Quote:
Quote by: nose  in response to rez.
Firstly any such "tenets of science" are always inevitably insufficient for either describing what science is or what science is not. In particular, the scientific method is a method that can be followed by anyone in any pursuit of knowledge, but it does not necessarily make that pursuit scientific. Futhermore, scientists have a hard time agreeing on a specific method which scientific enquiry should follow, meaning that choosing one particular method may rule out half the scientists.
Take for example creationism. I'm not going to argue the point, but creationism isn't a science. But, by the methodologist demarcation criteria, if a creationist went and tested all their hyptheses, then they'd be a scientist.
Whereas astronomers cannot, in general, formulate or construct repeatable experiments, due to the nature of their field of study, making it difficult for them to then be classified as scientists.
So whereas there is a method some scientists use, and all scientists base their view on observation and experimentation as well as theory, this is not quiet what makes science "science".
Also, an observation or experiment does not necessarily force a decision to be made between two theories, nor present a definite requirement that a modification or rejection of a theory be made.
The famous experiment regarding the bending of a light ray around a massive object highlights a downfall of Newton's theory of gravity, but does not call for it to be rejected and replaced.
Finally, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by:
Personally, I believe if an explanation leaves one asking further questions it is insufficient, so I quite disagree that an explanation should provide new sources for enquiry.
Take for example,
"Why did the glass break?"
"It fell"
This is insufficient as an explanation because it is not generally regarded that all glass breaks when it falls, we're left asking why does falling cause the glass to break. A better explanation would be:
"It fell and landed on a sufficiently hard surface at a sufficiently swift pace"
even better would be to make sure you state the "glass breaks on hard surfaces when hit hard enough" law - law in the sense that it is largely indisputable.
Of course, you could ask "why did the glass fall" but this has very little to do with it breaking. To claim that this leads to further enquiry, thus making it a good explanation, fails to differntiate between bad and good explanations. |
Many aspects of astronomy CAN be tested. For example, the red shift PROVING the universe is expanding, the way light (which is not polarised coming from the sun) becomes polorised as it reflects off a body in space, tells us much about the composition of that body.
The "wobble" of certain stars tell us that somthing is efecting the star's rotation, and since it would take a massive body to do so, we can literally "prove" the existance of planets around distand stars.
Astronomy PROVED that the Earth and the other planets revolved around the Sun, which is what got Galileo in so much trouble with the Catholic church.
Astronomy PROVED that a comet hit Jupiter, and the resulting plumes, PROVED much of what Jupiter's atmosphere was made of (MUCH more water than we previously thought for example).
Black holes, and now "dark matter" were once crazy theories, but now have been proven.
The Hubble telescope has taken pictures of "star nurseries" in distand places, PROVING how and where stars form in the first place.
Just because it can't be physically touched, does not mean it can't be observed and anylized.