Scientific Knowledge And The Deep Past by Adrian Currie
The book argues that inquiry into the deep past—prehistoric and geologic events—can produce reliable scientific knowledge despite severe evidential constraints, by analyzing how scientists infer past processes from traces and proxies. It examines methodological tools such as model-based inference, contrastive testing, robustness and consilience across independent lines of evidence, and the use of experimental and analogical reasoning, illustrating these with case studies from archaeology, paleontology, and paleoclimatology. The overall stance is pragmatic and pluralistic: historical claims are fallible and context-sensitive but can be epistemically warranted when supported by multiple, mutually constraining methods and careful attention to sampling, preservation, and inference strategies.
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- Nationality
- British
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- Original Language
- English
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