ABSTRACT
The whole question of contingency is extremely complicated, but it is made unnecessarily so by the varying meanings which are attached to contingency and related conceptions, such as 'possibility' and 'necessity'. The word 'contingency' has been used in three totally different senses. First, there is G. W. Leibniz' use, which is purely a logical one. Secondly, there is the common-sense view. The plain man would agree with Leibniz that it is contingent in the morning whether it rains in the afternoon—because he doesn't know— but he would not say in the afternoon that the rain in the morning was contingent, because it was a 'fact'. The third sense of contingency is the most exciting one, and is the one which is usually involved when scientists and philosophers discuss whether there is "a contingent element in the universe." It is in this third sense that contingency is the denial of determinism.
