A scientific approach that treats results as contingent on specific historical, environmental, and contextual conditions that might not hold elsewhere or elsewhen. It rejects the assumption that findings should replicate everywhere forever, instead asking: under what conditions does this hold? What had to be true for this result to appear? Contingency Method is essential for historical sciences like evolutionary biology or cosmology, where you can't rerun the tape and see if things turn out the same way. It produces knowledge that comes with an expiration date and a location stamp—not because it's bad science, but because reality itself is contingent.
"We found this amazing result in 2020, tried to replicate in 2021, and failed completely. Contingency Scientific Method says: maybe the finding was contingent on pandemic conditions that no longer exist. Science isn't broken—reality just changed."
by Dumu The Void February 23, 2026
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