Ad
related to: scientific theory vs fact vs law
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Science distinguishes a law or theory from facts. [4] Calling a law a fact is ambiguous, an overstatement, or an equivocation. [5] The nature of scientific laws has been much discussed in philosophy, but in essence scientific laws are simply empirical conclusions reached by scientific method; they are intended to be neither laden with ...
Professor of biology Jerry Coyne sums up biological evolution succinctly: [3]. Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.
to what extent "facts" are influenced by the mere act of observation; [20]: 138 and; to what extent factual conclusions are influenced by history and consensus, rather than a strictly systematic methodology. [20]: 7 Consistent with the idea of confirmation holism, some scholars assert "fact" to be necessarily "theory-laden" to some degree.
This rendered all facts about human action examinable under a normative framework defined by cardinal virtues and capital vices. "Fact" in this sense was not value-free, and the fact-value distinction was an alien concept. The decline of Aristotelianism in the 16th century set the framework in which those theories of knowledge could be revised. [6]
Scientific realism takes scientific theory's statements at face value, thus accorded either falsity or truth—probable or approximate or actual. [17] Neopositivists held scientific antirealism as instrumentalism, holding scientific theory as simply a device to predict observations and their course, while statements on nature's unobservable ...
The problem of underdetermination concerns the fact that the available evidence often provides equal support to either theory and therefore cannot arbitrate between them. [12] [13] Theory-ladenness refers to the idea that evidence already includes theoretical assumptions. These assumptions can hinder it from acting as neutral arbiter.
Scientific evidence is evidence that serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis, [1] although scientists also use evidence in other ways, such as when applying theories to practical problems. [2] Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpretable in accordance with the scientific method.