If you’re anything like me you were taught wildly inaccurate things regarding the nature of “theories”. Similarly you might be familiar with the word “hypothesis” but not understand exactly what a hypothesis is. Sometimes Fundamentalist religions deliberately cause confusion and mislead people regarding the terms. Other times confusion arises from the words being used in a casual sense to simply mean “an idea”. Lets get to the bottom of what scientific theories are.
Like mentioned above sometimes word’s like theory or hypothesis are used causally to mean an idea. Additionally sometimes word’s like theory and hypothesis are casually used interchangeably. I want to start this discussion by making a distinction between scientific theories (or hypotheses) and the more casual usage of the terms.
Lets starts with Scientific theory. Sometimes in fundamentalist circles (yes, Jehovah’s Witnesses, that means you too) the theory of evolution is criticized for just being an idea or a guess. However the the theory of evolution is a scientific theory. But what does that mean? Scientific theories are explanations regarding nature that are well supported with empirical evidence. Scientific theories are usually broad and have a very large pool of evidence that support them. They are not ideas that someone pulled out of no were.
These explanations of nature are constructed by means of scientific experimentation that produces empirical evidence. Empirical evidence is information that is collected by means of the senses. It is often collected using scientific experiments. In simplest terms an scientific experiment is a procedure that is done in order to support or contradict a hypothesis.
This brings us to Scientific hypotheses. A hypotheses are often times described as an educated guess. Hypotheses are constructed and then experimentation is used to prove or disprove preexisting theories regarding nature. This is the essence of scientific research.
I know I just threw a lot at you. I want this page to be short and to the point so I’m cramming a lot of information into a very small post.
If you want some more info check out these related Wikipedia pages:
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Ryan David Tuttle 