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How Inevitable Are the Results of Successful Science?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
†Send requests for reprints to the authors, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, 215 Huron St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A1.
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Abstract

Obviously we could have failed to be successful scientists. But a serious question lurks beneath the banal one stated in my title. If the results of a scientific investigation are correct, would any investigation of roughly the same subject matter, if successful, at least implicitly contain or imply the same results? Using examples ranging from immunology to high-energy physics, the paper presents the cases for both positive and negative answers. The paper is deliberately non-conclusive, arguing that the question is one of the few serious philosophical issues that divides protagonists in the “science wars.”

Type
Metaphilosophy and the History of the Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S58 - S71
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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