians like Demandt
and his opponents. The quintessence of this position is captured in an old
Yiddish saying, taken up recently not by a historian, but by the political scien-
tist Daniel Levine:
I suppose it all comes down to “If, if, if … If my grandmother had wheels, she
would be a trolley-car”. We can do without counterfactuals, except as heuristic ex-
pressions, and if we can we should.25
Obviously, unlike Wandruszka, Levine does not insist on the sheer idleness
of counterfactual reasoning in all cases; yet, while he accepts its usefulness
as a heuristic expression – unfortunately he does not tell us explicitly how this
idea should be understood (I will get back to this) –, unlike Demandt he re-
futes its validity as a proper heuristic method.
At any rate, counterfactual reasoning is an “all-too-human practice”, as
the Call for Papers for this conference put it. And this goes for historians,
too. In fact, they “have been doing it for two thousand years”.26 Therefore,
even most of the sceptics would probably concede (and if not, one could
charge them of a – to say the least – quite naïve perception of their own pro-
fessional activity) that “counterfactuals are not as easy to avoid in the prac-
tice of history as one might think”.27 In fact, one must even go further: His-
torians – willy-nilly – make indirect or direct counterfactual claims when
exploring the past, at least if they want to explain historical events, that is,
when they formulate sentences of the form P because of Q.28
Let us take the following two statements: (1) “World War I caused the
end of Austria-Hungary in 1918”. This sentence does not strictly imply but
strongly suggest that without the war this end would not have occurred, at
least not at that time. (2) “The course of World War I had negative effects on
the survival of Austria-Hungary”. This sentence strongly suggests that a dif-
ferent course of the war would have had other effects, which, note well, could
have been even more negative. Finally, take this statement:
24 Demandt, History, p. 68.

25 Daniel Levine, contribution to a forum, September 6, 2004, in: http://www.
historycooperative.org/phorum/read.php?11,245,246#msg-246 (January 25, 2010).
26 Tetlock/Belkin, “Thought Experiments”, p. 1.
27 Martin Bunzl, “Counterfactual History: A User’s Guide”, in: American Historical
Review, 129/2004, pp. 845–858, p. 845.
28 Cf., most fundamentally, David Lewis, Counterfactuals, Oxford 2005.
[T]he [political] forces responsible for the execution of the national loan [floated
in 1854] shared some responsibility for the fact […] that the official [imperial]
motto “viribus unitis”, sounding so nice, matched reality less and less. At the latest
by 1918, even the most intransigent optimists had to apprehend this.29
I wrote these sentences a few years ago. Re-reading them today, I feel some-
what queasy. At the end of my article you will understand why this is so.
One of the most remarkable results of counterfactual research is probably
a recent book dedicated to the allegedly “most controversial what if in the
history of American foreign policy”, that is, the question “What if John F.
Kennedy had lived?”.30 The three authors, political scientists quite deeply in-
terested in history and working to some extent like skilled historians, formu-
late a very peremptory counterfactual, namely: “Yes, there would have been
no [Vietnam] war if Kennedy had lived”.31 However, not surprisingly, a his-
torian notes in a foreword to this volume that one “never can know with
certainty [what a surviving Kennedy would have done in Vietnam]”.32 One
could even ask whether historians and scholars in general – in particular
political scientists – command sufficient scholarly means to assess or estab-
lish the likelihood (plausibility, possibility)33 of counterfactuals regarding his-
torical processes, events, and motives.
This is one of the aspects I will concentrate on in the following (part III ).
In addition, I will discuss three aspects which, at least in part, have been
rather neglected so far. This holds particularly true with regard to problems
concerning the definition of counterfactual historiography (part II ) and the
different forms of such an undertaking (part IV ). Furthermore, I will reflect
briefly on the question whether historians are aware of the conditions and
implications counterfactual historiographic reasoning implies (part V). In
conclusion, I will ponder on the utility of such reasoning. Deliberately, this
will be done in a somewhat provocative manner, in the hope to ignite further
discussion.
29 Georg Christoph Berger Waldenegg, Mit vereinten Kräften! Zum Verhältnis von Herr-
schaftspraxis und Systemkonsolidierung im Neoabsolutismus am Beispiel der Nationalanleihe
von 1854, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Neuere Geschichte Öster-
reichs 94, Vienna 2002, p. 613.
30 Fredrik Logevall, “Foreword”, in: James G. Blight/Janet M. Lang/David A.
Welch, Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived: Virtual JFK , Lanham 2009, pp. ix–xi, p. ix.
31 James G. Blight/Janet M. Lang/David A. Welch, “Epilogue”, in: Blight/Lang/
Welch, Vietnam, p. 251.
32 Logevall, “Foreword”, p. ix.
33 These two terms are used by Hawthorn (cf. Plausible Worlds, pp. 79, 123). One
could even speak of “probability”.
II. On the Definition of Counterfactual Historiography
I start with reflections on the definition of counterfactuality and counterfac-

tual historiography respectively. Most so-called “experts” define their topic
without providing any justification, as if this was not necessary. A quite typi-
cal example in this respect is Weinryb: “A [historical] counterfactual is a sub-
junctive conditional that presupposes the falsity of its antecedent”.34 Al-
though such a definition might be acceptable as a starting point, it might be
prudent to operate with a less clear-cut definition, because antecedents can
be completely or only partially false. As another writer has recently put it,
“[c]ounterfactual history is a virtual history […] assuming that certain events
didn’t take place or rather didn’t take place exactly as in reality”.35 Even
though one might criticise the equation of counterfactual history or histori-
ography with virtual history,36 we will see later on that the degree of false-
hood – respectively likelihood of a counterfactual – might indeed make some
difference.
Another definition has been proposed by the German historian Roland
Wenzlhuemer. He defines “counterfactual thinking”, thus in our case
counterfactual historiography, as the “imagination of [historical] alternatives
to [historical] reality”.37 One could dispute this definition for at least two rea-
sons.38 First: What is “historical reality”? Often, historians equate this idea
with hard historical facts. But are these facts really always so hard? Most
people would probably not blame one of the founders of current histori-
ography, Johann G. Droysen, for the fact that “in his private correspon-
dence […] [he] didn’t hesitate to call a spade a spade”.39 Yet, he also acknowl-
edged “that the facts do not speak except through the words of someone
34 Weinryb, “Historiographic Counterfactuals”, p. 109.

35 Reinhard Pohanka, Kein Denkmal für Maria Theresia: Eine alternative Geschichte Öster-
reichs, Graz 2007, pp. 7–8. Cf. also Weber, “Vom Sinn”, p. 14.
36 For some reflections on the various terms, cf. Weber, “Vom Sinn”, pp. 13–17.
37 Wenzlhuemer, “Counterfactual Thinking”, p. 37. He refers back to the definition
by Keith D. Markman/Igor Gavanski/Stephen J. Sherman/Matthew N.
McMullen, “The Mental Situation of Better and Worse Possible Worlds”, in: Jour-
nal of Experimental Social Psychology, 29/1993, pp. 87–109, p. 88.
38 For another critique of traditional definitions, cf. Todd S. Presner, “Subjunctive
History? The Use of Counterfactuals in the Writing of the Disaster”, in: Storiogra-
fia, 4/2000, pp. 23–38.
39 Philipp Müller, “Hermeneutics and Source-Criticism in Historical Scholarship”,
in: Miriam Dobson/Benjamin Ziemann (eds.), Reading Primary Sources: The Inter-
pretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History, London/New York
2009, pp. 21–36, p. 21.
who has seized and understood them”.40 Indeed, “these facts themselves are
not objective items, but rather dissected from a contingent transmission and
elevated to the status of a fact by way of interpretation”.41 Second, and for
our purpose more substantial: Are definitions as the ones mentioned above
“reasonably precise”, as the editors of one stimulating related miscellany
claim?42 This would be a great advantage because definitions are often sub-
ject to never-ending contention, not only among historians. But Demandt,
for instance, holds that “counterfactual history describes reflections on
likely events in the past which didn’t take place”.43
This is a crucial point: Must historiographic counterfactuals be likely?
Let us take the following counterfactual: “If only the Soviet Union had had
the atomic bomb in the summer of 1941 and if Joseph Stalin had been
irrevocably determined to use it immediately after the German attack he
wouldn’t have had to decide in the autumn of that year whether to leave Mos-
cow or not”. Obviously enough, Stalin could not have had the bomb in the
summer of 1941, therefore, I have created a kind of “miracle counterfac-
tual”,44 which one might denounce as pointless or even as a kind of bogus
science approach. However, it illustrates plainly the potential decisiveness of
overwhelming military power. I assume that Levine has exactly such an
“elucidation”45 in mind when he accepts historical counterfactuals as “heu-
ristic expressions” (although it might be more appropriate to speak of a
“heuristic device”).46 And whether such insights could as “easily be accom-
plished in ways more faithful to the historical record”,47 has yet to be seen.
40 Qtd. in Müller, “Hermeneutics”, p. 27.

41 Weber, “Vom Sinn”, p. 14.
42 Tetlock/Belkin, “Thought Experiments”, p. 4.
43 Alexander Demandt, “Kontrafaktische Geschichte”, in: Stefan Jordan (ed.),
Lexikon Geschichtswissenschaft: Hundert Grundbegriffe, Stuttgart 2002, pp. 190–193,
p. 190.
44 Richard N. Lebow, “What’s so Different About a Counterfactual?”, in: World
Politics, 52/2000, pp. 550–585, p. 566.
45 Thomas G. Otte, “Neo-Revisionism or the Emperor’s New Clothes: Some Reflec-
tions on Niall Ferguson on the Origins of the First World War”, in: Diplomacy &
Statescraft, 11/2000, pp. 271–290, p. 286.
46 J. Cheryl Exum, “Why Virtual History? Alternatives, Counterfactuals, and the
Bible”, in: Biblical Interpretation, 8/2000, pp. 1–7, p. 7; Steven Lukes, “Elster on
Counterfactuals”, in: Inquiry, 23/1980, pp. 145–155.
47 David Henige, “The Alchemy of Turning Fiction into Truth”, in: Journal of Scholarly
Publishing, 40/2008, pp. 354–372, p. 371 (referring especially to the “contingency
of history”). Cf. also Yemina Ben-Menahme, “Historical Contingency”, in: Ratio
(New Series), 10/1997, pp. 99–107.
Nevertheless, there remains one problem: Is it possible to assess the like-

lihood of historical counterfactuals? According to Demandt (in the 1984
version of his seminal study),
there is a region of such low probability that in vernacular German one speaks of
the impossibility of the conceivable. No […] Soviet General Secretary is able to
denounce Marxism under the conditions prevailing today. To increase the number
of such absurdities is of little interest. Of greater value is the consideration of
events that lay in the narrower sphere of the objectively possible!48
Obviously, Demandt is a better historian than prophet, and perhaps histori-
ans should generally avoid making predictions about the future.49 At least he
later frankly confessed his misjudgement:
[N]o Soviet secretary general (so I wrote in 1984) could condemn Marxism.
Alas! Tempora mutantur! Never say never! However, there is little inducement to
multiply absurdities. It is more interesting to observe events that lie within the
inner circle of the objectively possible.50
As already indicated, this point is quite central with regard to counterfactual
reasoning, at least when its advocates claim to argue scholarly (“wissenschaft-
lich”) – however scholarship (“Wissenschaft”) might be defined. It demands an
answer by historians, even if they do not look into the future but into the past
instead – as they usually do –, exploring what alternative courses history could
have taken at a particular moment. Let me ask again: What kind of ex-post
counterfactuals are likely? And I refer once more to Demandt, who conjec-
tures that “if the shots [that killed the throne successor Franz Ferdinand] had
not been fired in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914” Austria-Hungary “would perhaps
have become a commonwealth”.51 Now, this counterfactual – probably the
“most popular and most discussed”52 – is much more cautious than the one
regarding the possibility of denouncing Marxism. Yet, is it also more likely, as
Demandt obviously thinks? And could we ever measure its likelihood?
These two questions bring me to my next issue, the problem of assessing
the likelihood of counterfactuals regarding historical processes, events, and
motives (and, thus, reaching scholarly consensus regarding the likelihood of
specific historiographic counterfactuals).
48 Alexander Demandt, Ungeschehene Geschichte: Ein Traktat über die Frage: Was wäre ge-
schehen, wenn …?, Göttingen 1984, p. 46. My translation, because the English ver-
sion of this passage is imprecise.
49 But obviously this is part of the problem of counterfactual reasoning, which quasi
by definition implies to reflect on future developments.
51 Demandt, History, pp. 107, 204.
52 Pohanka, Kein Denkmal, p. 204.
III. On the Likelihood of Historiographic Counterfactuals
Holger Herwig, a German military historian teaching in Calgary (b. 1941),

recently constructed a “close-call counterfactual”,53 thus adhering to the so-
called “minimum-rewrite-of-history rule”,54 already set up by Max Weber55
(who is often used as a kind of reliable warrantor for the fruitfulness of
counterfactual history).56 Herwig’s counterfactual concerns the very conduct
of Stalin in the autumn of 1941. As German troops besieged Moscow, the
Soviet leader “decided to leave the capital temporarily for the relative safety
of Kuntsevo”, a village near the capital where he had a dacha. According
to Herwig, Stalin changed his mind because of warnings by Lavrentyi Beria,
head of the Soviet Secret Service. In fact, the dacha was located west of the
capital and already mined. Herwig’s counterfactual asks: “What if Stalin had
had none of this caution and instead demanded to be transported to Kunt-
sevo?” For Herwig the answer is clear: “The great dictator would have been
dead”.57
Now, it is rather easy to question this conclusion. For example, Stalin
could still have changed his mind on his way to Kuntsevo (or even before).
Most of all, what about the likelihood of Herwig’s initial counterfactual ques-
tion? First, there is a problem historians nearly always have to deal with: the
reliability of their sources. Herwig claims to have “relied on the known his-
torical record”.58 But he only refers to a biography of Stalin by Dmitri Vol-
kogonov,59 whose account of the meeting between Stalin and Beria Herwig
does not depict correctly altogether,60 while Volkogonov himself does not
indicate the sources of his account. But even if we were in possession of a
53 Holger H. Herwig, “Hitler Wins in the East but Germany Still Loses World
War II ”, in: Philip E. Tetlock/Richard N. Lebow/Geoffrey Parker (eds.), Un-
making the West: ‘What-If ?’ Scenarios that Rewrite World History, Ann Arbor 2006,
pp. 323–360, p. 331.
54 Tim de Mey, “Remodeling the Past”, in: Foundations of Science, 10/2005, pp. 47–66,
p. 59.
55 Cf. Max Weber, “Objective Possibility and Adequate Causation in Historical Ex-
planation”, in: Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. and ed. Edward A.
Shils, Glencoe 1949, pp. 164–188.
56 For an adequate assessment of Weber’s position, cf. Hoffmann, Zufall, p. 145.
57 Herwig, “Hitler”, p. 331.
58 Herwig, “Hitler”, p. 331.
59 Cf. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, London 1991, pp. 434–435.
60 According to Volkogonov, Beria was “somewhat nervous” and Stalin “angry”
(Stalin, p. 435), while according to Herwig the latter was “not amused” and the
former “nervous” (“Hitler”, p. 331).
perfect record – and what ought this to be? – there would remain a second
problem: Could Stalin really have demanded to be transported to Kuntsevo?
According to some experts a counterfactual must be one already “contem-
plated by contemporaries”.61 This claim has been criticized quite harshly, and
it has been argued, for instance, that such a restriction “would rule out all
counterfactuals that were the result of impulsive behaviour (or the lack of
it), of human accident”.62 Be that as it may, and coming back to Herwig’s
example, Stalin apparently considered the possibility of going to Kuntsevo.
Yet, maybe he had no option to act on this thought.
If everything has a specific cause (or causes), then Stalin’s actual decision
also resulted from a specific cause (or causes) which historians maybe are
not able to identify. In our concrete case, Stalin could have been compelled
(despite of his political power) to follow the advice of subordinates, in this
case of Beria. According to the political scientist Richard N. Lebow – very
much engaged in counterfactual case studies – a close counterfactual should
not “strain our understanding of the world”,63 and thus not contradict “what
was technologically, culturally, temporally, or otherwise possible”.64 And evi-
dently, Stalin could have gone to Kuntsevo. This would not have “strain[ed]
our understanding of the world”.
But what is our understanding of Stalin, his character, and his ways of mak-
ing decisions? Can we identify his motives of action? Can we ascribe to him
a kind of typical, empirically observable behaviour in given, in specific circum-
stances? Admittedly, I am not very familiar with his life. But I know that his-
torians still today quarrel over the personality of a man like Adolf Hitler. And
most probably, they will continue to do so.
To begin with, in most cases historians cannot put their patients on the
famous couch. This statement appears to be trivial, but it is important,
since even if they could do so, maybe they would not be better off. Apart
from this, there is some trouble with the historian’s set of tools, the so-called
“historical method” – or rather “methods” (because there is no single his-
61 Cf., for example, Wenzlhuemer, “Counterfactual Thinking”, p. 52; Niall Ferguson,

“Introduction: Virtual History: Towards a ‘Chaotic’ Theory of the Past”, in: Fer-
guson (ed.), Virtual History, pp. 1–90, p. 86.
62 Lebow, “What’s so Different”, p. 569.
63 Richard N. Lebow, “Francis Ferdinand Found Alive: World War I Unnecessary”,
http://ir.emu.edu.tr/staff/ekaymak/courses/IR 515/Articles/
Lebow%20on%20WW 1 %20Counterfactuals.pdf, pp. 1–46, pp. 5, 27 (January 31,
2010).
64 Richard N. Lebow, “Counterfactual Thought Experiments: A Necessary Teaching
Tool”, in: The History Teacher, 40/2007, pp. 153–176, p. 160.
torical method). Historians are working mainly with sources of different

kinds. By tradition, they analyse them by asking specific questions, such
as: who? (author), what? (content), where? (place), when? (time), and so on.
Nowadays, that is, after the so-called “linguistic turn”, they even ask, or are
supposed to ask, other, let us say more sophisticated, questions such as:
“Does the text employ metaphors, and what is their specific function for the
argument of the text?”65
Obviously, historians hope to get correct answers by asking such ques-
tions. But often they quarrel which answers are correct or more accurate,
even with regard to so-called “hard facts” (evidently, this depends also on
the definition of “fact”). Such controversies are an “everyday” phenom-
enon,66 and that is why it is simply not true that “the historical data and facts
itself are in most cases without controversy”, as has been recently claimed,67
and that “truth […] is often little more, and nothing less, than that which is
most widely believed”.68
But most of all, such disputes arise when historians try to describe, under-
stand, interpret, and explain processes, events, and motives.69 Explanation is,
after all, often considered the discipline’s fundamental goal,70 a “must” for
serious historiographic works.71 Hence, these disputes arise exactly on the
same level as counterfactual reasoning. And the natures of these disagree-
ments are very often substantial.
65 Dobson/Ziemann, “Introduction”, pp. 5–14.

66 Cf. Gerd Tellenbach, “Ungeschehene Geschichte und ihre heuristische Funk-
tion”, in: Historische Zeitschrift, 258/1994, pp. 297–316, p. 312.
67 Cf. Nils Freytag/Wolfgang Piereth, Kursbuch Geschichte: Tipps und Regeln für wissen-
schaftliches Arbeiten, Paderborn 2004, p. 99.
68 Henige, “Alchemy”, p. 355.
69 Actually, these terms are used in different ways. For instance, the philosopher
David Carr writes: “The goal of the historian is to come up with a satisfying
account of the actions, whether we call it explanation, understanding, or just
description” (“Place and Time: On the Interplay of Historical Points of View”,
in: History & Theory, 40/2001, pp. 153–167, p. 154). Anton Froeyman states: “His-
toriography consists of giving answers to three different types of questions: What?
How? Why?” (“Concepts of Causation in Historiography”, in: Scholarly Incursions:
Historical Methods, 42/2009, pp. 116–128, p. 119).
70 Cf., for instance, Lothar Gall, “Review of: Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesell-
schaftsgeschichte im 20. Jahrhundert”, in: Historische Zeitschrift, 279/2004, pp. 409–414,
p. 415.
71 Cf. Gregory Radick, “What If …? Exploring Alternative Scientific Parts”, in:
New Scientist, 187/2005, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725131.500-
what-if-exploring-alternative-scientific-pasts.html?full=true (February 11, 2010).
Now, to call for unanimous explanations is a rather tall order, the more
so, as historians cannot conduct controlled experiments the way other dis-
ciplines are able to (although their results are often contested, too). Hence,
many colleagues are satisfied if explanations fulfil two conditions established
by the philosopher of science Aviezer Tucker (b. 1965). The first condition
concerns consensus: “Usually, when the consensus involves hundreds of
people who are geographically, institutionally, and professionally dispersed,
it is safe to assume that it is large enough […] to avoid accidental results”.72
The second premise concerns the methodological basis on which the afore-
said consensus is achieved, namely “accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity,
and fruitfulness”.73
So far, so good! Yet, we should bear in mind three normal, but quite fun-
damental, experiences for historians: First, by and by, even dominant expla-
nations become obsolete or at least require more or less substantial modifi-
cations (this also goes for so-called classics, even though their “form” or
rather their structure might get “irrefutable”);74 second, rather often expla-
nations shared only by a minority – members of the majority sometimes
blemish them as “outsiders” (that is part of the historian’s power game) –
turn out to be considered as more appropriate; third, even alleged hard his-
torical facts in the course of time may turn out to be only interpretations, and
thus, subjective.
What is more, explanations contain certain hidden assumptions (this
might be the case in all academic disciplines) such as: the view of mankind,
ideas about whether mankind in the course of time makes progress or not,
whether human history is made primarily by men, by impersonal forces, no-
torious structures, or even by accident and chaos, and – last but not least –
whether human beings act rationally, as historians normally “assume”.75
Another hidden assumption regards the view what scholarship is and what
it can achieve – if historiography is considered a scholarly endeavour and not
something else, for instance art or “fiction”.76 Finally, there is the problem of
72 Aviezer Tucker, Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography, Cambridge

2004, p. 34.
73 Tucker, Knowledge, p. 36. Tucker refers only to “interpretations”, but his argument
goes also for “explanations”.
74 Hayden White, “Der historische Text als literarisches Kunstwerk”, in: Christoph
Conrad/Martina Kessel (eds.), Geschichte schreiben in der Postmoderne: Beträge zur ak-
tuellen Diskussion, Stuttgart 1994, pp. 123–157, p. 138.
75 Bunzl, “Counterfactual History”, p. 852.
76 Tim de Mey/Erik Weber, “Explanation and Thought Experiments in History”, in:
History & Theory, 42/2003, pp. 28–38, p. 28.
“free will”. Regarding our concrete example, maybe what appears to be “im-
pulsive behaviour” is in reality behaviour resulting from certain brain activ-
ities.77 Hence, though “ultimately it is people who decide and act”,78 free will
might be an illusion (Herwig himself professes to “believe in choice, […] and
not in determinism”, and thus in free will).79
Overall, then, Herwig maybe did not reflect enough on the premises of
his own counterfactual starting point. Now, it has been argued that histori-
ans “hold the keys to their own release”, as far as their “preconceptions”
are concerned.80 I fear this is an illusion. But even if this were the case,
I fear that the other epistemological problems mentioned remain on the
table.
IV. On Different Forms of Historiographic Counterfactuals
In this part I will consider different forms (not “styles”)81 of counterfac-

tual historiography.82 For this purpose, I will rely on a historical example, or
rather a historical puzzle, aptly expressed by the British historian Alan Sked
(b. 1947): “[A]t what point did the collapse of the Habsburg Empire become
inevitable?”83 This puzzle, traditionally troubling historians, is connected
with another question formulated by Sked: “[C]ould anything have been
done to avoid this [collapse]?”84
To begin with, we can distinguish between “direct” or “explicit” and
“indirect” or “implicit” counterfactual statements. As Tucker rightly states,
“historians […] use counterfactuals regularly though implicitly when they as-
sign necessary causes, and sometimes in assigning degrees of importance to
77 Lebow, “What’s so Different”, p. 569.

78 Otte, “Neo-Revisionism”, p. 274.
79 Cf. Herwig, “Hitler”, p. 325.
80 Cf. Philip E. Tetlock/Richard N. Lebow, “Poking Counterfactual Holes in Cover-
ing Laws: Cognitive Styles and Historical Reasoning”, in: American Political Science
Review, 95/2001, pp. 828–843, p. 830.
81 On “different styles of counterfactual argumentation”, cf. Tetlock/Belkin,
“Thought Experiments”, p. 6–7.
82 As far as I see it, there is only one valuable contribution partly dedicated to this.
Cf. Peter Burg, “Kontrafaktische Urteile in der Geschichtswissenschaft: Formen
und Inhalte”, in: Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 79/1997, pp. 211–227.
83 Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire 1815–1918, 2nd ed., Harlow
2001, p. 3.
84 Sked, Habsburg Empire, p. 3.
causes”.85 Maybe one could even argue that all indirect causal statements en-
close counterfactuals. A rather typical “direct” statement is the following:
“Had the Habsburg Empire enjoyed a homogeneous population, there is no
reason to suppose that it would not have left the war intact”.86 Here is an-
other example, put even more straightforwardly:
If [the Austrian chancellor] Metternich had […] realized [“constitution” and “par-
liament”] […] already in 1848, in middle Europe too the “spring of people” [“Völ-
kerfrühling”] would have led to a democratic solution of the social and political
problems. But history took a different course.87
Here, by contrast, is an example of an indirect statement: “Reaction had

destroyed a great opportunity”.88 Obviously, according to its author Robert
A. Kann (1906–1981), a specialist on Austria-Hungary, absolutism yielded
negative effects, but it remains unclear whether he would also claim a causal
nexus between absolutism and the end of the monarchy.
Frequently, both indirect and direct counterfactual statements are rather
unspecified, because we are not told in detail why they should be correct.
This point leads to another distinction: Counterfactuals can be “unspecified”
or “detailed”. The latter ones mostly appear in the form of case studies. Now,
many, if not most of the works on the history of Austria-Hungary after about
1848 are dedicated to the question of why the monarchy collapsed in 1918
and not at some other point. Yet, almost always this question is addressed
only sketchily – a case in point for the observation that “most […] counter-
factuals” are “found” incidentally “in ordinary historical texts”,89 and that
they are unspecified, no matter if they are of direct or indirect nature.
85 Aviezer Tucker, “Historiographical Counterfactuals and Historical Contingency

(Review of Niall Ferguson’s Virtual History)”, in: History & Theory, 38/1999,
pp. 264–276, p. 265, italics in the original. According to Johannes Bulhof counter-
factuals are only “sometimes […] not explicit” (“What If ? Modality and History”,
in: History & Theory, 38/1999, pp. 145–168, p. 148).
86 Sked, Habsburg Empire, p. 271.
87 Helmut Rumpler, “Einleitung: Grenzen der Demokratie im Vielvölkerstaat”, in:
Rumpler/Peter Urbanitsch (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918, Vol. VII ,
Verfassung und Parlamentarismus, Part 1, Verfassungsrecht, Verfassungswirklichkeit, zen-
trale repräsentative Körperschaften, Vienna 2000, pp. 1–10, p. 3. By the way (and quite
tellingly), Rumpler as well as Sked do not worry about potential methodological
and/or theoretical difficulties to assess the likelihood of such a far-reaching
counterfactual.
88 Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526–1918, Berkeley/Los An-
geles/London 1974, p. 312.
89 Bulhof, “What If ?”, p. 146.
Moreover, one can also distinguish between “cautious” and “strong”

claims. The former ones contain subjunctive formulations such as “such and
such actions could have had these and these results” and expressions such as
“perhaps” or “maybe”. Here is one example, taken once more from Kann:
“In 1848/49 Austria could have realized reforms that perhaps could have as-
sured his further existence for many generations […]”.90 An even more cau-
tious statement is this one by Sked:
It is quite possible that, had the Monarchy been spared a war [its] local national-
isms […] might have grown more serious, but it is equally likely that the Monarchy
might have done more to solve its domestic problems and consolidate its position
in international affairs.91
Now, there are good reasons to desist from claims one cannot defend.
Yet, precisely because of such caution, it seems quite impossible to test the
relevant hypothesis. Speaking in Popperian terms, it is not open to falsifica-
tion. So maybe we are caught in a kind of dilemma. In other words, cautious
counterfactuals can lead to vagueness or even to vacuity, while strong ones
might be all too easy to falsify (could one establish a kind of happy medium
between the two?), as, for example, this indirect counterfactual by Sked:
“The [Habsburg] Empire fell because it lost a major war”.92 However, such
claims might be taken as “heuristic expressions”, as starting points to analyse
the impact of certain factors, in this case the degree of the impact of the lost
war on the fate of the monarchy.
Another distinction concerns the “temporal” and “substantive range” of
counterfactual statements. I divide them into three forms: first, “temporal”
(short-/mid-/long-range); second, “substantive” (small-/mid-/large-range);
and I confine myself to one temporal long-range counterfactual: Accord-
ing to one historian, the “century-long ‘decline’ [of the Habsburg monarchy]
that ultimately led to […] defeat and dissolution” began as early as 1815.93
90 Robert A. Kann, Das Nationalitätenproblem der Habsburgermonarchie: Geschichte und

Ideengehalt der nationalen Bestrebungen vom Vormärz bis zur Auflösung des Reiches im Jahre
1918, Vol. 2, Graz/Cologne 1964, p. 303.
91 Alan Sked, “The European Empires: A Case of Fall Without Decline?”, in: Arnold
Suppan/Klaus Koch/Elisabeth Vyslonzil (eds.), The Decline of Empires, Schriften-
reihe des österreichischen Ost- und Südosteuropa-Instituts 26, Vienna 2001,
pp. 149–173, p. 149.
92 Sked, “European Empires”, p. 150.
93 Charles Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1615–1815, 2nd ed., Cambridge 2000, p. 243.
The author alludes here, amongst other things, to the fact of missing internal
reforms.
Claims of this kind are open to criticism, even more so as they often are lin-
ear, not to say deterministic.
Yet a further distinction concerns causality: Counterfactuals can be
“pluri-causal” or “mono-causal” like the following one:
The absolutistic Austrian political system between 1851 and 1860 failed to settle
the social question in a fair manner. Therefore, even those parts of society which
until then weren’t infected with national ideas became nationalist. In the end, this
process decided upon the future of the monarchy.94
Most historians would denounce “mono-causal” claims as too simplistic.
But “multi-causal” claims imply the problem “of weighting”: “How much
importance should be assigned to factors A, B, C, and so forth?”95
The internal and external situation of the Habsburg monarchy was, of
course, highly complex. Hence, I doubt, for example, that one could formu-
late a “well-constructed”,96 sufficiently “evidentially based”97 counterfactual
that would withstand rather easy deconstruction, such as: “Even in case of
a general European conflagration, the downfall of the Habsburg monarchy
could have been avoided if there hadn’t existed Serbian nationalism or Pan-
Slavism”. Naturally, one could claim: “If nationalism had not existed at
all, there wouldn’t have been World War I and consequently the monarchy
would have survived”. Apart from the fact that the monarchy could have
fallen for other reasons, evidently, this is a “miracle counterfactual” whose
only (and I have no problems with that) heuristic value is that it stresses the
potential impact of nationalism.
A final distinction: Counterfactuals often accentuate personal factors
(human agency) instead of, in particular, structures. According to Walter
Laqueur (b. 1921), counterfactual historiography forms a “reaction to the ex-
treme de-personalization and determinism of current historical studies, with
their emphasis on social history opposed to events and personality-driven
history”.98 Be that as it may, obviously even apparently insignificant circum-
94 Christoph Stölzl, Die Ära Bach in Böhmen: Sozialgeschichtliche Studien zum Neoabsolutis-
mus 1849–1859, Veröffentlichungen des Collegium Carolinum, Vol. 26, Munich/
Vienna 1971, p. 312.
95 Richard F. Hamilton/Holger H. Herwig, “World Wars: Definition and Causes”,
in: Hamilton/Herwig (eds.), The Origins of World War I, Cambridge 2003, p. 41.
96 Giovanni Capoccia/R. Daniel Kelemen, “The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory,
Narrative, and Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism”, in: World Politics,
59/2007, pp. 341–369, p. 355.
97 Martin Bunzl, “Posting”, September 8, 2004, http://www.historycooperative.org/
phorum/read.php?11,245,250,quote=1#REPLY (February 1, 2010).
98 Walter Laqueur, “Disraelia: A Counterfactual History”, 2008, http://blogs.law.
harvard.edu/mesh/files/2008/04/disraelia_laqueur.pdf (February 11, 2010).
stances might help to explain historical events such as the outbreak of World
War I: At the time of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Austro-Hun-
garian Chief of the General Staff was Conrad von Hötzendorf. Even before
the killing he had insisted on a pre-emptive strike against Serbia. So his per-
emptory call for war in the summer of 1914 seems only consistent. Yet,
maybe Conrad “calculated that, as a war hero, he would be free to marry his
beloved Gina von Reininghaus”. Thus, his “infatuation cannot, obviously,
explain the outbreak of the First World War. But it remains a reminder that
the most banal and maudlin emotions, as well as the most deeply felt,
interacted with the wider context”,99 that “little things”, too, “do” or at least
“matter”.100
So what about the likelihood of the following counterfactual: “If Conrad
had never met his beloved Gina, (maybe) he would not have opted for war
the way he did, therefore (maybe) the war-party in Vienna would have had
less influence, therefore, the ultimatum to Serbia (maybe) would have been
at any rate formulated less drastically, therefore, the Serbian government
(maybe) would have accepted its (crucial) terms, therefore, World War I
(maybe) would not have taken place …”?
In conclusion, I must emphasize three aspects: First of all, further distinc-
tions could be made. Second, counterfactuals often combine some of the
categories mentioned. A very striking example, being “mono-causal” as well
as “indirect” and “strong”, is the one already quoted from Sked: “The Em-
pire fell because it lost a major war”.101 Third, there are gradations in all cat-
egories of my typology; they are not binary categories, but arrayed on a con-
tinuum.
V. On the Historian’s Awareness of the Implications

of Counterfactual Reasoning
Now, are historians aware of the possible conditions and implications re-
garding counterfactual reasoning? The answer is simple and can therefore be
stated briefly: In most cases this does not seem to be the case, since histori-
ans’ counterfactuals of whatever kind are almost never accompanied by ref-
99 Hew Strachan, The Outbreak of the First World War, Oxford 2004, p. 127.
100 Dylan Kissane, “The Balkan Bullett With Butterfly Wings”, in: Central and
Eastern European Political Science Journal, 4/2006, pp. 85–106, p. 100, http://
works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=dylankissane
(February 15, 2010).
101 Sked, “European Empires”, p. 150.
erences or even reflections. Put more generally in the form of a question:

Why are “historians […] not more ‘historical’ in relation to their own pro-
fessional practices”?102 I suppose, this results mainly from a certain disincli-
nation, if not aversion, against the necessity of theoretical reflections regard-
ing historians’ everyday work, notwithstanding the fact that nowadays most
of them would probably underline the importance of such reflections, not
seldom paying a kind of lip service.
Let me just give one example: Lorraine Daston, a renowned historian of
science, wrote in an article published about ten years ago:
Debates on the […] literary character of history […] are welcome provocations,
to reflect more precisely, to distinguish more exactly and to argue more forcefully,
and – most of all – to research in a broader and more open way. But these are
only turbulences on the surface. In the depths, where historians do their work, the
water still flows calmly.103
Daston – all told – does not appear to be all too troubled about this state of
affairs. Instead, I fear that the water flows all too calmly. And – alas – this
also holds true for some of those historians who explicitly approve counter-
factual historiography and have even written methodical-theoretical con-
tributions about this subject. For instance, Demandt does not even mention
the work of David Lewis.
VI. Conclusion
In conclusion then, what is the use of counterfactual historiography? Evi-

dently, I am rather sceptical as regards the historian’s power to interpret
and/or explain rather complex historical events, processes, and actions; and
maybe most events, processes, and actions are more complex than it may ap-
pear at first glance.
Hence, can historians really “arrive in many cases at lucid hypotheses con-
cerning probabilities”, as Demandt has suggested?104 Counterfactual histori-
ography in my opinion involves more “perils” than “pleasures”.105 Never-
theless, I am neither convinced that historians can only construct “impostor
102 Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice, 2nd ed., London 2006, p. 7.

