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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).
When a hypothesis has survived a sufficient number of tests, it may be promoted to a scientific theory. A theory is a hypothesis that has survived many tests and seems to be consistent with other established scientific theories. Since a theory is a promoted hypothesis, it is of the same 'logical' species and shares the same logical limitations.
[B] A theory or hypothesis is falsifiable if it can be logically contradicted by an empirical test. Popper emphasized the asymmetry created by the relation of a universal law with basic observation statements [C] and contrasted falsifiability to the intuitively similar concept of verifiability that was then current in logical positivism.
The hypothesis of Andreas Cellarius, showing the planetary motions in eccentric and epicyclical orbits. A hypothesis (pl.: hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be based on observations and make a testable and reproducible prediction about reality, in a process beginning with an educated guess or ...
A scientific theory differs from a scientific fact or scientific law in that a theory seeks to explain "why" or "how", whereas a fact is a simple, basic observation and a law is an empirical description of a relationship between facts and/or other laws.
Such evidence is called a falsification of the hypothesis. However, under the theory of confirmation holism it is always possible to save a given hypothesis from falsification. This is so because any falsifying observation is embedded in a theoretical background, which can be modified in order to save the hypothesis.
In short, a hypothesis is testable if there is a possibility of deciding whether it is true or false based on experimentation by anyone. This allows anyone to decide whether a theory can be supported or refuted by data. However, the interpretation of experimental data may be also inconclusive or uncertain.
Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others. According to this way of thinking, a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make.