Laws and theories

No matter how expressed, all scientific rules, laws, and theories are statements of regularities of nature. Their usefulness depends upon the amount of experimental evidence that shows that the rule, law, or theory corresponds to experimental reality. Within the bounds that it is known to correspond to experimental reality, the relation can be used for prediction. 

A second commonality is the importance of a plurality of perspectives. In Cartwright s view of the world as dappled (Cartwright, 1999), the limitedness of scientific laws and theories — the fact that they only apply under particular circumstances, in particular domains — means that to get a complete picture (or as complete a picture as possible) a phenomenon, problem or issue must be investigated by the many different disciplines that make up what we call science, perhaps also drawing on knowledge and experience that is external to science. Similarly, in the conclusion to his book Human Nature and the Limits of Science, Dupre says that his argument has been that ... 

Hypothesis. An untested statement about nature a scientific conjecture, or educated guess. Formally, a hypothesis is made prior to doing experiments designed to test it. Compare law and theory. 

After organizing observed data into a law, scientists try to explain the law. A statement that attempts to explain why a law is true is called a hypothesis. If the hypothesis becomes generally accepted, it becomes a theory. Einstein explained the law of gravity with his theory of relativity. Laws and theories are... 

Recall and recognition of facts information, principles, laws and theories of chemistry. 

What does it mean to say that chemistry is or is not reducible to physics Two chapters in the volume pursue this question, choosing to focus on epistemological issues such as whether and in what sense chemical theories and/or practices are reducible to those of physics, rather than on the ontological issue of whether or not the entities with which chemists operate are reducible to the entities of physics. Maureen and John Christie, in the chapter entitled " Laws and Theories in Chemistry Do Not Obey the Rules," make a case for the diverse character of laws and theories in the sciences and. 

In the grand scheme of science, chemistry stands next to physics in any supposed reductive hierarchy, and chemistry does produce many alleged laws of nature and scientific theories. An examination of the characters of these laws and theories, and a comparison with those that arise in classical physics, might provide a broader and more balanced view of the nature of laws and theories and of their role in science. 

Laws and theories do play an important part in defining the body of chemical knowledge. 

The characters of the laws and theories that chemists discuss and use often differ markedly from those of the laws and theories from physics that are usually chosen by philosophers as examples. 

Scientific laws and theories have a much greater diversity of character than has generally been recognized. 

The characteristic differences between the laws and theories of chemistry and physics largely arise from differences in complexity between the systems studied in the two disciplines and can be related to specific problems in the reduction of chemistry to physics. 

The peculiar character of chemical laws and theories is not specific to chemistry. Interesting parallels may be found with laws and theories in other branches of science that deal with complex systems and that stand in similar relation to physics as does chemistry. Materials science, geophysics, and meteorology are examples of such fields. 

Difference between Laws and Theories in Physics and Those of Chemistry... 

We would suggest that this sort of thing should provide fertile and little explored ground for the philosopher of chemistry. The characters of the laws and theories that chemists use are rather different and rather more diverse than those of the central laws and theories of physics that have served as the usual philosophical exemplars. The chemist typically seems to have a different, more pluralistic, attitude to rival theories and to use them in a rather different way. Are the differences real or apparent Are there reasons for the diverse and somewhat strange characters of many chemical laws and theories, and for the chemist s distinctive attitude to them ... 

But we are arguing that the differences in character of laws and theories in the two sciences arise neither primarily from their separate historical developments nor even from the type of natural system that each addresses. The relationship of the two sciences on the reduction hierarchy is what is crucial. 

I herinodynamics through the use of state functions describes the properties of systems at equilibrium. Kinetics on the other hand deals with descriptions of lime-dependent processes, which are path dependent. These two areas of science together constitute a powerful body of scientific law and theory that can be used to describe both systems and processes. A number of methods... 

The scientific method is a systematic approach to research that begins with the gathering of information through observation and measurements. In the process, hypotheses, laws, and theories are devised and tested. 

My primary aim is to show how physics and chemistry interact in giving us our current understanding of chemical bond. I want to establish the factual aspects of the relation between the two sciences without any reference, initially, to what has been speculated about that relation by other investigators. Once this is done, I will show that the laws of physics relevant to chemistry are statements of limitations. They define a boundary within which chemical laws and theories are valid and beyond which they become meaningless. Within the boundaries, the laws of physics do not dictate what is actual nor do they provide a clear path connecting the theories and the laws of physics with those applicable to chemistry. The latter have to be established, among the many possibilities within the boundaries set by physics, by chemical research. 

Given, the strong ontological connection between chemistry and physics and only tenuous epistemological relations between the two disciplines, it may be futile to look for a simple or elegant model that would characterize the relation between the two. Indeed the only relevant question may be the one I posed earlier. What is the nature of the laws and theories of physics that have such strong influence on chemistry and yet cannot subsume the concepts and models that arise in chemical systems in accordance with these very laws of matter ... 

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