Bill

Reading between the lines <a href="http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Einstein.html" target="_blank">HERE</a> would lead to the conclusion that it was the Special Theory that was verified in 1919 with the eclipse measurements because Einstein made the prediction about the bending of light in 1911, but he didn't begin formulating the General Theory until 1912.

I believe that Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" was always called a "Theory" once it reached the state where it was published and/or mentioned in the popular press, without regard to whether or not it was empirically verified. As near as I can tell, it ceased to be a hypothesis once the mathmatical equations were written out and properly aligned with what was known to be true at the time.

== Bill

Pantera

It was the GTR (published in 1915) which was verified by the eclipse, because that was the one which predicted that light should bend under gravity. The STR does not deal with gravity. However, the bending of light under gravity is just the start of the GTR (and about as far as I ever got with it) - once that and a few other things are accepted, most of the rest of it follows, so the prediction represented the beginning of Einstein's work on the GTR, not the end of it.

The way to verify it was to compare the apparent positions of a group of stars when they appear next to the sun in the sky (ie their light is passing near, and being bent by the sun) with there positions when they are elsewhere in the sky. Of course, prior to the space age stars next to the sun in the sky could only be observed during a solar eclipse. The expedition (IIRC it was to a rather remote spot in Africa) observed that the stars did indeed appear distorted.

There may be an interesting post-script. One of my old physics professors once told me (though I don't have a reference, so it could be apocryphal) that the team which did the experiment were actually rather over-optimistic about the accuracy of their measurements, and it later turned out thet the distortions they measured were within the margin of error of their experiment. So it may be that for all the publicity, the GTR was not verified at that time after all, though it has of course been verified since by more accurate measurements.

tribalbeeyatch

It may very well just be something that people say, but it's something that a lot of people say:

<a href="http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node7.html#SECTION02122000000000000000" target="_blank">hypothesis/theory</a>

"A hypothesis is a working assumption. Typically, a scientist devises a hypothesis and then sees if it ``holds water'' by testing it against available data (obtained from previous experiments and observations). If the hypothesis does hold water, the scientist declares it to be a theory." [emphasis mine]

tronvillain

Actually, I found that page myself. I'm just not sure it's something that really happens.

tribalbeeyatch

Oh, then I guess that I actually agree with you. I think that it's common for working scientists to be horribly deficient in their understanding of the philosophy of science. It's not like a typical curriculum will include this sort of training at the expense of teaching less of the immediately relevant subject matter. That's my guess as to why scientists would end up conflating theories and hypotheses (a layman's mistake, IMO)...and believe me there are plenty of them, and they don't seem to appreciate being corrected.

I've got another example of this sort of thing from my former life as a reproductive endocrinologist. It was the convention among endocrinologists to call something a "factor" until it was fully characterized, at which time it would get a more descriptive label (e.g. "follicle-stimulating factor" becomes "follicle-stimulating hormone"). And yet, much to my frustration, there were many examples of hormones that had been fully characterized but were still being called "factors". Aargh!