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. Over the last three decades, physicists have engaged in, sometimes heated, debates about relative merits and prospects of string theory as a viable research program and even about its status as a science. The aim of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of this controversy as a particular form of boundary discourse. Drawing on the sociological work of Thomas Gieryn and Lawrence Prelli, we bring to light the way in which protagonists appeal to, and rhetorically construct, different (...) |
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We analyse the possibility that string-theoretic dualities present a genuine case of strong underdetermination of theory by evidence. Drawing on the parallel discussion of the hole argument, we assess the possible interpretations of dualities. We conclude that there exist at least two defensible interpretations on which dualities do not present a worrying case of underdetermination per se. |
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As a candidate theory of quantum gravity, the popularity of string theory has waxed and waned over the past four decades. One current source of scepticism is that the theory can be used to derive, depending upon the input geometrical assumptions that one makes, a vast range of different quantum field theories, giving rise to the so-called landscape problem. One apparent way to address the landscape problem is to posit the existence of a multiverse; this, however, has in turn drawn (...) |
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By the end of the twentieth century, many prominent cosmologists were fascinated by the questions why is the universe the way it is, and why does the universe appear to be just right for life to emerge.1 Indeed, the shift to posing questions beginning with why rather than what or how is a relatively recent development in modern cosmology. This paper begins by looking at the emergence of why questions in cosmological discourse by tracing affiliated anthropic reasoning and fine-tuning arguments (...) |
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In this paper, I offer an analysis of the radical disagreement over the adequacy of string theory. The prominence of string theory despite its notorious lack of empirical support is sometimes explained as a troubling case of science gone awry, driven largely by sociological mechanisms such as groupthink (e.g. Smolin 2006). Others, such as Dawid (2013), explain the controversy by positing a methodological revolution of sorts, according to which string theorists have quietly turned to nonempirical methods of theory assessment given (...) |
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This chapter presents a detailed explanation of Peirce’s early and late views on semiotic indeterminacy and then considers how those views might be applied within biosemiotics. Peirce distinguished two different forms of semiotic indeterminacy: generality and vagueness. He defined each in terms of the “right” that indeterminate signs extend, either to their interpreters in the case of generality or to their utterers in the case of vagueness, to further determine their meaning. On Peirce’s view, no sign is absolutely determinate, i.e., (...) |
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The evolution of gravitational tests from an epistemological perspective framed in the concept of rational reconstruction of Imre Lakatos, based on his methodology of research programmes. Unlike other works on the same subject, the evaluated period is very extensive, starting with Newton's natural philosophy and up to the quantum gravity theories of today. In order to explain in a more rational way the complex evolution of the gravity concept of the last century, I propose a natural extension of the methodology (...) |
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Evoluția testelor gravitaționale dintr-o perspectivă epistemologică încadrată în conceputul de reconstrucție rațională al lui Imre Lakatos, pe baza metodologiei acestuia a programelor de cercetare. Perioada evaluată este foarte vastă, începând cu filosofia naturală a lui Newton și până la teoriile gravitației cuantice din zilele noastre. Pentru a explica mai rațional evoluția complexă a conceptului de gravitație din ultimul secol, propun o extindere naturală a metodologiei programelor de cercetare pe care o folosesc apoi pe parcursul lucrării. Consider că această abordare oferă (...) |
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