View Single Post
Old 05-08-2009, 04:49 PM   #34
Colm
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 171
Quote:
Teaching couldn't take place if you didn't believe something before it was demonstrated to be true...
This can also be described as making inferences, that is, making statements/predictions about what you can not detect, on the basis of what you can -- Neptune was predicted before later astronomers were able to directly observe it. More broadly this can also be called theory, and it is a key aspect of the scientific method; but observation/recording comes first, and is the basis of subsequent hypotheses made in the scientific community.
Colm is offline   Reply