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Contingency and History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Kim Sterelny
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Abstract

Debates on the contingency of history have largely focused on the history of life. This article targets the supposed contingency of human history. It does not defend a global claim about the overall contingency of history. Rather, it aims to identify and explain the difference between robust and fragile historical trajectories. It does so by considering a set of contrasting cases and identifying critical differences among the cases. The analysis shows that one important source of contingency is the historical emergence of command-and-control institutions; one important source of robustness is the existence of population-level processes structured by relatively stable institutions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 521 - 539
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to Joe Bulbulia, Adrian Currie, John Matthewson, Ron Planer, and the referees of this journal for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Thanks also to audiences at University of Sydney and Victoria University at Wellington for constructive feedback and to the Australian Research Council for their generous funding of my research into human evolutionary history.

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