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> While it is technically true that a theory cannot be "proved", that view ignores the huge range of predictive power in our various scientific theories. It do

• pdonis 4y ago
  > Acknowledging one thing does not mean that all other things are ignored. That's true in the abstract, but in the particular case we are discussing, the view that a theory cannot be proved goes along with the view that what is important in science is falsification: we rule out competing theories until only one is left standing. But that is not what actually happens. What actually happens is that, as we get more and more data in a particular domain, we refine our models to have better and better predictive power. The more efficiently we can do that (because we are able to conduct controlled experiments with very accurate measurements involved), the "harder" the science is (the "hardest" by this criterion being physics). Nothing ever gets falsified and thrown away. The other problem with the emphasis on falsification is that scientists still use theories that, by Popper's criterion, were falsified long ago. The obvious example is Newtonian physics. By Popper's argument, we should have abandoned it as soon as we had experimental and observational data, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that contradicted it. But what actually happened was that one branch of physics developed new theories, relativity and quantum mechanics, while other branches of physics kept right on using Newtonian physics, because, even though it was "wrong", it gave answers that were accurate enough for the purpose. In other words, its predictive power, while less than that of relativity and QM, was good enough for what it was being used for.