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by kuhewa 1265 days ago
> Generate additional evidence at will" when applied to the "scientific fact that atoms exist" means that any new experiment that you design and perform will be compatible to that fact.

There's a word for this, as I think it's fair to say any evidence of atoms still takes some inference and isn't a direct observation. The word is theory [1]. That is why we refer to the idea that matter is made of atoms as 'atomic theory',

Gould: "facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory