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Timothy

Posted By: Matt Cohn-Geier
Date: Saturday, 30 June 2012, at 12:42 a.m.

In Response To: Timothy (Timothy Chow)

This Platonic ideal of the hypothetico-deductive scientific method as:

1) Consider the problem 2) Form a hypothesis 3) Deduce predictions from the hypothesis 4) Gather new data and test the predictions

is almost never used in the real world.

For example, Newtonian mechanics was unable to accurately predict (with reasonably simple assumptions) the perihelion precession of Mercury's orbit. This fact, and all relevant data, was known for half a century before Einstein produced his general theory of relativity. But the fact that Einstein's general theory of relativity accurately predicted the perihelion discrepancy was taken as powerful evidence that the theory was true. The notion that the truth of a claim is somehow dependent upon the historical order in which the facts were gathered or hypotheses were conceived is extremely unintuitive.

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