Stuart McKelvie: >I wonder if he or someone else can enlighten us if physics >has a special meaning for "law"?
Chris Green: >Darwin's and Einstein's "theories" are far broader and scope >and far more firmly established than *anything* in psychology, >and yet they are not called "laws." More than anything else, >I think the term "law" has to do with the scientific fashion at the >time such claims are first enunciated. For instance, Newtonians >were attempting to challenge the hegemony of "Divine Law" and >so countered with "Scientific Law," but by the time Darwin was >accepted, and Einstein had come along, scientists had pretty much >a become fallibilists, and so "theory" seemed more appropriate to > (the public presentation of) that sort of epistemic humility. Michael Britt: >It looks like the word "law" is used too indescriminantly by >scientists and non-scientists alike. Mike Smith: >Surely there are laws in other fields; e.g. >Boyle's law for gasses; the laws of >thermodynamics; the law of gravity; the inverse >square law of light. It would seem that a law >should be able to be defined and not at the whim >of whomever: Something like a relationship >between variables which is consistent across >conditions-and I don't think psychology has any >such stable relationships which 'always hold'. Jim Dougan: >I really wouldn't can the "law of gravity" a law - at >least by the definitions we are using here. Gravity is >a set of repeatable empirical observations for which >there is a theory. The theory itself is quite strong - >but not without its problems. As Chris says, the use of the word "law" in the physical sciences has to be related to tradition and historical circumstances, and there is no clear dividing line between "hypothesis", "theory" and "law" (though there are many circumstance in which the first two are entirely appropriate). (Crudely speaking, one might say that they indicate increasing degrees of validation of a scientific generalisation.) Yet is still seems to me to appropriate to refer to Boyle's Law (PV = constant) , or the Gas Laws (PV/T = constant), and so on, rather than Boyle's theory, or the General Gas theory -- they are empirically validated relationships between basic macro-properties of gases. This despite the fact that they are not precisely true, especially under more extreme conditions. But from a teaching perspective it would seem a bit odd (to me at least) to present the above relationship as "Boyle's hypothesis", which has a connotation of some uncertainty which is not warranted (as a generalisation that is entirely appropriate for high school level science, and enables students to work on problems involving macro-properties of gases). Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
