MISCONCEPTION - Theories Become Laws - Suesa's Science Challenge

chrisroberts (65)in #suesascience • 7 years ago (edited)

The following is a transcript of a conversation between myself and my Google Home.

Chris: Hey Google! Define science.

Google: Science. The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

Chris: Hey Google! When does a hypothesis become a theory?

Google: On the website study.com, they say: Over time, if the original hypothesis is overwhelmingly supported by the greater scientific community, and if no experiments have proven it wrong, it becomes a theory.

Chris: Hey Google! When does a theory become a scientific law?

Google: On the website learningcenter.nsta.org, they say: "See if this sounds familiar: Scientists begin with a hypothesis, which is sort of a guess of what might happen. When the scientists investigate the hypothesis, they follow a line of reasoning and eventually formulate a theory. Once a theory has been tested thoroughly and is accepted, it becomes a scientific law.

Chris: Hey Google! When does a scientific law become a fact?

Google: Sorry, I can't help with that yet.

Sorry Google, but according to my latest research, both your answers and my questions are full of misconceptions.

The Differences between Theory, Law and Fact

What is Science For?

In the simplest possible terms, science serves two purposes:

To Describe Things - This is where a Scientific Law comes into play. Scientific laws are simply meant to describe a phenomenon. Newton's law of Universal Gravitation, for example, is a scientific law. It describes the force of gravity in analytical terms. It does not, however, address the issues of how or why.
To Explain Things - Explanation is attempted by scientific theory. With the example of Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, Einstein's Theory of General Relativity is currently used to explain why things fall.

That brings me to the most important misconception I would like to discuss:

Misconception: Theories Turn Into Laws

Theories don't turn into laws at all. In fact, theories and laws serve completely different purposes. As I have just explained, laws describe while theories explain. They are both needed, and neither ever becomes the other.

Hypotheses and Theories

The large misconception about theories becoming laws could have started with the fact that every theory starts as a hypothesis. A Hypothesis is an attempt to explain a phenomenon from an much more limited set of data, pre-experimentation.

Through experimentation the scientist aims to isolate patterns, which may eventually contribute to the formulation of a theory.

Science is a tool, a method for solving problems and finding answers. We all are practicioners of science in our everyday lives, perhaps without even realizing it.

What about Facts?

This is where it gets a little confusing. A fact is a simple, proveable statement that is shown to be true. For example, it is a fact that my house has a front porch and a back deck. Facts are simple and limited. Facts are combined with hypotheses to sometimes form a theory. But that's where it stops for facts. This makes another misconception:

Misconception: Facts are the Result of Science

Facts are not the result. If anything, they are the starting point in a well-constructed system of complete theorization. Facts are plain to see. It's the guesses that are arrived at, and that is the beauty of science. And just like experimentation leads to further questioning, my examination of a single misconception led to more misconceptions...