Apostate1970

agrajag, this is from the wiki you cited:

1) In science a theory is a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise verified through empirical observation.

2) According to the National Academy of Sciences,

Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature that is supported by many facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena.

But can you really not see that these are two different definitions? The first definition does not require that there actually be any observations that have supported the theory. The second definition requires many such observations to have been made. I just can't believe that you really can't see the difference here.

There are many other problems with these and other definitions. For one example, when does anything support another to begin with? It is only according to some model that one thing can ever support another at all, so the very notion of support already requires that one be working under and thereby presupposing a theory. For another and related example, what about when two or more models have the same predictive or explanatory power but are nevertheless inconsistent with one another? For another related example, what about models that we plausibly could never make observations to distinguish between (ex. Everett vs. Copenhaggen interpretations)? Are we really to remain neutral between these? And even if we should, should we on that grounds deny them the status of "theory"? If we should then we need another word to allow us to say what they are. I've already used "model" (just as the wiki did), but the point is that there's no consensus on when to use what words. Also, we would just need too many different words to make all the distinctions that need making when the one word "theory" works just fine and its meaning can be understood from context.

So the fact is that theyeti is right (and so is skepticalbip).

None of this calls into question the power of scientific method broadly construed. None of this justifies magical thinking or puts all forms of reasoning or evidence on a par with one another. If that is your concern then you can lay it aside. For example, you don't need a consensus on how to use "theory" and its kin-words to distinguish between things like evolutionist and creationist arguments. The fact that there's no consensus in science on how to use this word in no way reflects poorly on the sciences.

Finally, you seem to be a big fan of Popper but you know, you just need to keep reading and come up to date with the last several decades of thinking on this issue. Or, for that matter, you could go back in time because people (ex. C.S. Peirce, pretty much all of the frequency-interpretation proponents) were doing better philosophy of science than Popper 60 years or more before him.

The Dagda

You cant change reality get over yourself. In science a theory needs evidence you lose end of story. OK? Got it? Or do you think if you go on talking somehow reality will change to suit your lonely opinion?

Your wasting your time, really.

Your prose grows increasingly desperate.

What do you want me to say, that the scientific community should and will abandon all links to scientific method because of a casual whim?

What do I mean by theory, you can't get out of your unreasoning assertions by playing some analytical game. This is not a moral argument it is not grey, the term theory is used by scientists to denote something with a testable basis, that's it, end of story, nothing you say can or will ever change reality.

And stop making out you don't understand what I mean as well now you've resorted to pretending to be an idiot as if that somehow makes your drivel more meaningful. I'm not buying it get over yourself and accept the conventional scientific use of the word or go live in a cave, I don't care which you're boring me now.

lol this is pointless? This is just waffle? A theory is a theory is a theory is a theory. We don't need another word we have a perfectly good convention going here? What are you the thought police? No wait everyone this theory thing I know we've been using it in a well established way for 200 years, and it is understood by all of us when we use the term what we mean? But what if we could magically rewrite reality? Because we don't like the idea that pre scientific method theories might be included by mistake.

Is today your "special day" where you try to prove black is white?

It doesn't matter what you say, only the opinion of those in the field matter and I seriously doubt you've ever even worked or come into contact with scientists or you wouldn't be saying this. You have no idea at all you are way out of your depth here.

The question is should string theory be rated as theoretical by scientists anyway, answer no, and it isn't anyway. Not should we upset the applecart and redefine theory to suit you.

And please answer my questions? Why do you think that theory is different in your world? What makes you the voice of science? If your just going to come back with look he's an idiot, your ranting you make no sense, don't bother, I don't care for your abuse or your lack of ability to reason or recognise reality. I want to know who died and made you God?

The answer to this really is you studied some abstract theory about science and now you think your an authority enough to tell science what it should think and what its conventions should mean. You don't have that right, you never will have that right. So why are you trying to write an abstract essay on some reality that you think should exist but doesn't. It's utterly irrelevant. I'm not your bloody lecturer and I will not be grading you for making pretentious arguments that only exist in your head.

Now if you want to imagine what theory should mean to the scientific community if someone died and made you God, then surely you should start a different thread and say why the scientific definitions and its conventionally accepted usage are wrong, because that is an entirely different subject and misses the point. They do not accept string theory as a theory because of the commonly used meaning of the word in the field. Maybe you should write a strongly worded letter to the king of science and complain they are being unfair, or maybe you should just accept that today in the world you live in science must have evidence and its theories likewise. To be honest I think its best because if I have to listen to one more reason why your will is powerful enough to change reality I'm really not going to be impressed.

The Dagda

Actually apologies I've just realised you in reality have no idea what a scientific theory is, so here's a basic tutorial so you don't make the same mistake in future:

http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQ...sci_theory.htm

Oh my God string theory lacks all of those except the last one, it must therefore be a theory!

