[tuumi]

"Two years after the eruption, they tested this theory." Has the science community just given up on the word hypothesis? It's not that complicated and in the USA the word is taught almost every year starting in elementary. When a science driven website like this has given up then we've lost the theory/hypothesis distinction.

[lucaspfeifer]

Yes, the distinction between theory and hypothesis can be important, but a distinction should also be made between popular science and rigorous peer-reviewed literature. Popular science is meant to be easy for the general reader to understand. Often that means using simpler words, as long as they are still accurate in a general way.

In this case, I believe theory is an acceptable word to use. The MW dictionary, for the definition of 'theory', says

2a. "a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action"

3a. "a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation"

Seems to me that the usage in the article fits either of these definitions well enough.

[earthboundkid]

> The Greek theoria (θεωρία) meant "contemplation, speculation, a looking at, things looked at", from theorein (θεωρεῖν) "to consider, speculate, look at", from theoros (θεωρός) "spectator", from thea (θέα) "a view" + horan (ὁρᾶν) "to see".

"Theory" should refer only to the beatific vision or its analogical precursors in temporal existence achieved through mystical union with the Uncreated Light!

[istultus]

The only reason this Ancient Greek definition holds is because it is a dead language. Prescriptivism cannot stop natural language change. Any "X should only mean Y" statement is a dead-end conservative approach.

[PittleyDunkin]

Finally, a voice of real reason in this thread.

[lupusreal]

> Popular science is meant to be easy for the general reader to understand. Often that means using simpler words

The point above, and I agree, is that the word 'hypothesis' is taught every year in public schools, from elementary school through highschool. Even dropouts should know it, and from what I've seen do know it. At a certain point we've got to stop pandering to morons. Or worse, pandering to what we assume is the level of morons but is actually substantially lower. I don't think the general public is perplexed by that word; anybody who thinks they are is probably underestimating the public. Even if the average Joe on the street isn't disciplined about using the word hypothesis vs theory, they still understand what the word means when they read it.

[BobaFloutist]

Even if I know (or can trivially decipher) the definition of a technical word, reading an article saturated with technical words takes more work than reading an article written in more common language. Articles that take more work to read are going to be read by fewer people, and the population of people that do read them is going to be biased to the well-educated.

If you're trying to communicate to the general public something like "Gophers are actually good sometimes", you probably want that message to go beyond the well-educated.

[equestria]

It wasn't a terribly useful distinction to begin with - especially in natural sciences where there is usually no definite proof, just various degrees of confidence. We had quite a few linguistic purity battles in tech, too. You never win and it's not particularly worthwhile to play that game.

[cogman10]

There is never definite proof.

The difference between a hypothesis and a theory is that a hypothesis has no evidence to support it while a theory has at least some supporting evidence.

An important part of science is that, given enough evidence, any theory can be overturned in favor of a better theory. Scientific theoretical models are just "This currently fits demonstrated evidence of reality the best".

Some theories have mountains of evidence in support (evolution, gravity, the standard model, for example) that will necessarily need a huge amount of evidence to overturn. It is far more likely these theories will just be refined with further evidence rather than broken by new evidence.

Part of the scientific model is the built-in assumption that any model or theory is at least a little incorrect. They are fuzzy generalities that are constantly being refined to hopefully more closely match reality.

[cryptonector]

Here's one dictionary's definition of hypothesis: "a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation."

Here's one dictionary's definition of theory: "a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained."

According to the dictionary you have it exactly backwards. A hypothesis requires some supporting evidence. A theory requires none. Though the dictionary won't reflect scientific definitions. I like these definitions, though we have to add verbiage about falsifiability to make them scientific.

One can still refer to Newton's theory of gravity as a theory, and indeed one does even though it has been falsified. Well, I suppose one could say the same thing about "the flat earth hypothesis" -- there is no evidence supporting it, and one might still refer to it as a hypothesis because there might once have been evidence for it when people did not recognize the evidence for the Earth being round.

So what is the difference between those words? Both are "suppositions". Both can be falsified. A theory must be falsifiable in order to be a scientific theory (the dictionary didn't say this, but this is a pillar of modern science). A theory is a "system of ideas", something much larger than a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a starting point for a theory.

[cogman10]

What dictionary did you use for those definitions?

If I search for those phrases I can find them floating around in random unrelated places. However, if I look up the definition of the words, really common dictionaries have definitions that match what I just said.

Here's MW for example:

hypothesis: an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument

theory: a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena

It even has this handy bit of text after the definition

> A hypothesis is an assumption, an idea that is proposed for the sake of argument so that it can be tested to see if it might be true.

