Scientific Method
Scientific Theory
A scientific theory is contrasted with a scientific law. A lot here, is immutable because it is simple enough that we have learned everything there is to know about it. it has a simple testable (think unit test) methodology to it.
- ex. second law of thermodynamics it's easily testable and consistent, but there are still things we are learning about evolution, which makes it not a law
Scientific theories have to be falsifiable to be considered valid. this means that we can test it and prove whether it is false or not ex. Freud's theory of suppress childhood memories having an impact in later life is not falsifiable, because we can't test it. Therefore it can't be proven or disproven from a scientific standpoint.
2 things make up a good theory: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements It must make definite predictions about the results of future observations
Any physical therapy is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis. You could never prove it, since no matter how many times the results of the experiment agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory
It only takes a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory to disprove it. What often happens then is that the theory is revised to account for that observation.
- anal: think of it like testing software. We may observe a certain component to be robust for years, but then some edge case comes along and breaks it. This breakage causes us to realize our shortcomings, so we modify our implementation.
The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe
- this is due to the understanding that everything in the universe depends on everything else in a fundamental way. Therefore, to investigate parts of the problem in isolation would cause us to fall short of an accurate answer for any single theory.
Today, scientists describe the universe in terms of 2 partial theories: the general theory of relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics.
- these theories are known to be inconsistent with each other– they cannot both be right.
- The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large scale structure of the universe, that is, the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as 1 million million million million miles, which is the size of the observable universe.
- Quantum mechanics deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch
Dependent variables are like dependencies in software. Dependencies need input provided by other modules. The modules that depend on other modules then change based on the input of the dependency this is no different from mathematics. The dependent variable is not unchanging, and the independent variable is the input