Hypotheses

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A hypothesis (from ancient Greek hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose") offers a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. A scientific hypothesis must be testable and based on previous observations or extensions of scientific theories a supposition made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation,a prediction.

Contents

Usage

In early usage, scholars often referred to a a clever idea or to a convenient mathematical approach that simplified cumbersome calculations as a hypothesis; it did not necessarily have any real meaning. Cardinal Bellarmine gave a famous example of the older sense of the word in the warning issued to Galileo in the early 17th century: that he must not treat the motion of the Earth as a reality, but merely as a hypothesis.

In common usage at present, a hypothesis refers to a provisional idea whose merit needs evaluation. A hypothesis requires more work by the researcher in order to either confirm or disprove it. In due course, a confirmed hypothesis may become part of a theory or grow to become a theory itself.

Reference to the Riemann hypothesis misuses the term hypothesis: one would more properly refer to Riemann's formulations as a conjecture.

Types of hypothesis

Propositions

Propositions follow a causal order ("A causes B") .

Empirical generalizations

Empirical generalizations base themselves on observed regularities, but they don't stipulate the cause and effect themselves, only stating that 'A is related to B'. Proven empirical hypotheses are considered laws.

Evaluating hypotheses

The hypothetico-deductive method demands falsifiable hypotheses, framed in such a manner that the scientific community can prove them false (usually by observation). (Note that, if confirmed, the hypothesis is not necessarily proven, but remains provisional.)

As an example: someone who enters a new country and observes only white sheep might form the hypothesis that all sheep in that country are white. It can be considered a hypothesis, as it is falsifiable. Anyone could falsify the hypothesis by observing a single black sheep. Provided that the experimental uncertainties are small (for example, provided that one can fairly reliably distinguish the observed black sheep from (say) a goat), and provided that the experimenter has correctly interpreted the statement of the hypothesis (for example, does the meaning of "sheep" include rams?), finding a black sheep falsifies the "white sheep only" hypothesis.

According to Schick and Vaughn (2002), researchers weighing up alternative hypotheses may take into consideration:

  • Testibility (compare falsifiability as discussed above)
  • Simplicity (as in the application of "Occam's Razor", discouraging the postulation of excessive numbers of entities)
  • Scope - the apparent application of the hypothesis to multiple cases of phenomena
  • Fruitfulness - the prospect that a hypothesis may explain further phenomena in the future
  • Conservatism - the degree of "fit" with existing recognised knowledge-systems

Quotes

  • "... a hypothesis is a statement whose truth is temporarily assumed, whose meaning is beyond all doubt. ..." -- Albert Einstein


Notes

Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica. A New Translation by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, translators. University of California Press 1999 ISBN 0-520-08817-4

Letter to Eduard Study from Albert Einstein, September 25,1918 Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, J.J. Stachel and Robert Schulmann, eds. Princeton University Press 1987

External links

References

Schick, Theodore and Vaughn, Lewis: How to think about weird things: Critical thinking for a New Age Boston, 2002

Copyright

"Original data received from Wikipedia on March 30, 2006. Credit given to original authors can be seen Here."

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