Dark Matter: Explanatory Unification and Historical Continuity

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the philosophical and historical arguments supporting dark matter, highlighting their weaknesses and advocating for improved interdisciplinary approaches to strengthen the scientific case.

Contribution

It analyzes the explanatory unification and historical continuity strategies in dark matter research, revealing their limitations and proposing enhancements through interdisciplinary practices.

Findings

Historical evidence for dark matter continuity is weaker than often assumed.

Philosophical and historical arguments need greater rigor and interdisciplinary integration.

Current experimental searches have largely ruled out many dark matter candidates.

Abstract

In recent years, the hope to confirm the existence of dark matter by experimentally detecting it has diminished significantly. After more than 30 years of experimental searches, many of the most promising candidates have since been ruled out, leaving the epistemic and scientific condition of dark matter in a state of suspension. In efforts to improve the epistemic justification for the dark-matter hypothesis, physicists have turned to philosophical arguments and historical narratives. In this paper, I explicate two such strategies -- explanatory unification and historical continuity -- applied in the context of dark matter. I argue that greater care and attention should be invested in the explanatory arguments to increase their strength, and that a survey of primary historical sources in astronomy renders the historical evidence for the continuity of dark matter substantially weaker. The quality and rigor of the philosophical and historical arguments which physicists are constructing could be substantially improved by increasing interdisciplinary practices.