103 Lorraine Daston, “Die unerschütterliche Praxis”, in: Rainer M. Kiesow/Dieter
Simon (eds.), Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Wahrheit: Zum Grundlagenstreit in der
Geschichtswissenschaft, Frankfurt a.M./New York 2000, pp. 13–25, p. 25.
105 David Laibman, “What If ? The Pleasures and Perils of Counterfactual History”,
in: Science & Society, 72/2008, pp. 131–135.
counterfactuals”106 nor that they should follow Levine’s advice and use
counterfactuals only as “heuristic expressions”. On the contrary. For at least
four reasons I contend that historians should grapple with the challenge of
counterfactual historiography: First – and as I already said – they willy-nilly
argue counterfactually; in fact, such reasoning “plays a pivotal role in his-
torical inquiries”.107 Second, I agree with Lebow that counterfactual histori-
ography differs only in degree, not in substance from its so-to-say factual
twin brother (or sister), and thus from the normal business of historians. In
reverse this means, then, that historians who argue explicitly counterfactually
should try to base their interpretations and/or explanations on as much
evidence as possible;108 third, both “businesses” are inextricably intercon-
nected. Fourth, and last but not least, many historians like what they are
doing; so they should try to make the best of the problems, if not to say
shortcomings, of their discipline. All told, I support a thesis by the editors of
a recent volume dedicated to what-if scenarios: “The primary value of such an
exercise […] is humility. The world we inhabit is but one of the vast array of
possible worlds that might have been brought about”.109
Let us return to the outbreak of World War I – by the way this expression
is not a fact but an interpretation: For good reasons, some historians con-
sider this war to be already the fifth or even eighth World War.110 Soon after
the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Vienna sent an emissary to Berlin to
assure unconditional German support in case of war, which was granted.
What if this assassination had not taken place? No blank cheque and no war
then? And could Austria-Hungary really “have become a Commonwealth”,
as Demandt conjectured? In other words: Franz Ferdinand’s death mattered!
Even historians who favour structural explanations are bound to admit its
historical impact. But I fear it will remain uncertain how much it mattered.
Thus, World War I – or something comparable – might have broken out for
other reasons, if not in the summer of 1914, then rather soon.111 And in this
106 Cf. Cartwright on counterfactuals in economics,“Counterfactuals”, p. 191.

107 De Mey, “Remodeling”, p. 62.
108 Cf. Lebow, “What’s so Different”, pp. 555–557; T.A. Climo/P.G.A. Howells,
“Possible Worlds in Historical Explanations”, in: History & Theory, 15/1976,
pp. 1–20, p. 19.
109 Philip E. Tetlock/Richard N. Lebow/Geoffrey Parker, “Preface”, in: Tetlock/
Lebow/Parker, Unmaking the West, p. 3.
110 Cf., for example, Hamilton/Herwig, “World Wars”, p. 3.
111 With regard to “second-order-counterfactuals” cf. Geoffrey Parker, “What If …
Philip II had gone to the Netherlands?”, in: The History Teacher, 54/2004,
pp. 40–46.
case the end of the Habsburg Monarchy might have occurred in quite a simi-
lar way as it actually did.
Unfortunately, I forgot to mention two things: First, the monarchy could
have become a Commonwealth even in case of defeat or even score, and sec-
ond, it could have won the war! Many experts would judge both claims as
rather unlikely; yet, if “the world we inhabit is really but one of the vast array
of possible worlds that might have been brought about”, they appear to be
only two of so-to-say infinite likely counterfactuals! I would like to conclude
with a reflection borrowed from Robert Musil, in my opinion an inexhaust-
ible source of interesting, important, and useful insights:
Whoever has the sense of possibility [Möglichkeitssinn], does not say, for in-
stance: Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents:
Here this or that might, could, or ought to happen. If he is told that something is
the way it is, he will think: It could probably just as well be otherwise.112
112 Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Reinbek 1978, p. 16, my translation.
150 Richard Ned Lebow
Richard Ned Lebow (Dartmouth)
Counterfactuals, Contingency, and Causation
Causation, as David Hume understood, is a creation of the human mind, not

a feature of the world. Social science regularly ignores this caveat and at-
tempts to “explain” human behavior and the outcomes to which it leads in
terms of Humean causation. Social scientists search for regularities and dis-
tinguish cause from effect by means of temporal precedence. As the social
world is open-ended and non-linear, the attempt to map Humean causes on
to it is not only artificial but often unsuccessful. We need to rethink our
understanding of cause and how we attempt to establish it in domains where
simple, linear conceptions of causation offer little traction. I take a few hesi-
tant steps in this direction.
I begin by showing how counterfactual intra-case comparison can be used
to explore complex causation in international relations. Case studies of the
origins of World War I and the end of the Cold War – summarized here –
suggest that both outcomes were the result of non-linear confluences that
defy description in terms of Humean causation. These cases have negative
implications for the project of theory building in international relations as it
now rests on Humean causation and its search for linear regularities. I dis-
cuss these limitations as a prelude to offering an alternative: an approach to
causation that recognizes the importance of agency, immediate causes, and
non-linear confluence and works backwards from them to reconstruct a
more complete and satisfying account of important international outcomes.
I. Case Studies
Social scientists have long recognized the utility, even necessity, of using
counterfactuals to help establish or buttress causal claims. If we hypothes-
ize that “X” caused “Y”, we assume that in the absence of “X”, other things
being equal, there would be no “Y”. The obvious way of testing such a prop-
osition is in a large sample of comparable, independent cases where there is
adequate variation on both the independent and dependent variables. This
condition can rarely be met in international relations given the limited
number of comparable and independent cases that are generally available.
Scholars using the case study method often attempt to establish causation
Counterfactuals, Contingency, and Causation 151
through process tracing.1 They try to document the links between a stated
cause and a given outcome in lieu of establishing a statistical correlation.
This strategy works best at the individual level of analysis, and only when
there is enough evidence to document the calculations and motives of actors.
Even when such evidence is available, it is often impossible to determine the
relative weight of the hypothesized causes and which, if any of them, might
have produced the outcome in the absence of others or in combination with
other causes or background conditions not present in the case. It is often
useful to supplement process tracing with some kind of comparative analy-
sis. Counterfactual thought experiments can sometimes be utilized toward
this end.
Within a single case comparative analysis can take two forms: intra-case
comparison and counterfactual analysis. Intra-case comparison breaks down
a case into a series of similar interactions that are treated as separate and in-
dependent cases for purposes of analysis. Counterfactual analysis imagines
parallel cases in which one or more hypothesized causes or contextual fac-
tors are mutated. The two techniques are closely related because they add or
subtract what are thought to be key causes or enabling conditions while at-
tempting as far as possible to hold everything else constant. Comparative
case studies, when they are feasible, have the advantage of addressing real
world cases, and the drawback of never being able to control all relevant fac-
tors beyond the cause that is allowed to vary. Counterfactual comparisons do
just the reverse.
I have used both methods of comparison in a case study of the origins of
World War I.2 The Austrian leadership considered going to war with Serbia
or Montenegro on four occasions between 1911 and 1914. These decision
points can be broken out into individual cases and comparisons used to
identify the reasons behind the decision for war in 1914. The most important
difference was the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sop-
hie. The archduke, committed to peaceful relations with Russia, had been the
principal opponent to war. Emperor Franz Josef, also inclined toward peace,
was more willing to go to war in the aftermath of the assassinations, as was
the German Kaiser. For Franz Josef, the assassinations transformed the con-
flict between Austria and Serbia from one of interest and security into one
1 Cf. Alexander L. George/Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development,

Cambridge 2005; John Gerring, Case Study Research: Principles and Practices, Cam-
bridge 2007.
2 Cf. Richard Ned Lebow, Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations,
Princeton 2011, ch. 3.
of honor, making him willing to run risks he abjured on previous occasions.

The Kaiser’s anger and sympathy for Franz Ferdinand’s and Austria’s need
for “satisfaction” led him to frame the contest as a duel and his role as a “sec-
ond” to the Austrian Emperor. He responded favorably to Austria’s plea for
support (the so-called Hoyos mission). The assassination also reversed the
balance of power between hawks and doves in Vienna, which accounts for
the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia in July 1914 and declaration of war five days
later.
Intra-case comparison is also possible for German decision-making. The
Kaiser and his chancellors rejected military demands for war in 1905 and
1912 and urged diplomatic resolution of the 1912 and 1913 crises when they
threatened to involve Austria in wars with Serbia and Montenegro. These
intra-case comparisons reveal a significantly greater risk-taking propensity in
1914 for Kaiser and chancellor alike. The reason for the Kaiser’s shift has al-
ready been noted. That of Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg was due to his
belief that, sooner or later, war was inevitable and that Germany could no
longer be certain of winning it after 1917. This belief had been planted in his
mind by chief-of-staff Helmuth von Moltke, who, like his Austrian counter-
part, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, had been pushing for war for over a
decade – and for reasons that had little to do with security. The shift in risk
propensity in Germany enabled and reinforced the one in Austria.
Intra-case comparisons indicate that policymakers in Vienna, Berlin, and
St. Petersburg were more risk prone in 1914 than they had been even a year
earlier and that these shifts were due to the synergistic effects of three largely
independent causal chains. Counterfactual thought experiments help us as-
sess the contingency of these chains and establish their confluence.
The causal chain affecting Austria-Hungary was associated with the pre-
cipitous decline of Ottoman power which greatly exacerbated the Empire’s
insecurity. The Ottoman decline had many internal causes but was dramati-
cally accelerated by the Italian occupation of Tripoli in September 1911 and
the war between the two countries that it provoked. The conflict in the West-
ern Mediterranean provided Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece with the oppor-
tunity to take up arms and all but expel Turkey from Europe. Serbia doubled
its population and territory and with Russia’s backing sought to organize an
anti-Austrian alliance in the Balkans and incite national unrest within the
Dual Monarchy. If Italy had not occupied Tripoli – and there was consider-
able opposition in Rome to this ill-conceived venture – there would have
been no Balkan Wars in 1911–12, Serbia would not have constituted a threat
to Austria-Hungary and could not have done so until a much later date.
Credible minimal rewrites of history – the occupation of Tripoli is merely
one possibility – can easily sever this causal chain or alter its timing. Had
the Balkan events that Austria-Hungary found so threatening occurred a few
years earlier or later the Austrian response would almost certainly have been
different. If earlier, the German Kaiser and chancellor, given the causes and
timing of their gestalt shifts, would have been much less likely to have encour-
aged Austria to draw its sword. If later – Franz Josef died in 1916 – the Arch-
duke would have been emperor and in all likelihood engaged in a constitu-
tional struggle with Hungary that would have made him and other Austrians
even more inclined toward peace. Similar counterfactual interventions can
be made in the German and Russian causal chains and the consequences of
severing them or changing their timing have equally dramatic consequences
for risk-taking in 1914. Counterfactual thought experiments suggest that
World War I was highly contingent. It was the result of an unusual con-
fluence whose timing was fortuitous.
Elsewhere, Richard Herrmann and I use intra-case comparisons and
counterfactual analysis to probe the causes and contingency of the end of the
Cold War.3 We identified a single causal chain that led to the end of the Cold
War. It began with the election of Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary,
followed by his decision to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan, arms
control agreements with the West, the political independence of Eastern Eu-
rope, and unification of Germany. We recruited authors to write case studies
of these turning points and use counterfactuals to probe their contingency
and timing. Most of the turning points proved malleable in both respects and
could readily be untracked by credible minimal rewrites of history.
The sensitivity of these turning points to a range of counterfactual inter-
ventions helps to establish not only their contingency but the conditions re-
sponsible for them. In the case of the Cold War, leadership turned out to be
the important variable in most of them. Jacques Lévesque reasons – to offer
one example – that if Gorbachev had pressed for the replacement of Erich
Honecker by Hans Modrow – the preferred candidate of German reform-
ers – and Modrow, as expected, had made overtures to the internal opposi-
tion, events in Germany and Eastern Europe in general would have unfolded
differently. The German Democratic Republic (DDR ) might have remained
independent for some time as existing opposition forces were in favor of
its continued existence; the DDR might ultimately have been unified with
the Federal Republic rather than being absorbed. The new governments in
Poland and Hungary in the summer of 1989 did not call for an end to the
3 Cf. Richard K. Herrmann/Richard Ned Lebow (eds.), Ending the Cold War, New
York 2006.
Warsaw Pact and reserved a major and crucial role of their communist par-
ties. It was the sudden collapse of the DDR and calls for German unification
that upset the equilibria in Poland and Hungary and made dominoes fall in
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Rumania, and with them, the Warsaw Pact.4
Counterfactual analysis of turning points helps us to understand why
these events functioned as turning points: they were preconditions or cata-
lysts for other turning points and changing understandings in Moscow and
Washington about the nature and possibilities of their relationship. The se-
lection of Gorbachev as president was critical to the Intermediate Nuclear
Forces’ (INF ) accord with the United States and the general secretary’s pub-
lic disavowal of the use of force to prevent political change in Eastern Eu-
rope. These developments paved the way for the unification of Germany.
Political change in Eastern Europe arguably made German unification diffi-
cult to prevent, as Davis and Wohlforth demonstrate, but did not determine
the form it took.5
II. The Limits of Theory
Counterfactual probing of the origins of World War I and the end of the
Cold War raises questions about the ability of our theories to explain, let
alone predict, events of this kind. Theories in international relations are sys-
temic or structural, and I use these terms interchangeably. They rely on some
condition or set of conditions (e.g., balance of power, type of regime, nature
and implications of military technology) or process (equilibria, or their ab-
sence) to explain and predict outcomes. They assume that selection effects
are strong enough to shape behavior over time or that actors are sufficiently
rational and self-interested to grasp the implications of these structures or
bargaining games and respond as theorists expect they should.
Critics identify numerous ontological and psychological reasons for the
failure of such theories. The key ontological objections I noted in the intro-
duction: the open-ended, non-linear, path-dependent, and reflexive nature
of the social world. Systemic theories and formal models invariably ignore
the cognitive limitations and emotional commitments of actors and the at-
tention, even priority, they can give to other domestic and foreign problems
they confront. Models of bargaining impose a format of move and counter-
4 Jacques Levesque, email to the author, October 16, 2000.

5 Cf. James W. Davis/William C. Wohlforth, “German Unification”, in: Herrmann/
Lebow, Ending, pp. 131–169.
move on interstate relations that bear little relationship to the understanding

actors have of their interactions.6 Strategic logic, moreover, is not something
universally but culturally contingent.7
Systematic theories take for granted that appropriate catalysts will come
along when the underlying conditions for whatever they are trying to ac-
count for are present. The origins of World War I indicate that this is an un-
warranted assumption; underlying and immediate causes are not necessarily
linked, and the latter may be every bit as complicated and problematic. Sa-
rajevo met a series of conditions without which war would have been un-
thinkable for German and Austrian leaders. It removed the principal Aus-
trian opponent to war, angered Emperor Franz Josef and Kaiser Wilhelm in
ways that made them more receptive to strong action against Serbia, made it
possible for German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg to win over the Social
Democrats by making Russia appear responsible for any war, and allowed
the German Kaiser and chancellor – men unwilling to accept responsibility
for war – to convince themselves at the outset that support for Austria would
not escalate into a continental war, and that if it did, responsibility would
lie elsewhere. Sarajevo was not a match that set the dry kindling of Europe
alight – the metaphor routinely invoked by historians and international re-
lations scholars. It was more like a permissive action link on a nuclear
weapon, a trigger as complicated as the weapon itself that requires a specific
code without which the warhead cannot be detonated.
If catalysts fail to materialize in any kind of crisis other than a justification
of hostility crisis, war is unlikely to occur. By not taking the independent and
problematic causation of immediate causes into account, existing theories
are incomplete and data sets used to test them are of questionable utility.
All the underlying causes may be present, but no war will occur in the ab-
sence of an appropriate precipitant, and the case will be interpreted as dis-
confirming. The problem is further complicated by recognition that what are
often described as precipitants may be important causes in their own right,
with origins independent of underlying causes. This was certainly true of
Sarajevo.8
6 Cf. Richard Ned Lebow, “Beyond Parsimony: Rethinking Theories of Coercive

Bargaining”, in: European Journal of International Relations, 1/1998, pp. 31–66.
7 Cf. Richard Ned Lebow, A Cultural Theory of International Relations, Cambridge
2008.
8 Cf. William Thompson, “A Street Car Named Sarajevo: Catalysts, Multiple Causal-
ity Chains, and Rivalry Structures”, in: International Studies Quarterly, 47/2003,
pp. 453–474; Richard Ned Lebow, “A Data Set Named Desire: A Reply to William
P. Thompson”, in: International Studies Quarterly, 47/2003, pp. 458–475.
Underlying causes are equally problematic for existing theories. My case

studies demonstrate that the origins of World War I and the end of the Cold
War were the result of non-linear confluences. In 1914, the intersection of
several independent chains of causation brought about dramatic shifts in
risk-taking that would not otherwise have occurred. There is no reason to
think that World War I is atypical in this regard. A strong case can be made
that what are commonly described as the three transformations of the in-
ternational system in the twentieth century – those following World War I,
World War II , and the Cold War – were all the result of non-linear con-
fluences. If so, theories that attempt to account for hegemonic wars and other
transformative events in terms of single factors (e.g., power transition, offen-
sive-defensive balance), or even combinations of them, must be regarded as
inadequate. To the extent that many major international developments are
non-linear in nature – another question open to empirical investigation – we
must search for multiple causes and the synergistic ways in which they interact.
Events like World War I or the end of the Cold War are particularly in-
teresting to theorists because of their consequences for the future of inter-
national relations. Theories that seek to explain them, or the transformations
they bring about, assume that the latter follow ineluctably from the former.
However, there is every reason to think that the consequences of events of
this kind are as contingent as the events themselves. Because the Austro-
Russian conflict over Serbia escalated into a continental and then a world
war, it is commonly assumed that any European war of this period would
also have done so. However, a different kind of provocation, and one at an-
other time, could have led to a very different kind of war, even one that re-
mained localized in the East. If we mutate leaders or military strategies, all
kinds of variation become possible and lead to very different kinds of post-
war worlds. World War I – the war that was actually fought – could have
ended by means of a diplomatic settlement or even a victory by the Cen-
tral Powers as Germany came close to winning on more than one occasion.
World War II – or at least its opening round – could have been ended by a
diplomatic settlement in 1940 or 1941 if Britain had agreed to, as many con-
servatives favored, to Hitler’s peace overtures following the fall of France,
or if Hitler had taken up Stalin’s peace feelers after the Red Army’s initial and
catastrophic defeats.9 George Breslauer and I have demonstrated that the
9 Cf. John Lukacs, Five Days in London, May 1940, New Haven 1999; Holger Herwig,
“Hitler Wins in the East but Germany Still Loses World War II ”, in: Philip E. Tet-
lock/Richard Ned Lebow/Geoffrey Parker (eds.), Unmaking the West: “What-If ”
Scenarios That Rewrite World History, Ann Arbor 2006, pp. 323–362.
Cold War could have ended in different ways at different times. When and
how the Cold War was resolved was all-important for the character of post-
Cold War international relations. Even theories that might alert us to the
possibility of a European War or an end of the Cold War – valuable as they
would be – could tell us only part of what we want to know. To make more
meaningful statements about transformations – to link events to outcomes –
we must take non-systematic factors into account.10
The origins of World War I and the end of the Cold War were very sen-
sitive to timing. By 1917, Archduke Franz Ferdinand would have been Em-
peror and unlikely to travel to Sarajevo or any destination where his security
would be at risk. Austria-Hungary would also have almost certainly been in
the throes of a serious constitutional crisis, touched off by the new Emper-
or’s extension of the universal franchise to those parts of the empire con-
trolled by the Hungarian minority. Germany would have been compelled
to adopt a defensive military strategy, as even Moltke was on record to the ef-
fect that an offensive against France would not work by 1917. A defensive
strategy, perhaps devised by his successor, or one based on an initial defense
followed by counter-offensives on either or both fronts, would have re-
moved any strategic pressure on Germany to go to war. According to some
authorities, Russia might have faced a revolution, or at least a serious do-
mestic crisis, without the setbacks and suffering of World War I. If a great
power war did start in 1917 or sometime afterwards, it might have had dif-
ferent antagonists and a different outcome.
The end of the Cold War and the way it was resolved were equally de-
pendent on timing. If Andropov or Chernenko had lived a few years longer,
Gorbachev might have had George Bush instead of Ronald Reagan as his
initial American interlocutor. We know that when Bush assumed the presi-
dency in 1988 he was still not convinced that Gorbachev was sincere and was
inclined to slow down, if not halt altogether, Soviet-American rapproche-
ment. Bush’s view was shared by a significant fraction of the official national
security community. In the absence of Reagan, who was more committed to
responding positively to Gorbachev’s overtures than any of his advisors, it
could have proved difficult to wind down the Cold War while Gorbachev
was still in power. If Saddam had still invaded Kuwait in August 1990 – or
anytime in the 1990s – the Soviet Union would almost certainly not have
been as supportive of the U.S. as it was under Gorbachev. The American re-
10 Cf. George W. Breslauer/Richard Ned Lebow, “Leadership and the End of the
Cold War: A Counterfactual Thought Experiment”, in: Herrmann/Lebow, End-
ing, pp. 161–188.
sponse might have also been different, and if not, war in the Persian Gulf
might have intensified the Cold War. If the Cold War had dragged on into the
twenty-first century, even in muted form, there is no reason to think that the
attacks of September 11 against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
would not have occurred, as the U.S. would still have had a close relation-
ship with Saudi Arabia. How the American response would have played out
against the background of a still on-going Cold War is difficult to say. The in-
ternational environment in which an American president acted and sought
to cobble together a coalition of allies and local powers – critical for any in-
vasion of Kuwait and Iraq – would have been very different than it was in
1991. In the absence of the Gulf War, subsequent relations between the U.S.
and Iraq would also have developed differently.
Timing effects are by no means limited to these two cases. Consider the
fate of divided nations (the two Germanys, Koreas, Chinas, and Vietnams)
and partitioned countries (Ireland, Cyprus, Palestine-Israel, India-Pakistan),
the other great source of conflict in the second half of the twentieth century.
India and South Korea consistently sought to isolate and undermine Pakis-
tan and North Korea respectively. Their goals changed in the aftermath of
the unification of Germany. Observing how much money it cost the Federal
Republic to begin to integrate the people and territory of the former Ger-
man Democratic Republic, Indian and South Korean politicians and busi-
ness leaders grew fearful of the consequences of the possible collapse of
their long-standing rivals. They envisaged themselves swamped with refu-
gees and burdened with costs of occupation and reconstruction.11 Their pol-
icies have undergone an observable shift in favor of doing what they can to
keep their rivals in business. If North Korea had collapsed first with abso-
lutely chaotic consequences for the South, it is entirely conceivable that the
German government would have responded differently to the prospect of
unification.
Counterfactual thought experiments prompt a radical conclusion. Vari-
ation across time, due to changing conditions and human reflection, the
openness of social systems and the complexity of the interaction among
stipulated causes make the likelihood of predictive theory extraordinarily
low.12 Theories that rely on multiple variables run into the problem of
11 Interviews with Indian and South Korean officials: Washington, D.C.; Columbus,
Ohio; Beijing, China; January 1999, March 2001, September 2007.
12 Cf. Gabriel A. Almond/Stephen J. Genco, “Clouds, Clocks, and the Study of
Politics”, in: World Politics, 4/1977, pp. 489–522, for an early but still powerful ar-
gument to this effect.
negative degrees of freedom, and in international relations it is rare to have

data sets in the high double digits. Where larger data sets can be constructed,
they invariably group together cases that differ from one another in theor-
etically important ways. Complexity in the form of multiple causation and
equifinality makes simple statistical comparisons misleading. But it is hard to
elaborate more sophisticated statistical tests until one has a deeper baseline
understanding of the nature of the phenomenon under investigation, as well
as the categories and variables that make up candidate causes.13 In the case
of wars and many other events of interest to international relations scholars,
this is probably impossible given the relatively small number of comparable
and independent events in any of these categories. As Milja Kurki argues, in-
ternational relations theorists must free themselves of the limitations of Hu-
mean causation.14
In a practical sense, all social systems (and many physical and biological
systems) are open. Empirical invariance does not exist in such systems and
seeming probabilistic invariance may be causally unrelated.15 Evolution is the
quintessential open system. It is the result of biological change and natural
selection. The former is a function of random genetic mutation and mating.
The latter depends on the nature and variety of ecological niches and the
competition for them. These niches are in turn shaped by such factors as
continental drift, the varying output of the sun, changes in the earth’s orbit,
and local conditions that are difficult to specify. Biologists recognize that all
the primary causes of evolution are random, or if not, interact in complex
non-linear ways that make prediction impossible. Certain kinds of outcomes
can be ruled out in a probabilistic sense but almost never absolutely. Biol-
ogists have attempted to document the course of evolution and explain the
ways in which natural selection works. Historical and theoretical work has re-
sulted in a robust theory of evolution that permits scientific reconstruction
of the past in the context of a logic that explains why things turned out the
way they did. As the social world is open-ended and non-linear, efforts to
build parsimonious, predictive theories of international relations are mis-
guided for all the same reasons. We would be better off to accept these limi-
13 Cf. Ian Lustick, “Multiple Historical Records and the Problem of Selection Bias”,
in: American Political Science Review, 90/1996, pp. 505–518; Robert Jervis, System
Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life, Princeton 1997.
14 Cf. Milja Kurki, Causation in International Relations: Reclaiming Causal Analysis, Cam-
bridge 2008.
15 Cf. Rom Harré/Peter Secord, The Explanation of Social Behaviour, Oxford 1973; Jer-
vis, System Effects.
tations, focus more on explanation than prediction, and recognize that any
theory in the social world is nothing more than a starting point for working
through a policy problem or making a provisional forecast.
III. Theory Building
We are predisposed to think of big events as having big causes, a bias rou-
tinely reflected in historical narratives and social science theories. Ever since
Thucydides historians and international relations scholars have almost in-
variably privileged underlying over immediate causes. In the case of World
War I, as we have seen, the conventional wisdom holds that if the assassin-
ations in Sarajevo had not taken place, some other event, or set of events,
would have triggered a European war. The end of the Cold War is also at-
tributed to deep structural causes, most notably the failure of communism as
a social-economic system, and with it, the loss of communism’s appeal and
the relative decline of the Soviet Union vis-à-vis the West.
Counterfactual priming and case studies have the potential to make us
aware of the extent to which our theories build on and reinforce our procliv-
ity to see history as a linear progression from which deviation was improb-
able. They can alert us to the shortcomings of linear models, so central to
existing approaches to the study of international relations, and more funda-
mentally, to Humean causation and its search for regularities across cases –
the “holy grail” of social science, as currently formulated. By loosening the
hold of this primitive but psychologically satisfying approach to causation,
counterfactuals can make us more receptive to complex, non-linear models
that recognize that international relations is an open system and sensitive to
the role of chance, agency, and confluence. Many simulations, including the
so-called “game of life”, point to the same conclusions.16
Theory building along these lines would start from the premise that wars
and other events (e.g., economic crises) that have the potential to transform
the international system or behavior of actors are likely to be the result of
multiple reinforcing causes. They may also require catalysts that have inde-
pendent causes. The underlying and immediate causes of such events ac-
cordingly need to be addressed separately and in sequence. The problem can
16 Cf. James D. Fearon, “Causes and Counterfactuals in Social Science: Exploring an

Analogy between Cellular Automata and Historical Processes”, in: Philip E. Tet-
lock/Aaron Belkin (eds.), Counterfactual Experiments in World Politics, Princeton
1996, pp. 39–68.
be set up as a decision tree that encourages us to explore different branches,

or lines of inquiry, depending on the answers to successive sets of questions.
I used this method to work my way through the causes and contingency of
World War I. I describe this model below and show how it can be used to
understand other wars. In principle, it is applicable to any complex inter-
national event or development.
With respect to war, we ought to begin by asking about its immediate
causes: the incident, provocation, or crisis from which it arose. Was this situ-
ation novel or repetitive in the sense that it had occurred on more than
one occasion in the past without leading to war? If novel, what might have
brought it about? Was the incident, provocation, or crisis the result of a
causal chain that can be traced back to underlying causes and enabling con-
ditions? If the behavior was repetitive, or the situation in which it arose re-
current, it may be possible to conduct intra-case comparisons. We should ask
how many other times the behavior or situation in question occurred and
why it failed to lead to war in these instances. Can these failures be attributed
to the absence of an appropriate catalyst, or did war require the presence
of other behavior or conditions that might have been the product of other
causal chains? If multiple causal chains are involved, to what degree were
they independent of one another? The greater their independence, the more
the war must be understood as the result of a confluence.
Even satisfactory answers to these questions will provide only a partial
account of the underlying causes of war. We must go on to consider back-
ground conditions that were essential for these causes to have their effects.
These conditions are sometimes difficult to identify because they do not
necessarily show variation in the short term. In the 1914 case, one of the
critical background conditions was the belief among German policymakers
that sooner or later war was inevitable. It made the Kaiser, chancellor, and
chief-of-staff more willing to exploit the opportunity that arose as a result
of the twin assassinations. In other war-threatening crises (e.g., Fashoda,
1898; Berlin, 1958–59 and 1961; and Cuba, 1962) policymakers believed
and hoped that resolution of the crisis might enhance the prospects of a
longer-term peace.17 Another important background condition in 1914 was
the nearly universal commitment to offensive strategies by European gen-
eral staffs. I attributed this orientation to the endurance of traditional aris-
tocratic and warrior values, commitments more intense in Germany by vir-
17 Cf. chs. 7 and 9 in Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of Inter-
national Crisis, Baltimore 1981, for these conditions and relevant cases.
tue of the difficulties the Junker class had in response to the political,
economic, and social challenges of modernity.18 These examples indicate
the extent to which critical background conditions in turn have deeper
causes that must be traced and considered as the more fundamental under-
lying causes of war.
Immediate causes of war are catalysts that trigger hostilities. Sometimes
they are unproblematic in the sense that they are almost certain to arise
when the underlying conditions for war are present. They cannot be taken
for granted, as they sometimes have independent and infrequent causes of
their own right, as with the assassinations at Sarajevo. I have tried to dem-
onstrate that they had effects on Austrian and German policymaking that
probably would not have been brought about by other kinds of provoca-
tions. In this sense they were causes of war in their own right, and call into
question the usual hard-and-fast distinction between underlying and im-
mediate causes.
It is useful for purposes of analysis to identify four classes of catalysts or
immediate causes (fig. 1). Type I catalysts are common occurrences linked to
the underlying causes of the event we are trying to explain. “Fender benders”
are minor road accidents; they are more likely in cities where there is lots
of vehicular traffic. In this instance the increase in traffic – the underlying
cause – brings with it an increase in accidents. Border incidents might also fit
in this category. They are generally outgrowths of deeper conflicts between
countries and historically have served to trigger wars. They have sometimes
been arranged with this end in mind.
Type of Catalyst Characteristics

I Linked to underlying causes
II Independent but frequent
III Independent and infrequent
IV Independent and rare
Figure 1: Immediate Causes
Type II catalysts are events with independent causes but occur frequently and
can serve as catalysts when the appropriate conditions are present. Rainfall is
independent of traffic but a regular event in temperate climates. It will almost
certainly bring about an increase in fender benders on heavily trafficked and
slick streets, and more so still in aggressive driving cultures or in countries like
India, where one does not need a license to purchase or drive a car.
18 Cf. Lebow, Cultural Theory, ch. 7.

Type III catalysts are events that are not only independent of underlying
causes but infrequent. Staying with our illustration of road accidents, this
might include fatalities caused by a bridge collapse, as happened in August
2007 on Interstate 35 where it crosses the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.
The collapse occurred during the rush hour and at dusk, a time of poor vis-
ibility, which increased the number of fatalities, but the timing was uncon-
nected to the causes of the collapse. Bridge failures are relatively infrequent
and their distribution is entirely independent of the underlying causes of the
events in which we are primarily interested.19
Type IV catalysts are also independent of underlying causes. Like viruses
that require a specific surface architecture to penetrate a target cell, they
must meet a set of additional requirements to serve as catalysts. Sarajevo is
the quintessential example. The assassinations were the outgrowth of an in-
ternal struggle for power in Serbia and their timing was entirely independent
of the confluences that made leaders in Vienna, Berlin, and Petersburg more
risk prone. As I noted earlier, Sarajevo created or helped to bring about four
critical conditions without which Austria would not have declared war on
Serbia. This is one of the reasons why World War I was so contingent.
The likelihood of a catalyst appearing when underlying causes and en-
abling conditions of context are present varies as a function of type. Type I
catalysts are the most common and can more or less be assumed to occur in
these conditions. Type II through IV catalysts are increasingly problematic.
We must treat them as causes with probabilities different from and indepen-
dent of underlying causes. To the extent that they can readily be untracked
by minimal rewrites we must consider the wars which they triggered to be
highly contingent.
My approach for probing the causes of events like wars is more or less the
reverse of how scholars usually attempt to analyze such events. It is far more
common to start with a theory or propositions about causes and test or
evaluate them against an appropriate data set or in selected case studies. In-
stead of working deductively from theory to data, I have worked inductively
from data to theory – with the understanding, of course, that what we select
as relevant data is inevitably conditioned by the theoretical assumptions we
bring to the problem.
The advantage of this strategy, I believe, is that it is capable of capturing
the richness of the causal nexus responsible for transformative events like
wars. In contrast to approaches that test for the presence or absence of single
19 Cf. Matthew L. Wald/Kenneth Chang, “Minneapolis Bridge Had Passed Inspec-

tion”, in: New York Times, May 22, 2008.
cause, or even multiple causes, and ignore other possible causes and enabling
conditions, my approach foregrounds them, making it possible to account for
the effects of open-ended systems and non-linear effects. This approach also
stands in sharp contrast to historical narratives that often propose multiple
causes for war, and may describe key enabling conditions, but do so in an a-
theoretical way that makes it difficult to see the connections among the many
hypothesized causes and between them and relevant enabling conditions.
In social science rigor needs to be balanced against richness. This is not
infrequently done by excluding so-called contextual features from consider-
ation and treating cases as fully comparable when they are not. This is bad
science, and uses the claim of rigor as a rhetorical fig leaf. My strategy leads
us to consider multiple causes and the importance of context and admittedly
can lead to a proliferation of causes that makes theorizing difficult in the ab-
sence of any way of ranking the importance of these causes and of distin-
guishing those which were critical from those which were not. In an ideal
world we would do this by constructing a data set of independent but com-
parable cases that was large enough and contained sufficient variation on its
independent and dependent variables to allow us to run appropriate statis-
tical tests. For reasons that have been made clear, this is simply not feasible
with respect to wars and many other kinds of major international events.
An alternative, admittedly less rigorous, but generally more feasible strat-
egy is counterfactual probing. We remove one-by-one hypothesized causes
of war and enabling conditions and ask ourselves if the outcome would have
been any different. Would policymakers have behaved in similar ways in the
absence of one or more of these causes and conditions? Answers to these
questions invariably involve a degree of speculation, but there is often con-
siderable evidence available that allows us to make informed and empirically
defensible inferences. Suppose, for example, the German military had not
been committed to an offensive strategy but had plans for conducting a de-
fensive strategy on both fronts, intended to draw advancing French and Rus-
sian armies into traps where they could be repulsed, perhaps even destroyed,
with relatively moderate German losses in long-planned and carefully pre-
pared counter-offensives. Would the Kaiser and chancellor have given a
“blank check” to Austria in these circumstances? Would they have felt the
need to stiffen the spine of their Austrian ally? If it can be demonstrated
from the documents – as I think it can – that the Kaiser framed the ques-
tion as one of honor, not of security, and felt compelled to act, as he put it,
as Franz Joseph’s “second” in his duel with Serbia, then he would probably
still have acted aggressively even though security concerns were not deter-
minant. This was not true for his chancellor, who had been convinced by
chief-of-staff Moltke that war had to be fought before 1917 when the of-
fensive Schlieffen Plan – really the Moltke plan – would no longer have any
chance of success.20 With a good defensive strategy, the chancellor would
have been relatively immune to Moltke’s blandishments. However, the
Kaiser might well have ignored his chancellor’s pleas for caution in this cir-
cumstance, as he did in January 1917 when he supported his admirals’ de-
mand for unrestricted submarine warfare.21 This counterfactual thought
experiment suggests that an offensive military plan, while contributing to
war, was not a decisive cause, as the Germans might have issued the blank
check to Austria in its absence. They would have been less likely to have
mobilized when they did, as they would not have been under the same stra-
tegic pressure. However, German support for Austria would still not have
prevented Russian mobilization, which, in retrospect, would have remained
the point of no return.
Surgical counterfactuals are no more feasible than surgical air strikes, so
we must also consider what else would have been different – or the same –
when we remove a cause or enabling condition. As I noted above, a German
defensive strategy would have removed the need for rapid mobilization and
an unacceptable ultimatum to France demanding that key border fortresses
be handed over to Germany. War on two fronts was inevitable once Ger-
many and Russia went to war. However, a German defensive strategy would
have preserved Belgian neutrality and in all likelihood kept Britain neutral.
Germany would have been much more likely to have emerged victorious in
these circumstances. But how plausible was a defensive strategy? It is diffi-
cult to imagine Germany adopting such a military plan as long as Moltke was
chief-of-staff. If the Kaiser had not appointed him – and military authorities
thought Moltke an unusual choice at the time – other generals would have fa-
vored an offensive strategy, although they may have been less outspoken in
demanding war in every crisis from 1905 to 1914. Even this brief excursus
indicates that offensive military doctrines, while not a decisive cause of war,
were still important and would have been difficult to remove before 1916–17
with only minimal rewrites of history.
Similar thought experiments with other causes and enabling conditions
can, within reason, allow us to make some judgments about the extent to
which they were necessary for war, how contingent they were and how
closely linked they were to other causes and conditions. If we remove a cause
20 Cf. Lebow, Cultural Theory, ch. 7.

