underdetermining

Verb

underdetermine (third-person singular simple present underdetermines, present participle underdetermining, simple past and past participle underdetermined)

1. Particularly in the theory of scientific explanation, to provide too few constraints to specify a unique solution.
   • 1967 A. H. Armstrong (ed) The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy
     He recognised that, in constructing his laws, the physicist must go beyond the ‘facts’ which inevitably underdetermine his theories. Boltzmann rightly accused both the idealists and the inductivists of...