
Originally Posted by
Kalopin
AND, Now I am just starting to feel sorry for you! I know that no one taught you or convinced you that "there is no such thing as a "proven fact" in science"!!!
Strictly speaking, yes they are both theories. They could, in principle, be shown to be wrong. (1)
OK. Let's take an example. The hypothesis is that all swans are white. After many years of observation, this is elevated to the level of a theory; we have never seen a black swan. However, the only way of "proving this to be true" would be to find every single swan on Earth and check the colour. You could travel the Earth for decades finding swans and finding they are all white (2). But how do you ever know that have looked at
all swans? What about that one swan in the distant corner of a lake up a mountain in outer Mongolia that ypou couldn't get to? What about swans that died in the past? Maybe one of those was black? You can never prove this theory to be true.
(1) They won't be of course, which is why we, informally, consider them to be facts.
(2) Of course, you won't find them all to be white because, much to everyone's amazement at the time, there are black swans. Hence the phrase, a "black swan event" - something completely unexpected.
Now I need to explain what science is??
Hilarious.