21 Cf. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary
1914–1918, London 1997, pp. 312–317.
or condition and other causes and conditions drop out as well by virtue of
the counterfactuals we must introduce to do this, they can be said to be
coupled. In effect, we can build up a causal map of the event in question that
can help eliminate some causes as unnecessary or redundant, identify those
that appear to be the most important and perhaps some that can be traced
to similar origins. An example of the latter was the intense desire of so many
Austrian military and political officials for war with Serbia, even though they
recognized that it put Austria’s security at risk because it almost certainly en-
tailed war with Russia in circumstances where little military help could be ex-
pected from Germany. For these officials and the Emperor, Austria’s honor
demanded a military response almost regardless of the consequences. Aus-
trian motives for war and those of the German Kaiser and his chief-of-staff
can be traced back to the same source: an aristocratic honor code, not only
kept alive by leading officials in both countries but adhered to with a ven-
geance because of the perceived threat of modernity and the concomitant
spread of bourgeois values in society.22
The hindsight bias and historical scholarship encourage us to regard
major developments as overdetermined. We know this is not the case and
that there is considerable variation in the contingency of all important social
outcomes. Found at one end of the continuum is the so-called butterfly ef-
fect, where small changes have amplifying effects, moving the course of de-
velopments far from the path they would otherwise have taken. Butterflies
of this kind might have prevented events that were otherwise probable and
have been responsible for others that appeared at the time to have a low
probability. The determinist end of the continuum might be compared to a
freight train highballing down the track. In the absence of switches it takes
enormous counterforces to alter its course. Counterfactuals can be used to
make a reasonable determination of where along this continuum a particu-
lar event lies. Causation is often framed in terms of agency and structure. My
continuum recognizes that this is not an either-or choice and that agency
is merely one of the factors we must consider at the contingent end of the
spectrum. In chapter two of Forbidden Fruit I propose a six-step process for
determining the contingency of an event, which I applied to the rise of the
West, and later, to World War I and the end of the Cold War.23 I offer a brief
restatement of these steps here:
1. What do we have to do to negate a cause or confluence? Causes or confluences
should be altered in ways that are readily credible and render them innocu-
22 Cf. Herwig, First World War, pp. 312–317.

23 Cf. Lebow, Forbidden Fruit, ch. 2.
ous much the way small mutations in the genes of pathogens can eliminate or
significantly reduce their virulence.
2. How many credible minimal rewrites can be found that might prevent, alter or stall
the turning point? As a general rule, the more different components of a turn-
ing point can be removed by minimal rewrite counterfactuals, the more con-
tingent the turning point.
3. How far back must we go to find credible minimal rewrites? The further back in
time we go to find a minimal rewrite counterfactual, the more steps there are
likely to be between antecedent and consequent and the lower its probability,
as the probability of any counterfactual is the multiple of the probabilities of
every step in the chain. Multiple-step counterfactuals also increase the possi-
bility that other developments set in motion by the initial counterfactuals
could sever the chain of causation leading to the desired alternative outcome.
4. At what level of analysis are our minimal rewrites? Minimal rewrites of history
require small, plausible changes in reality that are likely to have big conse-
quences. For this reason practitioners of counterfactual history most often
invoke changes in personnel, policy, or the fortunes of war. Changes some-
times require intervention at the level of elites, bureaucracies, or domestic
politics, and more elaborate arguments linking antecedents to consequences.
When we change ideas, state structures, and the balance of power, the latter
requiring intervention at the system level, minimal rewrites are out of the
question unless we go back to a point in time when those ideas, structures,
and balances had not jelled and might be significantly affected by small,
plausible changes at levels one and two. The further back we introduce
changes, the less plausible the consequent becomes because our antecedent
is likely to introduce other changes with unknown interaction effects and
consequences. So a turning point can be considered contingent if it can
be untracked by numerous, plausible counterfactuals involving agents, con-
fluence, or chance, and much less so if it requires intervention at the level of
elites, bureaucracies, or ideas.
5. How redundant is the turning point? Different causal paths have different
implications for contingency. A turning point described by the simple, linear
pathway of A + B + C (and only A + B + C) might be prevented by severing
any link in the three-step chain. If “A” and “B” are themselves the products
of other chains of causation, there may be many possible ways of using mini-
mal rewrite counterfactuals to prevent the turning point by preventing pre-
conditions “A” and “B”. There are turning points that are the outcomes of
simple linear chains. Others are likely to have one or more paths leading to
them. If we prevent A + B + C, the possibility of G + H + C, and perhaps
of M + N + C, remain. To prevent a turning point with a minimal rewrite
counterfactual we need to know all the principal chains leading to it and

something about their probability. In situations where multiple paths lead to
the same outcome, estimates of probability are likely to be complicated by
interaction effects. The removal of any causal chain may significantly change
the probability (in either direction) of other paths. An outcome that requires
the confluence of many independent causes, but could be prevented or
transformed in magnitude by removing any one of them with a minimal, is
highly contingent. But other confluences can have multiple pathways that
lead them to “C” and require multiple interventions to prevent. Their con-
tingency would depend on how many minimal rewrites were necessary to
halt or deflect each possible pathway.
6. What about second order counterfactuals? Up to this point we have tried to
prevent, alter, or delay turning points. But we must also consider how they
might still come to pass in the aftermath of successful counterfactual inter-
vention. Second order counterfactuals, either by themselves or in interaction
with one another, might produce the turning point, or some variant of it,
at a later date. The enabling counterfactuals necessary to bring about the
antecedent can set in motion a chain of events that leads to the turning point,
as can events arising from the antecedent itself. A rigorous attempt to assess
contingency compels us to work through these possible pathways in search
of the most likely ways that turning points could still come about. If second-
ary routes to turning points can be found, researchers need to find ways of
stopping or delaying them with additional counterfactuals. Roughly speak-
ing, the more alternatives we find, and the more likely they appear, the less
contingent the turning point.
By probing underlying and immediate causes this way we can develop a
reasonable idea of the contingency of events. By examining multiple events
this way we can develop some idea of the contingency of classes of events.
Such an exercise allows us to evaluate theories with probabilistic or deter-
ministic claims and to come away with some sense of the kinds of events that
are most likely to be predictable – and thus amenable to positivistic theoriz-
ing – and those that are not, as they are so heavily context-dependent.
IV. Conclusion
The methods I propose for conducting such experiments are not intended to
replace traditional approaches but to supplement them. If theories and prop-
ositions work from the general to the particular, my approach moves from
the particular to the general. It is more inductive than deductive, but com-
plementary rather than antagonistic. By tacking back and forth between de-
ductive theory and inductive counterfactual probes of empirical cases we can
develop better theories and better understandings of both their potential and
limitations.
Such a project can be made more compelling when it is a collaborative
one, bringing together scholars with different substantive expertise and even
different initial estimates of the contingency of the event in question. Argu-
ment and counter-argument over counterfactuals and their implications have
the potential to bring about a consensus or bracket disagreement when that
is not possible. Such an exercise is not limited to the past. It is equally appro-
priate to forecasting, which makes use of many of the same techniques. It es-
tablishes possible branching points in scenarios and engages in speculative
inquiry about how much (or how little) the alternative paths they create di-
verge from the main narrative.24
24 Cf. Steven Bernstein/Richard Ned Lebow/Janice Stein/Steven Weber, “Social

Sciences as Case-Based Diagnostics”, in: Richard Ned Lebow/Mark I. Lichbach,
Social Inquiry and Political Knowledge, New York 2007, pp. 229–260.
170 Andreas Martin Widmann
Andreas Martin Widmann (Mainz)
Plot vs. Story: Towards a Typology of Counterfactual

Historical Novels
I. Introduction
“History”, the English writer and critic David Lodge states in his book
The Novelist at the Crossroads, “may be, in a philosophical sense, a fiction but
it does not feel like that when we miss a train or somebody starts a war”.1
Lodge’s remark refers to theories many scholars are familiar with these days
but which were only starting to infuse critical debates when Lodge’s book
was published in 1971. These theories, centered around the assumption that
the writing of history is not an objective process of reconstruction but a cre-
ative and imaginative act, set out to remodel conceptions of reality, past and
present, by stressing the impact of narrative discourse on its subjects. His-
tory was therefore to be evaluated as a construct, shaped by the needs, possi-
bilities, and limitations of language. In order to understand the discomfort
following in the wake of such claims one must bear in mind that at least since
Leopold von Ranke established historiography as an academic discipline
in the early 19th century, it was taken for granted, more or less, that lan-
guage was an adequate tool to reproduce reality. The postmodernist thinkers
Lodge hints at turned the former order around by arguing that language does
not reproduce reality but generates it.
Looking back, it seems that one of the first scholars to articulate such
views was the American philosopher Arthur C. Danto, whose Analytical Phil-
osophy of History prepared the ground for others in the 1960s. Danto argued
that narrative sentences were a key feature of historical writing and he came
to the conclusion that works of historiography were written according to the
same principles as other narratives. Danto’s theses allowed for the assump-
tion that the facts of history were not found but made. Since then, in the hu-
manities these claims and their effects have become known as the linguistic
turn. It challenged history as an academic discipline as it prompted historians
to reflect on their methods, and it seems as if it helped to shape a zeitgeist in
which the counterfactual thought experiment gained in importance.
1 David Lodge, “The Novelist at the Crossroads”, in: David Lodge, The Novelist at
the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction, London 1971, pp. 3–34, p. 33.
Towards a Typology of Counterfactual Historical Novels 171
The shape that these experiments most often take are case scenarios in
which a historical event is altered by changing its outcome or by substitut-
ing one or several of its constituents. Yet, obviously and maybe paradoxically,
counterfactual versions of historical events require facts. The Dutch his-
torian Chris Lorenz explains that the existence of facts is a vital necessity for
a discourse about truth when he argues that the statement “Hitler died in
1945” is true because it is a fact that Hitler died in 1945, whereas the state-
ments “Hitler died in 1944” or “Hitler died in 1946” are not true.2 Instead of
“not true” one might say “counterfactual”. But how can we decide that an
account of history is counterfactual if the facts themselves are not rooted in
solid ground?
This question concerns the triangle in which facts, language, and narrative
strategies interact. Since history is essentially concerned with facts, it is state-
ments about these facts by which truth value is assessed. Historiographers
find themselves locked in a double bind: Specific facts must be established
while the facts as such have become a bit slippery. Without pretending to
solve the problem, however, it seems that Terry Eagleton has come up with
an approach that is sensible and useful. Starting from the observation that
there are hardly “brute facts”, but that facts must always include interpre-
tations, Eagleton concludes that an “interpretation on which everyone is
likely to agree is one way of defining a fact”.3 Eagleton’s definition acknowl-
edges the rhetorical quality of historical facts without abandoning their status.
Therefore, by means of a working definition, such representations of history
can be understood as “counterfactual” that deviate from the version that is
commonly known and accepted at least in one aspect of great significance.
It is crucial that the deviation from the facts takes place deliberately.
Why is this? In order to distinguish counterfactual propositions from other
fictional images of history some preliminary assumptions can be made:
Probably every historical novel ever written includes minor deviations or is
inaccurate in certain details, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by mis-
take. Yet there are novels in which this kind of deviation is immediately vis-
ible because of its dimensions. We can assume that it is there to be recog-
nized and that it is there for a reason. Both aspects are vital: Firstly, if the
deviation from the facts occurs accidentally, it is a flaw. Secondly, if the
disparity between the facts and the counterfactual version told in the novel is
invisible, if it is successfully disguised, it is a falsification or a lie. If this turns
2 Cf. Chris Lorenz, Konstruktion der Vergangenheit: Eine Einführung in die Geschichtstheo-
rie, Cologne 1997, p. 22.
3 Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Minneapolis 2008, p. 75.
out to be the case, the counterfactual depiction of history serves other pur-
poses.
The present essay will examine basic narrative strategies that are em-
ployed to create counterfactual scenarios in historical novels. In the first
part, a theoretical concept for the analysis of narratives is introduced, which
shall then be applied to two examples in the second part. The works dis-
cussed are of recent dates. The first one, Helden wie wir by the German writer
Thomas Brussig, was published in 1995. It was made into a feature film
shortly after and has been elevated into the canon of contemporary German
fiction due to its unorthodox treatment of the German reunification. The
second example is a novel by the Swiss author Christian Kracht called Ich
werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten which came out in 2008. It rewrites
twentieth-century history by turning Switzerland into a communist super-
power engaged in a seemingly endless war against fascist states. Both novels
deal with episodes from the authors’ national histories, but in a way that
deviates from the established versions.4 Both novels can be easily recognized
as counterfactual in the sense outlined above. My analysis and interpretation
of these works of fiction will focus on the way history is used as material for
the fable told in each book. Thereby, I aim to show how these novels figure
as representatives of two different types of counterfactual historical fiction.5
II. Aspects of Counterfactual Historical Novels
So far, representations of counterfactual history in literature have mostly

been equated with “what-if ” stories – not surprisingly, perhaps, considering
that the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche regarded the question “what if …?”
as the most important question when it comes to history.6 Historians have
frequently asked this question, sometimes explicitly, sometimes more tacitly,7
4 I will use translated quotations from both novels in the text. The translations are
mine; the original German quotes can be found in the footnotes.
5 The argument presented here has been developed in detail and with regard to
a broader range of literary texts from different countries in Andreas Martin
Widmann, Kontrafaktische Geschichtsdarstellung: Untersuchungen an Romanen von Günter
Grass, Thomas Pynchon, Thomas Brussig, Michael Kleeberg, Philip Roth und Christoph
Ransmayr, Heidelberg 2009.
6 Cf. Alexander Demandt, Ungeschehene Geschichte. Ein Traktat über die Frage: Was wäre
geschehen, wenn …?, Göttingen 1984, p. 9.
7 A number of edited volumes provide examples dealing with historical turning
points from ancient Greece to the twentieth century. Barring the numerous pub-
lications from the popular history section, the volumes edited by Ferguson and
and from the 1950s onwards, novelists have asked it more often than ever
before. “Alternate history”, “alternative history”, “uchronia”, “uchronian
fiction” and “parahistorical novels” are the terms most often used to
name the phenomenon. Christoph Rodiek, Jörg Helbig, and Edgar Vernon
McKnight Jr., among others, have described it by using similar parameters.8
Therefore the definition McKnight Jr. offers can stand on behalf of the
others. He defines alternative history as “a fictional genre defined by specu-
lation about what the present would be like had historical events oc-
curred differently”.9 More recently, Michael Butter has further developed the
understanding of what he argues should be labeled “alternate history”. Re-
garding it as “a genre of its own, a genre that exists at the intersections of his-
torical fiction and dystopian literature”,10 Butter defines alternate histories
as “narratives in which one or more past events are changed and the sub-
sequent consequences on history imagined”.11 Within that framework, he
distinguishes “between an affirmative and a revisionist type of alternate his-
tory”.12
A sensible definition when applied to the texts Butter analyzes, and prob-
ably even beyond, it should not be stretched to cover novels in which
other strategies to construct counterfactual versions of history are pursued.
Novels like Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Günter Grass’s Der Butt, or
Brodersen deserve to be mentioned in this context (cf. Niall Ferguson [ed.], Vir-
tual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, New York 1999; and Kai Brodersen
[ed.], Virtuelle Antike: Wendepunkte der Alten Geschichte, Darmstadt 2000). Lubomir
Doležel has summed up the principle according to which most case studies work:
“The focus of alternative history is simple yes/no situations: win/lose a battle,
war, election, a power struggle; a leader assassinated/not assassinated” (cf.
“Possible Worlds of Fiction and History”, in: New Literary History, 29/1998,
pp. 785–809, p. 802). The method does not stand uncontested but has given rise
to criticism. Cf., for instance, Hubert Kiesewetter, Irreale oder reale Geschichte? Ein
Traktat über Methodenfragen der Geschichtswissenschaft, Herbolzheim 2002. For a dis-
cussion of the methods and principles of employing counterfactuals in histori-
ography, see also Berger Waldenegg’s essay in this volume.
8 Cf. Christoph Rodiek, Erfundene Vergangenheit: Kontrafaktische Gechichtsdarstellung
(Uchronie) in der Literatur, Frankfurt a.M. 1997; Jörg Helbig, Der parahistorische
Roman: Ein literarhistorischer und gattungstypologischer Beitrag zur Allotopieforschung,
Frankfurt a.M. 1988; Edgar Vernon McKnight Jr., “Alternative History: The De-
velopment of a Literary Genre”, Diss. University of North California 1994.
9 McKnight, “Alternative History”, p. iii.
10 Michael Butter, The Epitome of Evil: Hitler in American Fiction 1939–2002, New York
2009, p. 53.
11 Butter, Evil, p. 9.
12 Butter, Evil, p. 13.
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children deal with history in a way that qualifies
as counterfactual although the authors do not employ the “what-if ” pattern.
So far, two serious attempts have been made to discuss these novels by using
parameters of counterfactuality. Referring to Rodiek, Elisabeth Wesseling
has recast the concept of uchronian fiction as “uchronian fantasy”.13 It “lo-
cates utopia in history, by imagining an apocryphal course of events, which
clearly did not take place, but which might have taken place”.14 Although she
discusses Pynchon, Rushdie, and Grass, she cannot bring their novels to fit
in with her own understanding of the type of fiction she has outlined.15 In
one of the most comprehensive and thorough studies on the contemporary
historical novel, Ansgar Nünning introduces a taxonomy that allows for the
integration of the types of novels I discuss into the category of what he calls
“revisionist historical novel”.16 Such novels, Nünning argues, push the limits
of traditional historical fiction by questioning conventional ways of making
sense of the past and by stressing the differences between past and present.
Revisionist historical novels tend to take a critical position towards offi-
cial interpretations of history and challenge them by providing counter-
narratives; in doing so, they frequently use innovative narrative strategies.17
Nünning’s definition – of which I can only present a highly condensed ver-
sion – works with elements that are related to both the content and the for-
mal structure of the novels. Convincing and insightful as it is on a broader
scale, the integration of counterfactual novels into this scheme comes at the
13 Cf. Elisabeth Wesseling, Writing History as a Prophet: Postmodernist Innovations of the

Historical Novel, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 1991.
14 Wesseling, Writing, p. 102.
15 Wesseling’s understanding of counterfactuality is clearly based on the notion of an
alternative development of history due to one or more altered events in the past.
Accordingly, she concludes: “Gravity’s Rainbow’s version of the historical period in
question may be unorthodox, but it is certainly not counterfactual” (Wesseling,
Writing, p. 182). The major problem of her study on postmodernist historical fic-
tion is, I believe, the inappropriate adaptation of the term “uchronian” as defined
by Rodiek when she discusses counterfactual novels.
16 Cf. Ansgar Nünning, Von historischer Fiktion zu historiographischer Metafiktion. Band 1:
Theorie, Typologie und Poetik des historischen Romans, Trier 1995. Nünning argues that
counterfactual references to reality must be included among the characteristic fea-
tures of this type of the historical novel: “Zu den Merkmalen dieses Typus zählen
etwa kontrafaktische Realitätsreferenzen, Anachronismen und Referenzen, die
logische und/oder physikalische Gesetze der empirischen Welt durchkreuzen”
(Nünning, Fiktion, p. 80). However, he does not spend much time on the dis-
cussion of counterfactual novels. The only example he refers to is Kingsley Amis’s
The Alteration (1976).
17 Cf. Nünning, Fiktion, pp. 268–276.
prize of neglecting the features that make them unique.18 For that reason it
seems advisable to reconsider the understanding of counterfactual history in
literature as described above and to look for means of examining its different
varieties.
In order to do so I intend to look at the basic narrative operations by
which counterfactual set-ups are produced. It is therefore necessary to re-
turn to the analogies between the writing of history and the writing of fiction
that have already been mentioned. The American historian and philosopher
Hayden White has prominently pointed out formal similarities between fic-
tion and non-fiction. In The Tropics of Discourse White argues:
Novelists might be dealing only with imaginative events whereas historians are
dealing with real ones, but the process of fusing events, whether imaginary or real,
into a comprehensible totality capable of serving as the object of representation, is
a poetic process. Here historians must utilize precisely the same tropological strat-
egies, the same modalities of representing relationships in words, that the poet or
the novelist uses.19
Among the methods used by novelists as well as by historians there is, for
example, the selection of material. Every selection includes interpretation
because it must leave things out and give preference to others. Another im-
portant assumption is that both writers of history and writers of fiction
adopt a specific perspective on a subject. They evaluate, they look for rea-
sons, and finally they produce texts that are shaped by narrative patterns.
It has been argued that two different layers can be found in narrative rep-
resentations of history. On the one hand, there are dates and events in their
chronological order. Whether depicted that way or not, the inherent chrono-
logy of their occurrence enables us to regard them as one level of the histori-
cal narrative. On the other hand, there are causal relations. This would be an-
other level of the narrative. Arthur C. Danto has given a precise description
of these levels by distinguishing the so-called “chronicle” from the so-called
18 As opposed to the understanding of counterfactual novels as a subgenre of the

historical novel which I would generally subscribe to, there are attempts to define
alternative or alternate histories as belonging into the vast realm of science fiction.
As Karen Hellekson (The Alternate History, Kent 2001, p. 3) puts it: “One import-
ant point I wish to stress is that the alternate history is a subgenre of the genre of
science fiction, which is itself a subgenre of fantastic (that is, not realistic) litera-
ture”. More recently Hilary P. Dannenberg has analyzed common elements in
postmodernist literature and science fiction (Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plot-
ting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction, Lincoln 2008).
19 Hayden White, The Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, Baltimore 1982,
p. 125.
“proper history”. “Chronicle”, Danto explains, “is said to be just an account

of what happened, and nothing more than that”.20 Although a pure, one-
hundred percent objective chronicle of events is rarely to be found, Danto
hints at a general difference in the nature of historical accounts when he
observes “that one kind of narrative explains, where the other merely de-
scribes”.21 Danto goes on to explain “that one can draw a distinction be-
tween perceiving that x is the case, and explaining why it is so”.22 With regard
to history, “[o]ne might surely argue that there is a difference between say-
ing only that Napoleon lost at Waterloo, and going on to explain why he did
lose”.23 It is here that another feature which connects history and fiction can
be seen, for Danto’s observation is valid for both. In this context, a study
of how fictional narratives work, undertaken by E. M. Forster, helps to more
closely describe these parallels.
E. M. Forster was, of course, primarily a novelist and when he was invited
to give a series of lectures in Cambridge in 1926, he spoke about what he was
familiar with, namely aspects of the novel. Forster’s lectures were published
as a book shortly after and since then the rather slim volume has come to be
acknowledged as a key text in the theory of the modern novel.24 Among the
aspects Forster addresses are “persons”, “pattern” and “rhythm”, “fantasy”,
and, most important in this context, “story” and “plot”. Forster singles out
these aspects because they function as components of which narratives are
constructed, and he goes on to show that there are two levels on which a nar-
rative is organized: the story and the plot. Forster defines a story as “a nar-
rative of events arranged in their time-sequence”.25 A plot, according to
Forster, “is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality”.26
Forster illustrates his point by making up an example. The subject of this
very short narrative involves the figures history has traditionally dealt with,
namely kings and queens: “‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story.
20 Arthur C. Danto, Analytical Philosophy of History, Cambridge 1965, p. 116.

21 Danto, Philosophy, p. 119.
24 It continues to inspire critical discussions in the 21st century as a recent response
from Frank Kermode proves (cf. Concerning E. M. Forster, London 2009). In this
study Kermode reassesses the importance of Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, making
the novelist’s work the subject of his own Clark Lectures at Cambridge eighty
years after Forster.
25 E. M. Forster, “Aspects of the Novel”, in: E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel and Re-
lated Writings, London 1974, p. 1–119, p. 60.
26 Forster, “Aspects”, p. 60.
‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief ’ is a plot,” says Forster.27
The difference is a simple one. In the first version of this very short narrative
the two events that are referred to are arranged in a merely chronological
order that is signaled by the word “then”. In the second version a cause is
added. “The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality over-
shadows it”, as Forster puts it.28 In order to find out whether it is a story or a
plot, Forster suggests asking questions: “Consider the death of the queen. If
it is in a story we say: ‘And then?’ If it is in a plot we ask: ‘Why?’ That is the
fundamental difference between these two aspects of the novel”.29 With re-
gard to the latter question one can think of a number of reasons without
having to change the “story” of the narrative: “The king died, and then the
queen died of joy” would be another version of the narrative which adds a
different plot to the same story. The time sequence is preserved. The events
stay the same in the sense that no death is substituted by entirely different
events: “The king died and then the queen lived happily ever after” would be
a different story altogether.
By applying these considerations to counterfactual history I will argue
that our understanding of literary representations of counterfactual history
should not be restricted to narratives that imagine or depict possible histori-
cal consequences of missing or changed events in the past. In the discussion
of the two examples below I want to employ Forster’s distinction to analyze
and classify two types of counterfactual novels.
III. History’s Missing Link: Thomas Brussig’s Helden wie wir (1995)
At the beginning of Thomas Brussig’s novel Helden wie wir the protagon-
ist and first-person narrator makes a claim of great historical significance.
“Yes”, he says, “it’s true, it was me: I toppled the Berlin Wall”.30 Exagger-
ation is not uncommon in picaresque novels but the narrator is serious here.
That he has single-handedly brought about the downfall of the Berlin Wall
is the idea upon which the counterfactual set-up is built. The narrative
frame for this confession is an interview recorded on tape. The hero, Klaus
Uhltzscht, whose name is hard to spell and almost impossible to pronounce,

30 “Ja, es ist wahr. Ich war’s. Ich habe die Berliner Mauer umgeschmissen” (Thomas
Brussig, Helden wie wir, Berlin 1995, p. 7).
tells the story of his life to a journalist of the New York Times. By carefully
watching video tapes, an American reporter, Mr. Kitzelstein, has identified
Klaus as the person whose deed changed history. Klaus promises to shed
light on the events in question, but before doing so, he exploits the oppor-
tunity and speaks about his parents, about his childhood, and his education
in the GDR . The sensational pun, although frequently announced, is only
unveiled towards the end of the novel: In 1989, when the GDR government
appears to be on the brink of a collapse and crowds of protesters assemble
in the streets, Klaus is in Berlin. He listens to a speech the famous writer
Christa Wolf is delivering to the people. Klaus, the most ill-informed person
in the world, as he labels himself, mistakes her for Jutta Müller, the former
ice skating champion and secret object of his teenage fantasies. When he
tries to move closer to her he stumbles, falls down a flight of stairs, and gets
hurt in the groin. He is taken to a hospital where the treatment he is given
causes a mysterious enlargement of his genital. Afterwards he runs away and
re-appears in the middle of another demonstration in Berlin. This is where
his intertwining with history finally takes place.
Addressing his interview partner and the reader at the same time, he says:
“I ran away on the evening of November 9, as you may have gathered”.31
Klaus joins the masses and together with the other protestors he walks on to
one of the border control points:
The so-called masses were lining up in front of it. For reasons I didn’t understand
at the time they kept hoping for the gates of heaven to be raised, for them to flow
over into the West. […] What I didn’t know was that the masses had been stirred
up by a mysterious utterance from Günter Schabowski at his press conference:
For those who want to leave, Schabowski had meant to say, it is no longer neces-
sary to take the long way via the Czech-West-German border, now they can use
the inner German border – but just like any party politician he put the simple
matter in such words that could mean almost anything, after which only minutes
later the session of the Bundestag was hastily interrupted, some members of Par-
liament stood up, sang the national anthem, and believed the borders to be open.
The Tagesschau took the same point of view, whereupon ten thousands of the Ber-
lin people got up, only to find at the border control points that they were hoping
in vain.32
31 “Sie ahnen bereits, ich floh am Abend des 9. November” (Brussig, Helden, p. 304).
32 “Davor drängelten sich sogenannte Volksmassen, die aus mir damals unverständ-
lichen Gründen darauf hofften, die Himmelspforte werde gleich geöffnet, auf das
[sic] sie in den Westen strömen dürfen. […] Die Volksmassen waren, was ich nicht
wußte, durch eine undurchsichtige Formulierung auf der Pressekonferenz von
Günter Schabowski aufgescheucht: Wer ausreisen will, wollte Schabowski sagen,
muß nicht mehr den Umweg über die tschechischwestdeutsche Grenze nehmen,
sondern könne gleich über die deutsch-deutsche Grenze ausreisen – doch wie es
Seeing these crowds helplessly in limbo provokes Klaus into doing some-
thing. This is the decisive moment. Klaus, who has always been obsessed
with his genital, undoes his trousers, and at the sight of his enormous penis
the soldiers give up and open the gate:
Slowly I unbuttoned my coat, I undid my belt next, and finally my trousers and I
looked the border guards straight into their eyes. […] Never before had they seen
such a thing! This was something they never thought was possible. […] I took my
time, plenty of time, I looked them in the eye one after another and finally one of
them unlocked the door as if he had been hypnotized.33
At this point the counterfactual claim is finally fully explained. The Wall
came down, but without Klaus the protesters would not have reached their
goal.
Brussig’s novel depicts the events prior to the opening of the inner Ger-
man border most accurately. It provides the facts against which the counter-
factual version is to be read and against which Klaus Uhltzscht’s narrative
is explicitly set. In these passages the historical process is split up into two
parts: First, citizens of the GDR organize peaceful protest, and then the
Berlin Wall comes down. Usually both parts of that historical narrative are
causally linked, which means that the collapse of the GDR is presented as the
result of the protests. In Brussig’s novel, however, the cause and effect re-
lation between the two events is dissolved. If we apply Forster’s terminology,
we can say that the “story” of history has hardly been changed here. The real
historical events are taking place in Helden wie wir but the plot is not the
same. It could be summarized like this: In 1989 citizens of the GDR organ-
ize peaceful protests and then the Berlin Wall comes down because Klaus
Uhltzscht undresses in front of the soldiers. In this version the cause of the
downfall is to be found in Uhltzscht’s action. He explicitly states his claim to
sich für einen Parteifunktionär gehört, drückte er diesen einfachen Sachverhalt so

umständlich aus, daß es alles mögliche heißen konnte, worauf Minuten später im
Bundestag aufgeregt die Sitzung unterbrochen wurde, ‘Wie wir soeben erfahren
haben …’, sich ein Häuflein Parlamentarier erhob, spontan das Deutschlandlied
anstimmte und die Grenze für geöffnet hielt. So sah es auch die Tagesschau, worauf
sich Zehntausende Berliner auf die Beine machten, um an den Grenzübergängen
enttäuscht festzustellen, daß sie sich falschen Hoffnungen hingaben” (Brussig,
Helden, pp. 314–315).
33 “Ich öffnete langsam den Mantel, dann den Gürtel und schließlich die Hosen und
sah den Grenzern fest ins Auge. […] So was hatten sie noch nie gesehen! So was
hätten sie nicht für möglich gehalten! […] Ich ließ mir Zeit, viel Zeit, ich sah nach-
einander allen in die Augen und schließlich entriegelte einer von ihnen wie hypno-
tisiert das Tor” (Brussig, Helden, pp. 318–319).
fame when he says: “Anyone who doesn’t believe my story won’t understand
what’s going on in Germany! Without me it doesn’t make sense. For in Ger-
many’s recent history I am the missing link”.34
Due to its depiction of the political changes of 1989, Brussig’s novel has
immediately been recognized (or rather classified) as a so-called “Wende-
roman”.35 This term designates a literary genre that came into being only
with the historical event it is related to, the “Wende”. It was born out of
the notion that a national process as groundbreaking as the German reu-
nification demanded an aesthetic response that would reflect the caesura of
1989. Within academic criticism the counterfactual parts in Helden wie wir
were noted as a violation of expectations attached to the traditional historical
novel. Rachel Halverson states with regard to Brussig’s rearranging of the es-
tablished facts: “Helden wie wir is far removed from the genre of historical
fiction, which does provide its readers with personalized, yet believable ac-
counts of historical events”.36 Unbelievable the plot may be, but Brussig
does not make up this counterfactual version without a reason. However,
he does not fully reveal his motives in the passages discussed but at various
other points in the novel where the picaresque attitude giving shape to the
narrator’s voice is abandoned. Uhltzscht’s distorted perception is replaced by
a more sober and serious approach to the matter when he remarks:
It’s a debate that’s totally distorted but no one seems to notice! How could this so-
ciety continue to exist for decades if everyone was dissatisfied with it? Mr. Kitzel-
stein, I ask you to take my question seriously, it’s not a rhetorical question! Every-
body was against it, but they were part of it, they cooperated, timidly, blindly, or
simply stupidly. I really want to know, as I believe that all modern societies move
34 “Wer meine Geschichte nicht glaubt, wird nicht verstehen, was mit Deutsch-
land los ist! Ohne mich ergibt alles keinen Sinn! Denn ich bin das Missing Link der
jüngsten deutschen Geschichte!” (Brussig, Helden, p. 323).
35 The novel is dealt with accordingly in the following studies and articles: Stephan
Brockmann, Literature and German Reunification, Cambridge 1999; Ulrike Bremer,
Versionen der Wende: Eine textanalytische Untersuchung erzählerischer Prosa junger deutscher
Autoren zur Wiedervereinigung, Osnabrück 2002; Stefan Neuhaus, Literatur und
nationale Einheit in Deutschland, Tübingen 2002; Markus Symmank, “Mutter-
sprache: Zu Thomas Brussigs Roman Helden wie wir”, in: Matthias Harder (ed.), Be-
standsaufnahmen: Deutschsprachige Literatur der neunziger Jahre aus interkultureller Sicht,
Würzburg 2001, pp. 177–194.
36 Rachel J. Halverson, “Comedic Bestseller or Insightful Satire: Taking the Inter-
view and Autobiography to Task in Thomas Brussig’s Helden wie wir”, in: Carol
Anne Costabile-Heming/Rachel J. Halverson/Kristie A. Foell (eds.), Textual
Responses to German Unification: Processing Historical and Social Change in Literature and
Film, Berlin/New York 2001, pp. 95–105, p.103.
along these lines. As long as millions of failures do not face their failings they will
remain failures.37
As this paragraph as well as numerous others reveal, the intention of the novel
is a political one. The question it poses seems to be: How could a society that
was mostly at ease with the system under which it had to live suddenly turn
into a society of would-be resistance fighters? For Klaus Uhltzscht this is im-
possible and therefore the conclusion must be that there never were any Wall-
busting people. The novel functions as an instrument of criticism directed
against the dominant discourse about the German reunification, which, ac-
cording to Brussig, is based on an inappropriate image of the historical pro-
cess. Instead of merely stating a point of view Brussig uses his counterfactual
version as a method to deliver an interpretation of the real event.
IV. Chart of Darkness:

