State of the field: Are the results of science contingent or inevitable? |
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| Authors: | Katherina Kinzel |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Urology, Mercy University Hospital, Cork, Ireland;2. Department of Oncology, Mercy University Hospital, Cork, Ireland;3. Department of Pathology, Cork University Hospital, Cork, Ireland;1. Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, H3A 2B4 Montréal, QC, Canada;2. Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, H3A 2B4 Montréal, QC, Canada;3. Department of Physiology, McGill University, H3A 2B4 Montréal, QC, Canada;1. Department of Biomaterials, School of Dentistry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece;2. Dental Biomaterials Research and Development Chair, Saudi Arabia;3. Prosthetic Dental Sciences Department, College of Dentistry, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia;4. Biomaterials Unit, School of Dentistry, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK;1. Wide Bandgap Semiconductor Technology Disciplines State Key Laboratory, School of Microelectronics, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China;2. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 2R8, Canada;3. School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China |
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| Abstract: | This paper presents a survey of the literature on the problem of contingency in science. The survey is structured around three challenges faced by current attempts at understanding the conflict between “contingentist” and “inevitabilist” interpretations of scientific knowledge and practice. First, the challenge of definition: it proves hard to define the positions that are at stake in a way that is both conceptually rigorous and does justice to the plethora of views on the issue. Second, the challenge of distinction: some features of the debate suggest that the contingency issue may not be sufficiently distinct from other philosophical debates to constitute a genuine, independent philosophical problem. And third, the challenge of decidability: it remains unclear whether and how the conflict could be settled on the basis of empirical evidence from the actual history of science. The paper argues that in order to make progress in the present debate, we need to distinguish more systematically between different expressions that claims about contingency and inevitability in science can take. To this end, it introduces a taxonomy of different contingency and inevitability claims. The taxonomy has the structure of an ordered quadruple. Each contingency and each inevitability claim contains an answer to the following four questions: (how) are alternatives to current science possible, what types of alternatives are we talking about, how should the alternatives be assessed, and how different are they from actual science? |
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| Keywords: | Contingency Inevitability Counterfactual history Social constructivism Alternative sciences |
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