Boutroux’s Alternative: An Ontology of the Fact

Boutroux, approximately 150 years prior to Meillassoux, already argued for the contingency of laws of nature, as well as truths of logic and mathematics. Boutroux, however, does not espouse factiality, namely, the necessity of contingent beings, but he rather offers a veritable ontology of the fact. Boutroux does not abandon necessity, but he does show how all necessity is itself consequent, that is, a matter of fact. He does this by arguing for the laws of nature as nothing but the habit of nature, which springs not from chance but from spontaneity. Being bottoms out in pontaneity rather than in simple randomness.