3 ms·
It's meaningless to compare with the status quo ante, because you want to investigate the effects of a single change (the stirrup is adopted in Europe) and not
by tlb 8y ago
It's meaningless to compare with the status quo ante, because you want to investigate the effects of a single change (the stirrup is adopted in Europe) and not freeze everything else in the world. Otherwise, the answer to "what if the stirrup hadn't made it to Europe" would be "it's still the early middle ages". The stirrup hypothesis is a statement comparing our world to a world without stirrups, but still with all the later inventions.
- mannykannot 8y agoBy your approach to methodology, it would be impossible to meaningfully investigate the question of whether the European discovery of the Americas changed the world in any way.
- tlb 8y agoYes, because I think that is impossible to meaningfully investigate. You'd have to go through some mental gymnastics to explain how, in the counterfactual situation, it remains undiscovered through the age of jet airplanes and satellites.
- mannykannot 8y agoSo, to be clear, your position is that no argument can be made that anything changed as a consequence of the European discovery of the Americas, because there is no plausible scenario in which Europe never learns of the existence of America? This seems to insist on an an unnecessarily broad counterfactual, if we cannot say, for example, that the cultivation of potatoes in Europe began as a consequence of the European discovery of America.