> On Dec 13, 2016, at 12:43 PM, Thomas903 <[email protected]> wrote: > > There are a lot of scientists, so I won't claim that all agree with a single > definition. But when I see the term "law" being used by scientists (e.g., > Kepler's Law), it is normally used to describe a physical-empirical > regularity. It is assumed that something causes/generates the regularity, > and that cause can (eventually) be formalized in a theory -- but the law > itself is a phenomenological description of reality. An empirical habit.
That’s an important point. Scientists typically don’t take philosophy classes. When they do they’re often introductory or broad classes. (Early modernism, Plato, Aristotle, etc.) It’s pretty rare that people have studied philosophy of science. So how the typical scientist understands ‘laws’ or other such terms tends to be picked up from the linguistic usage in their textbooks and peers. In my experience this often means a somewhat incoherent use but that the common facet is fixed regularities. As you note above. To the other points I think scientists are even more inconsistent. I just don’t see in regular language use a very distinct difference in use between hypothesis and theory. I’d even say the distinction between law and theory is pretty loose at times too. (Undoubtedly due to too much indirect influence from Popper loosely understood) The way these often are used is merely a continuum of guesses with different words used for different degrees of strength. Note I’m not saying this is how they should be used. However as I said scientists often ignore philosophy too much. Further the use seems to shift over time as broader philosophical fads affect indirectly how scientists speak. While I’m not sure I would suspect if we looked at pre-positivist and pre-Popperian language by lay scientists as quite different from the language in the 60’s and 70’s. Having said all that though I agree with how John uses the terms and wish scientists more broadly would stick to such uses.
----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
