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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.
In modern science, the term "theory" refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with the scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science. Such theories are described in such a way that scientific tests should be able to provide empirical support for it, or ...
Science, then, could not find a secure foundation of indubitable truth. And since science aims to reveal not private but public truths, verificationists switched from phenomenalism to physicalism, whereby scientific theory refers to objects observable in space and at least in principle already recognizable by physicists. Finding strict ...
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 ...
Scientific theories are distinguished from philosophical theories in that each of their theorems are statements about observable data, whereas a philosophical theory ...
[1] [2] Theoretical definitions contain built-in theories; they cannot be simply reduced to describing a set of observations. The definition may contain implicit inductions and deductive consequences that are part of the theory. [3] A theoretical definition of a term can change, over time, based on the methods in the field that created it.
The scientific definition of the word theory is different from the definition of the word in colloquial use. In the vernacular, theory can refer to guesswork, a simple conjecture, an opinion, or a speculation that does not have to be based on facts and need not be framed for making testable predictions.
Francis Bacon, articulating inductivism in England, is often falsely stereotyped as a naive inductivist. [11] [12] Crudely explained, the "Baconian model" advises to observe nature, propose a modest law that generalizes an observed pattern, confirm it by many observations, venture a modestly broader law, and confirm that, too, by many more observations, while discarding disconfirmed laws. [13]