Speculations The anthology of essays from the years 2006-2012 offers a cross-section of Quentin Meillassoux's philosophical theory. Can the "thing-in-itself" truly be conceived? On what grounds can only contingency be thought of as this "reality in itself" and articulated as an absolute principle, as the "principle of factuality"? Is it possible that modern skepticism implicitly presupposes such a principle? What would it mean if Hume's problem, contrary to the usual epistemological resolution, allowed for an ontological solution, if stable natural laws were based on an uncontrollable and lawless chaos? If neither any specific reality nor the natural laws can be absolutized, but only their "ability to be otherwise" and "ability to not be," their possible becoming, which cannot be subordinated to any calculation?.