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To: doc30
See post #55 above for definitions of terms,particularly "law" and "theory" as used in a scientific manner.

You might brush up on some basic science as well.

110 posted on 11/18/2005 8:30:14 AM PST by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: Coyoteman
Laws and Theories are inextractably tied together. Your googled defintion, "generalization that describes recurring facts or events in nature,": and the one from the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms, "A regularity that applies to all members of a broad class of phenomena," does lead to a connection with theory. But this is really hair splitting and I'm not underplaying the distictions. Violations of scientific Laws do happen, but my point to Mazeman was that violations of a Law are the same as violations of a theory. The question is do these violations invalidate the theory or law in question? Typically, the violations occur outside the scope of the theory or law. When building a theory to explain the violations, it must also explain the conditions where the older theory still works well. You have probably heard many times the classic example where Relativity is an extension of Newtonian laws of Motion. When Newton's laws are invalidated under the velocities and/or gravities, Relativity becomes the dominant theory. However, outside of those extreme circumstances, Newton's Laws work well and relativity can be simplified into Newton's Laws. In other words, Newton's laws are predicted from relativity and can be considered a subset of relativity.

The creationist types demand that either unproven theory not be taught or theories with bholes and gaps not be taught. But if they understood what they are thinking, they would realize that their arguements leads to a scientific dead end.

Aside from arguing the nuances of Law vs. Theory, the important point is that most people, especially the creationist types, just can't or won't get their heads around the basic concept of theory. And I can tell by many of your previous posts, that it drives you just as crazy as other people here on FR who know the important context of what is a scientific theory.

165 posted on 11/18/2005 11:42:52 AM PST by doc30 (Democrats are to morals what and Etch-A-Sketch is to Art.)
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