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Explanatory power is the ability of a hypothesis or theory to explain the subject matter effectively to which it pertains. Its opposite is explanatory impotence . In the past, various criteria or measures for explanatory power have been proposed.
For example, explanatory power over all existing observations (criterion 3) is satisfied by no one theory at the moment. [10] Whatever might be the ultimate goals of some scientists, science, as it is currently practiced, depends on multiple overlapping descriptions of the world, each of which has a domain of applicability.
Scientific modelling is an activity that produces models representing empirical objects, phenomena, and physical processes, to make a particular part or feature of the world easier to understand, define, quantify, visualize, or simulate.
Science is the process of gathering, comparing, and evaluating proposed models against observables. A model can be a simulation, mathematical or chemical formula, or set of proposed steps. Science is like mathematics in that researchers in both disciplines try to distinguish what is known from what is unknown at each stage of
One can use language to describe a model; however, the theory is the model (or a collection of similar models), and not the description of the model. A model of the solar system, for example, might consist of abstract objects that represent the sun and the planets. These objects have associated properties, e.g., positions, velocities, and masses.
Covering law model reflects neopositivism's vision of empirical science, a vision interpreting or presuming unity of science, whereby all empirical sciences are either fundamental science—that is, fundamental physics—or are special sciences, whether astrophysics, chemistry, biology, geology, psychology, economics, and so on.
A model is an abstract and informative representation of reality (a "model of reality"), similar to the way that a map is a graphical model that represents the territory of a city or country. In this approach, theories are a specific category of models that fulfill the necessary criteria. (See Theories as models for further discussion.)
Normal science, identified and elaborated on by Thomas Samuel Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, [1] is the regular work of scientists theorizing, observing, and experimenting within a settled paradigm or explanatory framework. [2]