Multiple discoveries, inevitability, and scientific realism

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Abstract

When two or more (groups of) researchers independently investigating the same domain arrive at the same result, a multiple discovery occurs. The pervasiveness of multiple discoveries in science suggests the intuition that they are in some sense inevitable—that one should view them as results that force themselves upon us, so to speak. We argue that, despite the intuitive force of such an “inevitabilist insight,” one should reject it. More specifically, we distinguish two facets of the insight and argue that: (a) the profusion of multiple discoveries in scientific practice does not support the inevitabilist side of the inevitability/contingency of science controversy; and (b) the crucial role of background knowledge in scientific inquiry complicates the attempt to interpret the pervasiveness of multiple discoveries in realist terms.

Introduction

Multiple discoveries have an air of inevitability to them: when several scientists who investigate a certain domain independently from one another all arrive at basically the same result, the intuition emerges quite naturally that the result is in some sense inevitable. Consider the discovery of the periodic table of elements. Often associated with the names of Dimitri Mendeleev and Lothar Meyer, such a discovery is, in fact, a case of multiple discovery involving, to varying degrees, no less than six individuals—the less celebrated ones being Alexandre de Chancourtois, John Newlands, John Odling, and Gustavus Hinrichs. In the short timespan between 1862 and 1869 these researchers, living in different parts of the world, specializing in different fields, tackling the ordering of chemical elements with different approaches, and not communicating among them, independently arrived at basically the same result (see Scerri, 2007, 2015). This is certainly a clear-cut case where the converging of several individuals elicits the intuition that there is something inevitable to the result on which they converge (an intuition that we call the “inevitabilist insight”).

While sociologists and historians of science have extensively studied multiple discoveries, philosophers of science have, with rare exceptions, neglected them so far. This is surprising. In this paper, we first offer a sort of crash course in multiple discoveries, arguing that they are an important phenomenon which should draw the attention of philosophers, if only because it is a pervasive feature of the scientific enterprise. Second, we suggest that multiple discoveries raise a number of interesting issues, two of which we investigate in order to propose an appraisal of the inevitabilist insight. More specifically, we distinguish two facets of the insight, the first relevant for the recent debate on the inevitability/contingency of science, the second for the age-old debate on scientific realism.

The first facet of the inevitabilist insight is best introduced by considering again the multiple discovery of the periodic table, which helps to elucidate the notion of inevitability deployed by Ian Hacking in the writings that initiated the inevitability/contingency controversy (1999, 2000; for the state-of-the-art, see Soler et al. 2015). A result of scientific inquiry is inevitable, in the sense in which Hacking used the term, if it is what we get, when we get things approximately right about a certain fragment of the world. To put it differently, when we are successful in the investigation of a given domain, the result forces itself upon us, so to speak, and is thus inevitable. The multiple discovery of the periodic table then suggests itself as case of a result of science that qualifies as inevitable in the relevant sense. More generally—here comes the first facet of the inevitabilist insight—it seems at least prima facie plausible that multiple discoveries instantiate the so-called “inevitability thesis” at the heart of the controversy. According to the thesis, if the result of the scientific investigation of a certain subject matter is correct, then any investigation of the same subject matter, if successful, will yield basically the same result. And if multiple discoveries—which pervade scientific practice—instantiate the inevitability thesis, then one may be tempted to take their pervasiveness to support the inevitabilist side of the controversy, thereby speaking against the contingentist side. In fact, according to the contingency thesis, there could be alternatives to our current science that, as successful as our current science, are nevertheless built around entities and processes radically different from those around which our best theories are built. Despite the obvious interest of the relationship between multiple discoveries and the idea of inevitability for the controversy, such a relationship has so far remained largely unexplored (a notable exception being Radick, 2005, pp. 21–47, whose work this paper attempts to complement).

The second facet of the inevitabilist insight has to do with the perennial issue of scientific realism. The fact of several competent individuals who work independently of each other converging on the same result typically increases our confidence that the relevant fragment of the world is (approximately) as science says it is. One may then suggest—this is the second facet of the inevitabilist insight—that the pervasiveness of multiple discoveries mandates an interpretation in realist terms, whereby science's overall impressive success in describing the world accounts for such a profusion of multiple discoveries.

In a nutshell, our analysis indicates that one should reject both of the above facets of the inevitabilist insight: the first, because champions of the contingentist side of the inevitability/contingency controversy can account for multiple discoveries just as straightforwardly as champions of the inevitabilist side; the second, because the role played by background knowledge in the life of scientific communities, central in both realist and antirealist accounts of the significance of multiple discoveries, complicates the interpretation in realist terms of the profusion of multiple discoveries in science. We suggest that the phenomenon of multiple discoveries is then neutral with respect to the realism/antirealism debate—as looking at multiple discoveries in the light of path dependence in the development of science helps to highlight.

We proceed as follows. Since the interest of our topic hinges on multiple discoveries being a pervasive feature of the scientific enterprise, in section 2 we address their standing. Against claims to the contrary, we argue that, appropriately construed as a matter of degree, multiple discoveries are indeed a pervasive phenomenon in the life of scientific communities. In section 3, we first distinguish between the inevitability of scientific results in the sense that matters here and inevitability as inexorability, whereby certain results of science are inevitable in the sense that, given appropriate conditions, they will be attained. We then turn to discussing the inevitability thesis, and argue that there is no reason to maintain multiple discoveries to instantiate it. In section 4, we attend to the explanation of the pervasiveness of multiple discoveries and caution against the temptation of making too much of the apparent cogency of a straightforwardly realist interpretation of said pervasiveness. In section 5, we offer some brief concluding remarks.

Section snippets

The pervasiveness of multiple discoveries

Multiple discoveries—epitomized by such famous cases as Wallace and Darwin both putting forward the theory of evolution by natural selection, several individuals independently discovering the periodic table, etc.—have attracted the attention of many over the decades.2

Multiple discoveries, inexorability, and the inevitability thesis

A result of science is inevitable, in the sense that matters for the inevitability/contingency controversy, if it is what a successful investigation of a certain domain yields. It is with reference to this sense of the notion of inevitability that multiple discoveries suggest themselves as results of science instantiating the inevitability thesis—on which, of course, we say more below. First of all, though, we need to note that the concept of inevitability has been used by various authors, in

Multiple discoveries, background knowledge, and realism

Our discussion of the first facet of the inevitabilist insight, besides showing that multiple discoveries are so to speak “neutral” with respect to the inevitability/contingency controversy, suggests that appeal to end-run science is of dubious utility for the purposes of that controversy. There is, however, a good reason why Hacking (2000, p. S60) mentioned end-run science when introducing the concept of inevitability, namely, that the idea of a result featuring in (or being inferable from)

Concluding remarks

One would expect multiple discoveries to draw the attention of philosophers of science, since they raise, among others, interesting questions concerning both the relatively recent debate on the inevitability/contingency of science and the age-old realism/antirealism debate. In particular, multiple discoveries quite naturally elicit what we call the “inevitabilist insight”—the insight that there is something inevitable to results on which several individuals working independently from one

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on materials presented at the kick-off meeting of the Group of Interest in the Methodology of Inexact Sciences (hosted by Gustavo Cevolani at the IMT School of Advanced Studies, Lucca, October 2018), at the annual conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science (Durham, July 2019), at the workshop Rationality, logic, and scientific realisms (Trieste, October 2019), and at the conference Is a radically different science plausible? Path dependence and the

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