Re: [asa] Theory of gravity

Thanks for your clarification, Randy. You and John both (I think it was John?)
are helping me see different shades of these labels in a better light. I knew
that it was overly simplistic to use time as a formula to distinguish law and
theory and leave it at that. But your noting how equations look different than
larger frameworks of thought --that observation is helpful to me. Since I am on
a computer away from home, I don't have access to the first gentleman's email
that I responded to anymore, but I think he was driving at this too. Second
exposure is helping it to click. Thanks.

--Merv

I put a mirror in the copier at the office the other day. Now I have another
copy machine. --Steven Wright.

Quoting "D. F. Siemens, Jr." <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>:

> Something struck me that I cannot fully back up, but it seems that the
> Newtonian laws and laws of thermodynamics go back a while, while the
> theory of relativity, quantum theory, theory of evolution and the like
> are of more recent vintage. However, some individuals tried to use "law"
> to bolster claims, like Haeckel's law of recapitulation. I have drawn a
> blank on the dating of the Fick mentioned.
> Dave (ASA)
>
> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:08:09 -0500 "Randy Isaac" <randyisaac@comcast.net>
> writes:
> Merv,
> I'm a bit uncomfortable with the view that a law is primarily a
> theory that has passed more tests. George said it better when he pointed
> out that these labels are used somewhat loosely and we don't derive as
> much significance from the label as we do the content and how it was
> derived and what it means. In very general terms, I would think that
> "laws" are more closely related to "equations" than to "theories."
> Specifically, "laws" tend to be the equations that are more useful and
> fundamental--the starting point for the derivation of equations that
> apply in specific situations. We say "Newton's laws of motion" but
> "Schrodinger's equation" even though the latter is more rigorous and
> passes more tests. We say "laws of thermodynamics" or "Fick's laws of
> diffusion" rather than "theory" because they are equations that can be
> applied in specific situations to calculate specific effects. A theory
> would tend to encompass the bigger picture of why these equations hold as
> in "diffusion theory." We say "theory of relativity" and the
> "relativistic equations" or "Einstein's equations" and mean slightly
> different things with it. The theory certainly includes the equations but
> tends to refer to the reasoning process behind it. Hence "quantum theory"
> and the "Dirac equations."
> Of course, the use of the word "theory" as a "tentative hypothesis
> postulated for possible future verification" is a legitimate use of the
> word but it is by no means the only use and it is wrong to attribute this
> meaning to situations where the meaning is closer to that in my previous
> paragraph. In other words, the use of the term "theory" by itself
> provides no clue to the degree of verification or validity of its
> contents.
> In this sense, the phrase "law of evolution" would make no sense.
> Those who would use this phrase as a means of connoting more validity
> than the "theory of evolution" are making the same error in usage. The
> true laws underlying evolution turn out to be the laws of thermodynamics
> and quantum mechanics but we don't know anywhere near enough of the
> specific energy levels and multi-dimensional potential energy landscape
> to do much with them. When the day comes that we can write the
> Hamiltonian for the entire human genome and solve Schrodinger's equation
> rigorously for an arbitrary environment, then perhaps we can start
> talking about calculating probabilities. I don't think that will be next
> year.
>
> Randy
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Merv
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2007 8:18 AM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Theory of gravity
>
>
> One way that I have put it to my science students is that a law is like a
> theory that has withstood the tests of time; which is not the same as
> calling something "proven" (a term more apropos to mathematics than
> science), but it just shows the highest degree of confidence that science
> confers by means of a label. This is more simplistic than the nuances
> into which you delve below. But I would venture that those who want to
> refer to the "law" of evolution (and I have heard this expressed), do so
> with more political / metaphysical motivation than other more purely
> scientific motives. Scientists themselves, I think, are not so caught
> up in these attempts at hard categorization because they are aware of
> the constant flux between those two concepts as you allude to. And the
> "only a theory" retort against evolution also betrays a lack of awareness
> about that same flux, and how highly regarded a "theory" can actually be.
>
>
> --Merv

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Received on Wed Nov 21 23:43:01 2007