Can We Justifiably Assume the Cosmological Principle in Order to Break Model Underdetermination in Cosmology?

Beisbart, Claus

doi:10.1007/s10838-009-9098-9

Cited by 32 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Rugh and Zinkernagel 2011). I especially recommend recent work by Beisbart (2009Beisbart ( , 2012. His (2009) focusses on the CP's breaking under-determination, and what follows is but a glimpse of his treatment.…”

Section: The Cosmological Principle To the Rescue?mentioning

confidence: 96%

On under-determination in cosmology

Butterfield

2014

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in

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I discuss how modern cosmology illustrates under-determination of theoretical hypotheses by data, in ways that are different from most philosophical discussions. I emphasize cosmology's concern with what data could in principle be collected by a single observer (Section 2); and I give a broadly sceptical discussion of cosmology's appeal to the cosmological principle as a way of breaking the under-determination (Section 3).I confine most of the discussion to the history of the observable universe from about one second after the Big Bang, as described by the mainstream cosmological model: in effect, what cosmologists in the early 1970s dubbed the 'standard model', as elaborated since then. But in the closing Section 4, I broach some questions about times earlier than one second.

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Section: The Cosmological Principle To the Rescue?mentioning

confidence: 96%

On under-determination in cosmology

Butterfield

2014

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in

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“…(1) at the end of Section 2.2). For many models that violate CP are physically reasonable (Beisbart and Jung 2006: 245-250;Beisbart 2009: Section 5, 189f. ; Butterfield 2014: Section 3, 60-65).…”

Section: Ascertaining the Global Structure Of Spacetime?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific Realism and Primordial Cosmology

Azhar¹,

Butterfield²

2017

The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism

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We discuss scientific realism from the perspective of modern cosmology, especially primordial cosmology: i.e. the cosmological investigation of the very early universe.We first (Section 2) state our allegiance to scientific realism, and discuss what insights about it cosmology might yield, as against "just" supplying scientific claims that philosophers can then evaluate. In particular, we discuss: the idea of laws of cosmology, and limitations on ascertaining the global structure of spacetime. Then we review some of what is now known about the early universe (Section 3): meaning, roughly, from a thousandth of a second after the Big Bang onwards(!).The rest of the paper takes up two issues about primordial cosmology, i.e. the very early universe, where "very early" means, roughly, much earlier (logarithmically) than one second after the Big Bang: say, less than 10 −11 seconds. Both issues illustrate that familiar philosophical threat to scientific realism, the under-determination of theory by data-on a cosmic scale.The first issue (Section 4) concerns the difficulty of observationally probing the very early universe. More specifically, the difficulty is to ascertain details of the putative inflationary epoch. The second issue (Section 5) concerns difficulties about confirming a cosmological theory that postulates a multiverse, i.e. a set of domains (universes) each of whose inhabitants (if any) cannot directly observe, or otherwise causally interact with, other domains. This again concerns inflation, since many inflationary models postulate a multiverse. * For all these issues, it will be clear that much remains unsettled, as regards both physics and philosophy. But we will maintain that these remaining controversies do not threaten scientific realism.

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“…2) and Fahrbach (2011a). 23 Claus Beisbart (2009) and Jeremy Butterfield (2013) discuss examples of underdetermination in cosmology. If any of their examples involves theories with very high success, then cosmology (which is closely connected to fundamental physics anyway) requires special treatment as well.…”

Section: Our Current Best Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific revolutions and the explosion of scientific evidence

Fahrbach

2016

Synthese

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Scientific realism, the position that successful theories are likely to be approximately true, is threatened by the pessimistic induction according to which the history of science is full of successful, but false theories. I aim to defend scientific realism against the pessimistic induction. My main thesis is that our current best theories each enjoy a very high degree of predictive success, far higher than was enjoyed by any of the refuted theories. I support this thesis by showing that both the amount, and quality, of scientific evidence has increased enormously in the recent past, resulting in a big boost of success for the best theories.

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Can We Justifiably Assume the Cosmological Principle in Order to Break Model Underdetermination in Cosmology?

Cited by 32 publications

References 53 publications

On under-determination in cosmology

On under-determination in cosmology

Scientific Realism and Primordial Cosmology

Scientific revolutions and the explosion of scientific evidence

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