The Importance of Counterfactuals in History

E.H. Carr, one of the most famous historians of the 20th century, said counterfactuals were a pestilence. Robert Fogle approached it more like a scientist, and he quite correctly recognized that if you want to draw causal inferences from any historical sequence, you have to make assumptions about what would have happened If the hypothesized cause had taken on a different value. John Avlon: There's this very interesting tension between people who are more open or less open to thinking aboutcounterfactuals.Avlon: It doesn't mean things are hopeless, but there are some really deep difficulties we need to wrestle with.