Summer School: The Aim and Structure of Cosmological Theory
A number of challenging questions arise in contemporary cosmology, and philosophers can contribute constructively to answering them. Over the past century cosmologists have debated whether, for example, this field requires a distinctive methodology due to the unusual nature of its subject matter. In what sense is cosmology a “special case,” in terms of its aims, the nature of cosmological theories, or the ability to establish theories empirically? What, if anything, constrains theorizing about the early universe or regions of space and time so remote as to be beyond our observational ken? When should observational anomalies be taken as evidence that existing theory is incorrect, and when do they signal the discovery of new entities consistent with existing theory? How should we understand “spacetime geometry” in alternative theories of gravitation, or in theories according to which spacetime “emerges”? This summer school will provide a survey of several central questions, with some topics explored in more depth. The organizing theme of the summer school will be a new book manuscript by Smeenk & Weatherall called The Aim and Structure of Cosmological Theory. In addition to that manuscript, we will discuss background literature, alternative positions, and adjacent topics in other areas of philosophy of physics and philosophy of science.
Participants who would like to prepare themselves in the best way for the summer school can read the following works:
- McMullin, E. (1981), Is Philosophy Relevant to Cosmology? "American Philosophical Quarterly" 18(3): 177-189.
- Roush, S. (2003), Copernicus, Kant, and the anthropic cosmological principles. "Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics" 34:(1): 5 - 35.
- Smith, G. (2014), Closing the Loop. In Biener, Z. and Schliesser, E. (eds) "Newton and Empiricism", Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 262-351.
- Peebles, J. (2020) Cosmology’s Century, Princeton: Princeton University Press (as backgound reading on the development of cosmology).
Chris Smeenk
Chris Smeenk
Chris Smeenk is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario, where he also served as the Director of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy. His research focuses primarily on the nature, scope, and limits of the knowledge achieved in physics, through detailed historical and philosophical study of specific domains. Alongside the current project on cosmology, he continues to pursue topics in seventeenth century natural philosophy and has recently started a project evaluating the “effective field theory” approach to understanding the structure and content of theories.
James Owen Weatherall
James Owen Weatherall
James Owen Weatherall is Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at UC Irvine. He is the author of three previous books and more than 60 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in philosophy of science, social epistemology, and mathematical physics. In addition to his recent work in philosophy of cosmology, his current projects include a biography of the mathematician John von Neumann and an NSF-funded project on symmetry, structure, and the laws of nature in classical field theory. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophy of Science and Editor of the book series Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Physics.
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Schedule of the Summer School
Monday 23
3.30pm-4pm
Welcome
4pm-5.30pm
Introduction (Chris and Jim)
6pm
Drinks at Tra l'Altro Biblio Café
Tuesday 24
9.30am-10.30am
Cosmology, from Genesis to Today (Jim)
This session will provide a brief overview of the history and development of cosmological thought, from the Ancients through contemporary physical cosmology. It will conclude with an overview of the Standard Model of Cosmology.
10.30am-11am
Coffee break
11am-1pm
History of Cosmology, cont. (Jim)
Continuation of the previous session.
1pm-3pm
Lunch at Ristorante Fresco
3pm-4pm
Philosophical Aspects of Cosmology (Chris)
Cosmology has now become a mature physical science. What role can philosophy play in contemporary cosmology, and to what extent has cosmology overcome distinctive challenges? We will discuss the following related challenges: the nature of modalities, underdetermination, theories of origins, and anthropic reasoning.
4.30pm-6.30pm
Presentations
- Anastasiia Lazutkina - Evidence in cosmology: how galaxies became complicated
- Fank Cudek - Localising the singular structure of spacetime
- Antonios Papaioannou - The empirical grounding of the cosmological principle and progress in cosmology
- Timothy Luft - Towards erasing the distinction between the computational and syntactic accounts of scientific theories
Wednesday 25
9.30am-10.30am
Closing the Loop (Chris)
To set the stage and provide some conceptual and epistemological resources for discussing contemporary cosmology and how theory can guide inquiry, we will discuss an important essay by historian, philosopher, and engineer George Smith, on the logic of evidence exemplified in the development of celestial mechanics from Newton to Einstein.
10.30am-11am
Coffee break
11am-1pm
Spacetime Geometry and FLRW Models (Chris)
We will now shift to discussing the large scale structure of the universe according to the Standard Model of Cosmology. This session will briefly discuss how we represent a homogenous and isotropic universe within general relativity, and we will discuss the evidential basis for big bang cosmology.
1pm-3pm
Lunch at AnemaCore
3pm-4pm
Beyond FLRW (Chris and Jim)
We will now use Smith’s account of the logic of evidence as a lens through which to understand emerging issues in cosmology, including the role of tensions – such as the Hubble tension, failures of isotropy, and JWST anomalies – in moving beyond an FLRW model.
4.30pm-5.30pm
Presentations
- Christopher Hughes - Boltzmann brains and self-locating beliefs
- Sarwar Ahmed - The epistemology of multi-messenger observations
5.30pm
Short hike + apero at LSD
Thursday 26
9.30am-10.30am
Three Tooth Fairies (Chris and Jim)
We now turn to three striking and controversial features of the Standard Model of Cosmology: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Inflation. We will briefly introduce the history and current status of each of these, to set the stage of more detailed philosophical discussions in the remainding sessions.
10.30am-11am
Coffee Break
11am-1pm
Closing the Loop on Dark Matter (Jim)
This session will explore the epistemic status of dark matter in more detail, by describing the role that independent lines of evidence play in establishing its existence, and showing how cosmologists have “closed the loop” on Dark Matter by establishing its physical robustness (in the sense of Smith). We will discuss the role philosophical principles played in guiding cosmologists to posit dark matter.
1pm-3pm
Lunch at Ristorante della Posta
3pm-4pm
Closing the Loop on Dark Energy? (Jim)
We now turn to Dark Energy, with an eye towards comparing it with Dark Matter. We will argue that similar principles guided cosmologists to explore certain dark matter hypotheses, but that the past 25 years have shown that the details of the physics apparently prevent us from developing the same kind of strong evidential basis for Dark Energy as Dark Matter.
4.30pm-6pm
Presentations
- Antonis Antoniou - Whence the desire to close the Universe?
- Phillip Helbig - MOND in a cosmological context
- Sam Bysh - Smolin's temporal relationalism and cosmology
Friday 27
9.30am-10.30am
Gaining Access to the Early Universe (Chris)
Finally, we will consider how a similar analysis applies to inflation and early universe cosmology more generally. We will analyze novel philosophical principles that cosmologists have introduced to make the case for inflation, which we argue reflect a mistaken conception of how to reconstruct history. This will lead to a clearer assessment of the challenges cosmologists face in closing the loop in the early universe.
10.30am-11am
Coffee Break
11am-1pm
The Aims and Structure of Cosmological Theory (Chris and Jim)
This session will bring together the themes of the summer school, with the goal of articulating how philosophy has influenced the development of cosmology, the current status of philosophy within cosmology, and discuss what to expect for the future development of cosmological theory.
1pm-3pm
Closing reception on USI Campus 3pm-4pm
Wrap-up
Besides the one on the first day, a second drink will be organized and offered on another evening, after the sessions. The precise day will be decided later on depending on the weather, for there is a nice walk to reach and come back from that place.