Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T03:44:49.274Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Is the Contingentist/Inevitabilist Debate a Matter of Degrees?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Joseph D. Martin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The contingentist/inevitabilist debate contests whether the results of successful science are contingent or inevitable. This article addresses lingering ambiguity in the way contingency is defined in this debate. I argue that contingency in science can be understood as a collection of distinct concepts, distinguished by how they hold science contingent, by what elements of science they hold contingent, and by what those elements are contingent upon. I present a preliminary taxonomy designed to characterize the full-range positions available and illustrate that these constitute a diverse array rather than a spectrum.

Type
General Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 2013 , pp. 919 - 930
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

The author thanks Ken Waters, Alan Love, Michel Janssen, and Margaret Charleroy, who all provided keen commentary on earlier versions of this article.

References

Beatty, John. 2006. “Replaying Life’s Tape.” Journal of Philosophy 103:336–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cushing, James. 1994. Quantum Mechanics: Historical Contingency and the Copenhagen Hegemony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Forman, Paul. 1971. “Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Environment.” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3:1–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, Peter. 1987. How Experiments End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gould, Steven J. 1989. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Gould, Steven J., and Lewontin, Richard. 1979. “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptionist Programme.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 205:581–98.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1999. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian 2000. “How Inevitable Are the Results of Successful Science?” Philosophy of Science 67:58–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler, Robert. 1994. Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pickering, Andrew. 1984. Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pickering, Andrew 1995. The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sankey, Howard. 2008. “Scientific Realism and the Inevitability of Science.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 39:259–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soler, Léna. 2008a. “Are the Results of Our Science Contingent or Inevitable?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 39:221–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soler, Léna 2008b. “Revealing the Analytical Structure and Some Intrinsic Major Difficulties of the Contingentist/Inevitabilist Issue.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 39:230–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar