BIOL359 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Scientific Law, Scientific Community, Natural Selection
3 Apr 2018
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Purpose: to clarify the general meaning of some central concepts in science and the terms used to describe them, and to differentiate these from the very different definitions of the same words in common usage. Hypothesis - prefaced with "hunch" or "guess", many consider a graded series from least to greatest degree of certainty; this ranking makes little sense when these words are employed in scientific context. Theory - often implicitly indicates a lack of supporting data. If the dedu(cid:272)tio(cid:374)s are i(cid:374)(cid:272)orre(cid:272)t, the origi(cid:374)al hypothesis is pro(cid:448)ed false a(cid:374)d (cid:373)ust (cid:271)e a(cid:271)a(cid:374)do(cid:374)ed or (cid:373)odified. (cid:863: hypotheses are usually sufficiently focused to test only one aspect of complex theories. Law - laws in normal experience are prescriptive - they dictate what behaviours one should carry out and which ones must be avoided. Scientific law is descriptive - a "generalization about how some aspect of the natural world behaves under stated circumstances"
