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On 5/1/13 1:01 PM, John F Sowa wrote:
Mathematics can be used to disprove a theory by showing that it is
inconsistent with observations.
I, and some others such as Karl Popper, wouldn't agree with your
first statement.
"
In point of fact, no conclusive disproof of a theory can ever be
produced; . . . If you insist on strict proof (or strict
disproof) in the empirical sciences, you will never benefit from
experience, and never learn from it how wrong you are."
from
http://www.xenodochy.org/article/popper.html
All observations have experimental error/uncertainty. Given a large
number of observations that are inconsistent with a theory, there is
still a non-zero, but very small, probability that the theory is
correct, and those observations arose from unlikely events in the
tails of the probability distributions for the observations. In
order to make progress, (most) scientists agree to not waste their
time on such theories, but they are not disproven - they are
refuted, and then discarded.
Tara
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