What exactly is meant here by ‘believe’?
I can imagine various interpretations.
a. Which do we believe to be ‘a true capturing of an underlying reality’?
b. Which do we believe to be ‘useful’?
c. Which do we prefer, which seems more plausible?
a. Neither. Real scientists don’t believe in theories, they just test them. Engineers believe in theories :-)
b. Utility depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re an economist, then a beautifully complicated post-hoc explanation of 20 experiments may get your next grant more easily than a simple theory that you can’t get published.
c. Who developed the theories? Which theory is simpler? (Ptolemy, Copernicus?) Which theory fits in best with other well-supported pre-existing theories? (Creationism, Evolution vs. theories about disease behaviour). Did any unusual data appear in the last 10 experiments that ‘fitted’ the original theory but hinted towards an even better theory? What is meant by ‘consistent’ (how well did it fit within error bands, how accurate is it)? Perhaps theory 1 came from Newton, and theory 2 was thought up by Einstein. How similar were the second sets of experiments to the original set?
How easy/difficult were the predictions? In other words, how well did they steer us through ‘theory-space’? If theory 1 predicts the sun would come up each day, it’s hardly as powerful as theory 2 which suggests the earth rotates around the sun.
What do we mean when we use the word ‘constructs’? Perhaps the second theorist blinded himself to half of the results, constructed a theory, then tested it, placing himself in the same position as the original theorist but with the advantage of having tested his theory before proclaiming it to the world? Perhaps the constructor repeated this many times using different subsets of the data to build a predictor and test it; and chose the theorem which was most consistently suggested by the data and verified by subsequent testing.
Perhaps he found that no matter how he sliced and diced and blinded himself to parts of the data, his hand unerringly fell on the same ‘piece of paper in the box’ (to use the metaphor from the other site).
Another issue is ‘how important is the theory’? For certain important theories (development of cancer, space travel, building new types of nuclear reactors etc.), neither 10 nor 20 large experiments might be sufficient for society to confer ‘belief’ in an engineering sense.
Other social issues may exist. Galileo ‘believed’ bravely, but perhaps foolishly, depending on how he valued his freedom.
d. Setting aside these other issues, and in the absence of any other information: As a scientist, my attitude would be to believe neither, and test both. As an engineer, my attitude would be to ‘prefer’ the first theory (if forced to ‘believe’ only one), and ask a scientist to check out the other one.
What exactly is meant here by ‘believe’? I can imagine various interpretations.
a. Which do we believe to be ‘a true capturing of an underlying reality’? b. Which do we believe to be ‘useful’? c. Which do we prefer, which seems more plausible?
a. Neither. Real scientists don’t believe in theories, they just test them. Engineers believe in theories :-)
b. Utility depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re an economist, then a beautifully complicated post-hoc explanation of 20 experiments may get your next grant more easily than a simple theory that you can’t get published.
c. Who developed the theories? Which theory is simpler? (Ptolemy, Copernicus?) Which theory fits in best with other well-supported pre-existing theories? (Creationism, Evolution vs. theories about disease behaviour). Did any unusual data appear in the last 10 experiments that ‘fitted’ the original theory but hinted towards an even better theory? What is meant by ‘consistent’ (how well did it fit within error bands, how accurate is it)? Perhaps theory 1 came from Newton, and theory 2 was thought up by Einstein. How similar were the second sets of experiments to the original set?
How easy/difficult were the predictions? In other words, how well did they steer us through ‘theory-space’? If theory 1 predicts the sun would come up each day, it’s hardly as powerful as theory 2 which suggests the earth rotates around the sun.
What do we mean when we use the word ‘constructs’? Perhaps the second theorist blinded himself to half of the results, constructed a theory, then tested it, placing himself in the same position as the original theorist but with the advantage of having tested his theory before proclaiming it to the world? Perhaps the constructor repeated this many times using different subsets of the data to build a predictor and test it; and chose the theorem which was most consistently suggested by the data and verified by subsequent testing.
Perhaps he found that no matter how he sliced and diced and blinded himself to parts of the data, his hand unerringly fell on the same ‘piece of paper in the box’ (to use the metaphor from the other site).
Another issue is ‘how important is the theory’? For certain important theories (development of cancer, space travel, building new types of nuclear reactors etc.), neither 10 nor 20 large experiments might be sufficient for society to confer ‘belief’ in an engineering sense.
Other social issues may exist. Galileo ‘believed’ bravely, but perhaps foolishly, depending on how he valued his freedom.
d. Setting aside these other issues, and in the absence of any other information: As a scientist, my attitude would be to believe neither, and test both. As an engineer, my attitude would be to ‘prefer’ the first theory (if forced to ‘believe’ only one), and ask a scientist to check out the other one.