Wondrous Truths by J.D. Trout;

Author:J.D. Trout;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2016-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

CONTINGENCY

If scientific talent and resources were everywhere the same, the rate and character of scientific discovery might be more uniform. The high steppes of central Asia might have been the site of the first effective germ theory of disease. But it wasn’t. In 1800, the electric-chemical discoveries made by Berzelius in Stockholm might have been made by people living in Constantinople, Tokyo, or any of the largest cities in Africa. But they weren’t. The pattern is decidedly nonrandom. All possible discoveries are not equipossible. The aspects of a scientist’s conceptual world that produce departures from equipossible discovery may concern history, culture, climate, financial sponsorship—whatever facts support ingenuity, sustain hard work, or impose disciplined training. But, importantly, none of these features get traction unless the discovery promotes a theory or theoretical outlook that actually captures the causal structure of the world.

History is not an experimental science, and so we cannot nail down that a scientific success is genuinely contingent rather than, say, inevitable because redundantly determined. But there are signposts when an event that can be tied to a theoretical advance occurs against a background of a normal or routine course of events. For example, further examples of small contingencies, of unplanned advance, can arise from factors beyond the internal sources of scientific investigation. The brewery next door prompted Joseph Priestley to mull over apparently “heavier air” emanating from that location, and that became an occasion to study the features of carbon dioxide. Priestley was especially interested in its ability to extinguish glowing embers, while at the same time he uncovered the powerful combustive forces of oxygen largely by chance. As he characterized the contingency: “If, however, I had not happened, for some other purpose, to have had a lighted candle before me, I should probably never have made the trial.”19

In fact, Priestley offers a lovely general description of contingency:

The contents of this section will furnish striking illustration of the truth of a remark which I have more than once made in my philosophical writing and which can hardly be too often repeated, as it tends greatly to encourage philosophical investigations; viz. that more is owing to what we call chance, that is, philosophically speaking, to the observation of events arising from unknown causes, than to any proper design, or preconceived theory in this business.

For my own part, I will frankly acknowledge, that, at the commencement of the experiments recited in this section, I was so far from having formed any hypothesis that led to the discoveries I made in pursuing them, that they would have appeared very improbable to me had I been told of them; and when the decisive facts did at length obtrude themselves upon my notice, it was very slowly, and with great hesitation, that I yielded to the evidence of my senses.20

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