quote:
Maybe I am wrong. (It certainly wouldn't be the first time) however, your response indicates to me that if it were not flawed in some way it would still be considered law. Is this correct, or is it not?

Yes and no, and technically it can still be construed as a scientific law in extremely limited circumstances, kind of.

I think we should pause for a second and make sure we understand what we're discussing. This is Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation:

That's it. It intends to explain the observed effect of the force of attraction between objects. Note that it contains no words, because it's not intended to be an explanation of anything. It's simply a reporting of observed effect.

We now know that Newton's Law isn't nearly as "universal" as it claims to be, and we're not even certain if it's perfectly true in any circumstance, so it's status as "law" is tenuous at best.

But...

This actually has little to do with whether explanations for gravity, evolution, climate change, etc, could ever be scientific laws. Because scientific laws, by definition, can only describe effects and never causes, it's not at all persuasive to say that there is no law of evolution: it's simply tautological.

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Posted by DawgsLife

Member since Jun 2013

59008 posts

Posted on 4/1/17 at 10:00 am to Joshjrn

quote:
We now know that Newton's Law isn't nearly as "universal" as it claims to be, and we're not even certain if it's perfectly true in any circumstance, so it's status as "law" is tenuous at best.

The light came on about what you are talking about....I believe. It has more to do with whether it is universal or not? (Universal meaning that it fits all situations all the time, I am thinking?) Am I understanding you correctly?

Now...since we have both taken it down a notch (

)

My point is that what we know today, and accept as fact today will change tomorrow. (Tomorrow meaning, well it could mean tomorrow or it could mean 400 years from now) Our information and understanding of information changes as time passes. In 400 years scientist will look at us much the same way we look at the great minds of science of 400 years ago. They were smart, and truly on to something, but naive and did not have all the information they truly needed, therefore some pf the things they thought of as fact were not.

As time passes, it is inevitable that much of what we accept as fact today will be thought of as naive and incomplete.

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