- #1
Sophrosyne
- 128
- 21
My son is taking a chemistry class in high school, and he was telling me this morning that their teacher had taught them there was some kind of fundamental distinction between scientific laws and theories. He said the teacher had told them that laws are just fundamental regularities observed in nature, whereas theories are attempts at explanation of the phenomena.
This puzzled me a little bit. I asked him, for example, why he thought Newton's "laws" describing mechaics were considered laws, but Einstein's relativity describing mechanics was a theory. Because, he replied, Newton just stated a regularity that is observed without exception (he has not yet formally studied quantum mechanics or relativity), whereas Einstein provided a detailed explanation of WHY those things were happening.
But that can't be right. Einstein didn't know WHY the speed of light has to be a limit of how fast anything can go, or WHY it is the particular speed that it is, or WHY gravity bends space and time the way it does. He just was using certain observations like the Michelson Morley experiment to come up with a new mathematical model, very much like Newton.
I had heard another explanation from a historian of science that I liked better: In Newton's time, science was still young and ambitious enough that they were sure that equations with such striking regularity were "reading the mind of God"- reflections of ultimate reality and truth. But later, as we learned more (for example that even Newton's "Laws" really are just approximations and can be violated), science became more humble, and now they never use the word "law" anymore for their latest models. They call them "models" or "theory", no matter how many mountains of evidence they have for them. They know the paradigm, no matter how apparently good, can always shift with further possible observations or better ideas. So this is more of a historical distinction in the use of the words than a fundamental distinction in these different scientific ideas. There really is nothing fundamentally different between Newton's "Laws" or Einstein's "theories" in what they were attempting to do or what they were from a purely scientific standpoint. We just call them different things for historical reasons, and a shift in our philosophy of science and what we think it's really doing.
So what do you guys think?
This puzzled me a little bit. I asked him, for example, why he thought Newton's "laws" describing mechaics were considered laws, but Einstein's relativity describing mechanics was a theory. Because, he replied, Newton just stated a regularity that is observed without exception (he has not yet formally studied quantum mechanics or relativity), whereas Einstein provided a detailed explanation of WHY those things were happening.
But that can't be right. Einstein didn't know WHY the speed of light has to be a limit of how fast anything can go, or WHY it is the particular speed that it is, or WHY gravity bends space and time the way it does. He just was using certain observations like the Michelson Morley experiment to come up with a new mathematical model, very much like Newton.
I had heard another explanation from a historian of science that I liked better: In Newton's time, science was still young and ambitious enough that they were sure that equations with such striking regularity were "reading the mind of God"- reflections of ultimate reality and truth. But later, as we learned more (for example that even Newton's "Laws" really are just approximations and can be violated), science became more humble, and now they never use the word "law" anymore for their latest models. They call them "models" or "theory", no matter how many mountains of evidence they have for them. They know the paradigm, no matter how apparently good, can always shift with further possible observations or better ideas. So this is more of a historical distinction in the use of the words than a fundamental distinction in these different scientific ideas. There really is nothing fundamentally different between Newton's "Laws" or Einstein's "theories" in what they were attempting to do or what they were from a purely scientific standpoint. We just call them different things for historical reasons, and a shift in our philosophy of science and what we think it's really doing.
So what do you guys think?
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