Facts, Theory, and Law

[Chaigidel]

recently I had what a scientific theory is meant to be understood as in science

a fact is an observable reproducable and testable phenomena ( or something whatever a fact is insert here)

a theory is a collection of thousands upon thousands of facts

so to science a theory is MORE important than anything its the best that anyone can ask for information wise

now can any one correct me or correlate this? like I said it was told to me this way I have no sources.

[Darth Wong]

Sorry, but that's not how it's defined.

A fact is an observation.

A theory is a predictive model intended to accurately model the facts.

A law is a guideline. Many people think that a law is simply a really well-accepted theory, and that good theories become laws, but that's not how it works. For example, the ideal gas law does not actually model any real gas, because there is no such thing as an ideal gas. Yet it is called a law.

[Chaigidel]

ok but theory does then make the connections between groupings of facts yes?

[Darth Wong]

Imagine that the theory is like a computer program. You have a big pile of facts, and when you hit "Execute" on the program, it will hopefully spit out a whole bunch of predictions which match those facts. It doesn't have to match every single fact you have (maybe you need two different theories working together to cover the whole range), but the facts which it DOES try to predict, it should predict accurately. If it doesn't, then the theory is no good. If it does, but someone else's program does the same thing with fewer lines of code, then his program is better. If it does with the same number of lines of code but the other guy's theory covers more of the facts, then his program is better.

So a theory is not facts, nor is it a collection of facts, but it is a model, ie- like a computer program which can spit out predictions that closely match those facts.

[Chaigidel]

thanks wong !