Motives and merits of counterfactual histories of science

A preprint of my new article is here. The published version is in Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2018.11.001. A free entry for 50 days (from 16.02.2019) onward is here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1YaC34tTwyIZAH.

In the article, I propose a simple way for distinguishing construed from genuine contingencies—the so-called temponaut's test. Suppose the historian in question travelles back in time and, inadvertently, puts his counterfactual history into action. Here's an illustration (that is not in the published article) of the temponaut's test applied to a construed contingency. 😜