Absent Archimedes – what

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11935596
AutoresIvan Morris (0000-0003-3743-7727, Stanford University, autor de correspondencia), Ian Morris (Stanford University)
Año2022
Volumen47
Número3-4
Páginas440-448
Fecha de publicación2022-10-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInterdisciplinary Science Reviews (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0308-0188 • E-ISSN: 1743-2790
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03080188.2022.2124347
OpenAlexW4312750413
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas10

Reviel Netz offers a radically contingent counterfactual history in which the absence of Archimedes would have prevented early modern Europe's scientific revolution and perhaps the nineteenth-century industrial revolution too. I argue that we need to be more explicit about methods in counterfactual arguments. Techniques developed by economic historians and political scientists seem to point toward a more constrained range of possibilities, and also favor assigning more importance to external material forces. Absent Archimedes, I suggest, we would live in a different world from this one, but not very different

Counterfactual thinking · Economics · Epistemology · Industrial Revolution · Point (geometry · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Scientific revolution · Economic Theory and Institutions · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science