Dissertation Research: Theory Development and Evaluation in Early Universe Cosmology

论文研究：早期宇宙宇宙学的理论发展和评估

• 批准号: 0114760
• 负责人: John Earman
• 金额: $ 0.86万
• 依托单位: University of Pittsburgh
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2001-09-01 至 2002-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0114760&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dissertation; Research; Theory; Development; Evaluation

Historians and philosophers of science have studied the development and evaluation of theories in a wide variety of fields, and have developed a number of different approaches to these topics. What little attention has been devoted to modern cosmology has focused almost entirely on the controversy between the big bang theory and the steady state theory, a controversy which ended in the mid-60s. Since then a great deal of theoretical effort has been devoted to understanding the very early universe. This dissertation research project intends to develop a content-rich history of this research, with a focus on issues of theory development and evaluation. The NSF dissertation research support will allow the researcher to interview several prominent cosmologists and visit archives with collections related to modern cosmology (England, Chicago, Boston, and Princeton). These interviews and archival visits will allow the researcher to develop a more nuanced and insightful historical account of this period and to pose methodological questions to working scientists. In addition, detailed interviews with cosmologists will be a valuable resource for future historians. The research and interviews will focus on two methodological questions. Much of early universe research has been motivated by the alluring idea that fundamental physics dictates large scale properties of the universe. In particular, inflationary cosmology has won widespread acceptance due to its ability to solve a number of "fine-tuning" problems of standard cosmology. However, cosmologists' assessments of the importance of this success differ widely. Via focused interviews with proponents and critics of inflation (and earlier theories with a similar motivation), the researcher will explore the reasons for these differing assessments. The interviews will also focus on attempts to make precision tests of inflation.

历史学家和科学哲学家研究了各种领域的理论发展和评价，并开发了许多不同的方法来解决这些问题。对现代宇宙学的很少关注几乎完全集中在大爆炸理论和稳态理论之间的争论上，这场争论在60年代中期结束。从那时起，大量的理论研究致力于理解早期宇宙。本论文的研究项目旨在发展一个内容丰富的历史研究，重点是理论发展和评价的问题。NSF的论文研究支持将允许研究人员采访几位著名的宇宙学家，并访问与现代宇宙学（英格兰，芝加哥，波士顿和普林斯顿）有关的收藏档案。这些访谈和档案访问将使研究人员能够对这一时期进行更细致入微和更有见地的历史叙述，并向工作科学家提出方法论问题。此外，对宇宙学家的详细采访将是未来历史学家的宝贵资源。研究和访谈将集中在两个方法论问题上。许多早期的宇宙研究都受到一个诱人的想法的推动，即基础物理决定了宇宙的大尺度性质。特别是，暴胀宇宙学由于其能够解决标准宇宙学的一些“微调”问题而赢得了广泛的接受。然而，宇宙学家对这一成功的重要性的评估大相径庭。通过对通货膨胀的支持者和批评者（以及具有类似动机的早期理论）的集中采访，研究人员将探索这些不同评估的原因。访谈还将重点关注对通货膨胀进行精确测试的尝试。