What is a Scientific theory?

Question

My understanding is that the theory is about how something works, not if it exists. No one denies that gravity exists, but the theory is our best understanding of how it works. No one denies germs exist, but the theory is our best explanation of how they work. And of course no one with a rudimentary understanding of earth science denies that evolution exists, but the theory is our understanding of how it works. Am I correct that theories change as we learn more about how things work?

animalmother - Newton's theory of gravitation is that every mass attracts every other mass by a force pointing along the line combining the two and that the force is proportional to the product of the two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the point masses. The law to which you refer is used to calculate the Gravitational force between the two masses. It is a part of what makes up the theory. Within the theory of evolution, a comparable law would be Mendel's Second Law - the law of independent assortment - that states during gamete formation the segregation of the alleles of one allelic pair is independent of the segregation of the alleles of another allelic pair. This fact helps understand how evolution works.

Answer 1

If you are open minded, then as you test your theory, you let the evidence (data) speak for itself, which many times means refining the theory.

Answer 2

Of course theories change all the time. But the problem today with many theories is that people such as yourself assume something, which makes the research pretty useless.

Theories are based on, suggestions, conclusions, educated guesses, and some facts. The facts as to the theory of evolution are not facts at all, but conclusions as to findings. And the main problem with evolution is most of people researching it have assumed it to be true. It is no different then a cop assuming guilt, and then looking for evidence to prove that guilt. Which makes the result what the cop wants, and not what maybe the truth. Because once something is assumed to be correct, then all findings point to the desired result.

Natural selection is an assumption of how evolution worked. So acting on that assumption, all evidence is examined in such a way as to see where it fits into the assumption. Not what else it might explain. Or not explain.

Searching for truth requires that no assumptions are made, and that all evidence, if it even is evidence, is looked at as what it is, what we can prove it is, and what it truly means, if it means anything.

The theory of evolution and it's process, natural selection, have not even come close to being proven which is evidenced by recent findings that we can not even explain what happened even just 10,000 years ago.

Example. It has been taught as fact that North America was inhabited by humans crossing a land bridge, and that happened some 13,000 years ago. "New" evidence shows that, that probably didn't happen, and "new" findings show that humans were here over 17,000 years ago.

Answer 3

LOL, shouldn't you ask this in the Science section?

In science, a theory is a mathematical or logical explanation, or a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation.

For scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition.

Using your example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theories commonly used to describe and explain this behaviour are Newton's theory of universal gravitation and general relativity.

And yes, when a fact comes up that is not explained in a theory, a new theory or a modification of the original theory will be made.

You could say that Theory's evolve!

However, take the Theory of Evolution, it would be very simple to disprove this, provided you could find specific examples that would falsify the theory.

If they could find a Bat, that had true feathers for instance. Or a Bird that had mammaries. Or a creature from earth that didn't use any of the 22 amino acids that are assoicated with life on earth, but used 22 different amino acids from the other 378+ naturally occuring amino acids found in the world. Or a creature on the earth that did not use ATP but instead used CTP, TTP, UTP, ITP, or any ATP-like molecule with one of the 390 odd known amino acids or one of the dozens of other bases replacing the adenosine moiety.

But they haven't found any of these yet, so I doubt that they will ever disprove the Theory. It is consistant with the observable facts.

I hope that helps.

Answer 4

In science, a theory is the best explanation of known facts. So the theories that you mention -- gravitation, bacterial theory of disease, relativity, etc explain all the currently known facts. Often, new facts are discovered that mean a theory has to be modified or overthrown (as happened with gravitational theory when Einstein came along with the theory of relativity to explain some observations that did not fit).

This is why any explanation of the past and present biology of the planet that includes a supreme being or an intelligent designer can never be called a scientific theory. It requires you to postulate the existence of something that has no facts to support it (existence of god, designer, etc.) If you don't like the theory of evolution, which fits in with pretty much everything known about life on earth, then you are free to come up with a better theory, but you cannot just make up facts.

Answer 5

"From the almost total absence of fossil evidence relative to the origin of the phyla, it follows that any explanation of the mechanism in the creative evolution of the fundamental structural plans is heavily burdened with hypothesis. This should appear as an epigraph to every book on evolution. The lack of direct evidence leads to the formulation of pure conjecture as to the genesis of the phyla; we do not even have a basis to determine the extent to which these opinions are correct." Pierre-Paul de Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms

Answer 6

Not quite. A theory is a set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

Answer 7

In scientific usage, a theory does not mean an unsubstantiated guess or hunch, as it can in everyday speech. A theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a related set of natural or social phenomena. It originates from or is supported by experimental evidence (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations which is predictive, logical and testable. In principle, scientific theories are always tentative, and subject to corrections or inclusion in a yet wider theory. Commonly, a large number of more specific hypotheses may be logically bound together by just one or two theories. As a general rule for use of the term, theories tend to deal with much broader sets of universals than do hypotheses, which ordinarily deal with much more specific sets of phenomena or specific applications of a theory.

Answer 8

What about the Newton's Law of Gravity, that must hold some weight.

Answer 9

Bingo.

Answer 10

I don't drink before 10 am.