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"Jump Ship, Shift Gears, or Just Keep on Chugging: Assessing the Responses to Tensions between Theory and Evidence in Contemporary Cosmology", with Nora Boyd, forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
My co-authored paper with Nora Boyd is forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. In this paper, we assess the so-called small-scale challenges to the cosmological concordance model. We argue that the challenges do not support an abandonment or even a modification of the cold dark matter-paradigm. Instead, they suggest the further incorporation of known physics into cosmological simulations. Thank you to Marie Gueguen, Arthur Kosowski, and participants of the Dark Matter and Modified Gravity-workshop in Aachen for their helpful comments! The pre-print is available here. |
Dissertation Defense, 31 March 2020 |
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On March 31st, I successfully defended my dissertation. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the defense had to happen remotely. Thank you to all who attended through Zoom, who still made it a special event! Thank you to my committee, Arthur Kosowsky, Sandy Mitchell, and Jim Woodward, for their advise and support over the past six years. And of course, a special thank you goes out to my advisor, John Norton.
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"Method-driven Experiments and the Search for Dark Matter" forthcoming in Philosophy of Science
My paper, "Method-driven experiments and the search for dark matter" is forthcoming in Philosophy of Science. I argue that particle searches for dark matter are justified in a different way than most experiments, in that their justification requires substantive assumptions about the target that depend on the experimental technique used in the experiment. Illuminating this method-driven logic brings new challenges to the forefront for triangulation arguments in dark matter research. Thank you to all who gave me helpful feedback, especially Nora Boyd, Michela Massimi, Sandra Mitchell and John Norton. |
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Public Lecture for the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh, 13 September 2019
I was invited by the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh to give a lecture during one of their monthly meetings. The talk covered issues like theory change, the pessimistic meta-induction, the small-scale challenges and cosmic variance, all through the lens of the role of anomalies in science. |
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Let's Go To The Archives! Episode 2: Harmonia Macrocosmica |
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David Colaço, a fellow graduate student at Pitt HPS, hosts a web series on the Archives of Scientific Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh Hillman Library. In Episode 2, I joined Dave to discuss the Harmonia Macrocosmica, a rare volume from 1708 with beautiful images of different models of the solar system.
You can watch the episode below, or subscribe to the Center for Philosophy of Science's YouTube channel to get notified of new episodes! |
Dark Matter & Modified Gravity, Aachen, 6 - 8 February 2019
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At an interdisciplinary conference on Dark Matter &. Modified Gravity, organized by the Epistemology of the LHC project, Nora Boyd and I presented a co-authored paper on the small-scale challenges in cosmology with the provisional title "Jump Ship, Shift Gears, or Just Keep Chugging".
A couple of days later, I attended an interdisciplinary conference on model-independent searches, with focuses on particle physics, quantum gravity, particle physics, cosmology and astroparticle physics. I gave comments on John Peacock's presentation. This conference was the perfect kick-off to my visit to Edinburgh, where I'll spend four weeks as a visiting scholar to the Perspectival Realism project, working with Michela Massimi. |
Philosophy of Science Association, Seattle, 1 - 4 November 2018 |
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At the 26th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, I presented a paper during a session on Space, Time, and Cosmology. Together with Nora Boyd, I also organized a visit to the Center for Experimental Nuclear Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Washington for philosophers with an interest in cosmology and astrophysics. Thank you to Doug Will, John Lee, and Nick Du for giving us a fascinating tour, and to Nora for organizing!
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Astro on Tap, 26 April 2018 |
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I gave a short presentation ("You say you want a revolution (in your cosmological theories)?") on the pessimistic meta-induction during an Astro on Tap event in Pittsburgh (East End Brewing company). References to the Beatles were included just for fun, and to make Bingo somewhat more complicated!
Image credit: Heather Kresge |
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Public Lecture at the Allegheny Observatory, 20 April 2018 |
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Together with Nora Boyd, I gave a lecture at the Allegheny Observatory as part of their public lecture series. The talk, "Space Oddities: How Philosophy Can Help Cosmology" covered philosophical issues related to inflation, the global structure of spacetime, small-scale challenges to ΛCDM, and the implications of theory change in cosmology.
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Super-PAC - Early Career Workshop in Philosophy of Astrophysics and Cosmology, 27 - 29 October 2017 |
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I co-organized a conference on philosophy of astrophysics and cosmology at the Center for Philosophy of Science of the University of Pittsburgh. The conference brought together a physicists and philosophers to discuss issues in observational cosmology and astrophysics. The two keynote speakers were professor Michela Massimi of the University of Edinburgh, and professor Wendy Freedman of the University of Chicago.
The full conference website, with a detailed program, is available here. |