PHLA10H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Inductive Reasoning, Sample Size Determination, Fallacy
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Universal laws: universal laws describe what is true at any time and place - e. g. the law of gravity, these laws were not tested in every time at every place, thus many scientific laws are not deductively true. Abduction: abduction = inference to the best conclusion, e. g. Mendel"s theories - even though mendel never physically saw a gene he was able to describe the properties of one: note: if mendel simply stated that the results of his experiment would reoccur, his argument would be inductive. However, because he tried so say why (i. e. explain something he could not see) it is considered abductive. If you want to know whether an observation strongly supports a hypothesis, ask yourself what the alternative hypothesises are (is there an h3: successful prediction doesn"t automatically provide strong evidence, especially if the prediction is safe In essence; the hypothesis should make true predictions that we would not expect to come true if the hypothesis were false.