Philosophy and the Sciences

Transcript for lecture 3.1

Introduction
Michela Massimi
Welcome back. So in the last lecture, we saw how cosmology has
established itself as a science in its own right in just over a century. In this
class, we look at the current cosmological model, the so-called
concordance model, or lambda CDM. This model builds on Einsteins
general relativity and the so-called Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker
model, and asserts that our universe is infinite and consists of 5% ordinary
matter, 25% cold dark matter and 70% dark energy. So according to this
picture, the vast majority of our universe consists of two exotic entities: dark
energy and dark matter.
While the search for those two entities is at the very forefront of
contemporary research in cosmology, from a philosophical point of view, we
should ask, what are dark energy and dark matter, and how justified are we
in believing in them? The philosophical debate behind dark energy and
dark matter concerns the rationality of theory choice. What reasons do
scientists have for choosing one theory over another? How do we go about
making those rational decisions in the light of the available evidence? So, in
this class we look at the history of dark energy and dark matter and some of
the experimental evidence for them, as well as examining some of the
possible rival theories that have been proposed within the broader
philosophical debate about the rationality of theory choice.
To get us started with the debate about the rationality of theory choice in
science, lets consider for example, the discovery of the planet Neptune
back in 1846. The anomalous perihelion of the planet Uranus was known for
some time, and two astronomers, Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams,
independently of each other tried to reconcile the anomaly with Newtonian
theory by postulating the existence of a new planet called Neptune, whose

orbital mass was supposed to interfere with and explain the anomalous
orbit of Uranus. The new planet was indeed observed on the 23rd
September, 1846. A very similar phenomenon was also observed for the
planet Mercury, and also in this case, Le Verrier postulated the existence of a
new planet, Vulcan, to explain the observed anomaly. But this time, the
predicted planet was not found, and a final explanation of the phenomenon
came only with the advent of general relativity.
This historical example illustrates a phenomenon that we have already
encountered in the introductory lecture, namely, the problem of
underdetermination of theory by evidence. Whenever we have more than
one scientific theory or hypothesis, the available evidence may not be
sufficient to determine the choice for one theory over a rival one. For
example, in the case of Uranus, the anomalous perihelion was evidence that
there was something wrong with the set of assumptions, including both
main theoretical hypotheses about Newtonian mechanics, as well as
auxiliary hypothesis about the number of planets in the solar system, their
masses, and orbits. But the anomalous perihelion by itself didnt tell
scientists whether the culprit for the anomaly was one of the main
theoretical assumptions, as opposed to one of the auxiliary hypothesis
about number of planets, masses and so forth.
As is seen in our case of the anomalous perihelion of Mercury shows,
finding the right answer to these questions may well be far from obvious.
The physicist and philosopher Pierre Duhem at the beginning of the 20th
century concluded that scientists often followed their good sense in making
decisions in such situations. But Duhems solution in terms of good sense is
not satisfactory. For one thing, its not clear what good sense is. Second, its
not clear why scientist Xs good sense should agree with scientist Ys good
sense. And worse, Duhems solution delegates the rationality of theory
choice to whatever a scientific community deems as the most sensible
choice to make, even if that choice may well be the wrong one.
Lets then take a closer look at the argument from underdetermination and
how it challenges the rationality of theory choice. The argument proceeds
from three premises to a conclusion. So, premise one of the argument says
that scientists belief in theory T1 is justified. They have good reasons for
believing that theory T1 is true, or corresponds the way things are in nature.

Premise two says that scientific theory T1 has to be read literally. In other
words, if the theory talks about planetary motion, we must take what the
theory says about planetary motions at face value. Premise three says that
theory T1 is empirically equivalent to another theory T2, whenever T1 and T2
have exactly the same empirical consequences. And given those three
premises, one, two, three, we draw the conclusion that premises two and
three jointly imply that premise one must be false. In other words, it is not
the case that scientists have good reasons for believing that theory T1 is
true. In other words, the scientists are not justified in believing that a theory
T1 is true, or corresponds to the way things indeed are in nature, if there is
another rival theory, T2, which is empirically equivalent to T1.
These considerations resonate in the work of the influential historian and
philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn. In his 1977 book, The Essential
Tension, Kuhn argued that theory choice seems to be governed by five
seemingly objective criteria. The five seemingly objective criteria for theory
choice, according to Kuhn, are the following ones. Number one, accuracy.
The theory we go for has to be accurate, has to agree with the available
experimental evidence. Number two, consistency. The theory has to be
consistent with other theories accepted at the time. Number three, broad
scope. The theory has to be able to go beyond the original realm of
phenomena it was designed to explain. Number four, simplicity. We want
our theory to be simple. Number five, fruitfulness. Our theory should also
be able to predict novel, undreamt of phenomena.
However, Kuhn continued, those five criteria are either imprecise, for
example, we dont know how to define simplicity, or they conflict with one
another. Take the example of Copernican astronomy. Copernican
astronomy seems better than Ptolemaic astronomy on the basis of accuracy,
but it fared worse than Ptolemaic astronomy on the basis of consistency
with other well accepted theories at the time such as Aristotles physics.
Therefore Kuhn concluded that the five criteria are not sufficient to
determine theory choice. And external sociological considerations are
decisive in gathering scientists consensus around one theory.
Going back to our topic, we should ask what the evidence is for the
concordance model in cosmology, and whether in this case too there might
be empirical equivalent rivals. These questions are the more pressing if we

consider that the search for dark energy and dark matter is still ongoing,
with large galaxy surveys currently underway. In the next section we review
the evidence for dark energy, and dark matter. And we return to the
underdetermination problem and the rationality of theory choice at the very
end of todays class, when we assess the prospects and promises of the
concordance model in cosmology.

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