Contingency, Inevitability and Relativism in the History and Philosophy of Science

Could the historical development of the sciences have led to an alternative science, say an alternative biology or physics that used concepts, methods and practices incompatible with those of our actual science? And if such an alternative biology or physics was possible, could it, although incompatible with actual science, be equally successful as the biology and physics we know? To put it briefly, are the results of successful science contingent? If we answer in the affirmative, our most successful and most cherished scientific findings cannot be regarded as inevitable or unique in virtue of what the natural world is like. The problem of contingency and of possible alternatives is at the heart of our attempts to understand the nature and working of science, as well as to assess the epistemic status of scientific knowledge claims. What is at stake is not only the privileged status of science in relation to other forms of knowledge, but also whether science itself, as the highly disciplined and successful enterprise it is, allows for multiple alternatives. Whether science is such that it allows for such multiple equally successful alternatives is one question. A second, related question is what would follow from an affirmative answer to this first question. Does the acknowledgement of contingency in the history of science invite a dangerous relativism? Strikingly, the problem of contingency, although of central importance to our understanding of science, until now has remained virtually unexplored. There has been very little philosophical-systematic work discussing the problem as an independent matter. This lacuna persists despite the fact that historians and sociologists of science, philosophers of science, and also scientists themselves frequently appeal to the contingency, or conversely, to the inevitability of (certain) scientific results. And not only the concept of contingency itself, but also its possible relativist consequences have not been sufficiently addressed to the present date. This project closes this gap. It seeks to provide a thorough and systematic understanding of this essential dimension of scientific development. The aims of this project are twofold. On the one hand, the project seeks to clarify the notion of contingency both for the philosophy and for the history of science. On the other hand, it seeks to reveal the systematic connections between contingency, scientific progress and historical relativism. It approaches the issue of contingency on three levels of analysis. The first level concerns the systematic philosophical questions involved in claims for contingency and inevitability in science. This project analyzes central arguments for both positions and relates these arguments to the more familiar controversies in the philosophy of science, such as those concerning scientific realism and social constructivism, underdetermination, theory choice and scientific pluralism. The second level is that of historiographical narration. It is a central premise of this research project that an adequate understanding of contingency and inevitability in science has to take into account the methods of historical reconstruction used in the history of science. This project therefore explores the inevitabilist affinities of rational reconstructions and compares them with attempts to reconstruct historical otherness that render contingency visible and experiencable. On the third level the results obtained on the first two levels are related to the problem of historical relativism. The question to be answered is whether the acknowledgement of contingency in the history of science leads to relativism, or whether, conversely, contingency is compatible with scientific progress.

Could the historical development of the sciences have led to an alternative science? Might we have come to accept theories that furnish the world with different entities and causes than do our actual best-confirmed scientific theories? If an alternative science had emerged historically, then could it, although radically different from our actual science, have become as successful in its explanations, predictions and technological applications as the biology and physics we know today? To put it briefly, are the results of successful science contingent? If we answer in the affirmative, then our best-confirmed and most cherished scientific findings cannot be regarded as unique by virtue of what the natural world is like. What is more, they cannot be seen as an inevitable product of the reliable and successful operation of scientific rationality.This project sought to provide a better understanding of contingency as an essential dimension of scientific development. The results of this project are as follows:1. Contemporary discussion of the issue is troubled by a lack of conceptual clarity. The project intervened into the current discussion with a proposal for distinguishing more clearly between differ-rent types of contingency and inevitability in science. The proposal orders various manifestations of contingentist and inevitabilist thought and clarifies the central notions that feed into claims about the contingency or inevitability of scientific knowledge.2. Our research found that a certain form, and a certain degree, of contingency in scientific developments cannot be avoided. Having distinguished between contingentist positions of different strengths, a moderate contingentist position was proposed, and distinguished from less plausible, and more radical, alternatives. It was shown that this modest contingentist position is both philosophically sound and historically plausible.3. The project explored the role that historical evidence plays in the conflict at hand. Since claims concerning contingency and inevitability should not only be philosophically but also historically plausible, they need to be borne out in reconstructions of central episodes from the history of science. However, there is a lack of clarity regarding the question as to how exactly historical case studies of such episodes can support general philosophical theses. By dealing with the intricacies of historical reconstructions and their relation to the philosophy of science, our research arrived at a nuanced understanding of how the history of science can be said to favor a contingentist view of science.4. The project clarified the relationship between contingency assumptions and relativism. Almost all relativistic philosophical positions include contingency assumptions. Such assumptions can play very different roles. Sometimes they motivate the relativistic position, sometimes they follow from it. This interplay of relativism and contingency assumptions was studied in the case of the philosophy of Paul Feyerabend and the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Although relativism almost always involves assumptions of contingency, the reverse is not the case: contingentist positions need not be based on relativism. This too became clear in the research carried out here.