6336021
doi
10.5281/zenodo.6336021
oai:zenodo.org:6336021
user-astro2022
The scientific method from a philosophical perspective
Merritt, David
n/a
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
Philosophy of Science
Cosmology
Dark Matter
MOND
<p>A methodology of science must satisfy two requirements: (i) It must be ampliative: the theories which it generates must make statements that go far beyond any data or observations that may have motivated those theories in the first place. (ii) It must be epistemically probative: it must somehow provide a warrant for believing that the theories so produced are correct, or at least partially correct, even if they can never be fully confirmed. These two requirements pull in opposite directions, and attempts to specify the “scientific method” often focus on one to the exclusion of the other. On a few points there now exists something approaching a consensus. (i) Scientific hypotheses — including, particularly, statements about unobserved or unobservable entities or mechanisms — remain conjectural, no matter how frequently predictions based on those hypotheses are found to coincide with data. (ii) A good (best?) indicator of a theory’s verisimilitude is its ability to successfully predict phenomena which it was not specifically designed to predict. I discuss these ideas with particular reference to cosmological theories.</p>
Zenodo
2022-02-25
info:eu-repo/semantics/lecture
6285937
user-astro2022
1646704155.894573
3024801
md5:e318ab6312dee09e1ac06e1404fe5521
https://zenodo.org/records/6336021/files/ESO2022_Presentation_Merritt.pdf
public
10.5281/zenodo.6285937
isVersionOf
doi