Christian Kracht’s Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und
im Schatten (2008)
Among the historical novelettes in the volume Sternstunden der Menschheit by

the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig there is one that deals with Lenin’s return
from exile in Switzerland to Russia in a sealed train in 1917.38 Zweig sticks to
the historical facts and handles them in a way that tends towards the journal-
istic. He clearly does not spend much time on speculation. Yet, at one point,
he remarks that if Lenin had been run over by a careless driver he would have
died unnoticed by the public and by future generations: “And if back then
one of the magnificent automobiles rushing at great speed from embassy to
embassy would accidentally have hit this man in the street, the world would
never have known him, neither by the name of Ulianow nor of Lenin”.39 Ob-
37 “Eine völlig verzerrte Diskussion, und keiner merkt es! Wie konnte diese Gesells-
chaft Jahrzehnte existieren, wenn alle unzufrieden gewesen sein wollen? Mr. Kit-
zelstein, nehmen Sie meine Frage ernst, es ist keine rhetorische Frage! Alle waren
dagegen, und trotzdem waren sie integriert, haben mitgemacht, kleinmütig, ver-
blendet oder einfach nur dumm. Ich will das genau wissen, denn ich glaube,
daß sich alle modernen Gesellschaften in diesem Dilemma bewegen. Solange sich
Millionen Versager ihrem Versagen nicht stellen, werden sie Versager bleiben”
(Brussig, Helden, p. 312).
38 Cf. Stefan Zweig, “Der versiegelte Zug”, in: Stefan Zweig, Sternstunden der Mensch-
heit, Frankfurt a. M. 1998, pp. 240–252.
39 “Und hätte damals eines der prächtigen Automobile, die in scharfem Tempo von
Botschaft zu Botschaft sausen, diesen Mann durch einen Zufall auf der Straße zu
viously, Zweig recognized the potential for a counterfactual scenario and he

implicitly used it to underline his estimation of Lenin’s importance as an in-
dividual in a decisive moment.
Another eighty years later Christian Kracht’s Ich werde hier sein im Sonnen-
schein und im Schatten comes up with its very own version of Lenin’s exile in
Zürich.40 It tells “the story of the great Swiss citizen Lenin, who, instead of
returning to the disintegrating, contaminated Russia, had stayed in Switzer-
land where after long years of war he established the Soviet, in Zurich, Basel,
and New-Bern”.41 The novel, then, is based on the premise that Lenin never
left Switzerland but started the communist revolution where he was. Exact
dates are not given but almost a hundred years later, the world has become a
place that is as unlike the world we know as another planet. Africa has been
completely conquered and occupied by the Soviet-Swiss Republic, the SSR .
There is a war going on between the communist and the fascist regimes in
Europe, and although the narrator hints at “the Byzantine style knots, the al-
most surreal complexity of the military alliances” that characterize his age,42
the fronts are fairly clear: “The English King, so we learned, had formed
an alliance against us with the fascists, the Germans. They were planning
to build a decadent empire in which we Africans would be slaves and they
would be the grinning masters”.43
Again, it is possible to describe the novel’s counterfactual representation
of history by employing E. M. Forster’s terminology. Kracht substitutes a fic-
tional event for an event in the established story of history. Thereby he tells a
story that differs from the one the reader is familiar with. At the beginning of
the novel the developments that function as constituents of that story have
already taken place. A first-person narrator unfolds them before the reader’s
eye only by dropping occasional bits and snippets, thus creating the im-
pression that someone unfamiliar with the counterfactual history – as every
Tode gestoßen, auch die Welt würde ihn weder unter dem Namen Ulianow noch
unter jenem Lenins kennen” (Zweig, “Zug”, p. 242).
40 Cf. Christian Kracht, Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten, Cologne 2008.
41 “[…] die Geschichte des großen Eidgenossen Lenin, der, anstatt in einem plom-
bierten Zug in das zerfallende, verstrahlte Russland zurückzukehren, in der
Schweiz geblieben war, um dort nach Jahrzehnten des Krieges den Sowjet zu
gründen, in Zürich, Basel und Neu-Bern” (Kracht, Sonnenschein, p. 58).
42 “[…] byzantinische Verflechtung, die fast surreale Komplexität ihrer militärischen
Allianzen” (Kracht, Sonnenschein, p. 32).
43 “Der englische König, so hörten wir, hatte sich mit den Faschisten, den Deut-
schen, gegen uns verbündet, sie planten, ein dekadentes Großreich zu schaffen, in
dem wir Afrikaner Sklaven sein würden und sie die grinsenden Herren” (Kracht,
Sonnenschein, p. 59).
reader approaching the text from the outside must be, naturally – can merely
get a few fragments of the whole picture. The narrator and protagonist is a
black soldier from Africa. He has been trained and educated in military acad-
emies, and he is now engaged in the fight for the communist cause. When he
receives the order to track down and kill another officer named Brashinsky,
because he has become insane, the protagonist embarks on a man-hunt. His
journey takes him through Switzerland and to the Communist Army’s head-
quarters in the Alps, which have been turned into a giant fortress. In the deep
tunnels of this mountain fortress he meets Brashinsky, but he does not com-
plete his mission. In the end, he abandons all ideologies, even language. He
ceases to speak and returns to Africa, where the new cities have all been de-
serted. Where technology used to reign, nature is taking over, and the Afri-
can people return to their villages.44
Kracht’s novel abounds with mostly unmarked intertextual allusions to
other works of literature. It borrows elements from other counterfactual his-
torical novels such as Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, whose famous
opening line is evoked at one point.45 Another telling allusion is made to
Philip K. Dick and his prototypical counterfactual novel The Man in the High
Castle when the narrator mentions a reference work on insects called “The
Grasshopper Lies Heavy”.46 The fable of the novel itself is highly reminis-
cent of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness but it is obviously inverted in Ich
44 “Ganze Städte wurden indes über Nacht verlassen, und ihre afrikanischen Ein-
wohner kehrten, einer stillen Völkerwanderung gleich, zurück in die Dörfer”
(Kracht, Sonnenschein, p. 148).
45 The first line of Pynchon’s novel refers to the sound of German V2 rockets that
could be heard only after their detonation: “A screaming comes across the sky”
(Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, London 2000, p. 3). At one point Kracht’s
narrator observes: “High up in the sky the missile from a German long range
canon, coming from the north, was heading east with a hissing sound. Sometimes
they would fall down and hit our territory. It was pure chance, although one quite
naturally heard the impact first and only then the sound of the advancing rocket”.
(“Unendlich weit oben am Himmel sirrte das Geschoss einer deutschen Lang-
streckenkanone, von Norden kommend, nach Osten. Manchmal fielen sie herab
und schlugen bei uns ein. Es war reiner Zufall, wiewohl man natürlicherweise
erst den Einschlag wahrnahm und dann das Geräusch des sich nähernden Ge-
schosses” [Kracht, Sonnenschein, p. 21].) Notably, in this paragraph a dissolution of
the cause-and-effect relation that makes the protagonist’s present a nunc stans in
which the change of seasons no longer occurs is indicated.
46 Cf. Kracht, Sonnenschein, p. 68. Dick’s novel pictures a world in which Nazi Germany
and Imperial Japan have achieved world power after a World War II that lasted until
1948. As a novel within the novel, “The Grashopper Lies Heavy” tells a story about
how things could have turned out differently if Germany had lost the war.
werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten, as the protagonist is a black man.
His journey takes him from Africa to Europe and to the heart of its ideologi-
cal blood circle, from which societies all over the world shall be transformed
for the better: “Racism did not exist, it should not exist”.47 Accordingly, the
servant has become the master in the new Swiss society, as Claude D. Conter
remarks.48
Kracht has for some time been considered a representative of a new aes-
theticism associated with a specifically German Pop-Literatur that emerged in
the 1990s. It was only after his third novel was published that scholars began
to seriously analyze his works.49 One of the merits of this new interest is that
some articles link Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten to Kracht’s
other books, especially to his novels. What several of these essays bring to the
fore is that Kracht’s habit to comment on history is anything but new. Even
his inclination towards the counterfactual could be detected very early, for
the title of his first novel Faserland alludes to Robert Harris’s best-selling thril-
ler Fatherland (1992), in which Nazi Germany continues to exist deep into the
1960s.50 In Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten the counterfactual
serves as a cognitive tool for Kracht. Like Brussig, he reacts to a widely ac-
cepted version of history. That image is hidden in an instructive passage
where the narrator finds the history of Switzerland carved into stone:51
I saw reliefs along the walls which told Swiss history in socialist-realist style, from
the beginnings of the wars against the Habsburgers and Burgunders, from the
47 “Es gab keinen Rassismus, sollte keinen geben” (Kracht, Sonnenschein, p. 59).
48 Cf. Claude D. Conter, “Christian Krachts posthistorische Ästhetik”, in: Johannes
Birgfeld/Claude D. Conter (eds.), Christian Kracht: Zu Leben und Werk, Cologne
2009, pp. 24–43, p. 37.
49 Although miscellaneous articles were published before, a collection of articles
edited by Johannes Birgfeld and Claude D. Conter is the first endeavor to discuss
Kracht’s works in an academic context.
50 Oliver Jahraus offers a convincing interpretation when he suggests that Kracht
uses the title as a means to point at the fact that Germany has in some way won the
war (cf. Oliver Jahraus, “Ästhetischer Fundamentalismus: Christian Krachts radi-
kale Erzählexperimente”, in: Birgfeld/Conter, Christian Kracht, pp. 24–43, p. 16).
51 Again, there is reason to assume that Kracht is using another work of literature as
a basis upon which he crafts his own text, this time Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Der
Winterkrieg in Tibet, as Moritz Baßler points out. Dürrenmatt depicts a similarly
desolate world, with a Swiss government that is stuck inside a massif of rocks.
Moreover, this dystopian text features a hero who finally carves his own story into
labyrinth walls of a mountain fortress. Cf. Moritz Baßler, “Utopie und Apokalypse
im deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsroman (Kracht, Dath, Uschmann)”, paper
presented at the conference Utopie und Apokalypse in der Moderne: Internationales Sym-
posium der Universität Freiburg/CH , Fribourg, October 3, 2009.
peasant rising on the mythical Rütli field – easily to be recognized was the old
Swiss salute that had been adapted by the SSR , the raised arm, two fingers held up
and a thumb, the holy oath to stand brave in battle – next the short period of the
Peace of Basel brought about by cowardly force, followed by the first expansion of
Switzerland’s heartland through its mercenaries all the way to Milan.52
By turning its history into a petrified stream of battle scenes Kracht presents
Switzerland as the opposite of what it is often seen as. The novel undermines
a national myth which explains Switzerland’s independence as a consequence
of its strong urge for freedom, for here it takes only one small step to turn
the politically neutral, peaceful island into an empire torn by wars and ideo-
logy. At the same time, the novel inverts the outsider’s, and especially Ger-
man, perspective on Switzerland, such as the one that Kracht employs in
Faserland, which seeks comfort in its alleged cleanliness and neatness.
Peter von Matt once argued that historical and philosophical speculations
are rare in Switzerland because the country was bound to vanish all too soon
in the course of such speculations.53 Kracht seems to prove him right in the
sense that in his fictional history Switzerland has disappeared, paradoxically
due to its expansion. The country’s legacy is the epitome of a noble idea gone
bad. The master-servant structure has not been overcome but in a misguided
attempt to achieve racial equality the world has been transformed in a dysto-
pian fashion. Kracht’s book is a playful postmodernist text but the play is not
only set in motion for its own sake. On a broader scale the apocalyptic vi-
sion54 in which the novel culminates can be read as the literary expression of
a deeply pessimistic philosophy of history.55 Thus, Kracht uses the counter-
52 “Ich sah an der Wand sich entlangziehende Reliefarbeiten, welche im Stil des so-
zialistischen Realismus die Geschichte der Schweiz erzählten, von den Anfängen
der Kriege gegen die Habsburger und Burgunder, vom Bauernaufstand auf der
mythischen Rütliwiese – gut zu erkennen war der alte, von der SSR übernommene
Schweizergruß, der hochgestreckte Arm, die erhobenen zwei Finger und der
Daumen, und der heilige Eid, sich fortan im Kriege zu bewähren, dann die kurze
Zeit des feig erzwungenen Friedens von Basel und die glücklich darauf folgende,
erste Expansion des Schweizer Kernlandes durch sein Söldnerheer bis ins italie-
nische Mailand” (Kracht, Sonnenschein, p. 101).
53 Cf. Peter von Matt, “Bilderkult und Bildersturm: Eine Zeitreise durch die literari-
sche und politische Schweiz”, in: Peter von Matt, Die tintenblauen Eidgenossen: Über
die literarische und politische Schweiz, Munich 2001, pp. 9–78, p. 57.
54 For a detailed discussion of Kracht’s treatment of the apocalypse motif and its
tradition, see Baßler, “Utopie”.
55 Conter recognizes the same “existentiell-fatalistische Geschichtsdeutung […],
laut der sich Geschichte lediglich wiederholt” in Kracht’s 1979 (Conter, “Ästhe-
tik”, p. 31).
factual in order to show how mankind is doomed to expire no matter which

turn history would have taken in the past or is going to take in the future.
V. Plot-Type and Story-Type
Now that the basic patterns of their individual content and their intellec-
tual purpose have been outlined, the poetics of the counterfactual can be de-
scribed in a more general and abstract way by once more returning to E.M.
Forster’s Aspects of the Novel. Forster’s distinction between story and plot can
serve as an analytical model to classify the narrative strategies used in both
texts. If history is conceived as a narrative, the two novelists are operating on
different levels of that narrative in order to create their counterfactual ver-
sions of it. If the historical events mentioned in Brussig’s novel were reduced
to a series of abstract elements along a line, we would get a series like A, B, C,
D, and so on. Every letter along that line would correspond to an event out-
side the text. This series would be the story of the German reunification. If
we ask the question “And then?”, as Forster suggests, Brussig’s version does
not differ from the one that can be found in history textbooks. However, if
we ask “Why?”, the difference becomes obvious. In Helden wie wir the em-
phasis of the counterfactual narrative obviously is on causality. The deviation
from the facts is brought about by a counterfactual plot.56
56 A concept frequently used to characterize novels of that kind is “secret history”. It

comprises fictional narratives about “alternate pasts that are never discovered be-
cause they do not end up changing the historical record” (Gavriel D. Rosenfeld,
The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism, Cambridge
2005, p. 399), as their formal approach is not to change the facts within historical
developments but to add a factual or fully invented episode that has been formerly
unknown and which had no effect on the overall historical process, as Rodiek puts
it (cf. Vergangenheit, p. 138). Brian McHale, whose understanding of the term is
slightly different but less concise, refers to Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972) and
Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) as examples of history “as paranoiac
conspiracy-theory” (Postmodernist Fiction, New York/London 1987, p. 91). I do not
propose to abandon or reject the concept altogether, but the problem, in my
opinion, is that no significant effect is ascribed to the secret revealed in the novels.
It is therefore useful to analyze novels such as Stefan Heym’s Schwarzenberg (1984),
which tells the story of a small area in Germany which the Allied Forces forgot to
occupy in 1945 and in which for a limited period of time an independent republic
was formed. It could also be applied to Harry Mulisch’s Siegfried (2001), in which
the narrator discovers that Adolf Hitler had a son whom he had killed at young
age – a historical footnote of great interest but no consequence. However, with re-
gard to Brussig I consider it less useful as the novel’s emphasis is on the cause of the
If we picture the historical events that are referred to in Kracht’s novel in a

similar way as a series of elements we find that from a certain point onwards
the version told in the novel and the history textbook version do no longer
correspond. The story has taken a different turn. If we ask “And then?” after
that point we get different answers for the novel and the history textbook. In
Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten the emphasis of the counter-
factual narrative is on the events in their time sequence. In this case the devi-
ation takes the form of a counterfactual story.
Brussig and Kracht employ two different methods, then, but neither
stands alone. Other novels can be found in which counterfactual versions of
history are told accordingly, by either changing the plot or the story of his-
tory. Therefore, it seems justified to speak of two types of counterfactual his-
torical novels. With regard to the analytical model the distinction is based on,
they can be labeled “plot-type” and “story-type”. They need not be mutually
exclusive but would be appropriately pictured as two opposite poles on a
scale. A poetics of counterfactual novels represented in that typology may
be illustrated in terms of building elements. The two constituents used to
redecorate the house of history, metaphorically speaking, are events and
their causes. So far, only novels that fit into the category of the story-type
have been recognized and analyzed as counterfactual. Among the various
examples are Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration (1976), or, more recently, Philip
Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004) and Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish
Policemen’s Union (2007). In Amis’s case the fictional alteration to the story
of history is achieved by preventing the Reformation and by having Martin
Luther become Pope instead. Philip Roth uses the childhood memory genre
to relate a counterfactual interlude in the 1940s during which Charles Lind-
bergh’s reign as American president led to a non-aggression treaty with
Nazi Germany.57 Michael Chabon has Jewish refugees and their descendants
facing eviction when their settler’s right on the Alaskan Territory, granted by
the United States, runs out after sixty years. In every representative of this
downfall of the Berlin Wall. Brussig’s narrator explicitly establishes a direct link
between the counterfactual cause and the real event, thereby claiming the major
political event to be the direct outcome of the hero’s behavior.
57 Considering that in Roth’s novel World War II still ends with Germany’s defeat,
one might argue that in this case the difference between his and Brussig’s formal
pattern giving shape to the counterfactual is one of degree rather than of sorts.
Still, Roth rewrites the biographies of major historical and political figures, at-
tributing widespread effects to these alterations, whereas Brussig only inserts a
seemingly minor moment to the recorded historical events which leaves the chro-
nology of the established events unaffected.
type there is an event which can be identified as a point of departure after

which the history being told becomes counterfactual.
Operating with the typology sketched above, a variety of novels come into
focus that are usually not regarded as counterfactual novels. Gravity’s Rainbow,
Der Butt, and Midnight’s Children have been mentioned, as these would have to
be classified as other examples of the plot-type. Their inherent narrative pat-
tern is similar to the one in Helden wie wir. In each of these novels, established
historical events are referred to in a way that is mostly in keeping with the
chronological order but a new, counterfactual plot is presented, e.g. when
Pynchon’s characters come close to discovering a hidden plot, a giant con-
spiracy as the true force behind World War II , or when Saleem Sinai in Rush-
die’s novel suggests “that the whole of modern Indian history happened as it
did because of him; that history, the life of his nation-twin, was somehow all
his fault”.58
Both types can be considered to comprise works of realism if realism is
understood to signify “not only a mimetic representation of experience but
also the organization of narrative according to a logic of causality and tem-
poral sequence”.59 It is one of their aesthetic means to project an image of
history against another image that already exists, against an established back-
ground of facts. This is an integral part of their overall aesthetic strategy:
Counterfactual historical novels do not really – even if they occasionally pre-
tend to do so – deny real dates and events. Instead, by employing specific
narrative devices, they introduce new interpretations by making up alter-
native facts.
VI. Conclusion
In conclusion, these observations on the way in which counterfactual his-

torical novels work can be linked to the examples discussed in detail above.
Like other historical novels, counterfactual historical novels include numer-
ous references to historical figures, place names, events, and social or politi-
cal circumstances. Whereas traditional historical novels tend to situate their
action in the gray areas of the greater historical setting, counterfactual novels
interfere with at least one of the cornerstones of textbook history by altering
58 Salman Rushdie, “Introduction”, in: Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, London

2006, pp. ix–xvii, p. x. Italics in the original.
59 David Lodge, “The Novelist Today: Still at the Crossroads?”, in: David Lodge, The
Practice of Writing: Essays, Lectures, Reviews, and a Diary, London 1996, pp. 3–19, p. 6.
it. The basic facts the reader is supposed to be familiar with are usually in-
tegrated into the literary texts that present a counterfactual image related to
these facts. Brussig mentions the peaceful revolution of 1989 and playfully
rejects its impact. It is not the factual process of the German reunification to
which he objects but the particular attitude which glorifies the achievement
and conceals people’s failures that enabled the GDR system to run smoothly
for so long. In Kracht’s novel, the real path of history is presented as a road
not taken. In order to paint a different picture of Switzerland’s political heri-
tage, Kracht pursues that road for a while.
The author’s decision to either approach the links between the events
or the events themselves then requires different strategies of creating the
counterfactual image. Neither Brussig nor Kracht want to falsify history
in the sense that they would want their counterfactual versions to go unrec-
ognized. By asking what each work says about national self-images substan-
tial affinities between Helden wie wir and Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und
im Schatten are revealed. Notably, Brussig and Kracht are both objecting to
interpretations of historical events that are put to use in modern societies.
They create counterfactual versions of history to put the established ver-
sions into perspective. Whereas every powerful official image of history as-
cribes inevitability to a historical development, these counterfactual repre-
sentations draw attention to chance and contingency. In doing so, they
abolish every attempt to make sense of what has happened within a frame-
work of predestination. Once notions of a weltgeist, whatever philosophical
or ideological shape it might take, are done away with, there is room to
negotiate individual concerns by telling counterfactual versions of history.
Thus, after all, and keeping in mind what happens in Kracht’s novel, it is
possible to draw on the initial quotation from David Lodge for a suitable
closing remark about counterfactuals: The sense of history becoming a fic-
tion when someone misses a train and starts a war is a philosophical one.
190 Birte Christ
Birte Christ (Gießen)
“If I Were a Man”: Functions of the Counterfactual

in Feminist Fiction
I. Introduction
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1914 short story “If I Were a Man”, housewife
and “true woman” Molly Matthewson so longs to be a man that, one morn-
ing, she finds herself leaving the house in the shape of her own husband,
“with only enough subconscious memory of herself remaining to make her
recognize the differences”.1 Not only does Molly feel self-possessed, free,
and powerful for the first time, but through the gender role change she
can also recognize the world as “made, lived in, and seen, by men”.2 In other
words, she can recognize men’s assumptions about gender differences, wit-
ness the rituals of masculinity that reify these differences, and thus analyze
the mechanisms which uphold men’s dominance over women. As Gilman’s
title signals rather overtly, the story is based on a simple “counterfact” in the
manner of “if x, then y”. The “counterfact” in “If I Were a Man” is what may
be called “the counterfact of gender”: If Molly were a man, she would en-
gage in entirely different daily practices, would act in the world outside of
the home, and would experience herself and her position vis-à-vis men and
women differently. By contrasting this sense of self with her sense of self as
woman, she would then gain access to the recognition of the specific social
structures that determine her life as a woman.
The story illustrates, in a nutshell, two central aspects of the use of
counterfactuality in feminist fiction – in fictional texts, that is, which ex-
pose traditional gender roles as arbitrary, man-made, and disadvantageous to
women, which offer alternative visions of gender relations, and which call
the reader, in more or less didactical fashion, to political action. First, the
binary of “fact” versus “counterfact” is cast along the lines of the binary of
“male” versus “female”. Feminist thought recognizes the male gender as the
norm and the female gender as that which diverts from the norm – as the
1 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “If I Were a Man”, in: Barbara Solomon (ed.), Herland
and Selected Short Stories of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, New York 1992, pp. 302–308,
pp. 302–303.
2 Gilman, “If I Were a Man”, p. 306.
Functions of the Counterfactual in Feminist Fiction 191
marked Other. Society is organized to the advantages of men; a society re-

organized to the advantages of women is the utopia that feminism is striving
for. Whether feminism aims at reversing or changing the hierarchical rela-
tionship between women and men, or wants to do away with a binary con-
ception of gender, sex, and sexuality altogether, it has to grapple with the
gender binary as a fundamental structure that regulates the social distribu-
tion of power. Almost always, the gender binary is considered a totalizing
ideology which structures all realms of public and private life. Within a con-
text of feminist thought, the binary of “male” versus “female” can thus be
understood as the binary of undesirable “fact” versus desirable “counter-
fact”. Second, Gilman’s story shows that feminist fiction employs counter-
factuality to exploit its cognitive functions and uses them in the service of
social analysis and social critique.
In the following, I will look in detail at “If I Were a Man” and other
speculative feminist texts in order to trace two specific cognitive functions of
counterfactuals that are predicated upon the gender binary: an analytic func-
tion and a synthetic function. I maintain, on the one hand, that fiction which sub-
scribes to a feminist agenda of social and political change frequently projects
counterfactual scenarios because the binary of fact and counterfact lends
itself perfectly to an analysis of the binary of man and woman. In addition
to texts that employ speculative elements in an otherwise realist framework,
such as Gilman’s story, the broad canons of the feminist literary utopia and
feminist science fiction testify to this feminist affinity to the counterfactual
as a tool of analysis. The binary of the actual and the factual which are pitted
against each other within these genres often takes the shape of an actual
world, in which hierarchical gender relations structure society to the advan-
tage of men, and a counterfactual world in which the hierarchy between
women and men is abandoned. The counterfactual in feminist fiction thus
cognitively “estranges” the actual order of gender relations for the reader,3
and hence employs counterfactuality in an analytic effort to show society’s
gendered foundations to be social constructions rather than “naturally”
given.
On the other hand, I want to suggest that feminist fiction’s use of the
counterfactual – by virtue of its fictionality and its commitment to social
3 The term “estrangement” is borrowed from Darko Suvin’s notion of a “literature

of cognitive estrangement”, which he uses as an umbrella category to include vari-
ous speculative genres and which applies to the texts I discuss in this essay
(cf. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, New
Haven 1979, p. 4).
192 Birte Christ
change – can go well beyond this analytic function which fiction shares with
the social sciences.4 Because counterfactual feminist fiction’s political aim is
to unsettle and transcend the binary of male versus female and the hierarchy
that comes with it, it also frequently works towards speculatively undoing the
very binary of fact versus counterfact which its narrative structure is predi-
cated upon. Feminist counterfactual fiction, then, strives towards socio-
political analysis in the sense of a denaturalization of the gender hierarchy,
yet, at the same time, strives towards socio-political synthesis: the denaturaliz-
ation of the gender hierarchy, effected through counterfactual devices such
as role reversal and gendered separatism, does not remain its “real-world”
goal. Ultimately, counterfactual feminist fiction aims to synthetize male and
female in order to abandon the binary and recast both male and female as
non-gendered human.
I will illustrate these two central forms of the use of counterfactuality in
feminist fiction – analysis and synthesis – by looking at four texts which are
almost canonical in discussions of speculative fiction by women. Two are
from the early twentieth century: Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novel
Herland (1915) and her story “If I Were a Man” (1914), which I have already
introduced and from which I have borrowed the title for this paper. Gil-
man’s writing, which includes other utopias such as Moving the Mountain
(1911), must be seen in two interrelated contexts: first, the primary emerg-
ence of feminist engagé fiction on a broad and popular scale – more than
thirty women writers, for example, published utopian novels between 1890
and 1920;5 and second, the growing power of the women’s movement which
won its first significant national battle, women’s suffrage, in 1921. The other
two texts were published about sixty years later in the context of second-
wave feminism, which, like the women’s movement in the beginning of the
century, saw a parallel burgeoning of speculative genres in the hands of
women writers: Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground (1979) and Joanna
Russ’s The Female Man (1975).6
However, I do not want to make a historical argument here. Rather, I will
use Herland and The Wanderground to illustrate the analytic function of the
4 Cf. Neal J. Roese/Mike Morrison, “The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking”,

in: Roland Wenzlhuemer (ed.), Historical Social Research, Special Issue: Counterfactual
Thinking as a Scientific Method, 34/2009, pp. 16–26.
5 Cf., for example, Carol Kolmerten, “Texts and Contexts: American Women En-
vision Utopia, 1890–1920”, in: Kolmerten/Jane L. Donawerth (eds.), Utopian and
Science Fiction by Women, Syracuse 1994, pp. 107–125.
6 Cf., for example, Mario Klarer, Frau und Utopie: Feministische Literaturtheorie und uto-
pischer Diskurs im anglo-amerikanischen Roman, Darmstadt 1993, pp. 1–2.
counterfactual in feminist fiction, and “If I Were a Man” and The Female Man
to make my case that feminist fiction may go even further and employ the
counterfactual as a tool of synthesis. These two different uses of the counter-
factual, which call forth the reader’s participation in the text and her partici-
pation in political activism in different ways, thus cut across historical and
literary periods. That both uses of the counterfactual in feminist fiction
are relevant strategies in the 1910s as well as in the 1970s, and that both uses
share similar advantages and problems with regard to their feminist argu-
ment, must be due to the fact, I believe, that they are written against struc-
tures of gender inequality that, sixty years apart, differ in degree, but not
in kind. Counterfactuality, in the 1910s and in the 1970s, presumably also
shares in the affective functions of feminist fiction and contributes to mov-
ing readers towards taking political action based on their cognitive insights.7
In the following, however, I will not look at these counterfactual narratives’
possible real-world activation of readers, but will be concerned with what I
consider the two most salient cognitive functions of the counterfactual em-
ployed by them.
7 “If I Were a Man” employs upward counterfactuality: It imagines the gendered

protagonist in a “counterfactually” privileged position that is, for the time being,
“factually” unattainable. The three other texts I will be looking at in this essay
similarly create narratives in which women fare better than they do in the real
world. It is through employing such upward counterfactuals rather than down-
ward counterfactuals, I would like to hypothesize, that these feminist texts be-
come effective in the real world. As Patrizia Catellani points out in her contribu-
tion to this volume, an upward counterfactual is likely to “trigger a negative
emotion such as discomfort and regret”(p. 84). Quite obviously, the successful fem-
inist narrative does not leave its readers passively in their chairs, pained by negative
feelings, cynical and disillusioned about their own world and their position in it,
but is able to translate negative feelings such as regret, frustration, anger, and out-
rage into the acquisition of new attitudes and (political) action. In Catellani’s re-
search on “real-world” political discourse and citizens’ attitudes, the link between
negative emotions and political actions, as in voting behavior, is a transparent and
direct one. The link between reading upward counterfactuals in fiction, accompa-
nied by negative feelings, and positive action in the actual world is less direct. But
alongside the feelings of regret about the state of her own lived experiences as
a woman, which these fictional upward counterfactuals create in the reader, they
also offer her, as Carol Farley Kessler remarks about utopian texts in particu-
lar, “alternative vicarious experience” (“Introduction”, in: Kessler [ed.], Daring to
Dream: Utopian Stories by United States Women 1836–1919, Boston 1995, pp. xiii–
xxviii, p. xvii) in the fictional world and thus engender a sense of narrative liber-
ation, imaginary self-expansion, and self-empowerment.
194 Birte Christ
II. The Counterfactual as Feminist Analytic
Herland and The Wanderground do not feature protagonists who assume a

“counterfactual gender”, as Molly does in Gilman’s short story. Both texts,
instead, develop complete “counterfactually gendered” worlds – they con-
front the reader with fully-fledged ideal, separatist women’s societies. In
contrast to both “If I Were a Man” and The Female Man, they also follow the
pattern of classical literary utopias rather closely. Herland is told from the
perspective of Vandyck Jennings, a sociologist who discovers Herland’s all-
women society, located somewhere in South America, together with two
friends. “[A]bout two thousand years ago” Herland was entirely cut off from
the rest of the world after a volcanic eruption, which blocked off the val-
ley where it is located and killed the male members of its society.8 What the
American adventurers find in Herland is a population that is healthy, pros-
perous, clean, and well-educated, and a social structure which is built entirely
around the physical and intellectual well-being of the nation’s children, all
with a view to sustainability. There is no poverty, no exploitation of re-
sources, and no violence. Herlanders are vegetarians, wear simple clothing,
raise their children communally, and each woman performs the jobs that are
most suited to her talents. Due to centuries without contact with men, dur-
ing which the women procreated through parthenogenesis, the Herlanders
lack the gendered behavior towards men which Jennings and his friends ex-
pect. In what the three men come to see as a painful reversal of their actual
world’s dynamics, the Herlanders are immune to their bragging and advances
and are primarily interested in the men as a means to procreate and diversify
their own genetic stock. Almost any topic that the men discuss with the Her-
landers shows that the whole set-up of society follows an “inverse logic”
in comparison with the actual world – which is represented, text-internally,
through the male visitors’ perspective. The “rational” organization of the
real world is shown, in fact, to serve only economically privileged men’s in-
terests, and in particular their sexual possession of women.
The Wanderground imagines a world in the near future in which women have
established a society of their own, the “hill women’s” society. They live in
harmony with plants and animals in the “wanderground”, while men and
machines, mysteriously robbed of their potency, wither away in the “city”.
The Wanderground positively re-evaluates and strategically embraces essential-
ist stereotypes about women as close to nature, spiritual, fertile, relational, or
8 Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland, in: Solomon, Herland and Selected Short Stories,
pp. 1–146, p. 57.
“soft”, and rejects rationality and technology, which are coded as “male” or
“hard”. The women of the wanderground, moreover, reject “male” histori-
ography and written cultures of memory; they use books as material to insu-
late their homes, they communicate through forms of telepathy, and create
social bonds through oral storytelling and through communal recollection
in so-called “remember rooms”. The narrative form of The Wanderground de-
parts from Herland’s classical utopian narrative and reflects the non-hier-
archical and anti-scriptural nature of its women’s society: It consists of a
loose series of episodes, told by a hetereodiegetic narrator in associative se-
quences, involving changing protagonists, thereby sketching the commu-
nity’s egalitarian life in the wanderground. Both Herland and The Wander-
ground assume – and problematically so from a non-essentialist perspective –
that if women were left alone for some time to establish their own ways of
organizing their public and private lives, this would result in societies entirely
different from, and, above all, “better” in comparison to the actual U.S. so-
ciety of the 1910s and 1970s. Both texts invert and contradict the male-de-
fined logic that structures actual society down to the smallest detail and can
thus be said to develop entire counterfactual worlds.
The reader’s analysis of the social status quo of the “actual” in these texts
is enabled by two “effects” which are also at work in everyday retrospective
counterfactual thinking. Roese and Morrison have described these effects as
the “contrast effect” and the “causal inference effect”.9 First, I want to focus
on how the contrast effect is actualized in different ways in Herland and The
Wanderground. One aspect that the texts share is that they imagine the worlds
in which gender difference is abolished and women shape society in terms of
a pastoral ideal, and they share this desire for the pastoral with almost all uto-
pian texts published since the age of industrialization. By contrasting a uto-
pian world in which the relationship between humans and nature is sym-
biotic and caring rather than exploitative, they expose and critique real-world
social practices.
Herland makes the contrast between the counterfactual, utopian order and
the contemporary, actual order explicit through its reliance on the classical
utopian traveler figure, the narrator Jennings, who represents actual-world
assumptions in the counterfactual world and serves as the reader’s figure
of identification with whom she discovers the utopian world. Moreover,
the novel uses multiple visitor figures – three American men, who discuss
their observations of Herland with three native cicerones and compare these
observations with their knowledge of the United States in extended dia-
9 Roese/Morrison, “Psychology”, p. 16.

