Philosophy of Science
Over the past few years, I have contributed not only to cosmology as a scientific discipline, but also to its epistemological analysis. This activity resulted in two publications: a book chapter devoted to the physics and epistemology of the cosmological principle, and a research article on the epistemological foundations of dark matter.
C. Marinoni — Physics and Epistemology of the Cosmological Principle
In Connaître le Cosmos : enjeux philosophiques et scientifiques, éd. Spartacus, Nouvelles visions des sciences, ISBN 978-2-36693-146-4.
The cosmological principle is a conjecture about the structure of cosmic spacetime on which the standard model of cosmology is based. According to it, the spatial sections of the four-dimensional continuum are homogeneous and isotropic on large cosmic scales, i.e. invariant under translation and rotation of the observers. Long regarded as a philosophically attractive, if not logically necessary, convention about the symmetries of space, this postulate has now acquired the more scientifically legitimate status of a useful working hypothesis that can be challenged and verified by astronomical data. In this essay I present the historical development of this concept, while critically discussing its physical content and epistemic implications.
S. Beyne & C. Marinoni — Dark Matter in Zwicky's Cosmology: Towards an Epistemological Reconstruction
We argue that the discrepancy between the luminous matter observed in the Coma Cluster and the significantly higher mass estimated by Zwicky through virial analysis was not anomalous — but rather consistent with the order of magnitude Zwicky himself was expecting. This leads us to challenge the widespread view that dark matter was introduced as an ad hoc hypothesis to rescue Newtonian theory. We suggest instead that it may constitute one of the earliest cosmological pieces of evidence in favour of General Relativity.