Research: Networks of Discovery: Serendipity, Contingency, and the Emergence of Scientific Knowledge
My research investigates the epistemological significance of serendipity and contingency in scientific discovery, challenging traditional models that privilege rational method and linear progression. Building on recent work demonstrating serendipity’s dual explanatory nature – operating both prospectively during discovery and retrospectively in historical reconstruction – I argue that scientific discoveries emerge from complex networks of interdependent factors rather than isolated individual insight or systematic method alone.
Through detailed case studies of both successful and “lost” serendipitous discoveries, I explore how cognitive preparation, material infrastructures, institutional contexts, theoretical frameworks, and social networks contingently converge to enable breakthrough discoveries. This approach reveals that what appears as mere chance or individual genius actually depends on the alignment of multiple necessary but insufficient conditions, whose configuration determines whether anomalous observations become recognized discoveries or remain overlooked opportunities.
My work develops a “network model” of scientific discovery that conceptualizes serendipity and discovery as emergent phenomena arising from distributed human, material, and environmental agencies. This framework addresses fundamental questions in philosophy of science: for instance, the relationship between discovery and justification contexts, the theory-laden nature of observation, and the tension between contingentalist and inevitabilist accounts of scientific progress. By examining how discoveries actually occur – through the messy, situated, and irreducibly complex interplay of chance and wisdom – I aim to show that science itself is characterized by a factor of contingency, with profound implications for how we understand scientific knowledge production and how we might foster conditions conducive to future discoveries.