Scientific Theories

I have developed certain ideas about scientific theories that I have recently realized are not in accordance with majority of the public, and perhaps the majority of the scientific community either. As such, I would like to lay them out and give my reasons.

1. Scientific theories are not about explaining phenomena; they are about predicting the future.

This can often have the disguise of explaining, but ultimately that is not the purpose. One of the tests of a scientific theory is it having falsifiable predictions. If there are no falsifiable predictions it is not a theory. Ultimately everything is inexplicable. At best you can explain everything in terms of physical laws, but those laws have no explanation behind them, they just are. Personally, I consider such explanation to be unnecessary (though it is nice). If your theory makes falsifiable predictions, and is not falsified, it is a valid theory. In this view, a theory says "Assume A is how the world works, then B will happen," instead of "B happens, therefore A is how the world works."

2. A scientific theory cannot merely fit the current data points, it must make predictions about future data points, and is not to be considered correct until those data points are verified.

This is sort of the same as #1, but slightly more nuanced. It seems obvious right off the bat until you consider what it actually implies. Suppose I observed the moon for 10 years and noticed that on day 1 it was a new moon, on day 2 it was waxing, etc etc. I now make a theory saying the moon goes in cycles from new moon to new moon every 29.5 days. This fits the data I have perfectly. However, my theory is not yet tested, because all the data points I used to make it are irrelevant at testing it. This also means that if you have a fixed number of data points and you will never get any more, if you didn't make your theory before you finished getting the data, it will never be a valid one. It would simply be an organizational structure to help memorize the existing data points. Perhaps I am getting too close to arguing semantics on this point, but I nonetheless feel that it is important.

3. Nothing is strictly true. Everything comes about due to inductive reasoning.

Thus a scientific theory does not have a true or false value. Rather it has a percentage, where 0% is absolutely false and 100% is absolutely true. The truth value of a scientific theory is based on the number of experiments performed after it was conceived that match the predictions of the theory. An experiment performed that matches the prediction raises the truth value (though even if all the experiments match the theory it does not get to 100% because of the way statistics works). This is probably accepted by most people, but it leads to...

4. Two competing theories that have equal truth values are equally valid.

By this I mean that you cannot deny a theory purely on philosophical grounds. Saying "God does not play dice with the universe," is incredibly poor form. Moreover, this means that since two competing theories can be 99% true even if they are mutually exclusive. This seems very counterintuitive, but if you remember point #1, it works out, because a science ultimately doesn't care how things work, it just wants to predict the future.


If you have these 4 beliefs about scientific theories work, (and I think that, except for #2, you really have no choice but to believe it) then a few things become simpler.

First, Science and Religion never conflict. Well, they could potentially, but I don't know any falsifiable predictions that Religion makes, thus, they should never be in conflict.

Second, it becomes easy to accept all the craziness of quantum mechanics and other modern science (How can something be a particle and a wave? What do you mean how, it just is!), and the question of whether the universe really is random or not becomes irrelevant.

Citizen's Briefing Book

The Citizen's Briefing Book is a section of Change.gov, an online website that the Obama administration will maintain.  The Citizen's Briefing Book attempts to give the masses the power to share ideas with the president.  The website allows anyone to sign up to suggest ideas and issues and rank the ideas of others.  As expected, many of the issues include the usual "stupidity in masses" mentality seen frequently online.  However, there are a few gems hidden among the trash.

Most of the ideas in The Citizen's Briefing Book are fairly fiscally wasteful and some are very socially conservative as well.  I hope that the general public will hear about the website soon, allowing for possibility of diversifying the idea spectrum.  I encourage everyone to sign up for the Citizen's Briefing Book and vote up or add issues that matter, but please do not vote on issues when you are not well-informed.