Scientific Realism and the Contingency of the History of Science

In section 2 I will reconstruct the antirealist motivations of the classic contingentist scenarios developed by James Cushing and by Andrew Pickering; in section 3, by taking into account some versions of scientific realism that are more sophisticated than those discussed by contingentists up to now, I will clarify the logical relations of compatibility and incompatibility existing between contingentism and inevitabilism on the one hand, and scientific realism and antirealism on the other; in Section 4 I will try to spell out the specific contribution of contingentist historical reconstructions to the critique of scientific realism; finally, in Section 5, I will recapitulate the results of the article and argue that the conflict between contingentist antirealism and scientific realism can be seen as a clash of inferences based on interpretations of the history of science. This article will thus consist of a philosophical meta-analysis of a controversy existing between different meta-scientific investigations.