PRINCIPLES OF THEORY CHOICE IN THE HISTORICAL SCIENCES: GEOLOGY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL CASE STUDY

Like astronomy and evolutionary biology, geology is a “historical” as opposed to an “experimental” science. This talk discusses the philosophical issue of how to decide between competing theories when the evidence is very sparse and/or ambiguous. The aim is to make general conclusions about the methodological principles of theory choice special to the historical sciences. For example, should uniformitarianism, or its opposite, be assumed in interpreting the data, and what reasons can be given in favor of one or the other? The history of geology is used as a case study for investigating these issues, and parallels to astronomy and biology in the 16th-18th centuries are drawn.