[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.