Nov 6, 2023
The Origin Story at the End of the Universe: An Empirical Inquiry into a Cosmology of Problems
- 14:00 to 16:00
- Seminar
- Max Planck Research Group (Final Theory Program)
- Adrien De Sutter
Cosmology, the activity of describing the universe’s overall structure and origins, is understood today as the preserve of physics. Physical cosmology is an area of research that has seen such rapid progress in the last decades that it is regarded as the next chapter in physicists’ ambition toward unlocking the secrets of the cosmos. This paper argues, however, that rather than a story of linear scientific progress, the becoming scientific of our modern cosmology may be read as the expression of a crisis in fundamental physics and how rather than the story of a universe coming together through increasingly precise empirical observation, we have the story of a universe steadily falling apart as physicists struggle to hold on to the totality originally achieved in the abstract. Weaving together the scientific literature, recent historical studies, and philosophical reflection, combined with ethnographic fieldwork and interviews from a sustained engagement with cosmological researchers, I work to diagnose the source of this crisis and to think from it in order to characterise the meaning and purpose of cosmology otherwise. By adopting an empiricist sensibility, I explore how the problem of cosmology might be expanded away from a mere problem of physics to occupy a broader “cosmology of problems.” In this expanded cosmology, exemplified by attending to physicists’ dark matter problem, problems are real, immanent forces that work to form inquirers and the worlds they inhabit. It is this approach – one that seeks to understand how problems come (in)to matter for the peoples, practices, and worlds that belong to them – that I conclude holds promise in the development of a “pluralistic” cosmology, a cosmology that admits a plurality of divergent knowledges and practices into its explanations, ensuring that physicists’ “end of the universe” need not imply the end of the world.
Contact and Registration
Link to the Zoom-Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/94690790127 Meeting-ID: 946 9079 0127 no registration required. For more information contact Kseniia Mohelsky officeblum@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
About This Series
The seminar series of the Research Group “Historical Epistemology of the Final Theory Program” runs once a month, usually on a Monday at 14:00 in the seminar room of the Villa (Harnackstraße 5). The talks deal primarily with the history, philosophy, and foundations of modern (post-WWII) physics or with wider epistemological questions related to the work of the group. There are no pre-circulated papers.