Closing in on the Cosmos: Cosmology's Rebirth and the Rise of the Dark Matter Problem

Jaco de Swart

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arXiv · 1903.05281

Closing in on the Cosmos: Cosmology's Rebirth and the Rise of the Dark Matter Problem

Jaco de Swart

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Abstract

Influenced by the renaissance of general relativity that came to pass in the 1950s, the character of cosmology fundamentally changed in the 1960s as it became a well-established empirical science. Although observations went to dominate its practice, extra-theoretical beliefs and principles reminiscent of methodological debates in the 1950s kept playing an important tacit role in cosmological considerations. Specifically, belief in cosmologies that modeled a "closed universe" based on Machian insights remained influential. The rise of the dark matter problem in the early 1970s serves to illustrate this hybrid methodological character of cosmological science.

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Jaco de Swart. 2019-03-11. Closing in on the Cosmos: Cosmology's Rebirth and the Rise of the Dark Matter Problem. https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.05281

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