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Re: [Phys-l] DATA, FACTS, LAWS, THEORIES

On Oct 19, 2009, at 3:17 AM, James McLean wrote:

John Clement wrote:
Boyles law, Newton's laws, Kepler's laws, Hooke's law, The law
of conservation of energy... have very little in common except for
the fact that they are called laws and that they are relationships
between variables. . . .


Thank you for these illustrations and observations, John and James.

1) I wrote:

DATA = what is reported
FACTS = validated data
LAWS = generalized facts
THEORIES = explanations of laws and facts

I am glad that we are not arguing about the concepts appearing on the right of the equations. They are essential and obvious. I am certainly not the first to identify them. We are arguing about the words appearing on the left..

2) And yes, we have to deal with "social and historical" factors. Different people assign different meaning to words. This does create confusion. How can the situation be improved? One possibility is to invent totally new words, such as:

AADO=what is reported
BADO=validated AADO
CADO=generalized BADO
DADO=explanations of BADO and CADO

Yes, this is terribly artificial and impossible to impose.

3). Another approach would be to use existing words which are not likely to generate confusion. (I am thinking about words like beauty, used by theoretical physicists) Here is one such possibility.

FIND=what is found and reported
CONFIRMATION=validated FIND
GENERALIZATION=generalized CONFIRMATIONS
MODEL=explanations of GENERALIZATIONS and CONFIRMATIONS

For example:

John’s find and Mary’s confirmation.
Kepler’s generalizations and Newton’s model.

That is probably better than artificial words. Perhaps someone will suggest better words; I am not a native English speaker.The third option is to accept the existing chaos and suffer the consequences.



Ludwik Kowalski, a retired physics teacher
5 Horizon Road, Apt. 2702, Fort Lee, NJ, 07024, USA
Also an amateur journalist.

Food for thought: "Absence of proof is not proof of absence."

Updated links to his selected publications are at:
http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/ , http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/my_opeds.html and http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/revcom.html