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Variety-of-evidence reasoning about the distant past

A case study in paleoclimate reconstruction

  • Original Paper in Philosophy of Science
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Abstract

The epistemology of studies addressing questions about historical and prehistorical phenomena is a subject of increasing discussion among philosophers of science. A related field of inquiry that has yet to be connected to this topic is the epistemology of climate science. Branching these areas of research, I show how variety-of-evidence reasoning accounts for scientific inferences about the past by detailing a case study in paleoclimate reconstruction. This analysis aims to clarify the logic of historical inquiry in general and, by focusing on a case study about climate change, it offers an epistemic account of a particular discipline that is of environmental and social importance.

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Notes

  1. E.g., Hempel (1942, 1965); Hempel and Oppenheim (1948); Gould (1989, 1992, 2002, 2003); Turner (2000, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2016); Cleland (2001, 2002, 2011); Jeffares (2008); Forber and Griffith (2011); Tucker (2011); Currie and Turner (2016).

  2. Estimates of the extent of temperature changes differ from one study to another depending in part on how far back a given reconstruction goes, the baseline of comparison, and the quality and quantity of proxy data.

  3. Although the climatologist Jerry Mahlman is reported to have coined this use of the term, it had previously been associated with similar climatological data-series patterns, such as ozone depletion (Biello 2012, p. 74).

  4. In the literature on this subject, MBH98 refers to Mann et al. (1998), MBH99 refers to Mann et al. (1999), and MBH refers to both papers.

  5. For details about the IPCC’s likelihood and confidence terminology in TAR, AR4 and AR5, see Schneider and Moss (1999), IPCC AR4 Appendix (2007) and Mastrandrea et al. (2010), respectively.

  6. This figure also contains Southern Hemisphere and Global temperature reconstructions, which emphasize the extension of paleoclimate research since TAR.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks Wayne Myrvold, Gillian Barker, Eric Desjardins, Radoslav Dimitrov, Lisa Lloyd, Gordon McBean, Stathis Psillos, Jamie Voogt and the anonymous reviewers for helpful discussion and feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. This research was supported by the Department of Philosophy and the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario.

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  1. Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA

    Martin A. Vezér

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Vezér, M.A. Variety-of-evidence reasoning about the distant past. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 7, 257–265 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-016-0156-y

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