Antiplastic

Might I humbly suggest that one way to avoid having other people post on the meaning of the word "theory" in science is not to create a thread with a poll and explicitly invite other people to post on the meaning of the word "theory" in science? There are no guarantees, but I wager that would go a long way.

Antiplastic

Not all terms, of course, if that's what's got your knickers in a twist. Philosophy is for conceptual analysis, broadly construed.

Or lexicography. Look, here's what happens.

Words get their meaning through use, because the meaning of words just is their use. If you watch enough people pointing at rabbits and forcing air across their teeth and saying "rabbit", eventually you can (gavagai worries aside) be reasonably confident concluding that the meaning of "rabbit" is rabbit.

Most of the time this happens organically, distributively, democratically, with no one in charge. This is why most words that lexicographers put in dictionaries have 2 or 3 or 10 or even 20 meanings: competent language-users use them for 2 or 3 or 10 or 20 different functions. Every so often, someone coins a new word for a new use, or uses an old word in a novel way, and if it catches on, the lexicographers will report this next year.

Everything clear so far?

Now, one thing that we have in our post-industrial society is what Putnam called a "linguistic division of labor". There are simply too many expert cultures of specialists in too many fields for the population at large to keep up with the meaning of every word, or with the modifications in use that come with new discoveries (say, the discovery of rabbits' place in the ToL). So people take their general meanings of words with them when they immigrate to their specialist cultures, and change the use in new and fascinating ways that can be radically counterintuitive to nonspecialists.

Doing OK?

Often, these expert subcultures will have governing bodies with the authority to stipulate meanings -- to legislate uses on the members of the subculture. For example, the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union can get together, vote, and simply command that members of the specialist culture use the word 'planet' in such a way as to exclude Pluto, or the American Psychiatric Association can get together and command that members of the subculture accept their definition of clinical depression.

But this doesn't always happen. More often, subcultures are just sub-democracies, and while they develop their own specialist definitions they do it just like the general population does, by organically and implicitly agreeing on use. And, just like in the general population, since this happens without explicit oversight, very often there are multiple related yet distinct definitions that develop in parallel. And specialist lexicographers go and try to capture these in specialist dictionaries, like, say, Black's Law Dictionary.

No problems yet, I trust?

While of course it's very interesting and makes all the papers when there is a new legislation event (like the demotion of Pluto), 99% of scientists 99% of the time give fuck all about "arguing over the definitions of words" (like James T invited us to do in this thread). This is a good thing, because scientists are in the business of building increasingly generalized descriptions of the empirical world, and what works, works. But because scientists are (shock! horror!) also human beings, there is nothing stopping them from making divergent and conceptually messy alternate versions of concepts.

Some good examples of this in biology are the multiple inconsistent definitions of 'gene' that sprang up, or the multiple inconsistent uses of the word 'species' used by scientists (I have heard one account that claimed to have found twenty six different definitions in use by actual scientists doing actual science), or the multiple definitions of 'function' in evolutionary terms.

And so the question finally arises: what is "the" (sic) definition of such terms? And the answer is something you can only get by rolling up your sleeves and doing the conceptual analysis: how are such terms actually used? To what are taxonomists committed when they insist that two fossils are the same species on morphological grounds, and is this the same thing that population geneticists are committed to when they say that two morphologically identical groups are different species due to geographical breeding isolation?

These are not questions whose answers are handed down on stone tablets from on high, and they are not questions whose answers can be decided by just asking a single scientist to give his personal definition of 'gene'.

This is not an attack on the authority of science.

This is not a declaration that scientists don't know more about genes than philosophers.

This is not a declaration that philosophy can decide, a priori, what definitions ought to be.

This is not an invitation for philosophy to "meddle on science's turf".

It is the simple and obvious idea that conceptual analysis is what philosophy does, and not what (say) physics does. And this is a good thing, because physicists have better things to do than sit in armchairs and muse on "the definition of space". And I have seen and heard (with my own eyes and ears) scientists expressing gratitude to philosophers of science for bringing conceptual clarity to their work.

So what, if any thing, is "the" definition of theory?

There is no body of gnomes in Zurich or 13 Jews dwelling in the center of the earth or whatever capable of issuing binding proclamations on all sociologists, geologists, physicists, zoologists, applied mathematicians, neurologists etc. that has ever declared that "theory" (not "scientific theory" or "good scientific theory", I mean "theory") means such-and-such; if there were, you would have cited it by now.

There is no consistent use of words like "hypothesis" and "theory" among scientists, as the examples I supplied (and which you snipped away without acknowledging or addressing, tisk tisk) showed. And as theyeti tried to point out, it doesn't matter in actual scientific practice because there is no difference in actual scientific practice if they call their ideas RNA world hypotheses or RNA world theories or String Theory or String Pecan Pie or String Hay Guyz Check Out My Kewl Idea. There are ideas in science (just as there are ideas in everyday automobile repair or cooking or tying your shoes) that try to describe and explain the contents of empirical experience, and "theory" is a perfectly good word for them.

