underdetermination means the state or quality of being underdetermined. It carries an Arena rating of 955, earned across 96 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, underdetermination ranks #1,309 of 17,124 for Most Sublime Words, #2,781 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #4,561 of 17,134 for Most Malleable Words, #4,693 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words.
Why “underdetermination” is a great word
UNDERDETERMINATION — [Noun] The state in which the available evidence is insufficient to definitively select one theory, model, or interpretation from among several possible alternatives. From the prefix under- (indicating insufficiency) + determination (from Latin determinare, "to set bounds, settle") or from underdetermine + the noun-forming suffix -ation. First attested in the 1960s. Unlike "indeterminacy," which implies an inherent, fundamental lack of a fixed outcome, or "overdetermination," its conceptual opposite where an effect is saturated with causes, underdetermination is the specific, logical gap between what the evidence demands and what the theorist proposes. It is the astronomer weighing two stellar models from the same faint smear of light, the historian reading equal evidence for malice or incompetence in a faded letter, or the diagnostician seeing both the rare and the common disease in the same constellation of symptoms—a permanent reminder that the map is always smaller, and simpler, than the territory.
Etymology
From under- + determination or underdetermine + -ation.
noun
- The state or quality of being underdeterminede.g.“It is true that […] the questions of the justification of inductive inferences normally lead to further problems, associated with the phenomenon of the underdetermination of theory by experience.” — 2007 October 9, Manuel Pérez Otero, “The Humean problem of induction and Carroll’s Paradox”, in Philosophical Studies, volume 141, number 3, →DOI:
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