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Observation in the natural sciences [1] is an act or instance of noticing or perceiving [2] and the acquisition of information from a primary source. In living beings, observation employs the senses. In science, observation can also involve the perception and recording of data via the use of scientific instruments. The term may also refer to ...
In Popper's view of science, statements of observation can be analyzed within a logical structure independently of any factual observations. [W] [X] The set of all purely logical observations that are considered constitutes the empirical basis. Popper calls them the basic statements or test statements. They are the statements that can be used ...
Several philosophers and historians of science have, however, argued that Popper's definition of theory as a set of falsifiable statements is wrong [50] because, as Philip Kitcher has pointed out, if one took a strictly Popperian view of "theory", observations of Uranus when first discovered in 1781 would have "falsified" Newton's celestial ...
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. [1] The term law has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) across all fields of natural science ( physics , chemistry , astronomy , geoscience , biology ).
In physics, the observer effect is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. [1] [2] This is often the result of utilising instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner. A common example is checking the pressure in an automobile tire, which causes some of the air to escape, thereby ...
A causal relationship between the observations and hypothesis does not exist to cause the observation to be taken as evidence, [3] but rather the causal relationship is provided by the person seeking to establish observations as evidence. A more formal method to characterize the effect of background beliefs is Bayesian inference. [5]
[44] [45] [46] For example, inserting viral DNA into a bacterium is a form of experimentation while studying planetary orbits through a telescope belongs to mere observation. [47] In these cases, the mutated DNA was actively produced by the biologist while the planetary orbits are independent of the astronomer observing them.
In the philosophy of science, observations are said to be "theory-laden" when they are affected by the theoretical presuppositions held by the investigator. The thesis of theory-ladenness is most strongly associated with the late 1950s and early 1960s work of Norwood Russell Hanson, Thomas Kuhn, and Paul Feyerabend, and was probably first put forth (at least implicitly) by Pierre Duhem about ...