196 Birte Christ
logues.10 In the following excerpt, Jennings describes the Herlanders’ method

of recycling and composting all waste and fertilizing their soil with the result-
ing humus:
Here was this little shut-in piece of land [i.e. Herland] where one would have
thought an ordinary people would have been starved out long ago. […] These
careful culturists had worked out a perfect scheme of refeeding the soil […]. All
the scraps and leavings of their food, plant waste from lumber work or textile
industry, all the solid matter from the sewage, properly treated and combined –
everything which came from the earth went back to it.11
While the reader, without further hints, may recognize this as different from
contemporary practices in the United States, the text does not leave the
“contrast effect” to be performed text-externally and thus potentially ig-
nored, but enacts it for the reader text-internally. First of all, Jennings makes
clear that composting is not an “actual” practice in the contemporary United
States when he claims that an “ordinary people” would not be able to sustain
itself on such limited resources. The contrast between actual and counter-
factual methods of agriculture and waste management is made even more
explicit when Jennings goes on to report that the Herlanders “asked what
our methods were”.12 The text, however, does not allow Jennings to narrate
an account of “actual” methods in his narrative – which is unnecessary for
the reader familiar with contemporary U.S. society – by having him confess
that “we had some difficulty in – well, in diverting them, by referring to the
extent of our own land, and the – admitted – carelessness with which we had
skimmed the cream of it”.13 Here, Jennings establishes the inverted nature of
the counterfactual utopian and the real actual world by hinting at the differ-
ences, but, in addition, his statement leaves no doubt as to how the reader
is to evaluate both her own and Herland’s system. Herland, as this example
shows, not only makes the contrast of actual and counterfactual worlds ex-
plicit, but its representation of the travelers’ experience of the “contrast ef-
fect” between the Herlanders’ system and their own prescribes the reader’s
view of Herland as an upward counterfactual. Jennings’s shame about his
10 Of course, as Johnston has argued, the multiplied visitor figure also allows the text
to represent three male characters which stand for three proto- or stereotypes of
masculinity and to expose their different, but equally problematic attitudes to-
wards women (cf. Georgia Johnston, “Three Men in Herland: Why They Enter the
Text”, in: Lise Leibacher-Ouvrard/Nicholas D. Smith [eds.], Utopian Studies IV,
Lanham 1990, pp. 55–59).
11 Gilman, Herland, pp. 80–81.
12 Gilman, Herland, p. 81; my emphasis.
13 Gilman, Herland, p. 81.
own and hence about the actual world’s system also prescribes her emotional
attitudes toward the actual world, which may, as I have suggested above,
function as a trigger towards political action.
The Wanderground, by contrast, is very much a text of its time in that it does
away with the classical utopian traveler-and-cicerone constellation and its co-
lonial and heteronormative implications which, though ironically inversed,
centrally structure Herland. In consequence, the actual world against which
The Wanderground places its upward counterfactual remains outside of the
text. Here, it is the reader who must cognitively substantiate the contrast be-
tween the counterfactual world and her own actual world. She is not invited
to identify with characters who experience the contrast effect themselves.
The following scene, for example, relates how the character Alaka has just
swum through a cave filled with water and shaken the water out of her hair:
“I will warm you,” she heard. Laughing, she turned to the tree. Gently she laid her-
self against the heavy bark, spreading her legs and arms about the big trunk.
“I take when you give,” said the tree.
“I know,” she said. “And I take when you give.” She inhaled slowly, pressing her
viscera against the tree. As she released her breath, the trunk pushed against her.
Slowly, with no visible motion, the two set a rhythm of pneuma exchange. Alaka’s
trousers became dry and warm. So did even her soft shirt, a chamois given her by
Olu, her long-loved antelope when Olu changed form. Her hair swung free now
and dry.14
The scene represents a moment of social interaction in a counterfactual so-
ciety of which plants and animals are an integral part and in which women,
plants, and animals support each other mutually. Alaka’s rhythmic exchange
of “pneuma” with the tree quite obviously re-conceptualizes sexuality as a
life-giving form of interaction between equals, and nurturing as an essentially
physical or embodied capacity is stressed by Alaka’s virtually inhabiting the
inside of her friend’s (antelope) skin. The actual world’s exploitative or, at
best, non-existent relationship with nature and trees in particular exists only
as a foil in the reader’s mind; the way in which Alaka’s relationship with the
tree and her antelope-friend should be evaluated is left uncommented upon,
except for the fact that the reader might identify with the character and ex-
perience her well-being within these relationships vicariously, and hence
as something positive. One might argue that when the reader – over long
stretches of the narrative – is left to experience the contrast between
counterfactual and actual practices herself, without explicit commentary on
the part of the text, the contrast might be more effective didactically. At least
14 Sally Miller Gearheart, The Wanderground, London 1985, pp. 14–15.

198 Birte Christ
this might be the case in historical contexts in which overt didacticism in lit-
erature is not well-received either by readers or critics. The recognition of
contrast becomes the reader’s own cognitive achievement rather than the
text’s, and, if the text is successful, her evaluation of the hill women’s prac-
tices as cases of upward counterfactuality triggers her independent – rather
than textually prescribed – critical perspective of her own society.
The contrast effect which these feminist counterfactual fictions achieve,
then, primarily contributes to criticizing concrete social practices. Both the
text-internal prescription of the practice of composting as better than actual-
world practices in Herland and the reader’s potential positive, text-external
evaluation of Alaka’s mutually nurturing relationship with nature in The Wan-
derground, I would argue, prepare a desire for the “causal inference effect”: a
desire to understand the causal relationship between the fact that Herland
and the hill women’s society are governed by women and the fact that they
have developed environmentally more sustainable systems of life and more
nurturing relationships than the actual world, governed by men, has.
The “causal inferences” which the counterfactual allows the reader to
make in feminist texts are insights into the naturalized social “logic” that is
the cause and basis of hierarchical gender relations. The following excerpt
from Herland is rather straightforward in its exposure of a supposedly “natu-
ral” hierarchy of the sexes and the social structures that arise from such a
hierarchy. It is a dialogue between the male visitors and their three cicerones
that is sparked by the visitors’ observation that among Herlanders, there is
no economic competition. In spite of the fact that the men experience Her-
land as a society in which every woman is well off, the men’s implied assump-
tion is, nevertheless, that without economic competition there cannot be any
material prosperity. Clinging to their own notions of how the world must
work, they try to defend their perspective on economics by arguing that
without competition, there is no stimulus to industry:
“Stimulus? To Industry? But don’t you like to work?”
“No man would work unless he had to,” Terry declared.
“Oh, no man! You mean that is one of your sex distinctions?”
“No, indeed!” he said hastily. “No one, I mean, man or woman, would work
without incentive. […]”
“[…] Do you mean, for instance, that with you no mother would work for her
children without the stimulus of competition?”
No, he admitted that he did not mean that […] but the world’s work was dif-
ferent – that had to be done by men, and required the competitive element.15
15 Gilman, Herland, p. 62; italics in the original.

The opposition of the men’s “actual” and the Herlanders’ “counterfactual”

assumptions about the organization of society allows for the reader’s infer-
ences into the mechanisms of naturalization on various levels. First of all,
Terry, one of the travelers, uses the term “man” as a universal and is mis-
understood by the Herlander, who takes it to be a marker of sex. In an all-
female society such as Herland it certainly is a marker of sex, but it is not in
the actual world. The usage of “man” as a universal becomes estranged from
the reader through the counterfactual assertion that reality may be concep-
tualized inversely. In consequence, it allows the reader to infer that employ-
ing the male gender as the unmarked gender does not represent a given natu-
ral order, but rather that it is the product of a process of naturalization which
is potentially open to revision.
Terry’s and the Herlanders’ different uses of the term “work” have a simi-
lar effect. Activities in the household and childcare are not considered work
by Terry while they are the essence of work in Herland. Again, the opposi-
tion signals to the reader that the conventions governing her actual world are
not a given, but must be socially constructed. The intimate connection of the
gendered division of labor to the notion of “competition” in Terry’s account
of the actual world’s order, moreover, points towards the ways in which
socially constructed gender relations constitute the very foundation of the
economic system. As the conversation continues, Terry stresses that in the
actual world women are not allowed to work outside of the home. Event-
ually, however, he then has to admit that about one third of the women of
“the poorer sort” do have to do what he calls the “world’s work”. The debate
between “actual” Terry and the “counterfactual” Herlander, which, text-in-
ternally, does not lead anywhere because they speak at cross purposes, text-
externally opens up spaces for “causal inference”. It allows the reader to see
that Terry’s and the actual world’s economic system is not only based on a
gendered separation of spheres of work, but that it also leaves about a third
of the population poor. The latter, as the counterfactual world of Herland
shows, must by no means be seen as “natural” but could well be organized
otherwise so that, it is implied, the former injustice – capitalism – would
automatically be abolished.
The Wanderground’s hill-women’s society certainly also creates a desire in
the reader to understand how and why the female society is more peaceful,
more nurturing, and more in dialogue with nature than contemporary so-
ciety governed by men – and hence a desire to understand the logic and
mechanisms of naturalization underlying that male-governed society. How-
ever, as actual society is not represented within the text, this analytical task
is relegated entirely to the reader, who may for herself construct a feminist
200 Birte Christ
understanding of the actual world against the female/feminist counterfac-

tual world projected in the text. However, The Wanderground allows for causal
inference in a different way: It offers the reader avenues to understanding the
causes not of how women came to create a better world, but why they did it
and why they did it in separatist fashion – out of their own choice, and not
because they were forced to, as in Herland for instance, after a natural ca-
tastrophe. In other words, counterfactuality’s cognitive function to enable
causal inference is here employed to suggest to the reader why she should
join in the feminist re-organization of society, and not necessarily how she
should do it or which naturalized assumptions about women and men need
to be undone.
Instead of representing the actual world of 1979 through visitor figures,
the text projects two refractions of what may be considered the actual world
of 1979: It creates both a dystopian past to the present of the hill women’s
society and a dystopian locus, the “city”, left over from this dystopian past
and now occupied by defunct machines and impotent, yet violent men. The
hill women’s society is knit together by a culture of memory and oral his-
tory practiced in so-called “remember rooms”, in which objects of that past
world are also collected. Through communal memories which are “re-chan-
neled”, “called up”, and “replayed”, the older members of the community
familiarize the younger ones with “the hill women’s violent backgrounds”.16
At one point, the reader follows the teenage character Clana through a series
of “rememberings”, a ritual of initiation into the adult hill-women’s world:
As she went to the last of the rememberings, Clana’s head was already full of the
strangest imaginings she had ever known. She was still mentally digesting all the
hard pictures she had examined this morning – covers from magazines with
women clad only in high-heeled boots and a thin crotch band or being whipped
into apparent ecstatic submission by a masked man ready to enter her, photo-
graphs of women on their knees servicing men, women and men in a variety of
sexual postures. […] There was hardly a word spoken as Nova and Bessie began
drawing them into the rememberings of the Revolt of the Mother.
“Once upon a time,” began Bessie, “there was one rape too many. Once upon
a time.” […] “The earth finally said ‘no.’ There was no storm, no earthquake, no
tidal wave or volcanic eruption, no specific moment to mark its happening. It only
became apparent that it had happened, and that it had happened everywhere.”17
16 Gearhart, The Wanderground, p. 24.

17 Gearhart, The Wanderground, pp. 171–172. Through Bessie’s words, the text here
creates an intertextual link to other feminist separatist utopias such as Herland
in which the creation of a separatist women’s society is the result of a natural
catastrophe rather than a conscious effort of women to reject a male-dominated
society.
Read alongside the scene in which Alaka engages in a loving and nurturing
version of sexual intercourse with the tree, this passage reinforces, text-
internally, the contrast effect which the reader was left to experience text-
externally in the earlier passage, and hence makes unmistakably clear that ac-
tual-world social practices are a part of men’s overall domination and violent
subjugation of women. However, the passage also allows for causal inference
of why and how the women’s separatist society was established – and serves
as a call to real-world political action at the same time.
Sexual violence against women, which is equated with pornography and
sexual practices between men and women that, from a feminist perspective,
may be seen to underwrite women’s subservience not only in the sexual
act, is represented as the central outrage around which the “Revolt of the
Mother” gained momentum and led to the foundation of the hill women’s
separatist society. Here, the counterfactual scenario of The Wanderground
allows for the reader’s inference of what constitutes the foundations of male
dominance – violence that is represented as part and parcel of heteronor-
mative sexuality – and hence, for an understanding of where feminist resis-
tance must begin. The inference that can be made through the text’s projec-
tion of a counterfactual world and a counterfactual history of this world’s
origins is that programmatic lesbianism is the only measure that can get to
the roots of women’s oppression. The causal inference effect in The Wander-
ground, then, not only contributes to a cognitive denaturalization of actual-
world structures but suggests specific strategies – such as a programmatic
lesbianism – to replace these structures.
As the examples of Herland and The Wanderground have shown, the
“contrast effect” of utopian and real, of counterfactual and actual, is used
in order to critique specific social practices, while the “causal inference
effect” is used to expose mechanisms of naturalization structuring the ac-
tual world, and, as is the case in The Wanderground, can also contribute to pin-
pointing the exact strategies by which these mechanisms may potentially be
undone.
III. The Counterfactual as Feminist Synthetic
The titles of Gilman’s and Gearhart’s novels, Herland and The Wander-
ground, signal from the start that they set out to develop complete utopian,
or counterfactual, worlds. The titles “If I Were a Man” and The Female
Man, by contrast, signal that they engage in a different kind of counterfac-
tuality, which Hilary Dannenberg calls “characteriological counterfactual-
202 Birte Christ
ity”.18 They engage in imagining counterfactual identities along the gender

binary. In other words, they are texts in which women become men. In the
following, I will demonstrate that because characteriological counterfactual-
ity allows for a simultaneous presence of the actual and the counterfactual
within one character’s experientiality, this type of counterfactuality serves
not only the analytic function of feminist counterfactuals discussed above,
but also a synthetic function. The synthesis of actual and counterfactual, of
male and female, which these character counterfactuals achieve, I want to
argue, is not only designed to produce the anger and frustration in the reader
that may arise from an analysis of the social status quo. Instead, feminist fic-
tion can synthetize the actual and the counterfactual, thereby getting rid of
the very system which structures reality, and thus offer desirable vicarious
experiences of life in a non-gendered world and of non-gendered subjectiv-
ities. In other words, the synthesis of the actual and the counterfactual allows
feminist fiction to offer true experiential systemic alternatives, whereas the
counterfactual in the service of social analysis serves as a lens through which
to understand the existing system, the actual.
However, texts that employ characteriological counterfactuals, first of all,
also perform an analytic function which I would like to illustrate briefly by
looking at Gilman’s short story. Molly Matthewson, as I have pointed out at
the beginning of this essay, suddenly turns physically into “A Man! Really a
man –”.19 She inhabits her husband Gerald’s body and social position for a
day, but is still able to analyze the differences of perspective to her former
female self. When she experiences life as Gerald, “the world opened before
her. Not the world she had been reared in […] but the world as it was”.20 The
text here implicitly distinguishes between a deluded “female” and a truthful
“male” view of the world, and hence suggests that women are usually barred
from cognitive access to reality. Not only do women, relegated to domestic-
ity as Molly is, not equally participate in “the world”, they are not even aware
of the world which is out there, and are certainly not aware of the ways in
which “the world’s” rules structure the reality of the female “home”. Molly,
by assuming her husband’s character and simultaneously retaining her own
experiences as a woman, gains access to a privileged view of the world, which
for the first time – although she has been haunted by an inexplicable desire
to leave her gendered role and become a man for a long time – allows her to
18 Hilary Dannenberg, Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Nar-
rative Fiction, Lincoln 2008, pp. 120–122.
understand in which ways specifically she is at a disadvantage in her daily life

as a woman.
Leaving his/her house and fingering the objects in the many pockets
of his/her jacket, such as a fountain pen, a cigar case, and a check book, s/he
feels, “with a deep rushing sense of power and pride […] what she had never
felt before – the possession of money”.21 Taking the commuter train to
work, and looking out of the car windows, s/he sees “houses […] in terms
of builders’ bills, or some technical insight into materials and methods” and
“shops, not as mere exhibition of desirable objects, but as business ven-
tures”.22 Through experiencing a day in the life of a member of the other sex,
Molly/Gerald not only vaguely feels but actually substantiates and under-
stands her own lack of access to “the world”. Her observations revolve – in
keeping with the central issues addressed by the women’s movement of
the time and by Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself – around women’s lack
of legal rights, gender-specific education, and the gendered nature of the lei-
sure-class dynamics of economic production and consumption. Within her
counterfactual consciousness – which is at the same time held against her ac-
tual consciousness – the world and its gender roles become estranged from
her. Her female view is complemented by the male view, and she can under-
stand how men’s different behavior and attitudes as well as her own behavior
and attitudes are shaped by a separation of spheres and a hierarchy of power
which she was unable to intellectually analyze before – a process of under-
standing which the reader is invited to perform with her.23
The female character in her male garb, then, needs to reflect continuously
about the contrast between her actual and her counterfactual self, about the
ways in which these differently gendered selves become what they are, and
about the consequences their gendering has for the organization of society
as a whole. Texts that employ a characteriological counterfactuality of gender
hence use counterfactuals as tools of feminist analysis – much like the texts
that develop complete counterfactual worlds. They make both the contrast
and the avenues towards causal inference, which the counterfactual enables,
explicit within the consciousness of their protagonist. The protagonist’s

23 The title is interesting with regard to the reader. “If I Were a Man”, suggesting that
a homodiegetic narrative is to follow, disappoints this expectation immediately:
The story is told throughout by a heterodiegetic narrator and focalized through
Molly. The title hence points to the way in which the story can become useful to
the reader: Through the paratextual “I”, the narrator of the story explicitly puts
herself into the place of her character and invites the reader to do the same.
204 Birte Christ
thoughts can become central to the narrative either because she is a central
reflector figure, as in “If I Were a Man”, or because she is an autodiegetic
narrator, as in The Female Man.
What is more, “If I Were a Man” synthetizes gendered perspectives in a
way which opens up spaces for change. As the story progresses, Molly’s and
the reader’s newly acquired, counterfactual “male” view of the world be-
come integrated into both the character’s and the reader’s consciousness as
women – but as women who have become aware of their own disadvantaged
position in the world and have begun to understand the mechanisms through
which the dominance of men over women is upheld. The counterfactual
“male” perspective ceases to be counterfactual because it becomes part of
the actual perspective of the emancipated female character and reader. Molly,
and with her the female reader, take on the counterfactual male gender but
retain “enough subconscious memory of [themselves] to […] recognize the
differences”, and thus embody and render conspicuous the female conun-
drum of seeing the world from a female “emancipated” perspective. At the
same time, however, they remain aware of not being able to inhabit the male
one.24 The counterfactual and the actual that become reified simultaneously
within one character can be read as an expression of what feminist critics
have described as “double place of woman”,25 or as women’s “double-
voiced”26 or “palimpsestic”27 subjectivity, drawing on W. E. B. Du Bois’s con-
cept of the “double consciousness” of racially oppressed social groups.28
In feminist and critical race theory, this double or split identity of the op-
pressed is conceived of as being highly problematic for the individual. In Gil-
man’s story, by contrast, the convergence of the actual and the counterfactual
gendered perspective in one character not only models double conscious-
ness as the predicament of the emancipated woman, but at the same time
represents the reader with a counterfactual, productive notion of double
consciousness. Towards the end of the story, Molly’s feminist perspective on

25 My translation of Weigel’s expression “der doppelte Ort der Frau”, in: Sigrid Wei-
gel, “Der schielende Blick: Thesen zur Geschichte weiblicher Schreibpraxis”, in:
Weigel/Inge Stephan (eds.), Die verborgene Frau: Sechs Beiträge zu einer feministischen
Literaturwissenschaft, Berlin 1983, pp. 83–137.
26 Elaine Showalter, “Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness”, in: Showalter (ed.),
The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory, New York 1985,
pp. 243–270.
27 Sandra M. Gilbert/Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and
the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven 1979.
28 Cf. William E. B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk”, in: John Hope Franklin
(ed.), Three Negro Classics, New York 1965, pp. 208–389.
the world – which she has gained by looking at the world through male eyes –
begins to “infect” her husband Gerald’s consciousness and, more import-
antly, his/her actions with her/his new “emancipated” double conscious-
ness. When Molly-as-Gerald looks around the streetcar at his/her fellow
passengers, s/he admires the becoming hats and suits of the gentlemen, and
mentally remarks about women’s hats and fashions: “Never in all her life had
she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, for those who paid for
it, like the decorations of an insane monkey”.29 Obviously, this judgment of
the women’s looks undercuts the dynamics of the desiring gaze of the male,
which one might expect Molly to experience in her husband’s counterfactual
skin: It represents a view on women’s fashion held by female activists for dress
reform. It is what women activists wish men – estranged from their acquired
habit of finding exactly this kind of fashion attractive – would eventually
come to think about women’s fashion and thus support their reform agenda.
Gerald’s male view of women, complemented by Molly’s new feminist
sense of the world, becomes the basis for potential social change within the
story. In a casual conversation with other men on the train, Gerald/Molly ex-
claims, in his/her two-way counterfactual character:
“Women are pretty much people, it seems to me. I know they dress like fools – but
who’s to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs […] and what’s
more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes – and
shoes – which of us wants to dance with her?”30
Gerald/Molly lets the men on the train participate in his/her “double vi-
sion” of gender roles and thus lays open one of the many structures of
women’s oppression and men’s role in it. The story suggests that if both
sexes mentally occupied and synthetized both gendered perspectives, there
would indeed be potential for moving beyond the gender binary – individ-
ually as well as systemically.31

30 Gilman, “If I Were a Man”, p. 308; emphasis in the original.
31 The fact that in this story, it is “Gerald” who makes the first step towards social
change and tries to convince his fellow male passengers may be seen as problem-
atic from a twenty-first century feminist perspective that might seek in “feminist”
fiction female characters who are endowed with and can model female agency. Such
aspects of Gilman’s writing, which seems to miss chances to fictionally empower
women, may be explained by Gilman’s self-identification as a “humanist” – inter-
ested primarily in the welfare of the human race as a whole – rather than a femin-
ist; on Gilman as “humanist” cf., for example, Ann J. Lane, To Herland and Beyond:
The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Charlottesville 1990, p. 230.
206 Birte Christ
In The Female Man, by contrast, women’s double consciousness is – in line

with 1970s feminist theorizing – the central and highly problematic symp-
tom of women’s subordinated position in a male-dominated society. Joanna,
the narrator within the fictional “real” world in The Female Man, calls women’s
split subjectivity “the knowledge you suffer when you’re an outsider –
I mean suffer […] the perception of all experience through two sets of eyes,
two systems of value, two habits of expectation, almost two minds”.32 The
Female Man, a postmodern text par excellence, engages in characteriological
counterfactuality with regard to one of its protagonists, Joanna, who event-
ually “turn[s] into a man” in order to escape exactly this kind of suffering.33
In addition, three other female versions of the same author-as-character
Joanna (Russ) appear and all of them could also be read as cases of charac-
teriological counterfactuality, however not along the lines of the gender
binary.34 Joanna’s counterfactual characters are of the same gender, but so-
cialized within differently gendered or non-gendered realities.35 However,
I will focus here exclusively on Joanna’s assumption of a counterfactual
gender in the actual fictional world of the novel.
Joanna’s climax of suffering from having “almost two minds”, which
triggers her decision to become a (female) man, sets in when she is con-
fronted with Janet, who drops into 1969 New York from a utopian future
world called Whileaway, an all-female, technologically advanced society. The
utopian Janet is decidedly of one mind only, and of a mind in which gender as
a concept does not exist. Roaming the city with Joanna, she frustrates all of
the contemporary men’s expectations of adequate, gendered, female beha-
vior. She behaves in ways unmarked by categories of gender, or: very much
like a man. It is Janet’s (counterfactual) non-split, non-double consciousness
32 Joanna Russ, The Female Man, Boston 1986, p. 138, emphasis in the original.
33 Russ, Female Man, p. 133.
34 DuPlessis has argued that all four protagonists – Joanna, Janet, Jael, and Jeannine –
might be understood as “female men” and elucidate the contradictions of gender
in different ways (cf. Rachel Blau DuPlessis, “The Feminist Apologues of Lessing,
Piercy, and Russ”, in: Frontiers IV, 1979, pp. 1–8, pp. 6–7).
35 Besides Joanna in the fictional “actual” world of The Female Man, there are Janet in
a future utopian separatist world, Jael in a future dystopian world of a “cold war”
between the sexes, and Jeannine within an alternate history of gender relations,
in which the women’s movement has not taken place. Cf. Cortiel for a reading
of the text as “a postmodern science fiction novel that strategically interlaces four
distinct genres – Utopia, science fiction, alternative history, and ‘main-
stream’ postmodern autobiographical writing” (Jeanne Cortiel, “Joanna Russ: The
Female Man”, in: David Seed [ed.], A Companion to Science Fiction, London 2005,
pp. 500–511, p. 501).
as a non-gendered woman, or as a human, that Joanna is craving for. How-

ever, in a world founded on gender difference and a coding of the human as
male, this is virtually impossible. Joanna describes how women cannot claim
the universal while being women: “You can’t unite woman and human any
more than you can unite matter and anti-matter; they are designed not to be
stable together and they make just as big an explosion inside the head of the
unfortunate girl who believes in both”.36 In other words: If women insist on
their being women, they will never succeed in being recognized as human –
as “human” is equated to “male”. Moreover, nothing is won for women if
woman’s subjectivity is determined simultaneously by both her actual gender
(“female”) and her desire for the counterfactual gender (“male-human”).
The actual and the counterfactual cannot both be inhabited productively at
the same time; they are related to each other in a fundamental tension – even
exclude each other.
The Female Man takes a stance here which is different from the idea, sug-
gested by “If I Were a Man”, that woman’s split subjectivity can potentially
become a position from which change is possible. Instead, it insists that
claiming the human as a woman is “an infallible recipe for driving you
gaga”,37 and that “this is what you have to do: To resolve contrarities, unite
them in your own person. […] Well, I turned into a man”.38 Turning into a
man, as Rachel Blau DuPlessis argues, means to “turn into a generic man –
or, as one might translate the term, a human, a person”.39 Joanna’s turning
into her own gendered counterfact, into the unmarked gender, or into a non-
gendered person, is an act of will power and must be read as a process in-
terior to the subject, a mental and psychological process, but also one of
physical self-possession.40 The text stresses that strength and recklessness
allow individuals to accept and shed gendered identities, and thus prioritizes
women’s agency.

39 DuPlessis, “The Feminist Apologues”, p. 6.
40 The text explicitly frames the transformation of “woman” into “generic man” as
an auto-erotic act, supplying woman with a phallus: “turn yourself inside out, give
yourself the kiss of reconciliation, marry yourself, love yourself – Well, I turned
into a man. We love, says Plato, that in which we are defective […] we pursue it
with desperate cries – Stop! I must possess you! – but if it obligingly stops and turns,
how on earth can one then possess it? Fucking, if you forgive the pun, is an anti-
climax. And you are as poor as before. […] there is one and only one way to pos-
sess that in which we are defective, therefore that which we need, therefore that
which we want. Become it” (Russ, Female Man, p. 139; italics in the original).
208 Birte Christ
While Joanna claims to have turned into a man, and thereby takes pos-
session of her own humanness, the resultant subject position can yet be con-
sidered one that synthetizes “male” and “female”, or fact and counterfact –
as the novel’s title suggests. What is described here as “turning into a man”
must be considered as a radical reversal of the gendered cognitive frames
that govern the protagonist’s recognition of herself and of the world. That
the acceptance or shedding of gender is a dynamic of consciousness, rather
than of embodiment, is stressed in a passage in which Joanna addresses men
and affirms her manhood:
If we are all Mankind, it follows to my interested and righteous and right now very
bright and beady little eyes, that I too am a Man and not at all a Woman. […] I
think I am a Man; I think you had better call me a Man; I think you will write about
me as a Man from now on and speak of me as a Man and employ me as a Man and
recognize child-rearing as Man’s business; you will think of me as a Man and treat
me as a Man until it enters your muddled, terrified, preposterous, nine-tenths-
fake, loveless, papier-mâché-bull-moose head that I am a Man.41
At first sight, this passage may be most striking because of its parody of
men’s patronizing and belittling images of intellectually ambitious women
and its self-confident and aggressive assertion of the narrator’s new male
identity. However, it also insists on the central importance of what men and
women “think” and what is in their “heads” – in other words, on whether
they cognitively structure the world along a gender binary or not. The female
Joanna demands to be re-cognized as and re-cognizes herself as a man.
In The Female Man, “man’s” consciousness becomes embodied in a “fe-
male” one. By thus synthetizing cognitively and physically reified gender,
Joanna’s assumption of the male, counterfactual gender ultimately does away
with “male” and “female”: It is the consequence of recognizing the male as
the unmarked, as the universal – and of claiming the universal, instead of
the particular, for one’s female self. The employment of the counterfactual is
here, in its final consequence, used to deconstruct the border between
the actual and the counterfactual, the border between men and women.
A woman claims that which is counterfactual to her existence: the univer-
sal. In a symbolic feminist appropriation of male power such as in The Female
Man, then,42 the counterfactual does not remain pitted against the actual
41 Russ, Female Man, p. 140. Italics in the original.

42 On the symbolic nature of Joanna’s transformation and on the resolution of the
“contrarities” of gendered being through language and discourse, cf. Susan Ayres,
“The ‘Straight Mind’ in Russ’s The Female Man”, in: Science Fiction Studies, 22/1995,
pp. 22–34, p. 26; Tatiana Teslenko, Feminist Utopian Novels of the 1970s: Joanna Russ
and Dorothy Bryant, New York 2003, pp. 150–151.
world or actual character as an analytic instrument, but it turns into and re-
places the actual completely. Counterfactual fictional gender becomes one
with the actual fictional gender of the protagonist. By transforming the ac-
tual into the counterfactual, the text fulfils the utopia of doing away with the
gender binary and thus models ways for doing the same in our actual, non-
fictional world.
Feminist fiction, then, can be said to employ counterfactuality both as an
analytic and as a synthetic. It exploits basic benefits of counterfactual specu-
lation identified in studies of psychology, namely the contrast and causal
inference effects of counterfactual thinking, in a rather straightforward way,
as my analyses of Herland and The Wanderground have shown. The political
impetus behind the narrative is not the desire to replace the actual with the
counterfactual scenario in the real world, but to critique its structures and
institutions and to move the reader to change them. In characteriological
counterfactual gender narratives, the counterfactual and the actual, as we
have seen, can and do collapse as they denaturalize and eventually do away
with the gender binary.
IV. Afterthought:
Utopian Fiction and the Binary of the Real and Ideal
In its closing passage, The Female Man is very explicit about the effect it wants
to achieve in the actual world. The author-as-character Joanna, in this closing
passage, says “goodbye” to her book:
Go, little book, trot through Texas and Vermont and Alaska and Maryland and
Washington and Florida and Canada and England and France; bob a curtsey at the
shrines of Friedan, Millet, Greer, Firestone, and all the rest; […] do not mutter
angrily to yourself when young persons read you to hrooch and hrch and guffaw,
wondering what the dickens you were all about. Do not get glum, when you are no
longer understood, little book. […]
Rejoice, little book!
For on that day, we will be free.43
The author-as-character projects a future world in which the text itself will
be left without a purpose, as the forms of female oppression which it addresses
no longer exist. One might argue that the feminist necessity of merging the
counterfactual with the actual, of merging male and female in such ways that
they cannot be differentiated any longer, is staged on a metadiscursive level
43 Russ, The Female Man, pp. 213–214.

