State of the field: Are the results of science contingent or inevitable?

Kinzel, Katherina

doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.05.013

Cited by 21 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Pickering and Trizio both identify the contingency of ontological claims as the most meaningful and interesting form of contingency. But Boon shows, as have others (for example , Kinzel 2015;Martin 2013), that contingency claims can also be meaningful when applied to other targets. If we think of contingency claims as applicable not just to scientists' claims about the entities, processes, and structures that exist in the world, but also to their instruments, interpretations, practices, and values, then we see more clearly how the C/I problem is distinct from the realism/ anti-realism debate.…”

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confidence: 78%

A paean to contingency

Martin

2016

Metascience

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confidence: 78%

A paean to contingency

Martin

2016

Metascience

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“…Even if, despite the monist regime, contingentists are able to identify a promising putup, Soler explains that the inevitabilist holds all of the cards when it comes to evaluating its success. C/I scholars have long struggled with the unenviable task of defining and delineating the three conditions stipulated in P1: genuine science, similar questions, and equal value (e.g., Soler, 2008a;2008b;Trizio, 2008;Kinzel, 2015). Often these exemplary analyses yield more questions than answers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence, our focus will be on the causal-dependence variety. 4 I have added the A-E letters for ease of reference; they do not appear inMartin (2013).5 This framing provides the title of articles bySoler (2008a) andKinzel (2015), both published in this journal.…”

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confidence: 99%

Against defaultism and towards localism in the contingency/inevitability conversation: Or, why we should shut up about putting-up

Aylward

2019

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A

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Philosophers and historians of science have for some time now debated whether the results of current science are 'contingent' or 'inevitable'. Scholars have noted that inevitabilism often enjoys the status of a presumptive default position. Consequently, contingentists are, from the outset, lumbered with the burden of proof. This is evident in the case of the inevitabilist demand that the contingentist "put up or shut up" (PUSU). This paper adds to the existing case which says that inevitabilism's default-status is unjustified. However, whilst some have suggested that contingentism should replace inevitabilism as the default position, I argue that the contingency/inevitability (C/I) conversation should proceed sans default. This move is motivated largely by my claim that the C/I issue is best conceived as a 'local', rather than a global or universal one. The main problem with taking inevitabilism or contingentism as the default is the globalist nature of such a tack. Whilst localism is arguably an emergent reality of the growing C/I literature, its implications have not been fully realised. I suggest that fully and explicitly embracing localism, including the closely related move of doing away with defaults, represents the most promising way forward for the C/I conversation. In addition, I will show how these moves entail that we stop worrying about the inevitabilist PUSU demand, or more bluntly, that we shut up about putting-up. Keywords contingentism; inevitabilism; "put up or shut up"; defaultism; globalism; localism Joseph Martin's (2013) article, which purports to address a "lingering ambiguity in the way contingency is defined" (919), is one such contribution. In it, Martin proposes a taxonomy of contingency claims, organised according to "the things within science considered to be

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“…(Rée 1991, 961. ) This connection between localism and contingency seems especially interesting from the point of view of philosophy of science, given the attention that philosophers have paid to the issue of contingency of science and to the possible consequences that the contingency of science would have on our conception of science (see Soler et al 2015;Kinzel 2015). If local explanations indeed reveal the contingency of science, then it is no wonder that they received much attention and we should be able to capture the workings of such explanations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local explanation in historiography of science

Virmajoki

2020

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

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In this paper, I offer an explication of the notion of local explanation. In the literature, local explanations are considered as metaphysically and methodologically satisfactory: local explanations reveal the contingency of science and provide a methodologically sound historiography of science. However, the lack of explication of the notion of local explanation makes these claims difficult to assess. The explication provided in this paper connects the degree of locality of an explanans to the degree of contingency of the explanandum. Moreover, the explication is shown to be compatible with the methodological need for a general consideration in the historiography of science. In this way, the explication (i) satisfies the need to explicate an important notion, (ii) connects local explanations and contingency, and (iii) enables us to see how local explanations and general considerations can be connected. However, the explication also sheds critical light on many claims and expectations that are associated with local explanations and their satisfactoriness.

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State of the field: Are the results of science contingent or inevitable?

Cited by 21 publications

References 29 publications

A paean to contingency

A paean to contingency

Against defaultism and towards localism in the contingency/inevitability conversation: Or, why we should shut up about putting-up

Local explanation in historiography of science

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