Science as it could have been : discussing the contingency-inevitability problem / edited by Léna Soler, Emiliano Trizio, and Andrew Pickering.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Soler, Lena, 1966- editor.

Trizio, Emiliano, editor.

Pickering, Andrew, 1948- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Social aspects.

Science.

Science--History.

Science--Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (473 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

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 Pickering4. 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 GingrasPart 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 Petitmengin13. 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

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780822981152

0822981157

OCLC:

940438525