ABSTRACT
Leaving aside determinism, which denies that anything could be different, we now face the problem of trying to understand its opposite, contingency, which asserts that things could well have been different. Broadly speaking, contingency can take two forms: (1) contingency of the world as a whole and (2) contingency within the world. Thus one can look for contingency in the very structure of the universe with respect to its basic laws, constants, and boundary conditions. Alternatively, one can look for contingency in the subsequent unfolding of the universe. In that case, even if the underlying structure of the universe is determined, what happens in it might be contingent. On the other hand, even if the local functioning of the universe is determined, its global structure might be contingent. These two ways of understanding contingency, however, are not mutually exclusive. Thus the world’s global structure as well as its local functioning might both be contingent.
