IF: COUNTERFACTUAL AND CONDITIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

Conditionals are a feature of historiography. Despite this, historiographical research is focused predominantly on one kind of conditional, counterfactuals. New trans‐Atlantic contributions to this research by Catherine Gallagher and Richard J. Evans highlight the rich history of counterfactuals in Western thought, and their use by individuals and groups to imagine a present and a future that addresses regrets about the present. Their intimation of a flattening out of history through counterfactual nostalgia is not supported by the artistic expression of Tacita Dean, and new contributions to the philosophy of conditionals, building relations, and causal relations by Karen Bennett and Anthony Kwame Appiah. This review teases out the layered, causally tainted, and metaphysically agnostic world posited by Karen Bennett and conjoins it with David Lewis's reflections on possible worlds to suggest that conditional and counterfactual operators in historiography are building restrictors. This takes us away from Niall Ferguson's argument for the use of counterfactuals as a recognition of the underdetermination of history, and reminds us of the need to—as Appiah argues so succinctly—understand the pervasive role that idealizations play in helping us to manage the world and ourselves. The review rounds out by highlighting the computational implications of our conditional world, inviting historians to be at the table as fairness is debated and coded. In this way, the gap in research on the ethical need for historiographical conditionals in the twenty‐first century is highlighted.     

Beyond Ideology: Epistemological Foundations of Vladimir Fock's approach to Quantum Theory

Vladimir Fock was a Soviet theoretical physicist who, from the 1930s, worked to prove that modern physics was compatible with the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism. In 1957, he went to Copenhagen, and a dispute over the interpretation of quantum mechanics began with Niels Bohr. Fock later claimed that he had found points of convergence with his Danish colleague, most of them concerning issues of wording and recognition of the reality of the world independently of our mind. It led to a specific narrative among historians of physics on Fock and his interpretation of quantum mechanics: The Soviet physicist is often described as a member of the Copenhagen school that contributed to the rapprochement of the Soviet philosophy of physics with the ideas of complementarity in stripping away the positivism in its formulation. Our contribution aims to show that this ideological dimension was only one aspect of reality. Returning to the foundations of Fock's epistemology of physics, we argue that he relied on the principles of antireductionism and scientific realism to develop an interpretation of the theory that sought to overcome Bohr's approach and that the differences between the two men cannot be reduced to mere questions of formulation.     

A new Gaullist moment? European bandwagoning and international polarity

The transatlantic partnership needs to be reassessed. Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has chosen to bandwagon with the United States and to outsource its security to Washington. Bandwagoning has serious consequences when the use of force is at stake: it may lead to entrapment, where weaker allies may be involuntarily dragged into a conflict. It may also lead to abandonment, where the dominant ally may choose to discard their vital security concerns. With the evolution of the international system towards a multipolar configuration, this strategy of bandwagoning is becoming increasingly costly for Europe while the dominant power, the United States, is progressively confronted by other competitors at the systemic level. These classic dilemmas attached to an asymmetric partnership are exacerbated in a multipolar configuration. In particular, the abandonment scenario may become more and more frequent precisely because there is competition—and thus potential costs—at the international level: the United States may leave Europe alone, not by choice but by necessity. The current crisis in Ukraine illustrates this shift: while some American leaders were keen to escalate the conflict by arming Ukraine, the Obama administration's commitment to the defence of Europe has been minimal and it has largely delegated the management of the crisis to the Europeans themselves. Washington had other and more important priorities. Strategic autonomy is not an option for Europe; it has become a reality, a Gaullist moment where Europeans will have to learn to think and act strategically for themselves.     

RHX Dating: measurement of the Activation Energy of Rehydroxylation for Fired‐Clay Ceramics

In rehydroxylation (RHX) dating, the activation energy of the rehydroxylation reaction is required first in the estimate of a material's effective lifetime temperature (ELT), and second to correct the RHX rate constant obtained at a given measurement temperature to that at the ELT. Measurement of the activation energy is thus integral to the RHX methodology. In this paper, we report a temperature‐step method for the measurement of activation energy and develop fully the underlying theoretical basis. In contrast to obtaining the activation energy from a series of separate experiments (each of which requires the sample to be dehydroxylated prior to measuring the RHX rate constant), the temperature‐step method not only requires a single dehydroxylation at 500°C but also eliminates repeated acquisition of Stage I data, which are not required for dating purposes. Since the first temperature step is set to correspond to the temperature at which a dating determination is carried out, the measurement of rate constants at higher temperatures simply becomes an extension of dating. Consequently, the logistics of obtaining the activation energy of rehydroxylation are greatly simplified.     

A Preliminary Study on the Loss of Iron and Arsenic in the Re‐Melting of Iron‐Bearing Arsenical Copper

Re‐melting experiments were conducted with specimens made of high‐arsenic copper alloys containing lead, iron and sulphur. The melting treatment at 1000°C in ambient conditions for 5 min was found to cause an almost complete removal of iron and sulphur along with a notable reduction of arsenic levels. Evidence was found that the preferential oxidation of iron and arsenic was responsible for this change in composition. The treatment also brought about perfect dissolution of speiss particles scattered throughout the original specimen, suggesting the possibility of the addition of speiss to molten copper for the production of arsenical copper.