🚀 go-pugleaf

Marc A. Belanger <3914MABE@vm1.ulaval.ca> says:
>I stand corrected. But would you still say that a science has to make
>predictions in order to be considered scientific?

Pretty much.

In order to be scientific a theory must be falsifiable.  That is, there
must be some way of demonstrating that the theory is incorrect (it
being practically impossible to demonstrate that a theory is correct).

The only way that I can think of to do this is to make predictions of
the nature of unobserved phenomena based upon the theory.  The more
unique to your theory the predictions, the better (its not useful, for
example, to say that your new theory of cosmology predicts that the
western hemisphere of earth will turn to face the sun at HH:MM GMT
tomorrow).  The prediction can then be tested.  If it is incorrect then
your theory is wrong (or at least flawed).  If it is correct then your
theory is more strongly supported.  Note that the predicitions don't
have to be about new things, just newly observed things.

If you can think of a way of testing the correctness of a theory which
does not involve predicitions then I suppose that would serve.

Notice that even wildly incorrect theories are entirely scientific if
they can be tested.  Is just unscientific to stick to a theory after it
has been proven incorrect.

Also notice that a theory may be entirely correct but, until it makes
testable predictions, it isn't scientific.

-- 
Frank Peters  -  UNIX Systems Group Leader  -   Mississippi State University
Internet: fwp@CC.MsState.Edu  -  Phone: (601)325-7030  -  FAX: (601)325-8921
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