Stepping Forwards by Looking Back: Underdetermination, Epistemic Scarcity and Legacy Data

Abstract

Debate about the epistemic prowess of historical science has focused on local underdetermination problems generated by a lack of historical data; the prevalence of information loss over geological time, and the capacities of scientists to mitigate it. Drawing on Leonelli’s recent distinction between ‘phenomena-time’ and ‘data-time’ I argue that factors like data generation, curation and management significantly complexifies and undermines this: underdetermination is a bad way of framing the challenges historical scientists face. In doing so, I identify circumstances of epistemic scarcity where underdetermination problems are particularly salient, and discuss cases where legacy data—data generated using differing technologies and systems of practice—are drawn upon to overcome underdetermination. This suggests that one source of overcoming underdetermination is our knowledge of science’s past. Further, data-time makes agnostic positions about the epistemic fortunes of scientists working under epistemic scarcity more plausible. But agnosticism seems to leave philosophers without much normative grip. So, I sketch an alternative approach: focusing on the strategies scientists adopt to maximize their epistemic power in light of the resources available to them.

What is Philosophy of the Geosciences?

“…12 C. Wylie (2019) demonstrates how the eventual fossil data used by paleontologists is underdetermined by the extracted specimens (cf. Currie, 2021), and Bokulich (2021a) argues that fossil preparation can be viewed as a data processing or data modeling practice.…”

“…C. Wylie (2019) demonstrates how the eventual fossil data used by paleontologists is underdetermined by the extracted specimens (cf. Currie, 2021), and Bokulich (2021a) argues that fossil preparation can be viewed as a data processing or data modeling practice. Paleontologists also must reckon with legacies of colonialism and how unequal distributions of scientific authority affect patterns of fossil collection (we return to data ethics in section 6).…”

Past materials, past minds: The philosophy of cognitive paleoanthropology

“…Philosophers often characterize the patchiness of historical records in terms of underdetermination (Currie, 2021;Turner, 2005Turner, , 2007. Underdetermination describes situations where we have insufficient evidence to decide between hypotheses.…”

An Archaeology of Traces

“…Hence the importance of redundancy and ‘over description’ in the documentation practices of archaeology. In this sense, the transformation of archaeological knowledge by the passage of time (Hicks 2016a, 18–19) may itself allow phenomena to reveal themselves as previously unseen traces through the revisitation of legacy data with new tools, orientations and understandings (Currie 2021; Wylie 2017a).…”