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In science, an hypothesis (an initial idea) will inevitably lead to predictions of what should therefore result. In other words, your hypothesis is that if you apply enough heat to a container of water, you'll predict it will boil. And you can also predict that some steam will come off the water's surface, with other valid evidence.
So, in order to test your hypothesis without actually sticking your finger or a thermometer into that boiling water, you could "predict" that there would be all or some of the following evidence: visible steam (evidence #1) with a measurable temperature rise (ev. #2) increased humidity (#3) and, possibly, condensation (#4).
Good science, relying on initially unproved hypotheses, almost always provide predictions for confirmation of the idea. Do you agree that they offer strongevidence for the original hypothesis, or are they just coincidental? What if more than one predicted result (say, four or six) all line up together? Wouldn't you have a pretty airtight argument for the original hypothesis, even if you couldn't actually be there beside the original boiling pot of water, so to speak?
How much store would you therefore put into factual, documented evidence that fits all or most predictions?
Last edited by rifleman; 05-15-2009 at 04:18 AM..
Reason: typoz
It's easy to predict what will happen in circumstances above but you cannot predict the future of any person or situation because they are in constant change. You can predict what will happen overnight but not next week.
If someone told you that you were going to get hit by a car in three days, you'd do everything you could to avoid that. If someone told you that your company would fail in a month, you would do everything to fix that. Boiling water is easy, life is not.
It's easy to predict what will happen in circumstances above but you cannot predict the future of any person or situation because they are in constant change. You can predict what will happen overnight but not next week.
If someone told you that you were going to get hit by a car in three days, you'd do everything you could to avoid that. If someone told you that your company would fail in a month, you would do everything to fix that. Boiling water is easy, life is not.
Effie,
I can never get you. Your answers are very cryptic sometimes that I just can't answer you when you comment on some things. It's not a bad thing, just trying to figure you out.
well, being cryptic prevents me from becoming sardonic ...
that aside, to rifleman's exhortations, as they would apply to a late student such as myself:
i always thought a "hypothesis" was something sort of out of the blue, thought to be followed like a step-by-step manual coming with machines.
but with all the paradoxes occurring between "mind" and "matter", i would (yes, Reverend!) get the idea, that most of our thinking is retrieved from memories ... (and the associations they may trigger!)
just my 2 cents .... eurocents, can't do better. (since this is about predictions!)
History has a way of repeating itself, so predicting a future event is not all that difficult, just keep them obscure enough to fit. With natural events you can be sure of one thing, if it happened once, it will most likely happen again, so predicting a natural disaster is not all that difficult also, just try and avoid putting an exact date to them.
It's easy to predict what will happen in circumstances above but you cannot predict the future of any person or situation because they are in constant change. You can predict what will happen overnight but not next week.
If someone told you that you were going to get hit by a car in three days, you'd do everything you could to avoid that. If someone told you that your company would fail in a month, you would do everything to fix that. Boiling water is easy, life is not.
Agreed, but you missed my point here. i'm not trying to predict the future of anyone. Perhaps you're trying too hard to read in to what point you're sure I'm trying to make.
I'm just talking about hard, empirical evidence, such as a bloodstain left at the scene of a suspected murder, followed by the discovery of some ripped clothing that was known to belong to the missing person, plus, let's say, the neighbor having heard screams in a female voice. Couple this with a missing person report, and one could possibly predict they'd been murdered, no? I mean, the hypothesis that if they had been murdered, there would certainly be some consequential results & evidence, and then we go out and look for those predicted findings. If we found them where we would expect to, what can we then conclude?
What, then, is the likelihood that our original hypothesis (that poor old aunt Sally's been murdered, for instance) is correct? Better and better? If we find blood whose DNA matches aunt Sallie's, do we then have to find the body to know for a fact that she's dead and gone?
Not really, I agree, though it's not looking good for auntie at that point. Perhaps we could start to assign probabilities of her untimely demise though, and as time goes on and she's never heard from again despite that she used to be very active in the community, and showed up every Sunday for Church, except for the last two Sundays, what then do we begin to suspect?
And then, when we finally find a chunk of her brain (yuk!!) in an icebox, can we then conclude that she's likely dead? Why?
Simple questions. No hidden meanings. Just examining the hypothesis and evidence processes and their possible logical consequences.
I'm just talking about hard, empirical evidence, such as a bloodstain left at the scene of a suspected murder, followed by the discovery of some ripped clothing that was known to belong to the missing person, plus, let's say, the neighbor having heard screams in a female voice. Couple this with a missing person report, and one could possibly predict they'd been murdered, no? I mean, the hypothesis that if they had been murdered, there would certainly be some consequential results & evidence, and then we go out and look for those predicted findings. If we found them where we would expect to, what can we then conclude?
It's also worth pointing out that the detectives who are investigating such a situation virtually never witness the actual event unless there happened to be video surveillance. Yet they're able to piece together the events that took place based on a number of bits of evidence that eventually may prove what happened. All of the people who criticize evolution and other natural processes that took extremely long periods of time to happen ridicule scientists because they didn't happen to be physically present to witness these events first hand. This same kind of evidence is introduced into courtrooms every single day and has convicted countless thousands of criminals even though the detectives didn't actually witness the crime. Just something for creationists to think about.
In science, an hypothesis (an initial idea) will inevitably lead to predictions of what should therefore result. In other words, your hypothesis is that if you apply enough heat to a container of water, you'll predict it will boil. And you can also predict that some steam will come off the water's surface, with other valid evidence.
So, in order to test your hypothesis without actually sticking your finger or a thermometer into that boiling water, you could "predict" that there would be all or some of the following evidence: visible steam (evidence #1) with a measurable temperature rise (ev. #2) increased humidity (#3) and, possibly, condensation (#4).
Good science, relying on initially unproved hypotheses, almost always provide predictions for confirmation of the idea. Do you agree that they offer strongevidence for the original hypothesis, or are they just coincidental? What if more than one predicted result (say, four or six) all line up together? Wouldn't you have a pretty airtight argument for the original hypothesis, even if you couldn't actually be there beside the original boiling pot of water, so to speak?
How much store would you therefore put into factual, documented evidence that fits all or most predictions?
It's bad science, rifleman. There is no room for speculation in science. Hypothesis is just a result of observation, not prediction. The scientists go on to quantify it.
This heat situation is governed by the laws of thermodynamics. They intertwine entropy, some logarithmic multiples of the state of the particles (exchange of energy, dissolution of ionic/covalent bonds, delves into chemistry) ultimately proportionated by Boltzmann's constant. They went on to quantify this with integral calculus integrating over partial derivatives (where's Jacobi's theorem when I need it, may I also get some help from Euler?)
But before all this, the neanderthal man or whoever it was, never had the luxury to predict that the fire he made with the stones was gonna hurt him. He wasn't gonna predict that he would put a vessel on top, and even if he did, he would see steam hissing out of there.
He learned it on the job and posterity calibrated it.
Let's not predict, let's quantify
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