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Showing posts from August, 2013

Observation, Hypothesis, and Theory

A friend asked me to explain hypothesis and theory. There are so many excellent resources on this topic, I should simply point the reader toward such. For example my favorite is "The Ring of Truth" by  Dr.  Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison, both of whom have passed from this life, leaving an excellent legacy of science and science writing behind them.  Still it is always educational for a writer to write upon a given topic. No better way to learn (or relearn) than to teach. So here is my expression.   I. Definitions Observation : A statement about things you can see, hear, taste, feel, and so forth. Example: Fossils exist because we actually can dig such up and hold the fossils in our hands.  Observations are often combined. Fossils are old and can be chronologically ordered, because we believe in related geological processes, which were independently observed and determined.  We have natural observations, which are those made by simply looking at the