210 Birte Christ
here. The passage stresses the synthetizing power of the counterfactual and –
metafictionally spoken – of the fictional. The fictional imagination of alter-
natives and ideal states of being, it is implied, is – by virtue of its power in
the real world – capable of changing the real, of transforming it into a better
world. The text here re-casts the gender binary, and more concretely the bi-
nary between being a woman and being a man/human, as a binary between
the real and the fictional. The fictional – the counterfactual fantasy that
women may claim the male/human – is, of course, also the ideal world that
the text is promoting. In other words, the binary between counterfactual and
actual can be conceived of as the binary of the ideal and the real.
The genre that is most overtly based on the opposition between an ideal
and the real world is the literary utopia. While I have focused here on the way
in which the gender binary structures uses of the actual and counterfactual
in feminist fiction, which included feminist appropriations and post-modern
negotiations of the literary utopia, I would like to point out in closing that
the utopian genre should prove similarly fruitful for interrogations into lit-
erary uses of the counterfactual. Surprisingly, however, the classic literary
utopia in the tradition of Thomas More and, more widely framed, specu-
lative fictions with a utopian impetus have so far not been explored from
the perspective of counterfactuality.44 Hilary Dannenberg’s Coincidence and
Counterfactuality, currently the most comprehensive study on counterfactual-
ity in fiction, discusses alternate histories, historiographic metafiction, and
postmodern fiction in general as genres or modes that employ counter-
factuality.45 Utopian fiction, by contrast, is not even mentioned in this study
although it can be categorized as a counterfactual genre par excellence and, in
terms of form and function, is closely linked to the genre of alternate his-
tory.46 I can only speculate that this lack of interest in the literary utopia may
44 Studies on the literary utopia which employ the terminology of the “alternative”
may foreground the utopian opposition of mundus idem and alter mundus and thus
implicitly deal with issues similar to those a perspective on counterfactuality may
be concerned with, but this is neither done explicitly nor with a focus on the struc-
tural problematics of the binary. Cf., for example, Manfred Pfister (ed.), Alternative
Welten, Munich 1982; Derek Littlewood/Peter Stockwell (eds.), Impossibility Fiction:
Alternativity – Extrapolation – Speculation, Rodopi 1996. Philosophical studies on
utopian thinking rather than writing also tend to address structural binaries similar
to that of “fact” and “counterfact” implicitly (cf., for example, Michele Ciliberto’s
recent study on Machiavelli and Bruno: Pensare per contrari: Disincanto e utopia del
Rinascimento, Fiesole 2006).
45 Cf. Dannenberg, Coincidence and Counterfactuality, pp. 116–118.
46 In addition to Dannenberg, Geoffrey Winthrop-Young has recently discussed al-
ternate histories as counterfactual narratives in: “Fallacies and Thresholds: Notes
be due to the fact that utopian writing takes the form of the apologue. As
DuPlessis has shown, “character and plot [in the apologue] function
mainly as bearers of philosophical propositions or moral arguments”,47 and
Bammer has called utopian apologues “fictions without a protagonist and
barely a plot”.48 Inquiries into the counterfactual in fiction such as Dannen-
berg’s, however, tend to center their analyses on the category of plot, which
may explain why utopian fiction has so far not fallen into their ken. Here is
an entire literary genre which may be read afresh from the perspective of
studies in counterfactuality; and here is an immense corpus of literary texts
that may elucidate functions of the counterfactual in philosophy, psychology,
political discourse, and a host of other fields.
on the Early Evolution of Alternate History”, in: Wenzlhuemer, Historical Social

Research, pp. 99–117. With regard to utopias’ and alternate histories’ functional
properties it should be noted that alternate histories – unlike utopias, but like
some dystopias – can also function affirmatively, as Butter has pointed out (cf.
Michael Butter, The Epitome of Evil: Hitler in American Fiction, 1939–2002, New
York 2009, p. 53). The functional parallel between the literary utopia and alternate
histories is therefore only a partial one.
47 DuPlessis, “The Feminist Apologues”, p. 1.
48 Angelika Bammer, Partial Visions: Feminism and Utopia in the 1970s, New York 1991,
p. 80.
212 Rüdiger Heinze
Rüdiger Heinze (Brunswick)
Temporal Tourism: Time Travel and Counterfactuality

in Literature and Film
I. Introduction
Broadly speaking, all literary worlds are ontologically counterfactual if we

understand counterfactual in its basic sense as “contrary to fact”. However,
this does not carry us very far if we want to better understand the function
and correlation of counterfactuals and time travel in literary worlds. For one,
time travel itself is counterfactual in that it is physically impossible, as far
as we know. Time travel narratives, therefore, are doubly counterfactual:
as fictional narratives, and as fictional narratives about a physically impos-
sible – and thus counterfactual – scenario. Second, just as there are different
counterfactuals with quite different epistemological consequences and func-
tions, there are also literary worlds that include time travel in vastly different
ways and with significantly different conceptions of time, history, and indi-
vidual agency. It follows that time travel narratives can be used to stage spe-
cific counterfactuals: within the counterfactual world of fiction a “factual”
scenario exists prior to time travel and is then turned into a “counterfactual”
due to the repercussions of that time travel. And third, as a consequence,
time travel narratives in effect function similarly to the way in which counter-
factuals are used in some contexts: to scrutinize, reinforce, or question tem-
poral coherence and causality.
More precisely, then, counterfactual thinking works with a “focal factual
outcome” for which we mutate or alter “some factual antecedent” and then
“assess the consequences of that alteration”.1 Various factors such as plausi-
bility and probability of the alteration, co-tenability of other contextual fac-
tors, assessment of the consequences, and the significance of the focal out-
come play interdependent roles. Put more bluntly, counterfactuals are
complex “what if ” scenarios. For historiographic discourses and so-called
“alternative history” fiction, the “what if ” usually takes the form of “what
would have happened if ”, but psychology and political science also employ
counterfactuals in the form of “what would happen if ”. Plausibility, prob-
1 Neal Roese, “Counterfactual Thinking”, in: Psychological Bulletin, 121/1997,

pp. 133–148, p. 133.
Time Travel and Counterfactuality in Literature and Film 213
ability, and co-tenability of the counterfactual may vary greatly, but, as Ri-
chard Lebow argues, it is not always the realism which determines the use-
fulness of a counterfactual, it can also be the analytical utility.2 Miracle
counterfactuals, for example, may “help us work through moral and
scholarly problems”.3 In general, the usefulness of counterfactuals is not
necessarily dependent on their likelihood if we follow Lebow’s argument
that they can “reveal contradictions in our belief systems”, “highlight double
standards in our moral judgments”, and, most importantly for this essay, that
they “can combat the deeply rooted human propensity to see the future as
being more contingent than the past”.4 In effect, one could here replace the
word “counterfactual” with “time travel narratives”.
The question of “what would have happened if ” that is at the heart of
counterfactuals is also at the heart of time travel narratives in literary worlds.
As noted above, in a very basic sense literary worlds are always counterfac-
tual: they create their worlds through their utterances. They also generally in-
voke the conditional “what if ” by their specific complex referential relation
to the natural world and by their appeal to the reader: not being factual, they
ask of the reader to follow their thought experiment of a possible world.5
In other words, literary worlds are premised on counterfactuals and condi-
tionals both on an extradiegetic (via reference to the natural world) and in-
tradiegetic (via reference within the fictional world) level. If much of the ap-
peal of literature derives from this unique relational complexity, then the
popularity of time travel narratives in literature should not surprise. Time
travel as a theme in literary worlds offers a perfect fictional stage for explor-
ing counterfactuals. It complicates the conditionals and counterfactuals in-
herent in literary worlds by allowing for the malleability of time and history
through the miracle counterfactual of time travel,6 exploring alternative his-
tories and futures, and the attendant paradoxes. Via fictional time travel nar-
2 Cf. Richard Ned Lebow, “Counterfactual Thought Experiments: A Necessary

Teaching Tool”, in: The History Teacher, 40/2007, pp. 153–176, p. 162.
3 Lebow, “Thought Experiments”, p. 161.
4 Lebow, “Thought Experiments”, p. 157.
5 Possible worlds theory has become influential for theorizing the ontological and
epistemological relation between fictional narratives and the actual world (cf.
Ruth Ronen, Possible Worlds in Literary Theory, Cambridge 2004; Lubomír Dolezel,
Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds, Baltimore 1998).
6 “Miracle” here refers to the violation of natural laws. In this regard, all time travel
narratives employ miracle counterfactuals, irrespective of whether the violation is
given a scientific explanation or not. With regard to genre, however, it does make a
difference whether time travel is effected by technology (science fiction) or magic
(fantasy).
214 Rüdiger Heinze
ratives, we can travel to far-away places and times, we can change things in
the past, and know more about the future. Time travel toys with contingency
and determinacy, raising the question of the malleability and inescapability of
temporality. And, by implication, time travel fiction is also about causality:
when we go to the past, at least some part of our future life is known to us.
We can then correct decisions we consider wrong in hindsight.
In what follows I will analyze time travel narratives with regard to the
counterfactuals they employ and the attendant conceptions of time, history,
and individual agency. The apparent practical impossibility of time travel
notwithstanding, I will assume that time travel narratives and the paradoxes
they invoke have an “expressive power of [their] own” and shed “light on
[crucial] aspects of human experience” that seemingly more “natural” or
“rational” narratives might not adequately grasp.7
Time travel narratives break with four intuitive and common sense
axioms that, as Marie-Laure Ryan argues, we have about time: (1) time flows
in a fixed direction with a relatively stable speed; (2) you cannot go back in
time against this flow; (3) causes precede their effects; (4) the past is un-
changeable.8 Consequently, narratives that subvert one or more of these
axioms are almost inevitably situated in the realm of the physically and logi-
cally impossible by readers. The latter may then employ a variety of reading
strategies to come to terms with these impossible scenarios, e.g. by reading
them as an indication of genre (science fiction), or as the hallucination of the
narrator. It follows that the specific evaluation of time travel narratives is sig-
nificantly shaped by our knowledge about narrative techniques, generic con-
ventions, and physics, and, closely related, by our assumptions about time.
This in turn shapes our assessment of the counterfactual thought experi-
ments we encounter in these narratives with respect to plausibility and prob-
ability. If our knowledge about the physical properties of time changes to the
degree that we realize our intuitions and experiences about time to be mis-
leading, some previously unlikely time travel scenarios might move closer to
the realm of the possible, altering the degree of departure of the possible
world from the actual one.9 This possibility is not to be underestimated if
7 Marie-Laure Ryan, “Temporal Paradoxes in Narrative”, in: Style, 43/2009,

pp. 142–164, pp. 142–143.
8 Ryan, “Temporal”, pp. 142–143.
9 On a trivial level, we are all time travelers, if only in one direction, and with a fairly
steady speed that is mostly beyond our control. However, not only is everyone’s
perception of time passing subjective and subject to change, it is also nonsensical
to talk about us “traveling” or moving through time because that motion and its
speed would be measured by distance over time. This amounts to measuring time
one recalls one of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous “three laws” which states that
any technology advanced enough will look like magic to us. Especially re-
garding the four axioms listed above, modern physics and the rather bizarre
consequences of the – experimentally verified – propositions of quantum
mechanics and relativity have already given the lie to many of our intuitive as-
sumptions about time. First of all, it does not flow, nor does it have a speed,
as that would be measured by distance over time; also, the division between
past, present, and future is arbitrary, the future not being any more malleable
than the past.10 Second, under certain conditions, and with the right experi-
mental setup, it is possible to demonstrate that events in the present can de-
termine the past.11
with time. Joe Haldeman’s novel The Forever War is one of the few narratives to
make use of the only kind of real time travel possible already today: time dilation
(cf. The Forever War, New York 2009).
10 One of the consequences of Einstein’s special and general theory of relativity is
that we should actually conceive of all of time as a kind of “bread loaf ”. All of time
is continuously extant: past, present, and future. In fact, the distinction between
past, present, and future is physically untenable and seems to be something that
only exists in our minds. In this conception of time, the past and the future are al-
ways already present and unchanging. What we consider the future is already past
from another perspective. The “bread loaf ” metaphor has become standard in
most popularized discussions of the physics of time, possibly because it serves to
illustrate how one may cut different “slices” of time depending on the angle of the
cut. It is this angle that determines which events belong to the slice then called
“present”. Cf. Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos, New York 2005, pp. 127–142.
11 This has been shown by John Wheeler in his so-called delayed-choice experiment.
A mind-boggling interpretation of this is Richard Feynman’s sum over histories ap-
proach to quantum mechanics. It claims that the present is an average of all pos-
sible pasts; and thus the past is quite literally contingent on the present. Not less
astounding is the interpretation put forward in 1957 by Hugh Everett, a student of
Wheeler, that has since become known as the many worlds interpretation. For every
possible alternative path of any particle, another universe “splits off ”. This idea
was subsequently used by David Deutsch (cf. The Fabric of Reality, New York 1997;
David Deutsch/Michael Lockwood, “The Quantum Physics of Time Travel”, in:
Scientific American, 3/1994, pp. 50–56) for theorizing time travel as travel in parallel
universes. One will find this in numerous contemporary time travel fictions, a fa-
mous one being Michael Crichton’s Timeline. For a comprehensive introduction to
the physics and technology of time travel, cf. Paul Nahin, Time Machines, New York
1999.
216 Rüdiger Heinze
II. Counterfactuality in Time Travel Narratives
The idea of traveling through time one way or another of course precedes
modern physics, and time travel narratives have been extant for centuries.12
An early example is the legend of the Monk of Heisterbach, who follows a
bird in a forest and listens to it. When he returns after what seems to him
only hours, many years have passed. However, it is only since the late 19th
century, especially with the publication of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine in
1895,13 that time travel narratives have become widely popular, predomi-
nantly in the genre of science fiction. In order to facilitate a systematic analy-
sis of time travel literature and its featured counterfactuals, we need to con-
sider three key aspects of all time travel narratives: most importantly (1) the
time and place of travel, because this determines the entire counterfactual,
i.e. the specification of and (intradiegetic) relation between what is present
and what is past, and the (extradiegetic) relation of the fictional to the actual
world; (2) the manner of travel, because it influences the reader’s assessment
of genre and the attending assessment of plausibility, as well as the relevance
of the process of the time travel itself; and (3) the conception of time under-
lying both, because this shapes the specific projection of temporal coherence
and causality and thus issues of agency and determinacy.
The destination of travel has to be examined not only in terms of time and
place but also in terms of logic, as in “counterfactual compared to what”? In
some time travel narratives, the history that is – albeit fictionally – changed
is the history of the actual world, whereas some places and times travelled to
have no referenced factual counterpart in the actual world, and thus are, in
Saint-Gelais’s term, counterfictional, for example mythical pasts, or alter-
native universes which work with differing degrees of departure from the ac-
tual world. This is important for narratives like Mark Twain’s A Connecticut
Yankee at King Arthur’s Court,14 Time Bandits,15 or the Back to the Future series.
So, while it would seem at first glance that one could travel only into the fu-
ture or the past respective to one’s own time, in effect one also has to con-
12 For a relatively comprehensive list and summary of time travel narratives, albeit
with little analytic insight, cf. Ekkehard Böhm, “Der Großvater im Wurmloch”,
in: die horen, 50/2005, pp. 85–98. Andrew Gordon provides an excellent discussion
of a number of time travel films (cf. “Back to the Future: Oedipus as Time
Traveller”, in: Sean Redmond [ed.], Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader,
London/New York 2004, pp. 116–125).
13 Cf. Herbert George Wells, The Time Machine, New York 2003.
14 Cf. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York 1998.
15 Cf. Terry Gilliam (dir.), Time Bandits, HandMade Films 1981.
sider exactly what time and kind of world one leaves and exactly what time
and kind of world one travels to.
The manner of travel can be described in terms of the control the traveler
has over it, and by its precise mechanism. It can be technological (e. g. car-like
machines, space ships, telephone booths), esoteric (e. g. by hypnosis or long
sleep), biological (e. g. by a genetic defect), or circumstantial (e. g. by falling
through a hole, or a knock on the head).
Lastly, and most complicated, we have to ask which conception of time is
evoked. With few exceptions, most time travel fictions work with the “bread
loaf ” conception of time in the direction of the past, but are often inconsist-
ent in the direction of the future. They occasionally even change their con-
ception of time during the course of the narrative. Some mix conceptions of
time, some do not seem to care at all or purposefully flout even a pretense
at logic and consistency. One can roughly distinguish four types – fictional
worlds which are:
(1) mostly coherent or homogeneous. They present one intradiegetic
world with a relatively stable degree of departure from the actual world. This
would be true of The Time Machine or The Time Traveler’s Wife.16 In the latter,
the traveler stays roughly in the same region, travels within a limited time in-
terval of about forty years, and the respective past, present, and future are
all located on one timeline with a stable degree of departure from the actual
world.
(2) mostly incoherent or heterogeneous. They intradiegetically mix dif-
ferent worlds with different degrees of departure from the actual world. This
would be true of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure17 or Time Bandits. Here, the
protagonists travel not only to a historical past relatively close to the actual
world, but also to the mythical past of the Minotaur and the past of legends
and giants. Towards the end, they even travel to a place of evil beyond any
specific location and time.
(3) mostly consistent or complete. They follow one conception of tem-
porality. This applies to Twelve Monkeys18 or The Time Traveler’s Wife. In the
former, past, present, and future are located on one timeline with a stable de-
16 Cf. Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife, London 2005. And for the film
see: Robert Schwentke (dir.), The Time Traveler’s Wife, New Line Cinema 2009.
17 Cf. Stephen Herek (dir.), Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, De Laurentiis 1989.
18 Cf. Terry Gilliam (dir.), Twelve Monkeys, Universal 1995. The film is based on an-
other interesting time travel scenario in the French film La Jetée by Chris Marker
(La Jetée, Argos Films 1962). Here, time travel is possible via the mind. The physi-
cal body remains in the respective present, and yet the traveler also has a body in
the past, a kind of avatar.
218 Rüdiger Heinze
gree of departure from the actual world, and the conception of time evoked
is consistent (“bread loaf ”) and thus entirely deterministic. The protagonist
temporarily fosters the illusion that he might be able to change the past in
order to prevent the near extinction of humanity; however, in the end, every-
thing happens “according to plan” – time cannot be changed. Even cinema-
tographically, the film goes to great lengths to emphasize this “bread loaf ”
conception of time: repeatedly, images from the past and future overlap.
(4) mostly inconsistent or incomplete. They mix different conceptions of
temporality. This applies to Slaughterhouse-Five (where consistency and logic
in general are hard to come by, to a wonderful satiric effect), or most notice-
ably to the Back to the Future series. The second part introduces the concept
of different timelines to explain why the protagonist cannot travel back from
a trip to the future to a certain past once events have been changed prior to
that past. Most of the action consists of the attempt to set straight this diver-
gence of time lines. However, only the timelines considered to be bad by the
hero are eliminated; the changes effected in the first and third part that are
to the advantage of the hero are never reversed, nor is there any mention of
timelines then. The films seem to mix bread loaf and divergence conceptions
of timelines, depending on which is dramaturgically needed at a given in-
stance.
On the whole, the manner of travel, the time and place of travel, and the
conception of time in time travel narratives have serious consequences for
their ideological investment and the precise nature of their counterfactual
ruminations. To exemplify this, I will now discuss three of the best-known
and most influential time travel narratives in order to present a brief diach-
ronic survey of how differently conceptions of temporality can be negoti-
ated. The texts have also been selected because they employ three very dif-
ferent counterfactual scenarios and different combinations of “what would
have happened if ”, “what would happen if ”, and “what will happen if ”.
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Mark Twain’s novel, which was published in 1889, transports the eponymous
Yankee Hank Morgan from the end of the 19th century to 6th-century Art-
hurian England by way of a knock on the head. Morgan works as a weapons
manufacturer in a factory and is technologically highly skilled and knowl-
edgeable. Upon his arrival and after some initial hazards, he quickly realizes
that his superior knowledge puts him at an advantage over his new contem-
poraries, whom he regards as uncivilized, superstitious, and generally dumb.
He soon obtains for himself a position of influence with – and after some
time over – the king, and commences to introduce what he thinks of as

the epitomes of US -American civilizational feats and improvements, such
as telegraphs, newspapers, but also weapons. His “civilizing” mission soon
turns into an atrocious dictatorship and, ultimately, genocide, as he kills all
the knights in a battle that eerily seems to foreshadow the trench warfare of
the First World War. Morgan himself is cursed to sleep for, as the reader may
easily guess, fourteen hundred years, and wakes up in his time and place of
origin.
The narrative plays with the counterfactual of what would have hap-
pened/what would happen if a person with a 19th-century knowledge of
technology and, perhaps more importantly, with a 19th-century middle-class
moral code (had) stumbled into 6th-century England, or more precisely, into
the age of the legendary King Arthur.19 Quite obviously, this is a miracle
counterfactual; it is impossible and highly implausible. The generic conven-
tions quickly mark the narrative as satirical, and the mode of travel is appro-
priately esoteric and does not play a significant role, it could also have been
hypnosis or a steep fall. In fact, the hit on the head reminds one of the tall
tale conventions that Twain frequently employed in other stories. The fan-
tastic nature of the counterfactual time travel – the adjectives “impossible”
and “implausible” do not seem to sufficiently describe it – is highlighted by
the fact that the particular past Morgan travels to never existed in the first
place. It is a mythological past, compounded of various legends of the
Middle Ages and of the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott. It mixes
myth, legend, historical accounts, and later reconstructions, not to speak of
temporal incongruities such as references to 13th-century armor. The his-
torical distance is enormous, so even if it were a historical past, the histori-
ographic usefulness of the counterfactual would be severely limited by the
improbability of attending factors, increasing contingency and interdepen-
dence, and multiple causation. Morgan’s Arthurian 6th century is an incoher-
ent world, with an inconsistent temporality, because while Hank Morgan is
able to change things in the past – drastically –, none of the changes make it
through time and affect the present Hank Morgan then returns to.
Obviously, utility and function of this particular “what if ” scenario, made
possible by time travel to the past, do not lie in its credibility and realism but
in its satire and parody. It parodies a genre highly popular in Twain’s times
and before, namely the romantic and melodramatic narratives about chival-
19 Please recall that this inelegant double construction is due to the fact that the
grammatical mood of the counterfactual depends on whether the deixis reference
level is intra- or extradiegetic.
220 Rüdiger Heinze
rous knights, and satirizes the then virulent popular belief in the advance-
ment of humanity through technology, in historical progress, and the – often
eugenic – justification of colonialism, and in moral improvement through
free enterprise. All of these are lead ad absurdum and revealed as incongruent
and inconsistent by Hank Morgan when he, as the paragon of these ideas and
values, attempts to implement them in Arthurian England. The failure, how-
ever, is not primarily due to the incorrigibility of Morgan’s 6th-century con-
temporaries but to Morgan himself, as he shows the bloody, immoral, but
unavoidable underside of the values he cherishes. As with most time travel
narratives, this one too is more about the present from which it arises than
about the past it purports to present. The power of the counterfactual in this
case derives from the pervasive incongruity of the narrative, which shows
itself to be ideal for disclosing the incongruity of many of the ideas prevalent
at the time Twain wrote the novel.
The Time Machine

It seems unnecessary to summarize in more than the sparest detail the fa-
mous narrative by H. G. Wells. The unnamed narrator recounts the narrative
told to him and some select others by the time traveler about his trips to
the future. The time traveler encounters what he surmises – and in apparent
scientific detail rationalizes – to be the evolutionary future of humanity: the
Eloi above ground, who live a seemingly Edenic and blissful life in pre-lap-
sarian ignorance as the descendants of the leisured classes of Wells’s time;
and the Morlock beneath the surface, who, as the brutish descendants of the
working classes, atavistically and anthropophagically live off the Eloi. The
time traveler relatively futilely tries to help the Eloi, but then also travels
further into the future to witness the evolutionary development of all life
into a strange species of giant crabs and the inevitable end of the world in the
dimming sun. A deleted passage of the narrative also included the intermedi-
ate development of humanity into furry little herbivores that serve as food
for giant arthropods. After having delivered his narrative, the time traveler
embarks on a second trip, never to return.
Again, this time travel narrative about the future of humanity is in fact
about the late 19th-century present of humanity as Wells saw it. The time
travel into the distant future allows a speculative extrapolation of human de-
velopment based on evolutionary theory as understood at that point. This
specific counterfactual of what has not yet happened extrapolates from the
fin de siècle position of the novel what might happen if humanity does not
mend its ways, namely that the leisured classes will turn into hapless cattle
due to inactivity and lacking evolutionary fitness, while the working classes
will live in subterranean caves that seem to be very similar to 19th-century
factories and feed off the “cattle”. In some ways, the intradiegetic counter-
factual actually functions predictively as to what will happen if humanity
continues on its path. As improbable and implausible as the counterfac-
tual might seem, the prediction of the narrative is lent credibility through a
number of strategies. First, this is the original instance of a time traveling ma-
chine, which is given plausibility through a careful explanation of its mechan-
ism and a consistent-sounding theory of time. In his careful and detailed ob-
servations, reasoned deductions and hypotheses, the time traveler appears as
a scientist. As Firchow points out, his descriptions scrupulously follow the
rules about “How a Scientist Thinks” set down by T. H. Huxley – a teacher of
Wells – in 1866.20 This style gives the narrative an air of scientism and ob-
jectivity and thereby “appeals to a recently created audience which […] ex-
pected its fictions to be at least as technologically sophisticated as the articles
on technology and science in its newspapers”.21
In addition, because the text employs evolutionary theory as an explana-
tory and predictive framework, the time distance of the future actually in-
creases the plausibility of the counterfactual rather than reducing it, as in
Twain’s Yankee. Thus, the narrative displays a fairly coherent possible world
with a relatively stable degree of departure. The future of The Time Machine
is in fact a blend of the (19th-century) present and the evolutionary future,
which even contains elements of the past: not only does the narrative reflect
an interest in archeology and an apocalyptic mood popular in Wells’s time
that saw humanity on the wane; much of the description and imagery is remi-
niscent of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians and refers to a mythic, Edenic
human past and innocent childhood, but also to humans as formerly primi-
tive killers and cavemen.22 The future of humanity with crabs and arthropods
reads much like the pre-historic past, the ultimate future being the end of life.
Fitting the evolutionary paradigm of the narrative, the conception of time
is of the “bread loaf ” kind, i. e. deterministic, although somewhat inconsist-
ently. For one, the narrative suggests that the time traveler may change the
course of events, or, at least, that he interferes. Even if that individual inter-
ference does not matter on the larger scale of evolution, the narrative clearly
implies that cultural evolution has supplanted biological evolution, and that
20 Cf. Peter Firchow, “H. G. Wells’s Time Machine: In Search of Time Future – and
Time Past”, in: Midwest Quarterly, 45/2004, pp. 123–136, p. 127.
21 Firchow, “In Search”, p. 131.
22 Cf. Firchow, “In Search”, p. 134.
222 Rüdiger Heinze
this cultural evolution may very well be subject to interference in the present –
for what purpose should the warning call the narrative quite loudly sounds
serve, if not to call for a reform of affairs? The counterfactual underlying
the narrative, “this is what might very likely happen if we extrapolate cur-
rent trends into the far future” can be extended to include the appeal “so do
something about it before it is too late”. However, in the long run, the sun
dies and all life ends, so does it then make sense to try to change the present
from a cosmological perspective? Ultimately, I think the narrative remains
undecided about the possibility and sensibility of individual agency. The time
traveler does appeal to a moral sense and responsibility, assuming that one’s
actions do matter; on a larger evolutionary and cosmological scale, how-
ever, all individual human action seems futile. In a way, the narrative well ex-
presses the dissonant mood of the fin de siècle.23
Back to the Future I–III

As the title of the trilogy already announces, the three films produced be-
tween 1985 and 1990 play with the usual temporal paradoxes, in this case in a
humorous manner.24 Indeed, at first glance the series seems to cover import-
ant stages in U.S. history; it is a time travel trip to the West of the late 19th
century, to the 1950s, the then-present of the 1980s, and the future of 2015,
though not in this order. In the first part, the hero Marty McFly inadvertently
travels to 1955 with the help of a time-travel car invented by his friend Doc
Brown. As the genre demands, he causes all sorts of problems due to his
temporal displacement and experiences a number of adventures. His mother
falls in love with him instead of his father, and he has to remedy the situ-
ation by helping his father transform from a “loser” into a “winner” through
knocking out the notorious town bully. As the first part concludes, Marty
manages to get “back to the future”, i. e. 1985, from where he then takes off
23 For an excellent essay on The Time Machine’s relation to visuality and early cinema,
cf. Jonathan Bignell, “Another Time, Another Space: Modernity, Subjectivity
and The Time Machine”, in: Sean Redmond (ed.), Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film
Reader, London/New York 2004, pp. 136–144. As he points out, the narrative is
very “cinematic”, the time traveler watches the time fly by on his cushy chair
through a window, a spectator just like in the movie theaters and the still popular
diorama and panorama (cf. Bignell, “Another Time”, pp. 136–137). He takes “a
tourist trip to alien spaces” (Bignell, “Another Time”, p. 136), so that temporal
movement equals spatial movement.
24 Cf. Robert Zemeckis (dir.), Back to the Future, Universal 1985; Zemeckis, Back to the
Future II , Universal 1989; Zemeckis, Back to the Future III , Universal 1990.
into the future of 2015. The temporal details of the series are too numerous
to recount in detail here. Let it suffice to say that (1) not all time travel in the
series is on purpose because external circumstances and coincidences such
as lightning interfere with the technology; (2) and following this, time does
not cooperate: the characters never seem to be in control of their carefully
timed plans, escape is always narrow. Already at the very beginning of the first
part, a room is shown full of clocks. As it turns out, and much to the dismay
of the protagonist, all of them are 20 minutes late. Despite the fancy-looking
high-tech time machine car and the doctor’s scientific-sounding disquisitions
on time and temporality, time is definitely out of joint. (3) In the course of
the series there is a temporal doubling or even tripling of characters caused
by their traveling to the same time more than once. As a result, temporal
paradox, and consequent disaster, is always impending. (4) Themes, images,
and characters recur in all the different times. For example, the 1890s also
have a bully that happens to be the forefather of the bully of the 1950s
and 2015. Family patterns repeat themselves, as do improbable coincidences.
Characters constantly experience temporally paradoxical déjà vus, not to men-
tion the grammatical back bending and word play in order to accommodate
the temporal contradiction that results from the disjunction between story
chronology and temporal chronology.25
Despite the series’ seeming preoccupation with history, the counterfac-
tual is actually not historical but personal. Not only is the main character
always late and has substantial problems “keeping time”. Underlying the
whole series is the assumption that one single incident and decision in one’s
life determines one’s whole future life, and possibly the future of following
generations. Consequently, the series toys with the counterfactual of what
would have happened if Marty’s father, Marty, and his son, had not made that
single crucial mistake and had stood up for themselves. Through time travel,
the films dramatize what would happen if one had the chance to undo the
past and then what happens if one does change the past. As the first part
shows, once Marty’s father has knocked out the bully, his entire life changes.
When Marty returns to his present, his family is better off, sleek and success-
ful, his father has fulfilled his dream of becoming a writer, and the bully com-
plaisantly polishes their car. This pattern is repeated in the next two parts.
The trips to apparently historical stages of the U.S. thus primarily serve as the
stage for this paradoxical mix of determinism and free will. On the one hand,
25 At one point, after arriving in the 1950s, Marty notes about his high school that
“they really cleaned this place up” when of course it is cleaner because it precedes
the state of affairs in 1985.
224 Rüdiger Heinze
except for the very end of the trilogy, neither Marty nor any other male
member of his family seems to be able to change a personality pattern that
keeps getting them into trouble, as if it was genetic and as if history repeated
itself. On the other hand, Doc Brown’s emphasis that the past must not be
changed, and that in general one must not interfere with time, seems to sug-
gest that one can change time. Indeed, the whole second part is about “re-
pairing” unwanted changes to historical time and eliminating an alternative
time line. Moreover, the protagonists again and again change time and events
to suit their purposes; the main counterfactual actually propagates learning
from the past (and the future) and then seizing the opportunity to change
one’s “fate”. Of course, this actually constitutes an alternative time line – al-
though this is never explicitly stated – that should not be changed.
In general, even though it seems to present a straightforward manner of
travel, time traveled to, and conception of time, the series is full of intended
and inadvertent temporal inconsistencies. Although the manner of travel
is technological, it turns out to be quite unreliable – control is illusory. The
time traveled to is at a closer look actually not historical, but rather histori-
ographic, specifically: filmic, and in that regard similar to Twain’s mythic
past. The films show us not the 1890s and 1950s of U.S. history but of U.S.
film history. Fittingly, the travel to the “wild west” in the third part takes place
in an abandoned drive-in film theater; the “Indians” on a poster at one of the
walls then turn into “real” ones upon Marty’s arrival. The temporal concep-
tion is thus mostly coherent, although the mostly stable degree of departure
is not from the actual but from the film world, making the series nostalgic
throughout. In terms of consistency, however, the series is contradictory, re-
sulting from the specific counterfactual discussed above. Only in part two do
the changes Biff the bully makes create an alternative time line that has to
be destroyed; all other changes to the advantage of the heroes do not create
such timelines. The films hence work with an inconsistent combination of
“bread loaf ” and multiverse cosmology. As is the case with most narratives
featuring temporal paradoxes, non-contradiction is at some point surren-
dered for the sake of maintaining narrative interest.26
26 I follow Ryan here, who also points out that few narratives consistently employ all
different kinds of temporal paradoxes and argues that this is because it would vir-
tually obviate any kind of narrative interest (cf. “Temporal”, pp. 147–149).
III. Conclusion
It seems that very few time travel narratives are wholly coherent and consist-
ent regarding temporality and logic. At some point, most of them sacrifice
stringency for narrative interest and/or critical investment. Kurt Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse-Five is apparently deterministic in that one allegedly cannot
ever change anything, yet one can also never be sure about anything since the
messed-up psyche of the protagonist – not to mention the inconsistent nar-
rative perspective of the narrator – undercuts all reliability of the narrative.27
For a portrayal of atrocious events and a traumatized protagonist, this is
quite fitting. Time Bandits displays only a feeble pretense at temporal logic.
In fact, considering the content (a loot of precious historical artifacts by
dwarves and a boy) and the genre (fantasy), this seems to be the desired ef-
fect. Logic is obviously not the primary purpose; rather, history, legend, and
myth are shown to be close together, and notions of temporal stability and
progression as well as a naturalistic world view are undermined. Even Mi-
chael Crichton’s carefully constructed Timeline is actually illogical.28 The title
is misleading since the narrative works with the alternative timelines of the
multiverse cosmology, but then the alternative lines are always only in the
past, and the present of the book suggests one timeline only. However, since
the narrative is primarily a thriller with the temporal construction as drama-
turgic conceit, this inconsistency does not seriously damage the narrative in-
terest of suspense.
Obviously, focusing solely on inconsistencies and illogicalities in time
travel narratives is beside the point. If we concede once more that the ana-
lytic utility of the counterfactual need not necessarily lie in realism, physical
laws, or rationality, then time travel counterfactuals may have important les-
sons to teach as thought experiments and as imaginative possible worlds that
allow us to vicariously put ourselves “in the skin of the characters whose life
is being invaded by the irrational”.29 Even those time travel narratives that
cloak their contradictions in the thin veneer of apparent consistency and co-
herence at closer scrutiny show us a deeply unsettling, “unreliable” universe,
where time is “out of joint”, and where notions of free will, control, and au-
tonomous agency are highly questionable or at least problematic. One expla-
nation for the recent “explosion of time travel films” and novels, then, might
be a “pervasive uneasiness about our present and uncertainty about our fu-
27 Cf. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, New York 1991.

28 Cf. Michael Crichton, Timeline, New York 1999.
29 Ryan, “Temporal”, p. 162.
226 Rüdiger Heinze
ture, along with a concurrent nostalgia about our past”.30 Most of the visions
of the future are bleak and apocalyptic and constitute a negative extrapo-
lation of the present. Interestingly, these negative visions of the future are
not necessarily based on a deterministic temporality, but rather base their
extrapolation on a human nature that is shown as morally flawed and imper-
fect. It is humanity’s unique capacity to recognize good and choose evil that
most often leads to disaster and has to be combated by the time traveler. No
wonder, really, that many visions are either explicitly or implicitly of the past,
which is often – though not always! – nostalgically shown as more “authen-
tic” and unspoiled by technology.31
Among the greatest strengths and appeals of fiction is that it can con-
struct, contain and project a virtually endless variation of worlds and scen-
arios, a unique testing ground for thought experiments, with tremendous
aesthetic and experiential “fringe benefits”. Another appeal is that the
readers participate in the construction of these worlds. Fictions with time
travel scenarios offer one way of compounding these pleasures by play-
ing through a variation of conditionals and counterfactuals that are not as
strictly bound by the constraints of laws of rationality, plausibility and prob-
ability as other kinds of narrative. Indeed, it seems that time travel narratives
tend to exploit the more playful potential of fiction and of creating possible
worlds; their potential for counterfictional self-reflexivity offers an addi-
tional vantage point from which to explore the functions of fiction. And yet,
playfulness aside, time travel fictions are also fundamentally about repeti-
tion, contingency, causality, and about the decisions we have to make on a
daily basis. They cater to our understandable occasional dissatisfaction – as
unreasonable as it may seem, but who ever said we have to be reasonable all
the time? – that we cannot change the past and do not have the hindsight of
the future. At least in fiction, we may get to have our cake, and eat it, too.
30 Gordon, “Oedipus” p. 116.

