Why do we believe in theories?

[heypeps]

I was watching a short documentary talking about why we believe in several theories but I started wondering why believe in theories period? What are your thoughts? Why do we believe in theories?

[Phi for All]

It's not really about belief. Accepted scientific theories have loads of evidence to support them. They represent the most likely explanation.

 

Skeptical people don't accept anything as "proof", and most scientists are skeptical by nature. Theories are not proof, they just represent the best we know to this point.

 

On the other hand, when something has literal mountains of evidence to support it, like evolution, it's safe to say it's most likely the correct explanation. But since we haven't yet run every experiment we can imagine on every possible creature on the planet, we say that evolution is still a theory.

[swansont]

It's not really about belief. Accepted scientific theories have loads of evidence to support them. They represent the most likely explanation.

 

And they have been tested. Not only does the evidence support an accepted theory, a theory predicts what evidence will and won't be found in the future, and these predictions have held up. IOW, the theory is falsifiable — there have to be ways to show that it's wrong. A scientific theory is not just an ad-hoc explanation. It's not a matter of believing (not religious belief, at least), but in confidence as a result of the evidence and testing. That's how we know they are the best available explanation.

[DrRocket]

I was watching a short documentary talking about why we believe in several theories but I started wondering why believe in theories period? What are your thoughts? Why do we believe in theories?

 

Theories are accepted, not "believed in", because they possess predictive power that is substantiated by a significant body of verifiable and repeatable experimental or observational data.

 

The major physical theories are the quantum field theories of the electroweak force and the strong interaction (quantum chromodynamics) and general relativity. But since general relativity and quantum theories are inherently incompatible, I know for a fact that they cannot all be absolutely correct, and I strongly that each of them are only very good approximations under the appropriate circumstances. So, you could say that I don't really "believe" in any of them. Nevertheless they are the best available explanations of natural physical phenomena.

 

There is no single well-defined theory of evolution, but rather a broad framework. Nevertheless, that framework is consistent with what is known about chemistry, genetics and the fossil record. It is the best available explanation for speciation.

 

Not that a "theory" is a high level scientific construct. It is more than a hypothesis, and a great deal more than a conjecture or a speculation.

[richw9090]

To my way of thinking, a theory differs from a hypothesis only in that a theory has been tested by so many different sets of data, generated by different researchers, and always supported, that it becomes folly not to accept it as provisionally true. In addition, a theory is a hypothesis which has productively suggested other additional hypotheses which hve also been tested and found to be supported by the data. As the hypothesis reaches some sort of threshold, it passes into being a theory - which is the highest degree of certainty we can assign to any scientific explanation. Note that it never attains absolute certainty. Absolute Truth (or at least the claim to it) is the domain of religion, not of science.

 

Sometimes a scientific hypothesis is, as soon as it is proposed, recognized to explain such a wide variety of phenomena that it is almost instantly referred to as a theory. The theory of evolution was such an explanation. Its wide applicability, such that everything in biology makes sense when considered in the light of evolution, and the grandeur of its view of life, rendered it a theory almost from the begining.

 

Rich

[charles brough]

The answers posted so far deal with the scientific method and, I suggest, do not deal with the question.

 

"Facts" are what observervers have observed; "theory" is how scientists explain it. Gravity is a fact, for example, but how it works is fraught with problems and is theory. Evolution is a fact because it is observed over and over again in the paleonthological record. How it occurs is theory and like all theory, should and so far has constantly become more accurate.

 

Religious fundamentalists are unaware of such a distinciton because they are used to seeing all that we need to know being set forth in ancient documents. So, they tend to think only in terms of "true" or "false," and therefore that if theory is not "truth," it is "wrong" and inferior to the Scriptures.

[Ophiolite]

Religious fundamentalists are unaware of such a distinciton because they are used to seeing all that we need to know being set forth in ancient documents. So, they tend to think only in terms of "true" or "false," and therefore that if theory is not "truth," it is "wrong" and inferior to the Scriptures.

Science is analogue, religion is digital.

[StringJunky]

Science is analogue, religion is digital.

 

Your input does not compute...can you elaborate please.

