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Do Theories Have to be Testable to be Scientific?
"Gregory L. Hansen" wrote in message ... In article , Richard Alexander wrote: Al Klein wrote in message ... [snip] The definition of "scientific" doesn't include "testable". I think we should at least settle this question; Can an hypothesis, theory, principle, claim or statement be scientific if it is not testable? It needn't be immediately testable with current technology and the resources humans are willing to put into it. Those are just practical considerations. But, among other qualities, a theory must say something definite about nature, must make concrete predictions of observables that will be either right or wrong. Theory aids the understanding, but science is fundamentally empirical. www.m-w.com Main Entry: em·pir·i·cal Pronunciation: -i-k&l Variant(s): also em·pir·ic /-ik/ Function: adjective Date: 1569 1 : originating in or based on observation or experience empirical data That is why scientists differentiate between : 1. universal, scientific (empirical) statements ("There is no X") because we can all observe, experience it when such statements are false, and 2. unscientific, metaphysical (non-empirical) statements ("X exists") because the only thing that falsifies any such statement is the universal, empirical statement "There is no X." See Popper, _The Logic of Scientific Discovery_. And see this principle put in practice in the scientific method of investigation: 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 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. ... --- |
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