What is a Theory?
I often think about the human understanding of science. I wonder what our understanding of the universe is now, and I wonder what it will be like in the future. Right now, we really don’t know much, especially about the universe. All we have are theories. Even though we have lots of pieces of evidence, we still only have theories.
Our lack of knowledge is both exciting and frightening. Of course, most people want to know or have a concrete idea of how things work. However, our lack of knowledge is also exciting since we are constantly on the edge of learning something new, or completely reshifting what we thought we knew. So that begs the question of what is a theory, and why do we rely on theories so heavily.
To start off, it is important to understand that a theory is different from a hypothesis as I often hear the two words used interchangeably. A hypothesis is a prediction someone has before testing any evidence. But, it is not a guess; it is more of an educated estimate. In school you will often see “Make a hypothesis here” at the top of labs and other projects. A theory, on the other hand, is a hypothesis that has been tested and applied to something and is concise, applicable and backed up by significant evidence.
What’s challenging is that especially online, the word theory is used way too much. For example, a video that is someone's hypothesis about dark matter is instead described as the theory of dark matter. Instances like these muddy the meaning of the words, and they take the weight and seriousness away from the meaning of theory.
In a field like physics where you can't just go and test everything as a large portion, the difference between a theory and a hypothesis is a little vague and also begins to blur. However, it is important to understand that theories in physics are corroborated and backed up by a lot of math, research, and other sources. However, this weight or volume of information does not make every theory right. In fact, a scientific theory never actually becomes fact or law. That’s why it’s important to understand the distinction between a scientific theory and a scientific law. A scientific law describes how something happens (i.e how trees grow, how the water cycle works, how the digestive system functions) whereas a scientific theory explains why that scientific phenomenon is even happening.
At this point I think it is fair to ask if every theory is treated the same. Well, yes.… and no. All theories are able to be disputed, changed, and questioned equally. However, not all theories are disputed, changed, and questioned as frequently or as much, as some theories are much more widely accepted than others. An example is evolution versus string theory. Evolution is often added to and updated, however it is commonly accepted by nearly all of the scientific community. Whereas string theory is constantly added to and updated, but is flat out false for some people in the scientific community.
That’s why I want to make it clear that every theory at any point could be completely changed or disproven. But that doesn't mean every theory is going to be proved wrong. This just allows us to update and evolve our knowledge as we get a better understanding of the universe. Afterall, although our knowledge of the universe is small, our ability to evolve and grow our knowledge is great.