31 Gordon, “Oedipus”, p. 116. Recently, time travel as metaphor and/or conceit has
become very popular in historical theme parks and museums; reenactments, by
definition, imply a kind of time travel.
Dickens's Narrative Refusals 227
Robyn Warhol (Columbus, Ohio)
“What Might Have Been Is Not What Is”:

Dickens’s Narrative Refusals
To speak, as Hilary Dannenberg and other critics now do, of the “counter-
factual” in the context of prose fiction is in some ways counterintuitive.1 To
be sure, the counterfactual is itself a fictitious state of affairs. The subject of
study by social and cognitive psychologists, philosophers, political scien-
tists, legal scholars, and historiographers, among others, a counterfactual is a
statement of something that did not or does not happen, an alternative scen-
ario that contrasts with a real occurrence or a genuine possibility. Counter-
factuals may take the form of “if only …” thinking, as in “If only Jane Austen
had lived into her sixties, we might have fifteen or twenty of her novels
instead of six” or “If only I lived in London, I could go to the theater
every week”. With counterfactuals, one answers questions like, “What would
have happened, if …?” or “What happens if …?” or “What happens if we
don’t …?”. In the possible answers to all such questions, counterfactuals are
phrased subjunctively in sentences having dependent clauses that posit an
antecedent contrary to fact. If Jane Austen had lived longer, if I lived in Lon-
don: these antecedents posit lives that are only imaginary. They suggest al-
ternate realities that would be improvements upon the actual facts; hence,
social and cognitive psychologists would call them “upward counterfac-
tuals”.2 Examples of “downward counterfactuals” would be “If Jane Austen
had died as a teenager, we would not have Pride and Prejudice in its current
form” or “If I lived in rural Idaho, I would have fewer opportunities to at-
tend plays than I do now”. In downward counterfactuals, the result of an
antecedent – the consequent – is worse than the factual state of things.
The assertions following upon the false antecedents are always phrased
subjunctively, but the auxiliary verbs employed carry different degrees of
force. “Might” is less certain than “could”, and “would” (or in British Eng-
1 Cf. Hilary Dannenberg, Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in
Fiction, Lincoln 2008.
2 Cf. Keith D. Markman/Matthew N. McMullen/Donald A. Elizaga/Nobuko Mi-
zoguchi, “Counterfactual Thinking and Regulatory Fit”, in: Judgment and Decision
Making, 2/2006, pp. 98–107; and especially David R. Mandel/Denis J. Hilton/
Patrizia Catellani (eds.), The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking, New York 2005.
228 Robyn Warhol
lish “should”, as in “I should very much like that”) implies more probability
than either of the other two modalities. “If I lived in London, I might go to
the theater every week” sounds like a lukewarm response to someone else’s
suggestion; “If I lived in London, I would go to the theater every week” car-
ries confidence in my ability, for example, to find the time and to afford the
tickets, unlikely as those eventualities may be. When in Much Ado About No-
thing, Beatrice exclaims in her outrage over Claudio’s behavior, “If I were a
man, I would eat his heart in the marketplace!”, she is recommending to Ben-
edick a more drastic course of action than if she were to say she might or
could eat Claudio’s heart. As she is not a man, her point is moot, as is the
point of all counterfactuals. Contrary to fact as they are, they are not true.
But then, neither is fiction. That is, fiction makes no claims to truth,
though a historical novel, for instance, might overlap in some respects with a
reality external to the storyworld. Realist novels, too, make use of recogniz-
able details – street names, celebrities, routes from one city to the next, de-
scriptions of the weather – as part of the apparatus of what Ian Watt called
“formal realism”, the aggregation of techniques that add up to the realist ef-
fect.3 An entire novel, however, whether a work of historical, realist, or fan-
tasy fiction, amounts to one big counterfactual, pretending to assert, “If all
the conditions set out in this text were true, this plot is what might or could
or would happen”. For this reason, I propose to be more specific than Dan-
nenberg is by calling passages in novels that spell out what might or could or
would have happened if the story were different “counterfictionals”.4
This is another way of thinking about the speech-act theory of literature,
which holds that literary writing is made up not of constative statements that
could be evaluated as true or false, but of performative statements that bring
into being the thing they say. A performative is neither true nor false; it only
happens (in felicitous conditions, as the linguists would have it) or does
not happen.5 Indeed, performative utterances make something happen; they
bring into being a promise, a threat, a christening, a blessing – or, in the case
of literary writing, the creation of a storyworld. As a performative speech act,
literary writing is under no obligation to link the diegesis to any referent in
3 Cf. Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, 2nd ed., Berkeley 2001.
4 For the way I am using the concept of counterfictionality I am indebted to con-
versations with Daniel Dohrn and Richard Saint-Gelais at the “Counterfactual
Thinking/Counterfactual Writing” conference at the Freiburg Institute for Ad-
vanced Studies, September 28–30, 2009. See also Elaine Scarry’s use of the term
“counterfactual” to point back to the real in the context of courts of law (The Body
in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, New York/London 1987, p. 299).
5 Cf. John L. Austin, How To Do Things With Words, Oxford 1962.
the world outside the text. In this respect, the “counterfactual” in literary
writing is distinct from the object of study for historians or philosophers
who can distinguish it from “fact” or “truth”. Thus, the “actual world” of a
fiction is every bit as much the consequence of performative language as
is the “counterfactual world” the narrative might invoke as an alternative.
Although some theorists of the counterfactual in fiction speak of the “actual
fictional world” to distinguish what happens in a novel from that which does
not happen, the “storyworld” or “the diegesis” are better terms in that they
avoid the oxymoron of “actual fiction”.
I begin with an example from Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, in
which Pip, the narrator, describes a dinner in his childhood home, the forge.
Through an elaborate series of negations quite characteristic of Dickens’s
later style, Pip explains he was uncomfortable
[n]ot because I was squeezed in at an acute angle of the table-cloth, with the table
in my chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was not
allowed to speak (I didn’t want to speak), nor because I was regaled with the scaly
tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of
which the pig, when living, had had the least reason to be vain.6
Pip brings up the angle, the elbow, and the scaly tips in the course of telling
what was not making him miserable (“not because I was squeezed […] nor
because I was not allowed […] nor because I was regaled” was Pip unhappy).
Embedded in this series is yet another set of negations: for instance “I was not
allowed to speak (I didn’t want to speak)” and “those obscure corners of pork
of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason to be vain”. While it
is hilarious, this passage is a classically Dickensian example of an upward
counterfictional. Behind all these negatives shimmers a potential diegetic
world where children want to speak and are allowed to speak, where pigs
have reason to be vain of the less obscure corners of their bodies, where
being squeezed at the table or forbidden to talk or parsimoniously regaled
with bad food are circumstances unusual enough to be the source of a child’s
discomfort. That is not, of course, the diegetic world Pip inhabits, nor is it a
diegetic world present in any of Dickens’s novels. “Ah, me!”, R. Wilfer says
to himself upon his first appearance in Our Mutual Friend, “what might have
been is not what is!”.7 The rendition of what might have been and yet is
not does form, however, much of the substance of Dickens’s later narrative
6 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Harmondsworth 2002, p. 25. Unless noted

otherwise all emphasis in quotations is mine.
7 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, Harmondsworth 1998, p. 42.
230 Robyn Warhol
prose. Direct narratorial references to some of the specifics of what might have
been and yet is not are what I call “narrative refusals”.
This essay comes out of my new project in narrative theory; a contribu-
tion, I hope, to the descriptive poetics of the nineteenth-century British
novel, which examines specific narrative gestures in the context of the cul-
tural formation of subjectivity. Looking at what I call “narrative refusals”
gives us a glimpse at a previously unrecognized facet of the complexities that
form the distinctive Dickensian prose style, allowing us to see differently
what is “there” in the storyworld by turning our attention to what is marked
as explicitly “not-there”. With specific reference to Great Expectations, Our
Mutual Friend, and Dombey and Son,8 I will begin by laying out two modes of
narrative refusal in Dickens’s middle and later novels, disnarration through
negation and disnarration through the use of subjunctive constructions. I
will then turn to an earlier work, Nicholas Nickleby,9 where narrative refusals
are already incipient, though less common than later in Dickens’s career.
Dickens’s later, “greater” texts reflect a growing awareness of his audiences’
expectation of the cheery, Christmas-story side of “the Dickensian”, a wish
for happier storyworlds than the novelist was willing or able to produce. For
the later Dickens, the details of the happy storyworld are better left unsaid.
To be sure, an unimaginably large quantity of information is literally left
out of any text, considering everything that any novelist might have imagined
or observed, but not included in a particular text’s story or discourse. Nar-
rative elisions, suppressions, repressions, silences, gaps, omissions, or lacu-
nae: all of these invoke that which is “unnarratable” for any given text. Build-
ing on Gerald Prince’s classic definition of the “narratable”, I have elsewhere
identified four types of unnarratability in prose fiction and film: the subnar-
ratable (what need not be told because it is too obvious or boring); the su-
pranarratable (what cannot be told because it is ineffable or inexpressible);
the antinarratable (what should not be told because of trauma or taboo); and
the paranarratable (what would not be told because of literary convention).10
Thresholds of narratability vary from one genre to the next and, within
the same genre, from one period to the next. Even within the genre of the
Victorian realist novel, what is unnarratable for one author may fill up para-
graphs for another. For instance, Trollope does not hesitate to mention the
8 Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, Harmondsworth 2002.

9 Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, Harmondsworth 1999.
10 Cf. Robyn Warhol-Down, “Neonarrative: Or How to Render the Unnarratable in
Realist Fiction and Contemporary Films”, in: James Phelan/Peter Rabinowitz
(eds.), A Companion to Narrative Theory, Malden, MA , 2005, pp. 220–231.
smallest gestures of body, face, and eye contact in scenes whose substance
would be subnarratable (too boring or obvious) even for novelists as prolix
as Thackeray or Dickens. Always the text is finite, but that which is not nar-
rated is infinite.11 So texts have limits. But there are no limits to the unnar-
ratable.
If the unnarratable usually figures in fiction as a gap, silence, or elision, it
can also motivate explicit narrative refusals of the kind that Pip makes in his
description of the dinner table scene. Pip’s childhood experience of abuse is
antinarratable, too traumatic to recount in the genre of Victorian domestic
fiction. When narrators enact this kind of narrative refusal, they point in the
text to a particular subset of that which is being left out, thus explicitly mark-
ing something that is unnarratable. I have identified two distinct but related
gestures of narrative refusal: unnarration (when the narrator indicates she
can’t or won’t tell what happened), and disnarration (when the narrator tells
something that did not happen, in place of saying what did).
Both of these narratorial modes can come into play when narrators at-
tempt to render material in all four categories of the unnarratable, and any
given novelist is likely to favor one of these gestures over the other. As we
shall see, Dickens’s narrators prefer to disnarrate instances of unnarratabil-
ity. In contrast with that which is simply left out, the unnarrated and disnar-
rated aspects of a text become a vividly present absence, existing at a narrative
level somewhere between the text and everything that is left out of it.12 Un-
narration – the kind of passage where a narrator will say “I won’t go into de-
11 Even an elaborate deconstructive reading intended to open out rather than close
off meanings eventually reaches a boundary beyond which a particular text’s
utterances won’t reach. Whatever else it may be, for example, Little Dorrit is not a
novel about colonizing new planets in outer space.
12 Instances of narrative refusal share features in common with three distinct rhe-
torical figures (as defined by Richard Lanham): occupatio (“emphasizing a point by
pointedly seeming to pass it over”), litotes (“denial of the contrary, understatement
in order to intensify”), and aporia (“true or feigned doubt or deliberation about an
issue”, Analyzing Prose, 2nd ed., London/New York 2003, pp. 240–241). In some
cases unnarration or disnarration will combine effects of two or more of these fig-
ures. They are also related, though not identical to David Herman’s “hypothetical
focalization” (in which a narrator or character produces “hypotheses […] about
what might have been seen or perceived – if only there were someone who could
have adopted the requisite perspective on the situations and events at issue”,
“Hypothetical Focalization”, in: Narrative, 2/1994, pp. 230–253, p. 231) and Brian
Richardson’s “denarration” (“in which a narrator denies significant aspects of her
narrative that had earlier been presented as given”, “De-Narration in Fiction:
Erasing the Story in Beckett and Others”, in: Narrative, 9/2001, pp. 168–175,
p. 168).
232 Robyn Warhol
tails” or “words cannot express” – can be sentimental, as in this passage from

Nicholas Nickleby:
There are no words which can express, nothing with which can be compared, the
perfect pallor, the clear transparent cold ghastly whiteness, of the beautiful face
which turned towards him when he entered.13
Or it can be comical, as in this passage from the same novel:
What in the world Tim was doing with his arm it is impossible to conjecture, but
he knocked his elbow against that part of the window which was quite on the
other side of Miss La Creevy; and it is clear that it could have no business there.14
In either mode, however, it assumes knowledge on the part of the implied
reader. Experience of life or of literary reading will help the reader fill in the
blanks.
Disnarration, by contrast, is more pedagogical. In the disnarrated pas-
sage – where the narrator evokes nostalgia (“something was there, but is no
longer”), hopefulness (“something might be there, but is not yet”), or a sense
of bare absence (“something never was and never will be there”) – the im-
plied reader receives a set of options to consider and ultimately to reject. The
diegesis – or the virtual world created by the text – splits into multiple levels
whenever disnarration occurs. Shadowing the storyworld of the novel, an-
other diegesis lurks in the negated or subjunctive details mentioned in the
disnarration. In his series of negations, for example, Pip’s disnarration both
invokes and masks the cognitive and emotional experience of trauma, leav-
ing it for the moment unspoken somewhere in the space between the sec-
ondary, idyllic storyworld implied by his negated examples (where children
want to talk and are allowed to talk) and the imagined world represented in
the comic text he speaks.
In middle and late Dickens, disnarration becomes a dominant mode of
narrative discourse, maybe even the dominant mode. Pip disnarrates the
dinner-table scene when he brings into being that which is not (the alter-
native world where children might be happy) in place of telling details about
that which is (his feelings about life at the forge). In revising and then re-re-
vising the ending of Great Expectations, Dickens put Pip through a paroxysm
of disnarration, unbinding the novel’s closure by negating and then double-
negating the final action, rather than simply telling it. The extant draft end-
ing leaves no doubt that Pip and Estella have parted forever, once they have
greeted each other for the last time on a London street. The first revision
13 Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, p. 654.

moves their encounter to the ruined garden at Satis House, where Estella
says they will “remain friends apart”. In this version Pip – having taken Es-
tella’s hand and walked out of the garden with her – says he “saw the shadow
of no parting from her”.15 As if this ending too unambiguously contradicted
the first version by implying that Pip and Estella would become a permanent
couple at the novel’s end, Dickens re-revised it to complicate the disnar-
ration with a further negation: “I saw no shadow of another parting from
her”.16 Commentators may argue endlessly about whether “no shadow of
another parting” means Pip anticipated that he and Estella would stay to-
gether and never part again, or whether it means this is their last parting and
that Pip sees no reason to think they would meet again to part another time.
What makes the ambiguity irresolvable is Pip’s narratorial negation of action:
first he saw “the shadow of no parting”, then “no shadow of another part-
ing”. By rendering the prediction negatively, Pip disnarrates the ending
rather than telling us what did ultimately happen. I read the ending (as I do
the similarly ambiguous end of Charlotte Brontë’s Villette) to say that the nar-
rator-protagonist remains forever single. Such an ending is, in 1860, unnar-
ratable – specifically, it is paranarratable, because it would eventually become
not only acceptable, but conventional for realist novels to end in this way.
For a novelist as profoundly attached to his audience’s pleasure and approval
as Dickens was, the narrative refusal of closure is a startling choice.
The novel following Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, sustains from
beginning to end the same way of disnarrating events by negating them
rather than simply leaving them unmentioned. Like those in Great Expec-
tations, disnarrations in Our Mutual Friend work to heighten a sense of ab-
sence. Like the last page of the previous novel, the first page of Our Mutual
Friend leans heavily on negation, this time in the extradiegetic narrator’s first
description of Hexam:
He had no net, hook or line, and he could not be a fisherman; his boat had no
cushion for a sitter, no paint, no inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boa-
thook and a coil of rope, and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy
and too small to take in cargo for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or
river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked for some-
thing, with a most intent and searching gaze.17
This refusal to name Hexam’s object is part of the opening scene’s strat-
egy for building the sense of “dread or horror” the narrator attributes to
15 Dickens, Great Expectations, p. 484.

16 Dickens, Great Expectations, p. 507.
17 Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, p. 13.
234 Robyn Warhol
Hexam’s daughter, Lizzie. It is therefore part of the machinery of suspense,

and it operates throughout this novel built on a secret to emphasize the need
for detection. But the disnarration also creates an alternate diegetic world,
populated by industrious fishermen, cheerful passengers in brightly painted
cushioned pleasure boats, busy cargo haulers, and helpful lightermen. Like
the comfortable childhood Pip disnarrates, this world is entirely separate
from Lizzie Hexam’s experience – it is a present absence in the book.
Throughout Our Mutual Friend, the same explicit way of mentioning what
is not there occurs repeatedly, even in scenes where suspense is not deployed.
Here are just a few of the many instances:
Not, however, towards the ‘shops’ where cunning artificers work on pearls and
diamonds and gold and silver, making their hands so rich, that the enriched water
in which they wash them is bought for the refiners; – not towards these does Mr.
Wegg stump, but towards the poorer shops of small retail traders. […] [Mr. Venus]
has no cravat on, and has opened his tumbled shirt-collar to work with the more
ease. For the same reason he has no coat on: only a loose waistcoat over his yellow
linen. His eyes are like the over-tried eyes of an engraver, but he is not that; his ex-
pression and stoop are like those of a shoemaker, but he is not that.
It was not summer yet, but spring; and it was not gentle spring ethereally mild, as
in Thomson’s Seasons, but nipping spring with an easterly wind, as in Johnson’s,
Jackson’s, Dickson’s, Smith’s, and Jones’s Seasons.
[Eugene] looked at [Lizzie] with a real sentiment of remorseful tenderness and
pity. It was not strong enough to impel him to sacrifice himself and spare her, but
it was a strong emotion.
There was something in the attitude of [Lizzie’s] whole figure as [Eugene] sup-
ported it, and she hung her head, which besought him to be merciful and not force
her to disclose her heart. He was not merciful with her, and he made her do it.18
In each of these examples the disnarrated element is something more pleas-
ant, more proper, more ideally desirable and comfortable than what is impli-
citly present in the text. The prosperous shops of the jewelers are absent, Mr.
Venus’s seedier establishment present; the respectable cravat and coat that
Mr. Venus might have worn are absent, his ill-fitting waistcoat and stained
linen present; the possibility that he might be an engraver or shoemaker is
absent, the reality of his grim profession present. Instead of warm summer
or spring “ethereally mild”, it is “nipping” cold spring; instead of being the
season described by the poet Thomson, it is the weather experienced by
the prosaically generic Johnsons, Jacksons, Dicksons, Smiths, and Joneses.
Eugene’s sympathy for Lizzie might have moved him to spare her, but it
18 Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, pp. 83, 147, 675, 678.

is not adequately powerful. In each of these cases but one, the negation
straightforwardly contradicts a positive possibility in order to assert a less
ideal fictional reality. In that one exceptional case, Dickens employs a double
disnarration the more strongly to invoke the course Eugene ought to be tak-
ing with Lizzie, while emphasizing how far Eugene’s actions stray from their
more desirable opposite. The “whole attitude” of Lizzie’s body begs him
not to “force her to disclose her heart”. “Disclose” is a negative locution for
“reveal”; to “force her to disclose” is to do violence to her wish to be silent.
Behind the disnarration of “not to force her to disclose” lies an image of Liz-
zie serenely unmolested, relieved by Eugene’s imagined willingness to simply
let her be quiet. He is, however, “not merciful”, and so he makes her do it.
Every disnarrated action in Our Mutual Friend has its corresponding posi-
tive action. It is as if the narrator is imagining a parallel diegetic world where
the complications driving his novel’s plot become moot, because the de-
sires those complications continually thwart are all already realized. It is a
counterfictional storyworld, an alternate narrative that is not quite not-there.
The disnarrations function here, as in Great Expectations, as a parody of the
naïve view that would imagine this counterfictional storyworld could be a
possibility. If that “shadow world” is born of a naivety the parodic narrator
scorns – for instance, the deluded hope that the world might operate accord-
ing to standard moral norms –, it is also a world that is nonnarratable, where
no conflict or complication would arise to motivate a story. In this respect,
the disnarrations are spaces in which the narrator points to the narrative en-
gines driving the text.
Dombey and Son, like Our Mutual Friend, also carries a shadow-narrative that
flickers behind its main action. Like R. Wilfer, Dombey – finally repenting of
his stony indifference to his daughter – “chiefly thought of what might have
been, and what was not”.19 Of course, Wilfer – that loving father the narrator
likes to call the “Cherub” – is aware of this discrepancy between the real and
the potentially better from his very first appearance in the novel, while Dom-
bey can see nothing beyond his own version of “what is” until he has lost
everything. Whereas the narrator of Our Mutual Friend consistently invokes
that other, more positive possible world through negations, the narrator of
Dombey and Son couches disnarration in the subjunctive mode. Though both
novels continually evoke what might have been and yet is not, Dombey and
Son’s passages of subjunctive disnarration gesture toward a better possible
world only at the novel’s beginning, then shift to reinforce the novel’s pre-
vailing mood of despair. Early in the novel, the narrator raises the subjunc-
19 Dickens, Dombey and Son, p. 796.

236 Robyn Warhol
tive possibility that Dombey might not have shut out his daughter Florence,
had he been paying sufficient attention to her after her mother had died:
And, perhaps, unlearned as she was, [Polly] could have brought a dawning knowl-
edge home to Mr. Dombey at that early day, which would not then have struck him
in the end like lightning.
Had [Dombey] looked with greater interest and with a father’s eye, he might have
read in [Florence’s] keen glance the impulses and fears that made her waver; the
passionate desire to run clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace,
‘Oh father, try to love me! There’s no one else!’; the dread of a repulse; the fear
of being too bold, and of offending him; the pitiable need in which she stood of
some assurance and encouragement; and how her overcharged young heart was
wandering to find some natural resting-place, for its sorrow and affection.20
These subjunctive disnarrations, like the negations in Our Mutual Friend and in
Great Expectations, bring to the surface of the text the specifics of a more posi-
tive version of “what might have been, and what was not”. If he had been able
to learn from Polly’s example, or if he had been capable of reading Florence’s
fear of annoying him, Dombey would have realized the value of his daughter’s
attachment from the beginning, not just at the end. The disnarration invokes
for the reader an alternate story where father and daughter recognize and con-
sole each other for the loss of wife and mother. Still, in this novel the counter-
factual scene – the action that does not happen, but exists behind the action
that does – is not a particularly cheerful alternative. The narrator brings in
through the disnarration the spectacle of the child’s wavering, crying, and
clinging; her dread, her fear, her pitiable need, and her overcharged heart find
their way into the text without Florence’s having actually to enact them. The
shadow-narratives brought forth by this and subsequent passages of disnar-
ration come to rival the Dombey family’s actual story for perversity and misery.
Neither do the hypothetical situations the narrator proposes as “better”
than Dombey’s actual relations with his daughter present anything like posi-
tive alternatives to the diegetic action: “Oh, how much better than this that
[Dombey] had loved her as he had his boy, and lost her as he had his boy, and
laid them in their early grave together!”.21 In the parallel potential story
proposed here, Florence dies young and beloved, like her brother Paul.
The heroine’s early death would be better – the narrator exclaims – than that
Florence should waste her affection on her insensible father. Dombey’s
relations with Edith, his second wife, are identically hopeless, in both their
narrated and disnarrated versions:
20 Dickens, Dombey and Son, pp. 40, 42–43.

[Edith] had better have been dead than laugh as she did, in reply, with her intent
look fixed upon [Mr. Dombey]. He had better have been dead, than sitting there,
in his magnificence, to hear her.22
Better for them both to die than to laugh and be laughed at with such dis-
dain and indifference: in the “better” alternate story behind the disnarration,
both Dombey and Edith succumb to the murderous enmity between them.
For that matter, Florence’s father is so indifferent to her forgiveness and
sympathy that he is not just incapable of responding to them in the diegetic
world as presented. He is equally closed off in the possible world suggested
by the hypothetical passages of disnarration:
If [Dombey] could have heard her voice in an adjoining room, he would not have
gone to her. If he could have seen her in the street, and she had done no more than
look at him as she had been used to look, he would have passed on with his old
cold unforgiving face […].23
This is equally true of Dombey’s relationship with Edith, who from the be-
ginning of their marriage defies his assumed power over her.
[Dombey] might have read in that one glance that nothing that his wealth could
do, though it were increased ten thousand fold, could win him for its own
sake, one look of softened recognition from the defiant woman, linked to
him, but arrayed with her whole soul against him. He might have read in that
one glance that even for its sordid and mercenary influence upon herself, [Edith]
spurned it […].24
Even if he had seen the loving girl on the hypothetical street, or recognized
the disdainful woman actually sitting before him, his situation would be
equally bleak. Up to the moment just before his epiphany, Dombey remains
even hypothetically incapable of connecting with anyone other than his dead
son:
Here, thrown upon the bare boards, in the dead of night, he wept, alone – a proud
man, even then; who, if a kind hand could have been stretched out, or a kind
face could have looked in, would have risen up, and turned away, and gone down
to his cell.25
In the alternate world invoked by the subjunctive disnarration, Dombey’s
pride would keep him as isolated as he is in the presented story. “What might
have been” for Dombey proposes no positive alternative. If the suddenness
of his final reconciliation with Florence seems to come without preparation,

24 Dickens, Dombey and Son, pp. 544–545.
238 Robyn Warhol
this is at least partly attributable to the hopelessness of the parallel story the
disnarration so consistently tells. The implied reader has little reason to ex-
pect that a blissful father-daughter reunion could be on the horizon of a
storyworld so unremittingly bleak in both its diegetic and counterfictional
versions.
Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, and Dombey and Son are all celebrated
not just for the complexity of their plots, but also the complexity of their
psychology. Critics of the Victorian novel take it for granted that the earlier
Nicholas Nickleby is not complex in the same admirable way as the later work.
It would be easy to say that Nicholas Nickleby (either the character or the
novel) has no psychology – but then, no novel has a psychology, strictly
speaking: characters’ psychology is an effect created through the narrative
construction of interiority. Looking for narrative refusals in this earlier novel
shows that Dickens is already working on the technology of structuring a
subjectivity for the text. I will offer only one example from this earlier novel:
in an extremely rare moment of sentimental reflection, Ralph Nickleby falls
into a subjunctive reverie that briefly adds a depth-effect to his characteriz-
ation:
He thought of what his home might be if Kate were there; he placed her in the
empty chair, looked upon her, heard her speak; he felt again upon his arm the
gentle pressure of the trembling hand; he strewed his costly rooms with the
hundred silent tokens of feminine presence and occupation; he came back again
to the cold fireside and the silent dreary splendour; and in that one glimpse of a
better nature, born as it was in selfish thoughts, the rich man felt himself friend-
less, childless, and alone.26
Here the disnarrated images – the sound and sight of the young woman in
the chair, the sensation of her hand on Ralph’s arm, the “female touch” in
the room’s decoration and clutter – represent Ralph’s momentary sense of
what might have been, what the narrator calls “a better nature”. Here Ralph
is more than an early version of the “character type” Dickens will later de-
velop into Dombey. His behavior and attitudes resemble Dombey’s, to be
sure, but more striking is the parallel between the ways the narrators of the
two novels use subjunctive disnarration to structure the two characters’ psy-
chology. As the narrator remarks immediately after Ralph’s musings, “A very
slight circumstance was sufficient to banish such reflections from the mind
of such a man”.27 Such reflections are also evidently banished from this text,
as the narrator of Nicholas Nickleby refrains from disnarrating the potential

reconciliations and recognitions that so strongly characterize the narrative

refusals in Dombey and Son.
Negative and subjunctive disnarrations being part of the machinery for
creating a counterfactual storyworld repressed, as it were, from the main nar-
rative, or for enhancing the effect of character depth, the narrator of Nicho-
las Nickleby has comparatively little use for them. Narrative refusals can be
understood as explicitly marking something like the unconscious of a text,
another way of conceiving what I have been calling the “shadow world” be-
hind the diegesis. It is not a collective unconscious, but rather a collection of
specific possibilities and details the text mentions, only to turn around and
erase them, while not altogether forgetting those specified elements of the
counterfictional. When that counterfictional storyworld emerges through
narrative refusals, the “repressed” of the text returns, not quite not-there.28
28 I am grateful to the participants in the 2006 conference “Dickens Universe” at the

University of California, Santa Cruz, for helpful suggestions on this paper. Hel-
ena Michie, John Bowen, John Glavin, Matthew Kaiser, and Gerhard Joseph made
especially useful comments. Another version of this essay has appeared in Dickens
Studies Annual, 41/2010, pp. 45–59.
240 Richard Saint-Gelais
Richard Saint-Gelais (Québec)
How To Do Things With Worlds:

From Counterfactuality to Counterfictionality1
Jane Austen’s fans are well aware of the phenomenal number of adaptations,
sequels and parodies of her novels, especially of Pride and Prejudice.2 Some of
these are more surprising than the expected “what happened afterwards” or
“amorous life of a minor character” formulae. Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride
and Prejudice and Zombies tells anew the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwil-
liam Darcy,3 inserting into the narrative – otherwise largely identical with
Austen’s – several undead creatures and ninja combat scenes, for no other
reason than the fun of creating a very unlikely cultural hybrid, in which
the two main characters fight both with their inner feelings and with the
“unmentionable beings” that infest Netherfield Park’s environs. Two years
earlier, Emma Campbell Webster’s Lost in Austen, subtitled “Create your own
Jane Austen Adventure”, offered another type of variation – or rather vari-
ations, since this is an interactive novel inviting the reader to identify with
Elizabeth Bennet and, through a sequence of choices, to try to make a profit-
able marriage, with Darcy if possible (but not necessarily).4 This is not an
easy task – most of the paths lead to utter failure – and the text becomes pro-
gressively labyrinthine, as the reader discovers that his or her choices unravel
the original narrative and bring it to unexpected directions, including some
excursions into the plots of other Austen novels.
While it may be premature to speak of a tendency, these two books
(to which we may add a handful of others, based on various classics such as
Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) present
a common denominator: Each of them intrudes into a previous fiction, not
in an additive mode (as do sequels), but in a substitutive way. They retell the
1 I would like to thank Dorothee Birke for her useful comments on a previous ver-
sion of this article.
2 A bibliography compiled by Rolf Breuer lists 186 “completions, sequels, adap-
tations, pastiches, and fictionalisations” published between 1850 and 1998, 71 of
which are based on Pride and Prejudice alone. Cf. http://webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/
edoc/ia/eese/breuer/biblio.html (March 28, 2010).
3 Cf. Jane Austen/Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Philadelphia
2009.
4 Cf. Emma Campbell Webster, Lost in Austen, New York 2007.
From Counterfactuality to Counterfictionality 241
original story in part or in whole, and in doing so modify secondary or (more

often) important events, stating or implying that things did not happen the
way they had formerly been described. This appears to flout our common
understanding of the way fiction works. We do not expect fictitious events to
vary according to which author is recounting them; the “nature” of fiction
(the cultural rules governing its production and reception) entails that its
original author, through the act of imagining the characters and their adven-
tures, decides once and for all the content of the story. But works such as
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Lost in Austen show that another writer may
always put the original narrative into question. How can we explain this?
In order to shed some light on this problem, it is useful, I think, to turn to
counterfactuality, a similar phenomenon which offers the advantage of having
been studied from many points of view. In a recent article,5 Lubomír Doležel
has stressed the usefulness of possible-worlds theory for the understanding of
counterfactuality and, more specifically, of what he calls “counterfactual nar-
ratives of the past”: novels such as Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee, in which the
Confederates win the American Civil War, or speculations of historians such
as Hugh Trevor-Roper about alternative outcomes of historical events.6 It is
clear that counterfactuals, whether produced in everyday contexts (“If I had
brought an umbrella, I wouldn’t be soaked”), in historical reflection, or in
novelistic writing, posit possible worlds; moreover, David Lewis has shown
how the conceptual apparatus of possible-worlds theory may be used to evalu-
ate the truth value of counterfactuals.7 Useful as this treatment is, it en-
counters problems when applied to fictional texts, which are logically unde-
cidable, neither true nor false. A novel like Bring the Jubilee does not make the
statement that, had the outcome of the Civil War been different, the evolution
of North America would have followed the course it depicts: its only aim is to
imagine, i.e., to construct fictitious states of affairs, without making any claim to
the plausibility of their realisation, had the antecedent been true.8
Things become even more complex when a fictional text sets out to offer
a counterfactual version, not of a real state of affairs, but of a pre-existing
fiction. Negations of known facts may also be, after all, negations of known
5 Lubomír Doležel, “Récits contrefactuels du passé”, in: Françoise Lavocat (ed.),

La théorie littéraire des mondes possibles, Paris 2010, pp. 83–99.
6 Cf. Ward Moore, Bring the Jubilee, New York 1953; Hugh Trevor-Roper, History and
Imagination, Oxford 1980.
7 Cf. David Lewis, Counterfactuals, Oxford 1973.
8 It may be objected that fiction often makes claims about its verisimilitude. But
such claims are not a defining feature of fiction, which may – and regularly does –
abstain from making them.
novelistic facts. Lizzie Bennet may fail (or refuse) to marry Mr Darcy, as
happens in several narrative paths of Webster’s Lost in Austen. Emma Bovary
may avoid suicide, as she does in Jacques Cellard’s Emma, oh! Emma!9 Ham-
let may decide to forget about his mother’s second marriage and elope with a
young comedian named Kate, as in Jules Laforgue’s Hamlet.10 I will not pre-
tend that this formula is frequent enough to form a recognizable literary
genre. But the questions it raises justify, I think, considering the formula
more closely, especially since, as we will see, the various ways in which it is
done might offer some insight into the nature and status of fiction.
First, some conceptual indications may be useful. The phenomenon I
want to examine is, in some respects, the intertextual counterpart of the nar-
rative device that Gerald Prince has analysed some years ago under the label
of the “disnarrated”, i. e., “all the events that do not happen but, nonetheless,
are referred to (in a negative or hypothetical mode) by the narrative text”.11
Disnarration happens in virtually every narrative. For instance, in Chandler’s
The Big Sleep, Marlowe, the narrator, says: “I was still staring at the hot black
eyes when a door opened far back under the stairs. It wasn’t the butler coming
back. It was a girl”.12 Recently Prince’s idea has been rediscovered, unknow-
ingly it seems, by Maxime Abolgassemi under the label of “contrefiction”.13
With either disnarration or contrefiction, the narrative erases from itself an
event or circumstance. But the erasure is not complete, as it would be if a
narrator simply omitted a segment of time without mentioning it. On the
contrary, the disnarrated makes the erasure visible. As a consequence, the
disnarrated suggests what it denies, for saying that something did not
happen in a story is a sure way to instil the idea that it could have. Disnar-
rated sentences, thus, create possible worlds in a fictional world. This be-
comes clear when, to quote Prince, they “pertain to a character’s unrealised
imaginings (incorrect beliefs, crushed hopes, false calculations, erroneous
suppositions)”.14
9 Cf. Jacques Cellard, Emma, oh! Emma!, Paris 1992

10 Cf. Jules Laforgue, “Hamlet, ou les suites de la piété filiale”, in: Moralités légendaires,
Paris 1992, pp. 7–44.
11 Gerald Prince, “The Disnarrated”, in: Style, 22/1988, pp. 1–8, p. 2; emphasis in the
original. For more details, cf. Robyn Warhol’s contribution to this volume.
12 Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Harmondsworth 1948, p. 10; emphasis is my
own.
13 Maxime Abolgassemi, “La contrefiction dans Jacques le fataliste”, in: Poétique,
134/2003, pp. 223–237.
14 Gerald Prince, “Disnarrated, The”, in: David Herman/Manfred Jahn/Marie-
Laure Ryan (eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, London 2005, p. 118.
Prince insists on the metafictional use of the disnarrated in modernist fic-

tions that “foreground the production of a world by language, the fact that
the novel […] is a statement about novels and the writing of novels”.15 This
is the case when the narrative subverts its own authority by discarding, some-
times again and again, segments that until then were given as “what hap-
pened in the story”. Alain Robbe-Grillet’s La maison de rendez-vous and Luis
Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie are good illustrations of this ex-
treme strategy.16 In Robbe-Grillet’s novel a character, Édouard Manneret,
dies many times, each time in a different way. He is stabbed by a young pros-
titute, shot by a policeman, killed by an overdose, and so on. In Bunuel’s
movie, sequences of events are repeatedly revealed to be a character’s dream,
so that the new “reality” ends up being reframed as yet another dream. As
Prince puts it, “all the narrated is hypothetical, all of it becomes disnar-
rated”.17 We then reach the field of impossible story worlds.18 Not all disnar-
rations are this extreme in their effects; most of them are fleeting glimpses
into possibilities revolving around the main action or into what the char-
acters would have liked to happen (or feared), thus conferring an imaginary
depth to the story or the personality of its protagonists. We thus see that dis-
narration may have diverse, even contradictory effects, some of them real-
istic (we, too, think about what our lives may have been), some of them
antimimetic (we do not get through contradictory sets of events, as Robbe-
Grillet’s characters do).
All these uses of disnarration, though, have something in common: they
operate at an internal level, contributing in their discreet or spectacular way
to the elaboration of a given narrative. But what happens when the rewriting
takes place in another narrative? We then have external, or intertextual, disnar-
ration – or, to borrow Matt Hills’s useful term, counterfictionality.19 Hills’s defi-
nition of the term, though, is more general than what I am considering. He
counts as counterfiction any narrative that “deliberately sets out to re-con-
struct, modify, and merge prior, existent fictional worlds”.20 He includes the
retelling of a story from a different viewpoint, as in Valerie Martin’s novel
15 Prince, “The Disnarrated”, p. 6.

