[H-GEN] RepRapping in Brisbane!

andrew laidlaw aa_laidlaw at yahoo.com.au
Sat Apr 5 20:34:00 EDT 2008


Dear Gavin,

The Theory in question (especially the propostion that Gravity gives rise to singularities and hence Hawking radiation) has not undergone "rigorous testing" in the domain to which it was being applied.  In fact, the base theory is only tested to a crude first order expansion, and   an infinite number of alternative theories (and yes, they are commonly called theories!), not all of which even include black holes, satisfy all the known empirical data  (see for example the work on "post newtonian parameterisation").

I would have thought that it is the "Laws" that are supposedly well tested, that a theory is no more than an empirically sucessful codification of a certain set of known facts, whilst a "Theory" is a very well known theory.

regards.... andrew.



----- Original Message ----
From: gavin duley <gpd at snoopy.apana.org.au>
To: general at lists.humbug.org.au
Sent: Saturday, 5 April, 2008 5:24:30 PM
Subject: Re: [H-GEN] RepRapping in Brisbane!

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
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Arjen Lentz wrote:
> A theory, or part of a theory, can be wrong. They are hypotheses. They  
> must to be validated or disproven, lest they remain hypotheses. So...

Not quite. A theory is an hypothesis which has undergone (hopefully
fairly rigorous) testing.

If it's an untested idea, it's an hypothesis. It can only become a
theory if it's tested repeatedly and stands up to that testing. Theories
are not really the same as hypotheses.

They can still be wrong, though...

The confusing thing here is, in everyday speech, a lot of people use the
term 'theory' when they *mean* hypothesis. As in "It's just a
theory...". There's no chance of this changing of course, but it leads
to some fun confusion.

gavin,

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