BR is now arguing with the science text books. His greatest defense of evoultion is by using semantics and plays on words. Somehow he believes that if evolution is a theory it doesn't need to be proved. If that were true, then what is all the lab equipment for in schools and research facilities. NIH could be reduced to office space and they could just hand out theoretical cures to all the patients. The patients would have to be better so long as no one proved the theoretical drugs to be false. Truly a brave new world.
Regards,
Boiler Plate
Which is more likely to be able to provide an accurate description of what a scientific theory is: your grade school textbook or Sir Karl Popper?
What Makes A Theory Scientific?See source: http://www.geocities.com/healthbase/falsification.html"Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves." - physicist Richard Feynman
The big question about a theory is whether it's right or wrong.
Unfortunately, it's impossible to know that a scientific theory is right. The theory may agree beautifully with all the evidence - today. But science isn't like mathematics. There can be no guarantee about what evidence we will discover tomorrow.
So, we go for the next best thing, which is proving theories wrong. That's easy. You just find some evidence that contradicts what the theory says. The theory is then falsified and stays that way.
So, a scientific theory is one which can in principle be falsified. The theory has to make strong statements about evidence. If the statements aren't strong, then the theory fits any evidence, and is unfalsifiable. That's bad.
It's bad for three very practical reasons. First, a theory which can't make predictions is a dead end. Second, it would be useless. Oil companies are very pleased that geologists can predict where to drill for oil. And third, if we have two rival theories, we want to use evidence to choose between them. If they are unfalsifiable, then evidence doesn't do that for us.
While no number of observations in conformity with the hypothesis that, say, all planets have elliptical orbits can show that the hypothesis is true or even that tomorrow's planet will have an elliptical orbit, only one observation of a non-elliptical planetary orbit will refute the hypothesis. Falsification can get a grip where positive proof is ever beyond us; the demarcation between science and non-science lies in the manner in which scientific theories make testable predictions and are given up when they fail their tests. See http://www.xrefer.com/entry/553218
One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994)
The most important philosopher of science since Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Sir Karl Popper finally solved the puzzle of scientific method, which in practice had never seemed to conform to the principles or logic described by Bacon. Instead of scientific knowledge being discovered and verified by way of inductive generalizations, leaping from data into blank minds, in terms that go back to Aristotle, Popper realized that science advances instead by deductive falsification through a process of "conjectures and refutations." See http://www.friesian.com/popper.htm
Notice that NOWHERE in Popper's comments on scientific theories does he use the word "EXPERIMENT". He uses the words "falsifiability" and "testability," and throughout his writings refers to scientific theories that are capable of refutation by OBSERVATION. I trust this puts an end to your mistaken belief that theories that do not involve experimental reproduction of the phenomena within their scope are somehow not "scientific."
1603 posted on 03/10/2003 8:42 PM CST by longshadow
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Note: I did change the first line slightly and added "See" where appropriate. My thanks to longshadow for posting the original version!
<Truly a brave new world
The phenomenon is called Postmodernism. The truth does not exist objectively outside our minds, but is what you imagine it to be. As a rule, postmodernists are unteachable. It takes a personal crisis for them to reject their self-refuting worldview. Not ALL evos are embrace postmodernism, but quite a few on FR seem to.