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> What does that have to do with reproducibility? That is exactly what I wanted to ask you originally when you cited the celestial mechanics example. It is not
by buvanshak 8y ago
> What does that have to do with reproducibility?
That is exactly what I wanted to ask you originally when you cited the celestial mechanics example. It is not relevant in cases we are deriving a theory underlying the behavior, rather than axiomizing the very specific behavior itself...
- lisper 8y agoI don't understand the difference between "deriving a theory underlying the behavior" and "axiomizing [sic] the very specific behavior itself."
- buvanshak 8y agoSuppose you see an object A, moving straight line getting caught in the gravity of object B, ending up in a orbit around it. Deriving an underlying theory would be deducing the force of gravity from it. Axiomizing the very specific behavior would be making a rule that says. "If the object A (and object A only), while moving in a straight line, comes at so and so coordinates with respective to B, will end up in an orbit around it"
- lisper 8y agoAh. So these are two completely orthogonal issues. The question of what you do with the result of an experiment is completely independent of whether or not you can reproduce that result. The latter is what is under discussion here. So you can, for example, observe that there was a solar eclipse at a particular time and a particular place. But you cannot repeat that observation. (By way of contrast, you can drop and object from a particular height and observe that it takes a particular time to fall. You can repeat that observation.) What you do with those observations has (almost) nothing to do with whether or not you can repeat them.