Re: [Phys-L] strange things in chem book

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

But a theory is NEVER promoted to be called a law.  That was a misconcepted
idea promoted in the mid 20th century.  Look at all the things called laws
and they are basically principles or equations.  
Boyle's law
Gay Lussacs law
Newton's laws
Ohm's law
.... Please come up with more items on the list.

Quantum theory is never called a law.
Relativity theory is never called a law
Classical mechanics is never called a law
The standard model is not called a law
Electromagnetic theory is not called a law
... Any other examples???

Can you name one theory which was promoted to be called a law???  I can't.

And Boyle's law is falsifiable at some pressures and temperatures, so laws
are not even absolute.  Ohm's law is also not true for very high currents.
Some are merely empirical principles or equations, while others are
considered to be more fundamental.  Newton's gravitational law has to be
modified in the light of relativity and QM, but it is still called a law and
is used.

So the idea that a theory becomes a law is not really correct.  Now a
hypothesis or a postulate can be come a law if it is established as a
verifiable relationship.  But a law is a limited thing and usually contains
not explanation and many may be part of theories.  This was obviously
someone thinking that theories are tentative and laws are facts.  If you
type in a search engine "theory becomes a law" virtually all of the early
hits deny that this ever happens.  I think that creationist sites may buy
into this linguistic misconception, so they can say the evolution is just a
theory and not a law.

Unfortunately this misconception appeared in all mid 20th century texts and
is still in some modern ones, so many people still harbor this idea.  I
suspect that most elementary and HS teachers still harbor this linguistic
misconception.  Incidentally there have been some Physics Teacher articles
about this.  I am shocked that the abstract got past the reviewers.  But
then lots of things get past the reviewers.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> Here is a relevant fragment of my paper which will be 
> published in the proceedings of the Society of Philosophy of 
> Science (SPS)  conference in Montreal (June 2012):
>
> "3. Levels of Confidence in Scientific Claims: Data and Explanations.
>
>    A discovered experimental fact is usually presented to the 
> scientific community, to be independently confirmed or 
> refuted. Experimental results are accepted--at a high level 
> of confidence--when they become reproducible on demand. 
> Absence of such reproducibility justifies suspicion of 
> possible errors or fraud. Methods of validation of theories 
> (explanations of facts) are slightly different. A new 
> scientific theory is also presented to a community of 
> experts, to be independently evaluated. Their level of 
> confidence in a theory depends on the validity of underlying 
> assumptions and on the rigor of quantitative analysis. But 
> even a most reliable scientific theory, called a law, is said 
> to be falsifiable, in principle, when conflict with 
> reproducible-on-demand data becomes undeniable (15). Such 
> unusual conflict could trigger a scientific revolution (16).
>
>   To explain something usually means to identify causes and 
> to construct a logically satisfying model of reality. An 
> attempt to explain a fact, or to resolve an apparent logical 
> conflict, usually leads to discoveries of other facts. A 
> classical example was the discovery of planet Neptune, in 
> 1846. A more recent and less widely known example was the 
> discovery of a subatomic particle named neutrino. 
> Experimental data collected in the 1920's showed that beta 
> rays (electrons emitted in radioactive decay) had lower mean 
> energies than expected on the basis of the theoretical E=mc2 
> formula. Austrian theoretical physicist W. Pauli solved this 
> "logical inconsistency" by suggesting that tiny neutral 
> particles, later named neutrinos, were responsible for the 
> missing energy. His hypothesis was formulated in 1933. 
> Experiments confirming the reality of neutrinos were 
> performed, 23 years later. "
>
> Ludwik Kowalski
> http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/life/intro.html
>
> P.S. The title of the paper is "Philosophical and Social 
> Aspects of the Cold Fusion Controversy."
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