The name of this message board....

[badgerchap]

Shouldn't the name of this part of the forum be Physics, Space Science and Hypotheses? I only ask because I keep noticing how often people confuse 'theories' and 'hypotheses'. Any thoughts anyone?

[Treeden]

Shouldn't the name of this part of the forum be Physics, Space Science and Hypotheses? I only ask because I keep noticing how often people confuse 'theories' and 'hypotheses'. Any thoughts anyone?

"Physics, Space Science, Theories, Hypotheses, Pseudo-Scientific Guesswork & Rambling-On-In-A-Vaguely-Interesting Way"

Would probably be more accurate, but...

"Physics, Space Science and Theories" is shorter and neater!

[badgerchap]

Good point

[Matt Scunthorpe]

I think its fine how it is. It is only for amateurs afterall.

[acey]

Maybe there should be a separate section called "astrology" and all the weird, opinionated, cranky, unprovable and plain wrong stuff could get moved there.

But I too think it's fine as it is.

[Matt Scunthorpe]

Arn't 90% of scienctists findings today unprovable though

[George Jones]

Arn't 90% of scienctists findings today unprovable though

I think I know what you're saying, that science is science is moving in increasingly speculative directions, but science has never been about proving things.

As an example, consider Newton's theory of gravity. Given the masses of any two objects and the distance that separates the objects, Newtonian gravity gives an expression for the gravitational force between the objects. To prove that Newtonian gravity is true, we would have to verify experimentally its force expression for all possible masses and all possible separation distances. It is impossible, even in principle, to verify this infinite set of possibilities. Even if we verify it a zillion times, tomorrow we could make a measurement that we can't square with its force expression. It only takes one (set of) measurement(s) to prove it wrong.

We can't prove that a theory is true, but, if it is a good theory, we can prove that it is false. I think that you mean, and possibly badgerchap too, that, increasingly, we have been considering theories that can't be proved false.

Reposting something I posted previously; I like what Robert Geroch wrote (in his non-technical book "General Relativity from A to B about physics theories and "proofs" of theories:

It seems to me that "theories of physics" have' date=' in the main, gotten a terrible press. The view has somehow come to be rampant that such theories are precise, highly logical, ultimately "proved". In my opinion, at least, this is simply not the case - not the case for general relativity and not the case for any other theory in physics. First, theories, in my view, consist of an enormous number of ideas, arguments, hunches, vague feelings, value judgements, and so on, all arranged in a maze. These various ingredients are connected in a complicated way. It is this entire body of material that is "the theory". One's mental picture of the theory is this nebulous mass taken as a whole. In presenting the theory, however, one can hardly attempt to present a "nebulous mass taken as a whole". One is thus forced to rearrange it so that it is linear, consisting of one point after another, each connected in some more or less direct way with its predecessor. What is supposed to happen is that one who learns the theory, presented in this linear way, then proceeds to form his own "nebulous mass taken as a whole". The points are all rearranged, numerous new connections between these points are introduced, hunches and vague feelings come into play, and so on. In one's own approach to the theory, one normally makes no attempt to isolate a few of these points to be called "postulates". One makes no attempt to derive the rest of the theory from postulates. (What, indeed, could it mean to "derive" something about the physical world?) One makes no attempt to "prove" the theory, or any part of it. (I don't even know what a "proof" could mean in this context. I wouldn't recognize a "proof" of a physical theory if I saw one.)[/quote']

Geroch was a very deep thinking, very good, professor in the departments of mathematics and physics at the University of Chicago. He also authored the provocatively titled book "Mathematical Physics".

[Jussi]

Shouldn't the name of this part of the forum be Physics, Space Science and Hypotheses? I only ask because I keep noticing how often people confuse 'theories' and 'hypotheses'. Any thoughts anyone?

No, because getting the gist of what someone is trying to say is far more improtant IMO

language is such a poor form of communication anyway .. ( you can say something and think the opposite !)

so untill we develop telepathy ...

[badgerchap]

I was merely trying to distinguish between 'theory' and 'hypothesis'. What most people refer to a theory, i.e an untested set of thoughts or speculations is, more correctly a hypothesis. A theory is a set of propositions that has been rigorously tested by numerous investigations and has so far not been disproven. Such as the 'theory' of gravitation. A hypothesis on the other hand can come from anyone, anywhere at any time. Or maybe that's just my theory