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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 ...
The English word theory derives from a technical term in philosophy in Ancient Greek.As an everyday word, theoria, θεωρία, meant "looking at, viewing, beholding", but in more technical contexts it came to refer to contemplative or speculative understandings of natural things, such as those of natural philosophers, as opposed to more practical ways of knowing things, like that of skilled ...
The formal scientific definition of theory is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence. Many scientific theories are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them substantially.
For Putnam, the working hypothesis represents a practical starting point in the design of an empirical research exploration. A contrasting example of this conception of the working hypothesis is illustrated by the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment. This experiment involves confronting the global skeptic position that we, in fact, are all just ...
The history of scientific method considers changes in the methodology of scientific inquiry, not the history of science itself. The development of rules for scientific reasoning has not been straightforward; scientific method has been the subject of intense and recurring debate throughout the history of science, and eminent natural philosophers and scientists have argued for the primacy of ...
Philosophers, such as Karl R. Popper, have provided influential theories of the scientific method within which scientific evidence plays a central role. [8] In summary, Popper provides that a scientist creatively develops a theory that may be falsified by testing the theory against evidence or known facts.
In science and philosophy, an ad hoc hypothesis is a hypothesis added to a theory in order to save it from being falsified.. For example, a person that wants to believe in leprechauns can avoid ever being proven wrong by using ad hoc hypotheses (e.g., by adding "they are invisible", then "their motives are complex", and so on).
Sometimes, a conjecture is called a hypothesis when it is used frequently and repeatedly as an assumption in proofs of other results. For example, the Riemann hypothesis is a conjecture from number theory that — amongst other things — makes predictions about the distribution of prime numbers. Few number theorists doubt that the Riemann ...