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Old 17-07-2003, 07:12 PM
Bob White
 
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Default Do Theories Have to be Testable to be Scientific?


"Jeff Utz" wrote in message
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"Richard Alexander" wrote in message
om...
root wrote in message

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Richard Alexander wrote:
Historical events are--surprise!--History, not Science, and History

is
distinct from Science.

But it might take science to reveal history. The distinction isn't
as clear as you suggest.


There is a difference between science involvement and being a science.
Many church auditoriums are designed through the science of acoustics,
but that doesn't mean that religion is a science.

Certain terms have taken on a life of their own. A "quantum leap" or
"quantum advance" is used where we would normally say a "huge leap" or
a "huge advance." Of course, a true quantum leap is an extremely small
thing, the difference, say, in electron orbits. Likewise, saying that
something is not scientific has become akin to saying that something
is erroneous.


I disagree. I would argue that creationism is not scientific, because the
hypothesis that creation exists is not testable. That does not mean the
creationism does not exist, only that science cannot answer the question
whether or not creationism is true.


What prevents us from using the logical, systematic, scientific method of
investigation to investigate any proposition at all, even a proposition
like, "It is true that a magic invisible creator of everything might really
exist"?

We have an ongoing scientific investigation of the theory that ETs (not in
evidence) might really exist. Here is how that theory is being investigated,
using the scientific method:


Null : of, being, or relating to zero
www.m-w.com
(as in, "There are no ETs.")


---
Testing the Null Hypothesis
by John Marcus, MD
email

http://www.setileague.org/editor/null.htm

SETI is perhaps the most highly interdisciplinary of sciences,
encompassing not only astronomy, biology, engineering and physics, but
also psychology, metaphysics, probability, and belief. But it is, first
and foremost, a science, one to which we hope to apply the scientific
method.

[...]

The Scientific Method for the Argus search is this:

There are no ET's. (null hypothesis).

.... [W]e now design an experiment (Project Argus, for example) to try to
prove that statement wrong, recognizing that it takes only one clear,
unambiguous counter-example to reject the null hypothesis. ...

---