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The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is an historical hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to gestation or hatching (), goes through stages resembling or representing successive adult stages in the evolution of the ...
[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.
Church–Turing thesis. In computability theory, the Church–Turing thesis (also known as computability thesis, [1] the Turing–Church thesis, [2] the Church–Turing conjecture, Church's thesis, Church's conjecture, and Turing's thesis) is a thesis about the nature of computable functions. It states that a function on the natural numbers can ...
A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that can be (or a fortiori, that has been) repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results. Where possible, theories are tested under controlled ...
The term "scientific law" is traditionally associated with the natural sciences, though the social sciences also contain laws. [11] For example, Zipf's law is a law in the social sciences which is based on mathematical statistics. In these cases, laws may describe general trends or expected behaviors rather than being absolutes.
Testability. Testability is a primary aspect of science [1] and the scientific method. There are two components to testability: Falsifiability or defeasibility, which means that counterexamples to the hypothesis are logically possible. The practical feasibility of observing a reproducible series of such counterexamples if they do exist.
Theory. A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be scientific, belong to a non-scientific discipline, or no discipline at all.
It is argued against the first premise that the underdetermination must be strong and/or inductive. It is argued against the second premise that there is evidence for a theory's truth besides observations; for example, it is argued that simplicity, explanatory power or some other feature of a theory is evidence for it over its rivals.