Inquisitive wrote:hackenslash wrote:Inquisitive wrote:I'm looking for an unquestionably rigorous and irrefutable definition of science and scientific theory.
Well,
if the Prof's personal Definition of 'the study of what is true about
the real world' doesn't meet your criteria, what is your refutation of
it? I like it. I think it's elegant and concise. What about it is
non-rigorous?
If by elegant and concise you mean
poetic and short, then I agree. But the study of science and calling
that study "science" says absolutely nothing about what science is.
Hang
on, he didn't say the study of science, he called it the study of
what's true about the real world. The way you phrased it was
tautological, while what the Prof said was not. There is a reason for
this, of course. What you are calling science, or at least what's
implicit in the way you phrase, is a subject to be studied. That is not
what the Prof means by science. He is talking about science in a
research sense, rather than a study of what we know (provisionally).
So, you may be studying 'what science has taught us', while the
professor is studying 'what's true about the real world' which, in a
broad, vernacular sense, means 'extending what science has taught us.
Do you see the distinction?
What it boils down to is that your
formulation, while correct in the strictest sense, is not exactly what
linguists and scholars would call rigorous, while the prof's definition
is (which is why I like it, because I'm a big fan of rigorous
definitions).
What are the limits to finding what is true about the real world?
Who says there are limits, apart from the obvious limit of 'all that there is to know'?
What are the proper methods of investigation?
1. Observe the evidence
2. Formulate hypothesis on the basis of that evidence
3.
Make predictions concerning what you will find if your hypothesis is
true, along with a null hypothesis, or a prediction concerning what you
may find if your hypothesis is not correct.
4. Observe the evidence
5. Rinse. Repeat.
If
at any time your hypothesis fails, either in a predictive sense, or in
the sense that it fails to conform to the evidence, you must discard
your hypothesis or modify it to account for particular circumstances,
then go back to step 2.
I'm always studying science and I have definite opinions about it.
Excellent!
What are your opinions? Feel free to share them in the science forum,
where lots of knowledgable peeps can subject your ideas to the
peer-review process, albeit in a limited sense.
When are my opinions a scientific theory
When
they explain a class of observed data and have survived experimentation
and peer-review, although when I say peer-review this time, I actually
mean properly, as in submitting your ideas and your supporting evidence
to a scientific journal, where they can be dissected by professional
scientists whose expertise is the area you are studying.
You
must understand, a theory is not a guess, or a hunch, or conjecture. In
rigorous formulation, a theory is a framework within which to explain a
class or group of experimentally verified facts.