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LordMagnus227 t1_j23t0jf wrote

Reply to comment by jgoble15 in TIL The "Semolina Pilchard" mentioned in "I Am the Walrus" is a reference to Scotland Yard drug squad detective Norman "Nobby" Pilcher, who led a midnight drug raid on John Lennon's London flat in October 1968. He'd targeted musicians Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Eric Clapton and Donovan prior to that. by 54_actual

The scientific definition of a theory is different from a literary one. When you have a hypothesis and through repeated testing it's proven to be highly probable that it is the case then with the proper mathematical or chemical backing (depending in which field the discovery is) it is elevated to the status of a theory which is the highest it can go and the laws are postulates that help the theory work. For example, Newton's theory of gravitation states that two objects a distance apart are attracted to eachother and have a force acting on eachother that is proportional to the product of their masses and inverse to the square of the distance between them and the law of gravity is Gm1m2/r² with G being the universal gravitational constant. Laws are not of a higher status than a theory but parts of a theory.

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jgoble15 t1_j23tbqq wrote

Gotcha, I understood “law” as a theory that is repeatable and testable. Maybe I was taught wrong, but something is a theory, no matter the amount of theoretical evidence, until it can be proven law (and this proof is more along the lines of the scientific method. Mathematical evidence, for example, cannot establish something as law).

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LordMagnus227 t1_j24ocqr wrote

Ah don't worry, yeah you were probably taught wrong but in a scientific context a repeatable and testable educated guess is called a hypothesis which on recieving further evidence becomes a theory which will be our new understanding of it but the caveat is that you can never be 100% sure and scientists have the humility to say that they too can be wrong and call it a theory. However that doesn't discredit their work as some phenomenon stated as fact today are still theories. For example gravity, plate tectonics, thermodynamics, evolution, genetics, etc. The laws are like the important points of a theory as to what happens.

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jgoble15 t1_j24tbb8 wrote

Gotcha. I knew theories were solid, but definitely misunderstood the role of law. Thank you!

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