One of the parts of “liquid water is wet” is that a droplet of it will spread out on many common surfaces—salt, paper, cotton, etc. Yes, it is a bit tricky to unpack what is meant by”wet”—perhaps some other properties, like not withstanding shear are also folded in—but I don’t think that it is just a tautology, with “wet” being defined as the set of properties that liquid water has.
Re the catch/count/mark/release/recapture/count puzzle—the degree to which that is feasible depends on how well one can do (reasonably) unbiased sampling. I’m skeptical that that will work well with the set of testable statements that one is automatically certain of.
One of the parts of “liquid water is wet” is that a droplet of it will spread out on many common surfaces—salt, paper, cotton, etc. Yes, it is a bit tricky to unpack what is meant by”wet”—perhaps some other properties, like not withstanding shear are also folded in—but I don’t think that it is just a tautology, with “wet” being defined as the set of properties that liquid water has.
Re the catch/count/mark/release/recapture/count puzzle—the degree to which that is feasible depends on how well one can do (reasonably) unbiased sampling. I’m skeptical that that will work well with the set of testable statements that one is automatically certain of.