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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 2: Foundations of Physics II

AGPhil 2.4: Talk

Monday, March 10, 2025, 18:30–19:00, HS XVII

On the theory-ladenness of theorising — •Radin Dardashti — University of Wuppertal, Germany

The theory-ladenness of observations or data is a much-discussed topic in the philosophy of science. It is common to regard theory-ladenness as something problematic that needs to be overcome in order to be able to confront theories on a more neutral basis. But theories themselves are obviously not developed in a vacuum. So one might also ask whether there is a kind of theory-ladenness involved in theory development itself, and whether this might pose a threat to the reliability of theory development. In this paper I discuss different kinds of theory-ladenness in theory development in fundamental physics and the conditions under which they may or may not be problematic.

Keywords: Theory-ladenness; Fundamental physics; Theory Development