Siska De Baerdemaeker (University of Pittsburgh)
Cosmology at its core is an integrative science. In this paper, I focus on evidential integration and I investigate how cosmologists can overcome diffculties in integrating different sources of evidence. I draw a distinction between mediated and unmediated evidence, and I argue that unmediated evidence takes priority in two ways: in being more reliable in the integrative context, and in being more useful heuristically. I illustrate my view by drawing on contemporary dark matter research, as well as on the history of the cosmological constant.