> In the scientific method, the hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done, apart from a basic background review. You ask a question, read up on what has been studied before, and then form a hypothesis.

> A hypothesis is usually tentative; it's an assumption or suggestion made strictly for the objective of being tested.

> A theory, in contrast, is a principle that has been formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data. It is used in the names of a number of principles accepted in the scientific community, such as the Big Bang Theory. Because of the rigors of experimentation and control, it is understood to be more likely to be true than a hypothesis is.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory

[cryptonector]

> What dictionary did you use for those definitions?

Oxford Languages. First one offered by Google. Oxford's definitions are close enough to Merriam Webster's.

Consider gravity. A hypothesis 400 years ago might have been that massive bodies exert a pull on each other, but that would not have been a theory. To get to "theory status" you'd have to add enough content that one could start making falsifiable predictions. That would require working out that gravity is an inverse square law, and that's exactly what Newton did.

There were gravity hypostheses before Newton, but to be a theory required adding enough mathematics to make those falsifiable predictions.

So I'd say that both, hypotheses and theories are suppositions, but hypotheses are weakly supported by evidence and lack predictive power, while theories have predictive power but must be falsifiable. Both hypotheses and theories can be falsified, and once falsified we refer to them as such (incorrect, failed, falsified). In mathematics a theory doesn't even need to have "evidence" for it -- it's just a system of axioms and principles, though it could prove to be inconsistent.

I would also say that even in scientific communities we're a bit loose with these things. Is the Big Bang a hypothesis or a theory? I would think we'd need quite a bit in the form of equations and thinking behind them that yield falsifiable predictions, but I'm not sure that those exist in the level of detail that we'd normally require. The less amenable a scientific field is to experimentation, the more we can expect this sort of looseness from. In Big Bang theory we mostly make predictions that can't be subject to experiments, only to measurements of reality (e.g., the uniformity of the CMB, the distribution of visible matter, etc.).

[PittleyDunkin]

If we're going to entirely discard the substance of the article on lieu of nitpicking words, you probably shouldn't throw around "scientific" like that unqualified. Which science? It's a polysemous word. Even referring to the scientific methodology of empirical testing is insufficient because such distinctions between the terms involved aren't necessary for such methodologies. "Theories" and "hypotheses" arise from social institutions regulating consensus of empirical testing, and these same institutions regularly struggle with communication surrounding methodology and reproduction of consensus-held results.

My point is not to discard the term "science" as loosely referring to much of the above, of course, but to point out that semantic ambiguity is inherent in language and should never occlude good-faith interpretation; certainly not when the semantics are so unambiguously communicated as they are here. The distinction between "theory" and "hypothesis" and indeed "supposition" is irrelevant in the context presented in the article.

[equestria]

There are definite proofs in mathematics. In natural sciences, I think you're sort of restating what I said: there are various levels of confidence based on experimental data. Because it's not binary, the hypothesis / theory language doesn't convey a particularly useful distinction.

It's not a sign of a lack of sophistication or knowledge to use simpler language if the point you're making is still clear.

[cogman10]

> Because it's not binary, the hypothesis / theory language doesn't convey a particularly useful distinction.

I don't think we agree here. The distinction between a theory and a hypothesis is fairly binary. Theories have supporting evidence; hypothesis either have no evidence or so little evidence that they need further investigation.

But I would agree that the general understanding of the words is such that no useful distinction is made by using one or the other. I bristle a little at it, though, because the word "theory" is often used by scientific critics because they conflate "theory" with "guess". In fact, for general communication I would rather an article like above use "guess" instead of "theorized" as it's both simpler language and it doesn't trigger this sort of conversation.

[cryptonector]

> There are definite proofs in mathematics.

We prove theorems, which until proved are referred to as conjectures. But even in mathematics we don't prove theories. E.g., group theory. This is because a) the definition of mathematics theory is not quite the same as scientific theory since mathematics theories are axiomatic, and b) because it's entirely possible that some mathematics theory (e.g., group theory) could eventually be shown to be inconsistent (which is essentially how you disprove a theory in mathematics).

[arcbyte]

We use words because they have meaning and we communicate ideas through them because we've built a shared understanding of that meaning.

If we abondon meaning, we're abandoning reason.

It's worth the fight.

[amanaplanacanal]

Language changes over time, and there is no way to make it stand still. It's just wasted energy.

[arcbyte]

We put an enormous amount of work into teaching the correct meaning every day to humans of every age and it is not wasted energy.

Don't shirk your duty to educate others.

[thfuran]

Sew their snow point inn treyeing two bee cleer ore korekt?

[thfuran]

It's maybe the most important distinction in science.