[whereagles]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'W')ell, a theory is only a theory until it's proven...

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('whereagles', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'W')ell, a theory is only a theory until it's proven...

[emailking]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('whereagles', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dreamtwister', 'W')ell, a theory is only a theory until it's proven...

[roman]

Theories are proven by experimentation. And even then, it's designed to be modified and superseded by other theories. That why they remain theories even while they're proven..

Even then, some theories have been impossible to prove; Take the theory of gravity: Newton and Einstein did some great work in calculating the effects of gravity... But for all the theories that details the actual mechanisms of gravity, all of them have been unproven.

[TWilliam]

From the www.whatislife.com Glossary of Scientific Terms:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Theory
A scientific theory is an established and experimentally verified fact or collection of facts about the world. Unlike the everyday use of the word theory, it is not an unproved idea, or just some theoretical speculation. The latter meaning of a 'theory' in science is called a hypothesis.

[emailking]

To be ultra technical, I would like to point out that you cannot ever "prove" a theory, for the very reason that it may be overthrown at some point. It doesn't matter how many times you drop a pencil and watch it fall to the ground. That doesn't prove it will fall the next time. It only increases your confidence that the pencil will fall to the ground every time you drop it.

[TWilliam]

Well... to be ultra ultra technical, a theory (in the scientific, not vernacular sense) cannot be "overthrown" (If it can, it's not a theory, it's just a bad guess). It can, however, be refined or ammended. Of course if you really want to get down to minutiae, I can't "prove" you exist (but that's a philosophical debate anyway, not a scientific one). But I can be reasonably certain that if I stick a knife in you, you will bleed, because the "theory of biological organisms" includes as one of it's experimentally demonstrated "facts" that compromising one of said organism's demarcation between physical self and physical not-self leads to the egress of at least a portion of physical self into the zone of not-self thru said area of compromise.

Ok, I have a headache now. Pardon me while go find some aspirin...

[Falconoffury]

A theory isn't a fact, but it can be supported by facts. Sadly, the word is among the most misused in the English language.

Often, people should be using the word, "hypothesis" as captain Picard used in Star Trek. "Do you have a hypothesis, number one?"