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

ISBN-13: 9780822944454 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 472 str.

Lena Soler; Emiliano Trizio; Andrew Pickering

Opis

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.