[Ophiolite]

Digital logic is typically yes/no, on/off, right/wrong, black/white. Religion tends towards similar perspectives: good/evil; satan/god; saint/sinner

 

Science views things as a spectrum of possibilities.

[Dekan]

It's not really about belief. Accepted scientific theories have loads of evidence to support them. They represent the most likely explanation.

 

Skeptical people don't accept anything as "proof", and most scientists are skeptical by nature. Theories are not proof, they just represent the best we know to this point.

 

On the other hand, when something has literal mountains of evidence to support it, like evolution, it's safe to say it's most likely the correct explanation. But since we haven't yet run every experiment we can imagine on every possible creature on the planet, we say that evolution is still a theory.

 

The word "theory" isn't very satisfactory. In popular usage, it sort of suggests, a thing that someone's thought up, just as a conjecture, but is a bit doubtful. Of course that's why Creationists like to refer to the "Theory" of Evolution. It makes Evolution sound dodgy.

 

Hard to think of a one-word substitute though. "Hypothesis" sounds even less solid. Maybe we should use a phrase such as "Best Explanation that Fits the Facts"? But that's too long-winded.

[StringJunky]

Digital logic is typically yes/no, on/off, right/wrong, black/white. Religion tends towards similar perspectives: good/evil; satan/god; saint/sinner

 

Science views things as a spectrum of possibilities.

 

 

Thanks...that makes sense.

[Phi for All]

The word "theory" isn't very satisfactory. In popular usage, it sort of suggests, a thing that someone's thought up, just as a conjecture, but is a bit doubtful. Of course that's why Creationists like to refer to the "Theory" of Evolution. It makes Evolution sound dodgy.

 

Hard to think of a one-word substitute though. "Hypothesis" sounds even less solid. Maybe we should use a phrase such as "Best Explanation that Fits the Facts"? But that's too long-winded.

Screw that, I say we take theory back from the backward, inbred, buck-toothed, country hill people that stole it from us. I suggest a massive internet campaign featuring lots of pictures of goofballs with captions like, "NO! That 'idea' you had this morning about boogers being brain flakes is NOT A 'THEORY'"!

 

Or maybe like this...

 

THEORY of Evolution

 

IDEA about Alien Abductions

 

 

SEE THE DIFFERENCE?

[Greg Boyles]

It's not really about belief. Accepted scientific theories have loads of evidence to support them. They represent the most likely explanation.

 

Skeptical people don't accept anything as "proof", and most scientists are skeptical by nature. Theories are not proof, they just represent the best we know to this point.

 

On the other hand, when something has literal mountains of evidence to support it, like evolution, it's safe to say it's most likely the correct explanation. But since we haven't yet run every experiment we can imagine on every possible creature on the planet, we say that evolution is still a theory.

 

 

Important to note the difference between a hypothesis and a theory.

 

A hypothesis is a possible explanation for an unusual observation by a scientist. But it has not been subjected to the scientific process and ios therefore not verified.

 

A theory has been subjected to the scientific process and has been verified. But never the less it is still subject to review and ammendment if and when new data comes in that cannot be accounted for by the current theory.

 

For example DNA was unknown in Darwin's time and since its discovery the fine details of evolution have been ammended or added to in order to take into account the existence of DNA and its baring on natural selection.

[charles brough]

The word "theory" isn't very satisfactory. In popular usage, it sort of suggests, a thing that someone's thought up, just as a conjecture, but is a bit doubtful. Of course that's why Creationists like to refer to the "Theory" of Evolution. It makes Evolution sound dodgy.

 

Hard to think of a one-word substitute though. "Hypothesis" sounds even less solid. Maybe we should use a phrase such as "Best Explanation that Fits the Facts"? But that's too long-winded.

To put it simply and accurately, the meaning of "theory" is "the currently most accurate understanding of . . . . " If there is more than one theory best purporting to explain the same phenomenon, it is that there is more than one competing for the satus of being "the currently most accurate."

 

I agree that Fundamentalists like to say "evolution is only a theory." They think in ancient terms of black/white, yes/no, good/evil in which everything is either true or false---when, actually, nothing is totally accurate and totally understandable, especially ancient scriptures. . .