In fact he did not recognize this, because to recognize something it must be true, and this is not true. And he did not assert that a theory must have been tested, he asserted that a theory, in order to be a scientific theory (not in order to be "a theory"), must be falsifiable through testing, not "to have been tested". And he was wrong even on this, and he was shown to be wrong, and the "resultant redefinition" never took place, and if it had, it would have been lexicographical. And wrong.

Well, when I converse with someone, even when things get tense, I try to pay them the basic courtesy of actually caring what they think, and caring whether they understand the evidence and arguments I give them, and caring whether the evidence and arguments I give them (unlike your citations) both 1) actually support my position instead of contradicting it (and each other) and 2) are true. So I suppose we may simply have a conflict of styles.

Antiplastic

(This is the point where I was hoping you would start showing instead of saying.)

(This is the point where I thought you would take the opportunity to clarify your position by actually answering my question.)

(This is the part where I hoped you would take the opportunity to explain what you meant by the phrase "a scientific theory needs nothing at all".)

(This was the part where I hoped you would take the opportunity to explain what on earth you were talking about. So many missed opportunities!)

Lucky for me, I don't attempt to.

Have I ever said that theories don't need evidence to make it in science? Why no, I haven't. Does a theory need evidence to be a theory? Why no, it doesn't, as I have argued persuasively.

I am not a doctor and I cannot make promises, but I bet your blood pressure would stay down if you limited yourself to being angry at positions I actually hold.

I would not want to change reality, because in reality (as I have said and shown) testability is desirable but not necessary for an idea to be a theory. Because a theory is just a general explanatory description of some phenomenon, and string theory is a general explanatory description of some phenomenon. I do not claim it is a true description. I do not claim that it is likely to be a true description. I do not claim that it is a "good scientific" description. I do not even claim that it is necessarily a scientific as opposed to mathematical or philsophical description. I just claim that it is a description. Peace.

bong_0000007

String in what natural way???
Proof of existence..

The Dagda

This is the point where I ignore your unsupported and unsubstantiated opinions. Discussion over really unless you want to show me where science asserts that a theory is anything different from the link I gave, all your statements are waffle and say nothing or address nothing. Go whine at science ask why it makes such a big deal about scientific method if you must, but spare me your sophistry and semantic bs its just laughable and I've no interest in it. I happen to know what is required for a theory thanks. Don't try and tell me that the sky is green because you are unable to understand what the society of science has professed is their method and their terminology. If you don't like what theory is and has been designated to be then your whinging at the wrong person, take it up with the field, try and overturn there assertions and conventions and see how far you get. Because I'm superfluous to requirements, this isn't my definition it isn't my argument and is a matter for the institutes of science, I'll side with them, you can do what you like who cares? Lol.

My blood pressure is pretty level, and as for your persuasive argument, its not me you have to persuade its the whole scientific community. Persuasive to who, your imaginary friend who lives in your cupboard. I don't think anyone's buying this. Lol. But it is at least amusing watching you try and rewrite what things are.

If you prefaced that with in my extremely limited and unscientific opinion. Or outside of science a theory is: then I'd say fine, that's your opinion, good for you or yes outside of science that is exactly what a theory is. But to actually try and tell me that what I'm saying or should I say what scientists say is a theory is wrong is a bit beyond the pale tbh. You appear to have got hypothesis mixed up with theory by the way as your statement describes what a hypothesis is. It also describes what a theory is outside of science, which again I think is the problem you appear to have, ie distinguishing between a scientific theory (or a matter of science) and a theory. Which is why I put up that tutorial which goes into great depth exactly what a theory is but should be simple for those who are not in a scientific field to understand. I really hoped you'd read it its really quite illuminating, I read it and I have to say I was interested in the sociological definition of science, even I learnt something and I've always prided myself on knowing what science demands of its theories. Learn something new every day.

I don't even mind if people say they think ST is a theory, that's up to them, if in your opinion it merits that its fine, I disagree but there we go, but you've kind of gone beyond giving your opinion on what string "theory" is into giving your opinion of what a theory in science is, contrary to what a theory actually is, and for me that's going a bit too far.

In science, science is a good theory and a good theory is a good scientific description they are indivisible really at least in the way you mean, I'm kind of thinking your starting to disappear up your own nether regions now. Did I say that a theory needs evidence? Did I say that science needs evidence? Did I say that grass is blue? We know what you said, give it up already, it's not true.

I happen to agree on one point someone else made though, its not philosophies job to tell the scientific community what a theory is despite science.

James T

I don't have a problem with them doing that, it's your attempt (though I am not sure your approach deserves the positive connotations associated with the word attempt) that I find a little droll.

Do you have a point you can express in one sentence?

My own is simple.

That while we loosely call it string theory it doesn't really merit the title of a theory and that string conjecture would be more appropriate (though I voted voodoo as a piss take).

Lavis Knight

The tone in this thread has become less than civil. If the situation escalates further this thread will be closed.

-Lavis