Inevitability, contingency, and the epistemic significance of time

Abstract

A considerable attention has been given recently to the analysis of the temporal dimension(s) of science and the impact of the changes therein on scientific work. One of the questions that has emerged from the rapidly growing discussion is whether and (if so) how these changes affect not only the general structural aspects of scientific practice but also the very content of scientific knowledge. In this study, I critically examine these epistemological considerations in the available body of work on scientific temporality and argue that while there has been significant progress in our understanding of the manifold temporal layers of scientific practice, the analysis of their epistemic impact has remained rather limited in certain aspects. In particular, whereas the recent studies of academic time successfully overcome the binary perspective of “fast versus slow” academia, their considerations of the epistemic role of scientific temporality in particular seem nevertheless still couched in similarly binary terms. Against this background, the study explores—in a deliberately speculative fashion—how the available investigations into the temporal structure of science can be progressively utilized and further developed so as to enable an even more complex, nonbinary understanding of the manifold ways in which scientific practice is affected by its temporal conditions. Drawing on the contingentism/inevitabilism debate in the contemporary philosophy of science, as well as on Andrew Pickering’s “mangle” theory of practice, I develop a tentative argument that the temporal structure of scientific work should be perceived as affecting not merely the speed of scientific development—whether negatively or positively—but more importantly also its direction.