Article ID: CBB068401072

Methodological reflections on the MOND/dark matter debate (2023)

unapi

The paper re-examines the principal methodological questions, arising in the debate over the cosmological standard model's postulate of Dark Matter vs. rivalling proposals that modify standard (Newtonian and general-relativistic) gravitational theory, the so-called Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) and its subsequent extensions. What to make of such seemingly radical challenges of cosmological orthodoxy? In the first part of our paper, we assess MONDian theories through the lens of key ideas of major 20th century philosophers of science (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan), thereby rectifying widespread misconceptions and misapplications of these ideas common in the pertinent MOND-related literature. None of these classical methodological frameworks, which render precise and systematise the more intuitive judgements prevalent in the scientific community, yields a favourable verdict on MOND and its successors–contrary to claims in the MOND-related literature by some of these theories' advocates; the respective theory appraisals are largely damning. Drawing on these insights, the paper's second part zooms in on the most common complaint about MONDian theories, their ad-hocness. We demonstrate how the recent coherentist model of ad-hocness captures, and fleshes out, the underlying—but too often insufficiently articulated—hunches underlying this critique. MONDian theories indeed come out as severely ad hoc: they do not cohere well with either theoretical or empirical-factual background knowledge. In fact, as our complementary comparison with the cosmological standard model's Dark Matter postulate shows, with respect to ad-hocness, MONDian theories fare worse than the cosmological standard model.

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB068401072/

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Authors & Contributors
Derry, Margaret Elsinor
Folse, Henry J.
Generali, Dario
Govoni, Paola
Lõhkivi, Endla
Minazzi, Fabio
Journals
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Agricultural History
Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology
Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Publishers
Mimesis
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Cambridge University Press
Brill
Lexington Books
Princeton University Press
Concepts
Philosophy of science
Cosmology
Dark matter
Methodology
Theories of knowledge
Controversies and disputes
People
Compton, Arthur Holly
Hacking, Ian
Millikan, Robert Andrews
Rubin, Vera
Snow, Charles Percy
Suhrawardī, Yaḥyá ibn Ḥabash
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
Early modern
Medieval
Modern
Places
Europe
Latin America
United States
Institutions
Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
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