A great merit of this volume is that it provides the sophisticated framework that the contingency debate has needed. The editors and contributors are to be commended for presenting the contingency debate so fully. 'Science as It Could Have Been' is a powerful defense of the contingency of our science but also-perhaps more importantly-of our ways of thinking philosophically about it. If the history of science could have gone differently, then so, too, could the history of the philosophy of science.-- "Studies in History and Philosophy of Science"
The most comprehensive publication on the problem of contingency in science to date, and as such, it serves well to gauge philosophical opinions on the matter.-- "Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences"
This is an absorbingly interesting symposium on the question of, in Ian Hacking's phrase, how inevitable the results of successful science are. The issues in play are as important as they are difficult, benefiting from the kind of unhurried, expert but often unorthodox examination they receive over the course of this volume. Science as It Could Have Been will establish itself straightaway as defining the state of the art and will surely become a necessary reference point for all future work.-- "Gregory Radick, University of Leeds"
This well-edited, integrated volume of essays . . . illustrates welcome professionalism and maturity in a study of science that would have been rare a few decades ago. Highly recommended-- "Choice"