Science as It Could Have Been: Discussing the Contingency/Inevitability Problem

by Lena Soler (Editor), Emiliano Trizio (Editor), Andrew Pickering (Editor)

Overview

Could all or part of our taken-as-established scientific conclusions, theories, experimental data, ontological commitments, and so forth have been significantly different? Science as It Could Have Been focuses on a crucial issue that contemporary science studies have often neglected: the issue of contingency within science. It considers a number of case studies, past and present, from a wide range of scientific disciplines—physics, biology, geology, mathematics, and psychology—to explore whether components of human science are inevitable, or if we could have developed an alternative successful science based on essentially different notions, conceptions, and results. Bringing together a group of distinguished contributors in philosophy, sociology, and history of science, this edited volume offers a comprehensive analysis of the contingency/inevitability problem and a lively and up-to-date portrait of current debates in science studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822981152
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	01/15/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	680
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Léna Soler is associate professor of philosophy of science at the University of Lorraine. She is the author of Introduction à l’épistémologie and editor of Science after the Practice Turn in the Philosophy, History, and Social Studies of Science.
Emiliano Trizio is an instructor of philosophy at Seattle University.
Andrew Pickering is professor of sociology and philosophy at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Constructing Quarks, The Mangle of Practice, and The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction. The Contingentist/Inevitabilist Debate: Current State of Play, Paradigmatic Forms of Problems and Arguments, Connections to More Familiar Philosophical Themes - Léna Soler Part I. Global Survey of the Problem Situation 1. Why Contingentists Should Not Care about the Inevitabilist Demand to “Put-Up-or-Shut-Up”: A Dialogic Reconstruction of the Argumentative Network - Léna Soler 2. Some Remarks about the Definitions of Contingentism and Inevitabilism - Catherine Allamel-Raffin and Jean-Luc Gangloff Part II. Contingency, Ontology and Realism 3. Science, Contingency, and Ontology - Andrew Pickering 4. Scientific Realism and the Contingency of the History of Science - Emiliano Trizio 5. Contingency and Inevitability in Science: Instruments, Interfaces, and the Independent World - Mieke Boon Part III. In Search of a Concrete and Empirically Tractable Way of Framing the Contingentist/Inevitabilist Issue 6. Contingency and “The Art of the Soluble” - Harry Collins 7. Contingency, Conditional Realism, and the Evolution of the Sciences - Ronald N. Giere 8. Necessity and Contingency in the Discovery of Electron Diffraction - Yves Gingras Part IV. Contingency and Mathematics 9. Contingency in Mathematics: Two Case Studies - Jean Paul Van Bendegem 10. Freedom of Framework - Jean-Michel Salanskis 11. On the Contingency of What Counts as “Mathematics” - Ian Hacking Part V. Widening the Scope of Contingentist/Inevitabilist Targets: Scientific Practices and the Methodological, Material, Tacit, and Social Dimensions of Science 12. The Science of Mind as It Could Have Been: About the Contingency of the (Quasi-) Disappearance of Introspection in Psychology - Michel Bitbol and Claire Petitmengin 13. Laws, Scientific Practice, and the Contingency/Inevitability Question - Joseph Rouse Part VI. Contingency and Scientific Pluralism 14. On the Plurality of (Theoretical) Worlds - Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond 15. Cultivating Contingency: A Case for Scientific Pluralism - Hasok Chang Notes Bibliography Contributors Index

Editorial Reviews

The most comprehensive publication on the problem of contingency in science to date, and as such, it serves well to gauge philosophical opinions on the matter.”
—Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
 


“This well-edited, integrated volume of essays . . . illustrates welcome professionalism and maturity in a study of science that would have been rare a few decades ago. Highly recommended”
—Choice


“This is an absorbingly interesting symposium on the question of, in Ian Hacking's phrase, how inevitable the results of successful science are. The issues in play are as important as they are difficult, benefiting from the kind of unhurried, expert but often unorthodox examination they receive over the course of this volume. Science as It Could Have Been will establish itself straightaway as defining the state of the art and will surely become a necessary reference point for all future work.”
—Gregory Radick, University of Leeds


“Contingency is an important topic that deserves far more attention from philosophers of science and other science studies experts than it has so far received. Science as It Could Have Been is the most comprehensive treatment of the central issues concerning contingency and inevitability to date. Anyone curious about this ongoing debate in science and mathematics should begin here.”
—Thomas Nickles, University of Nevada, Reno

From the Publisher