transitive verb

• Account for (a theory or phenomenon) with less than the amount of evidence needed for proof or certainty.

  ‘most cosmological theories are underdetermined by the facts’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Generalizing, we might say that just as points underdetermine equations, so facts underdetermine theories.’
  • ‘Hence, theory choice is underdetermined by evidence.’
  • ‘A child's linguistic abilities appear to be radically underdetermined by the evidence of verbal behavior offered to the child in the short period in which he or she expresses those abilities.’
  • ‘In practice, of course, the evidence available will often underdetermine the identification of the desires and beliefs operative in a given course of action.’
  • ‘Periods of transition are underdetermined and our tools for the study of such processes are necessarily insufficient.’
  • ‘In every case, he will claim, all the evidence we will ever have radically underdetermines what it would be true or even justifiable to believe.’