16 Cf. Alain Robbe-Grillet, La maison de rendez-vous, Paris 1965. Luis Bunuel, Le charme
discret de la bourgeoisie, Carlotta Films, 1972.
17 Prince, “The Disnarrated”, p. 7.
18 Cf. Umberto Eco, “Small Worlds”, in: The Limits of Interpretation, Bloomington
1990, pp. 64–82.
19 Cf. Matt Hills, “Counterfiction in the Work of Kim Newman: Rewriting Gothic
SF as ‘Alternate-Story Stories’”, in: Science Fiction Studies, 30/2003, pp. 436–455.
20 Hills, “Counterfiction”, p. 440.
Mary Reilly,21 a feminist version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or works such as

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a comic book series that brings together
characters from several Victorian fictions.22 As interesting as these devices
are, I would like to distinguish them from counterfiction proper, which I
would define specifically as the alteration of a previous fiction, i.e. the re-
placement of at least one of its episodes, facts, etc., by other states of af-
fairs.23 Granted, the introduction of a different point of view (or “refocaliz-
ation”) may sometimes entail such alterations, in which case it is legitimate to
consider the resulting narrative as counterfictional as well. But since refo-
calization does not, in itself, lead to changes on the diegetic level (its aim is
usually to give another perspective on the same events), I deem it preferable
to distinguish, conceptually at least, the two categories, even if it is perfectly
possible for a text to belong to both at once.
A counterfiction, as I define it, is a text that sets out to modify the diegesis
of a former fictional narrative. Sometimes this is done explicitly, for instance
in sequels that reveal that the villain did not die, contrary to what the pre-
vious installment stated, and is thus available for new misdemeanors. Other
counterfictions operate tacitly. Jacques Cellard’s Emma, oh! Emma! never em-
phasizes its point of departure from Madame Bovary. This strange novel tells
again the story of Flaubert’s heroine, from her childhood to her unhappy
marriage to Charles and subsequent affairs with Rodolphe and Léon. The
reader has to read carefully to notice the point where Emma’s destiny is
changed so that her suicide never happens – namely, when her last-recourse
visit to Rodolphe proves successful: Her former lover agrees to help her to
avoid bankruptcy, which he refuses to do in Madame Bovary.24 In such cases,
the counterfictional writer banks on the reader’s knowledge of the original
narrative, enabling him or her to notice the alteration.25 But this is not only a
matter of visibility. The silence, the implicitness of such counterfictions has
other consequences, to which I will come back later.
21 Cf. Valerie Martin, Mary Reilly, New York 1991.

22 Cf. Alan Moore/Kevin O’Neill, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Boston
2002.
23 Conversely, one may think that Hills’s classification restricts itself by not taking
into account the whole spectrum of the operations a fiction may perform on an-
other fiction, as I have tried to do in my forthcoming De la transfictionnalité.
24 “Et lui, tout cynique qu’il fût, s’apitoyait devant ce naufrage. […] il désirait sincèr-
ement lui venir en aide, ne serait-ce qu’en souvenir des heures de plaisir qu’il lui
devait” (Cellard, Emma, oh! Emma!, p. 317).
25 This explains why many counterfictions are based on classics or are produced in
contexts such as fan communities, where even tiny modifications of a series’
events will be spotted.
Before that, a word on explicit counterfictions, which curiously enough

seem far less frequent than implicit ones. By “explicit” I mean texts that give
away the counterfictional game by openly addressing the modification they
implement on the original. This is as rare as alternate-history narratives that
tell the reader where (or rather when) they depart from known history,26 and
for a similar reason. In both cases, fiction would disclose its fictional nature,
either by stating that it feels free to reinvent history, or by admitting that it is
built on a previous fiction. Of course, metafiction has become a legitimate
strategy in our postmodernist times. So why this silence? The plausible
answer is that writers want to grant readers the pleasure of discovering by
themselves the alteration; the content matter of the narrative should be
enough to notice it, provided that the modification relates to a sufficiently
known historical or novelistic episode. We must remember, though, that this
notoriety depends on several factors and may vary accordingly. As a French-
speaking reader, I may be more familiar with Madame Bovary’s intricacies
than with, say, Wilhelm Meister’s. Counterfictionality, or rather, the question
of whether readers will notice it, is always to some extent a bet. Explicit-
ness about the antecedent is one way of avoiding the risk of non-recognition.
Authors have various options of framing explicit counterfictionality in a way
that avoids the problem of foregrounding the fictionality of their own texts.
The first of these is to tone down metafictionality. This may be done by
suggesting that the new version deviates not from the fiction as such (the
novel, short story, and so on), but from a previous version of what happened
related in that fiction. Take, for instance, Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Empty
House”.27 In this famous Sherlock Holmes story, Conan Doyle’s task was
twofold: to “resurrect” his hero (which he had killed off ten years before in
“The Final Problem”) and to provide an explanation for this rewriting of his
character’s fate.28 He did this, not by saying that he had changed his mind
about his fictional creation – which was indeed the case –, but by having
Holmes explain to a bemused Watson that he had misled him into believing
that he, Holmes, had died in his fight with Professor Moriarty. Here, the re-
26 One of the very few examples I know of is Charles Renouvier’s Uchronie, first pub-
lished in 1857 (cf. Renouvier, Uchronie, Paris 1988, p. 110: “Avec cette lettre, prob-
ablement apocryphe, nous entrons dans le roman de l’Uchronie, pour ne plus le
quitter. L’auteur appelle à de grandes destinées cet Avidius Cassius, que l’histoire
nous apprend avoir été assassiné dans son armée.”).
27 Cf. Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Empty House”, in: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete
Novels and Stories, Vol. 1, New York 1986, pp. 663–682.
28 Cf. Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Final Problem”, in: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete
Novels and Stories, Vol. 1, New York 1986, pp. 642–659.
writing of fiction is described as resulting from the diegesis itself, and

not some extradiegetic, authorial, intervention. Watson, the narrator of the
Holmes stories, had it wrong in “The Final Problem”; the “truth” is “re-
vealed” from within fiction, from the character himself. The previous ver-
sion is dispelled as an illusion, a misunderstanding, etc. We see a similar de-
vice in Cosette, François Cérésa’s sequel to Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, in
which he manages to bring Javert back from the dead.29 As in “The Empty
House”, the sequel “erases” the previous state of affairs by stating that the
character only seemed dead and after his rescue had good reasons not to re-
veal his survival.30 The previous text is reframed, but in a way that avoids
stressing its fictionality.
Another strategy insists, on the contrary, on the metafictional aspect of
counterfictionality, on its ability to flaunt the mutability of fictional nar-
ratives. Fictions are made of words (or visual signs, etc.); other words can al-
ways remake them. Narratives such as “The Empty House” exploit this se-
miotic dependency of fiction without recognizing it: the fictionality of the
former version is glossed over by a tale of misperceptions finally corrected.
The type of counterfictions that I now want to consider emphasizes fic-
tionality by an insistence on the rewriting process. A spectacular example of
this appears in Jasper Fforde’s first novel, The Eyre Affair.31 A slightly mad
scientist has invented a device called the Prose Portal that enables him to
physically enter the world of any novel, drama, or poem. But a gang of crimi-
nals steal the device and use it to kidnap Jane Eyre, whom they threaten to
kill if a ransom is not paid. Thursday Next, the heroine of Fforde’s novel,
succeeds in freeing Jane and bringing her back to Charlotte Brontë’s novel,
but at a price: Jane Eyre’s ending is changed. We thus have a counterfiction,
and a very explicit one at that: the modified plot is clearly the result of a med-
dling with another book’s content.32
29 François Cérésa, Cosette ou le temps des illusions, Paris 2001.

30 This process may be described through the notion of “ontological hierarchy”:
The former version (Holmes died at Reichenbach, Javert drowned himself in
the Seine) is shown not to correspond to the actual narrative world, which the
new version purports to reveal. On this notion, cf. Hilary Dannenberg, Coinci-
dence and Counterfactuality: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction, Lincoln 2008,
p. 109–132.
31 Cf. Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair, London 2001.
32 Just to make things a bit more complicated, the new ending of Jane Eyre is the one
we are familiar with – Jane and Rochester get married – so we understand that this
was an alternate-history world where the literary classics are not exactly the same.
Thursday Next’s blunder, then, is at the same time a counterfictional move and the
putting right of a counterfactual situation.
At this point, we may pause and ask if these alterations of previous nar-
ratives really function as counterfactuals do. An obvious difference is that
counterfictional texts do not follow the “if … then …” form. Novels that
alter previous novels do not begin with phrases like “Let us suppose that …”;
such a modal frame is implicit at best. Emma, oh! Emma!, for instance, works
like the development of a hypothesis contrary to what is established in Mad-
ame Bovary: if Rodolphe had helped Emma out of her financial quagmire, she
would not have committed suicide (and her fate would have been bleak any-
way). But this situation is not described as the result of a hypothesis. There is
no “if … then …” frame; the states of affairs narrated in Cellard’s novel are
given as facts, not suppositions. It is the reader who brackets them, by seeing
them as a conjectural reasoning based on Flaubert’s original novel. The same
may be said of counterfactual novels, which do not use the “if … then …”
frame either: here, too, it is supplied by the reader who understands that, for
instance, Bring the Jubilee posits as its actual narrative world one where Ameri-
can geopolitics, among other things, differ widely from what we know as
real. This suggests that the implicitness of such frames is a general tendency
of fiction, whether counterfictional or counterfactual. The reason for this si-
lence is simple: Fiction is based on make-believe. It does not, after the word
“novel” on the cover of the book, describe itself as fiction, or as the devel-
opment of a speculation. Neither does counterfiction, it seems. Even a meta-
fictional text such as The Eyre Affair pretends that the world of Thursday
Next is reality, as opposed to the avowed fictiveness of Jane Eyre’s world.
Theoretically, nothing prevents an author from playing an overt metafic-
tional game in a counterfiction; in fact, very few of them seem ready to do it,
maybe because they judge that one game at a time is enough.
If we want to find counterfictional utterances that share the explicitness
of the frames used in counterfactuals, we have to turn to the critical dis-
course, to texts that interpret other texts, an operation which naturally leads
to the recognition of the commented text’s existence. Being situated outside
fiction, a critical text treats fictional states of affairs as the fictions they are.
This normally rules out any intervention in the commented text’s diegesis:
Critical discourse is expected to offer interpretations, not rewritings. Some
commentaries, though, explore the virtual paths the plot of a novel could
have taken. A remarkable example is Valincour’s Lettres sur la Princesse de
Clèves, first published in 1678.33 This essay has recently been hailed as an
early example of the formalist study of fiction, as well as of creative criticism.
33 Cf. Jean-Baptiste Henry du Trousset de Valincour, Lettres à Madame la Marquise ***

sur le sujet de la Princesse de Clèves, Paris 2001.
Examining the articulations of the plot of Madame de la Fayette’s La Princesse

de Clèves, Valincour attempts to show that the story would have been more
plausible, had some (minor) circumstances been different. This is, clearly,
counterfictional criticism, offering alternative scenarios to Madame de Clèves.
Valincour’s critique is interventionist; he intends to mend some narrative
flaws in the novel he comments. For instance, a scene in the novel shows
Monsieur de Clèves overhearing a conversation between his wife and her
would-be lover Monsieur de Nemours; granted, says Valincour, but why did
the author devise a complicated series of events in order for this to happen
in such a distant location as a country cottage? This would have been more
plausible had the scene taken place at the Clèves’ hotel, where Nemours was
a regular visitor. This is a typical move by Valincour, who does not endeavor
to change the original outcomes of the episodes, but to imagine less debat-
able ways of reaching them. Interventionist though it is, his essay retains the
external stance of critical discourse: All of Valincour’s proposals are prefixed
with clauses such as “Plausibility would have been less stretched if the author
had imagined instead that …”. These are bona fide counterfactuals, open to
discussion about their truth value.
A much more spectacular kind of counterfictional criticism is offered by
Pierre Bayard in Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, a book-length essay about one of
Agatha Christie’s most famous detective novels, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.34
What is spectacular here is that this essay aims to refute the novel it com-
ments. Bayard’s thesis is that the solution of this mystery, as expounded by
the detective Poirot, is wrong: It does not take into account important clues,
and jumps to conclusions more than once. So Bayard reopens the case. First,
he shows the flaws in Poirot’s reasoning – this is the analytical part of his
book. Second, he does something much more provoking: He puts forward
his own solution, implicating another culprit. What distinguishes this from
Valincour’s essay is that in Bayard’s case the new state of affairs is given as
what really happened in the story. Valincour only suggested a possible rewriting
of the plot; his essays make it clear that these suggestions would lead to a fic-
tional world differing (however slightly) from the one constructed in La Prin-
cesse de Clèves. Bayard goes as far as to state that Christie’s novel does not ac-
curately represent the fictional truth, and that it gives enough evidence to
support its own contestation. Instead of delineating an alternative fictional
world, as Valincour did, Bayard’s book purports to give an alternative ac-
count of the world where Poirot tried to solve the Ackroyd case, and of what
exactly happened in it. Such a stance challenges the way we envision inter-
34 Cf. Pierre Bayard, Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, London 2000.

pretation, which here is not limited to the investigation of meaning, as we ex-

pect it to be, but is turned into an active participation in the construction of
fiction.35
As we see, counterfictionality may take many forms and establish differ-
ent relationships with the original plot. On the level of content, the descrip-
tion of an alternative course of events is a constant. It is on the level of fram-
ing devices that striking differences appear. Some counterfictional texts
present themselves as revelations (e.g., “The Empty House” or Cosette),
others as intrusions (as in The Eyre Affair) or as speculations about what
has really taken place (as in Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?). Some counterfictions
frame their interventions in order to circumscribe them carefully. Valincour,
for instance, does not embark on a full-fledged rewriting of the plot but
limits his alterations to narrative segments lacking in verisimilitude. Other
counterfictional texts offer no clear frame, and thus remain silent about their
precise relationship with the original. They run parallel to it, as Emma, oh!
Emma! does with respect to Madame Bovary, leaving it to the reader to recon-
struct them as speculations about possible fates of the characters.
Whether all these things are done seriously or not, in the pragmatic sense
of the word, is another question, and not an easy one to answer.36 Ordinary
counterfactual sentences do make statements: Somebody who claims that
the election of Al Gore as American President in 2000 would have prevented
the second Gulf War is not indulging in make-believe but states a proposi-
tion that can be debated. What about counterfictionals, then? The fact that
they are based on fictions does not beg the question, for it is possible to pro-
duce serious utterances about fictions. For instance, I may say seriously, but
falsely, that Sherlock Holmes never accepts money from his clients. Truth
values may also be attributed to framed counterfictionals: I can launch a de-
bate among Sherlockians by affirming that, had Sherlock Holmes never ac-
35 Another instance of interventionist criticism is the series of essays published in

the late 1990s by John Sutherland (cf. Sutherland, Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Great
Puzzles in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Oxford 1996; Sutherland, Can Jane Eyre Be
Happy? More Puzzles in Classic Fiction, Oxford 1997) in which he investigates several
“puzzles” in nineteenth-century English novels and offers some speculative sol-
utions. But these are not counterfictional: They add hypothetical explanations in-
stead of modifying the plots for the sake of verisimilitude or coherence, as Valin-
cour and Bayard do.
36 For Searle, a serious utterance is governed by rules ensuring that its speaker com-
mits himself or herself to the truth of the proposition it expresses. Searle explicitly
states that fiction, being a simulation of such utterances, frees its writer from this
commitment (cf. John Searle, “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse”, New
Literary History, 6/1973, pp. 319–332).
cepted money from his clients, he would still have been able to pay his part of
the rent for the flat on 221B Baker Street. Things are not so clear when
we consider unframed counterfictions produced in a fictional context. It is
counterintuitive to disqualify as “wrong” or “false” a novel in which Emma
Bovary does not commit suicide. A critic may deem it a bad aesthetical
choice, but this is a completely different matter. Novelistic counterfictions,
after all, are fictions and, as such, supposed to escape truth judgments. It
would be nice if we could stick to this simple axiom. I am afraid, though, that
the problem is a bit more complicated.
There are counterfictions such as Emma, oh! Emma! which read as fictions
upon previous fictions, as playful variations on the fate of the characters.
Other counterfictions stand at the same level as the fictions they revise.
Conan Doyle’s “The Empty House” or François Cérésa’s Cosette are not to be
read as musings about “The Final Problem” or Les Misérables, but as rectifi-
cations of those narratives’ so-called inaccuracies. Does this expose them to
truth judgments? I do not think so. Readers will form opinions about such
operations. But these opinions will probably depend more on the author’s
identity than on the content of the texts. A counterfiction written by the
original author revisiting his or her previous fiction will be received more
favorably than the same operation performed by another author. Conan
Doyle’s resurrection of his hero is seen as a legitimate prerogative of a cre-
ator, whereas François Cérésa’s resurrection of Victor Hugo’s character has
been described by some as a betrayal of the latter’s intentions. In our culture,
the original author is granted a privileged relationship with “his” or “her”
fiction that enables him or her to claim knowledge about parts of the fic-
tional world outside the scope of the narrative.37 Hence the difficulties we
face when we try to evaluate counterfictionals, since this entails institutional
factors (e.g., the status and identity of the author) as much as internal, tex-
tual, ones.
Critical discourse, exemplified by the essays of Valincour and Bayard,
presents yet another set of problems. Critical discourse, by definition, is out-
side of fiction: It makes serious statements about fictions. This is clearly
the case when Valincour suggests possible amendments of Madame de la
Fayette’s novel. But what about Bayard’s new solution to The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd? His tongue-in-cheek tone makes it difficult to decide whether this
is to be read as an effort to solve the mystery, to be taken seriously, or as a
sophisticated literary joke. Maybe this uncertainty is precisely the point of
37 But even this may be contended, as has been shown by the controversy surround-
ing J. K. Rowling’s post facto “revelation” about Dumbledore’s homosexuality.
the essay: to show the indeterminacy of fiction, but also its pervasiveness, its
propensity to invade unexpected fields, including criticism. Bayard describes
his book as “a detective novel about a detective novel”. His rewriting of The
Murder of Roger Ackroyd is at the same time an essay and a fiction, the result of
a thorough investigation and an exercise in critical ingenuity – an ingenuity
bordering on imagination.
One last word: why? Why alter previous (and often prestigious) fictions?
This clearly looks like an instance of our postmodernist age’s tendency to
build works of art upon works of art, texts upon texts, fictions upon fictions.
But the phenomenon of counterfictionality is anything but new. Valincour
published his essay in 1748. In 1749 Nahum Tate published a version of King
Lear which, among other revisions, provided the characters with a happy
ending: Cordelia does not die but marries Edgar, and Lear regains his
throne.38 Specialists agree, though, that this bold move was complying with
the eighteenth-century readers’ desire to “correct” the original’s bleak dénoue-
ment. Recent counterfictions exhibit a more playful attitude to the narratives
they modify. The alterations they perform are less governed by ideological or
moral imperatives such as the desire to reconcile a narrative with a current
set of values. Rather, they aim to stress the indefinite malleability of fiction,
what we may call its “rewriteability”. The recent additions to the Jane Austen
canon I have mentioned earlier tend to confirm this. Grahame-Smith’s Pride
and Prejudice and Zombies stretches the capacity of a narrative to incorporate
elements alien to its storyworld’s tacit rules; modifying the story, here, entails
a radical transformation of the world – the set of constraints governing what
is possible or not in the fiction – in which events take place.39 Campbell
Webster’s Lost in Austen maintains the original world-rules, but moves to-
wards the exhaustion of the narrative possibilities they open. Her book does
not offer a story but an arborescence of stories, the one told in Pride and
Prejudice being just one among several – one, moreover, that the curious
reader will probably neglect in favor of more disastrous (but much more
amusing) paths.
This suggests two lines of divergence between past and recent counterfic-
tions. The first line divides normative and anti-normative contexts and prac-
tices, but it may also provide a tentative explanation of the uneven distribu-
tion of counterfictionality in history: Paradoxically, both strongly normative
38 Cf. Thomas Pavel, Fictional Worlds, Cambridge 1988, p. 34.

39 For a theoretical formulation of these rules, cf. Lubomír Doležel, Heterocosmica,
Fiction and Possible Worlds, Baltimore 1998, especially ch. 5, which deals with alethic
macro-constraints.
(as the 17th century in France) and strongly anti-normative periods seem fa-
vorable to counterfictional rewriting, although in sharply different forms,
whereas more indifferent contexts seem to be less propitious. The second
distinction concerns the relationship between counterfactuality and the idea
of fictituous worlds. It is probably more blurred, if only because it is much
less conspicuous than normative considerations. But I would submit that
recent counterfictions show a playful attitude not only towards stories, i.e.
characters and their fates, as previous counterfictions already did, but also
towards the world the original author had outlined around them. Worlds, in
this context, are treated less as given than as objects of ludic writing prac-
tices.
But these remain hypotheses, to be verified, revised, or qualified through
a more extensive study. What remains certain, though, is that counterfic-
tionality takes advantage of what we already knew, but forgot in our fasci-
nation with the apparent reality of fictional lives and settings – that fiction,
being made of words, can always be made again and again by other words.
List of Contributors 253
List of Contributors
Andrea Albrecht, Emmy Noether Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for

Advanced Studies (FRIAS ) and at the German Department, Albert-Lud-
wigs-Universität Freiburg. Research interests: literature & science studies,
cultural theory, classical modernism, political discourses in literary contexts
of the 18th century, contemporary literature. Recent publications: Kosmo-
politismus. Weltbürgerdiskurse in Literatur, Philosophie und Publizistik um 1800,
Berlin 2005; “Mathematisches Wissen und historisches Erzählen: Michael
Köhlmeiers Roman Abendland”, in: Gegenwartsliteratur. Ein germanistisches Jahr-
buch (2009); “‘Konstellationen’. Zur kulturwissenschaftlichen Karriere eines
astrologisch-astronomischen Konzepts bei Heinrich Rickert, Max Weber,
Alfred Weber und Karl Mannheim”, in: Scientia Poetica (2010).
Georg Christoph Berger Waldenegg, apl. Professor at the Depart-

ment of History, University of Heidelberg. Research interests: history of
Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy from 1850 to 1945, anti-Semitism, the-
ory of history. Recent publications: Führer der extremen Rechten. Das schwierige
Verhältnis der Nachkriegsgeschichtsschreibung zu ‘grossen Männern’ der eigenen Ver-
gangenheit (2006; ed. with Francisca Loetz); Antisemitismus: Eine gefährliche
Vokabel? Diagnose eines Wortes (2003); “Vaterländisches Gemeingefühl und
nationale Charaktere. Die kaiserliche Regierung im Neoabsolutismus und
die Erfindung einer Nationalgeschichte”, in: Nationalgeschichte als Artefakt.
Zum Paradigma “Nationalstaat” in den Historiographien Deutschlands, Italiens und
Österreichs, ed. by Hans-Peter Hye, Brigitte Mazohl and Jan P. Niederkorn
(2009).
Dorothee Birke, Junior Research Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for

Advanced Studies (FRIAS ). Research interests: narratology, history of the
novel, reception studies, contemporary British literature and film. Recent
publications: Memory’s Fragile Power: Crises of Memory, Identity and Narrative
in Contemporary British Novels (2008); “Zur Rezeption und Funktion von
‘Typen’: Figurenkonzeption bei Charles Dickens”, in: Figurenwissen, ed. by
Lilith Jappe, Olav Krämer, and Fabian Lampart (2011); “Challenging the
Divide: Stephen King and the Problem of ‘Popular Culture’”, in: Journal of
Popular Culture (accepted for publication).
254 List of Contributors
Michael Butter, Junior Research Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Ad-
vanced Studies (FRIAS ). Research interests: American literature and culture,
popular culture, conspiracy theories. Recent publications: The Epitome of Evil:
Hitler in American Fiction (2009); Arnold Schwarzenegger: Interdisciplinary Perspec-
tives on Body and Image (2011; ed. with Patrick Keller and Simon Wendt); 9/11:
Kein Tag, der die Welt veränderte (2011; ed. with Birte Christ and Patrick Keller).
Patrizia Catellani, Professor of Social Psychology of Politics and Psy-

chology of Communication at the Catholic University of Milan. Research
interests: counterfactual thinking, political communication. Recent publi-
cations: The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking (2005; ed. with David Mandel
and Denis Hilton); “Fatti e controfatti nel ragionamento giudiziario”, in: Sis-
temi Intelligenti (2010); Psicologia della politica (2011; ed. with Gilda Sensales).
Birte Christ, Assistant Professor at the English Department, Justus-

Liebig-Universität Gießen. Research interests: American literature and cul-
ture, narratology, feminist and gender theory, middlebrow literature, law and
literature. Recent publications: American Studies/Shifting Gears (2010; ed.
with Christian Kloeckner, Elisabeth Schäfer-Wünsche and Michael Butter);
“More Trouble with Diversity: Re-Dressing Poverty, Masking Class in
Middlebrow Success Fiction”, in: Amerikastudien/American Studies (2010);
9/11: Kein Tag, der die Welt veränderte (2011; ed. with Michael Butter and Pa-
trick Keller).
Lutz Danneberg, Professor for Methodology and History of Herme-

neutics at Humboldt University, Berlin. Research interests: hermeneutics,
history of hermeneutics and of science. Recent publications: Die Anatomie
des Text-Körpers und Natur-Körpers: das Lesen im liber naturalis und supernatu-
ralis (2003); Begriffe, Metaphern und Imaginationen in Philosophie und Wissenschafts-
geschichte (2009; ed. with Carlos Spoerhase and Dirk Werle).
Daniel Dohrn, Research Fellow in Philosophy at Rheinisch-Westfälische

Technische Hochschule Aachen. Research interests: conditionals, counter-
factuals, modal thinking. Recent Publications: “Are there a posteriori con-
ceptual necessities?”, in: Philosophical Studies (forthcoming); “Hume on
Knowledge of Metaphysical Modalities”, in: Logical Analysis and History of
Philosophy (2010); “Counterfactual Narrative Explanation”, in: The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism (2009).
List of Contributors 255
Miko Elwenspoek, Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering,

University of Twente, Simon Stevin Master of the Dutch Technology Foun-
dation, and fellow of the Institute of Physics of IEEE and of the Freiburg
Institute for Advanced Studies. Research interests: liquids, nuclear physics,
light scattering, biophysics, crystal growth, microelectromechanical systems.
Recent publications: “Long-time data storage: relevant time scales”, in: Chal-
lenges (2011); “Capillary Negative Pressure Measured by Nanochannel Col-
lapse”, in: Langmuir (2010; with Niels R. Tas, Maryana Escalante, Joost W.
van Honschoten and Henri V. Jansen); “Self-assembly of (sub-)micron par-
ticles into supermaterials”, in: Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering
(2010; with Leon Abelmann, Erwin Berenschot, Joost W. van Honschoten,
Henri V. Jansen and Niels Tas).
Rüdiger Heinze, Professor at the English Department of the Technical

University Brunswick. Research interests: migration literatures, narratology,
ethical criticism. Recent publications: Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narra-
tology (2011; ed. with Jan Alber); Herausforderung Biologie (2010; ed. with Ker-
stin Müller and Johannes Fehrle); “Pioneering Outsiders: Latter-day Saints
and the American West”, in: Religion in the United States (2011).
Martin Hilpert, Junior Research Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Ad-
vanced Studies (FRIAS ). Research interests: cognitive linguistics, grammar,
language variation and change, linguistic methodology. Recent publication:
Germanic Future Constructions – A usage-based approach to language change (2008).
Tobias Klauk, Assistant Professor at the Courant Research Centre

“Text Structures”, University of Göttingen. Research interests: aesthetics,
epistemology, philosophy of science. Recent publications: Literatur und
Möglichkeiten“, in: Scientia Poetica (2010; with Tilmann Köppe); ”Wahrheit
und Erklärung – Eine trügerische Intuition“, in: Wahrheit – Bedeutung –
Existenz, ed. by Martin Grajner and Adolf Rami (2010); ”Can Unreliable
Narration Be Analyzed in Terms of Testimony?“, in: Journal of Literary Theory
(2011).
Bernhard Kleeberg, Professor for the History of the Humanities and

Social Sciences, Konstanz University. Research interests: history of sociol-
ogy, economics, biology and anthropology, 18th to 20th centuries. Recent
publications: “Gewinn maximieren, Gleichgewicht modellieren. Erzählen
im ökonomischen Diskurs”, in: Wirklichkeitserzählungen, ed. by Christian
Klein, Matías Martínez (2009); Knowing God, Believing Nature. Special Issue of
256 List of Contributors
Science in Context (2007; ed. with Fernando Vidal); Theophysis. Ernst Haeckels
Philosophie des Naturganzen (2005).
Tilmann Köppe, Professor at the Courant Research Centre “Text Struc-

tures”, University of Göttingen. Research interests: literary theory, narratol-
ogy, aesthetics. Recent publications: Literatur und Wissen (2011; ed.); Unre-
liable Narration (2011; ed. with Tom Kindt).
Richard Ned Lebow, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Gov-

ernment Emeritus at Dartmouth College. Research interests: international
relations, political psychology, counterfactual thinking. Recent publications:
A Cultural Theory of International Relations (2008); Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals
and International Relations (2010); In Search of Ourselves: The Politics and Ethics of
Identity (forthcoming).
Richard Saint-Gelais, Full Professor at the Département des Littéra-

tures, Université Laval (Québec). Research interests: theory of fiction, detec-
tive novel, French New Novel. Recent publications: “Le monde des théories
possibles”, in: La théorie littéraire des mondes possibles, ed. by Françoise Lavocat
(2010); Fictions transfuges: la transfictionnalité et ses enjeux (2011).
Robyn Warhol, Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English

and Director of Project Narrative at Ohio State University. Research in-
terests: narratology, feminist criticism. Recent publications: Gendered Inter-
ventions: Narrative Discourse in the Victorian Novel (1989); Having a Good Cry:
Effeminate Feelings and Pop-Culture Forms (2003); Feminisms Redux (2009; ed.
with Diane Price Herndl).
Andreas Martin Widmann, Copywriter, critic and novelist. Research

interests: contemporary literature, contemporary literary criticism. Recent
publications: Kontrafaktische Geschichtsdarstellung (2009); Odysseus/Passagiere.
Über Selbstbestimmung und Determination in Literatur, Medien und Alltag (2011; ed.
with Ulrike Weymann and Simone Schröder); Die Glücksparade (2012).

Counterfactual Thinking, Counterfactual Writing (PDFDrive)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Counterfactual Thinking, Counterfactual Writing (PDFDrive)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Counterfactual Thinking, Counterfactual Writing (PDFDrive)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Counterfactual Thinking - Counterfactual Writing

linguae & litterae 12

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

쑔 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

Dorothee Birke/Michael Butter/Tilmann Köppe

Andrea Albrecht/Lutz Danneberg

Georg Christoph Berger Waldenegg

Richard Ned Lebow

Andreas Martin Widmann

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253

Michael Butter, Dorothee Birke (Freiburg), and Tilmann Köppe (Göttingen)

Introduction: England Win

4 Neal Roese/Mike Morrison, “The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking”, in:

We have begun with an example that illustrates what psychologists have

7 Cf. Roland Wenzlhuemer, “Editorial: Unpredictability, Contingency and Counter-

factuals constitute an object of study, and disciplines such as historiography

In arranging the articles in this volume, we opted for a roughly discipli-

does Ahab chase Moby Dick?”) in ways analogous to our explanations of

search, cognitive linguistics, is one of the most important branches of con-

After proposing a preliminary typology of the counterfactuals discernible

Andrea Albrecht (Freiburg) and Lutz Danneberg (Berlin)

First Steps Toward an Explication

I. What Is a Counterfactual Imagination?

i.e. mental arrangements that, according to the classical definition of Albert

experimente?”, in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 106/1999, pp. 357–378; Richard Arthur,

imagination must determine a condition of adequacy which addresses its

of being obviously false, they are claimed to perform a cognitive function

9 Cf. Lutz Danneberg, “Kontrafaktische Imaginationen in der Hermeneutik und in

It is obvious that counterfactual imaginations can have different functions

ments – from hypothesis generation to hypothesis testing, from historical under-

II. Counterfactual Imaginations in Relation to Neighboring Notions

The adequacy condition that a counterfactual imagination must be obviously

when counterfactual imaginations are treated as metaphorical speech, they

idealizations usually means establishing their relations to scientific assertions

tion of irrelevance. This distinguishes modeling from counterfactual imagin-

III. Two Examples

After these first steps toward an explication of counterfactual imaginations,

28 Mill, “On the Definition”, p. 321.

34 Friedrich von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft, Jena 1931, vol. 1,

40 Friedrich H. Tenbruck, Die unbewältigten Sozialwissenschaften oder Die Abschaffung des

A contribution written in exile in 1937–38 by Ferdinand Lion (1883–1963)

43 Julius Petersen, “Goetheverehrung in fünf Jahrzehnten: Ansprache zur Feier des

mentary matters”, “Social matters”, “German History” – containing, among

Tobias Klauk (Göttingen)

Thought Experiments and Literature

using a counterfactual conditional, we utter, or think, or rely on a sentence

2 David Crystal, By Hook or by Crook: A Journey in Search of English, London 2008,

To imagine a scenario at the least means to describe the scenario consist-

4 In fact, it need not be the judgement that is used in a subsequent argumentation.

II. Finding the Three Steps in the Case of Literature

Let us now take a look at fictional literature. If it is true that we conduct

justify giving up on (LT ) already. Firstly, something like polyvalence can be

6 David Lewis, “Postscripts to ‘Truth in Fiction’”, in: Philosophical Papers I, Oxford

III. Learning from Step (A):

7 Lewis, “Postscripts”, p. 278.

8 The passage can be found in Descartes’s Meditations (René Descartes, Oeuvres de

possible, as far as the description goes.9 A scenario might turn out to be