Beyond Falsifiability: Normal Science in a Multiverse
- Creators
-
Carroll, Sean M.
Abstract
Cosmological models that invoke a multiverse - a collection of unobservable regions of space where conditions are very different from the region around us - are controversial, on the grounds that unobservable phenomena shouldn't play a crucial role in legitimate scientific theories. I argue that the way we evaluate multiverse models is precisely the same as the way we evaluate any other models, on the basis of abduction, Bayesian inference, and empirical success. There is no scientifically respectable way to do cosmology without taking into account different possibilities for what the universe might be like outside our horizon. Multiverse theories are utterly conventionally scientific, even if evaluating them can be difficult in practice.
Additional Information
This research is funded in part by the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at Caltech and by DOE grant de-sc0011632.Attached Files
Submitted - 1801.05016.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 84375
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20180117-155705369
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- DE-SC0011632
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics, Caltech
- Created
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2018-01-18Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-06-02Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics
- Other Numbering System Name
- CALT-TH
- Other Numbering System Identifier
- 2018-003