Article ID: CBB146005420

Redshifts versus Paradigm Shifts: Against Renaming Hubble’s Law (2020)

unapi

We consider the proposal by many scholars and by the International Astronomical Union to rename Hubble’s law as the Hubble-Lemaître law. We find the renaming questionable on historic, scientific, and philosophical grounds. From a historical perspective, we argue that the renaming presents an anachronistic interpretation of a law originally understood as an empirical relation between two observables. From a scientific perspective, we argue that the renaming conflates the redshift/distance relation of the spiral nebulae with a universal law of cosmic expansion derived from the general theory of relativity. We note that the first of these phenomena is merely one manifestation of the second, an important distinction that might be relevant to contemporary puzzles concerning the current rate of cosmic expansion. From a philosophical perspective, we note that many of the named laws of science are empirical relations between observables, limited in range, rather than laws of universal application derived from theory.

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Authors & Contributors
Badino, Massimiliano
Belkora, Leila
Brémond, Alain G.
Brown, James Robert
Carroll, John W.
Diéguez, Antonio
Journals
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Foundations of Science
Journal for the History of Astronomy
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
Journal of the History of Biology
Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science
Publishers
Cambridge University Press
Carocci Editore
Institute of Physics Publishing
Oxford University Press
Praxis
Princeton University Press
Concepts
Philosophy of science
Natural laws
Physics
Astronomy
Controversies and disputes
Methodology of science; scientific method
People
Hubble, Edwin Powell
Newton, Isaac
Bacon, Francis Thomas
Descartes, René
Herschel, William
Huggins, William
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
17th century
18th century
16th century
19th century
Places
United States
Institutions
Hubble Space Telescope
Mount Wilson Observatory
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
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