Scientific Hypothesis
People refer to a trial solution to a problem as a hypothesis, often called an "educated guess" because it provides a suggested solution based on the evidence. Experimenters may test and reject several hypotheses before solving the problem.
According to Schick and Vaughn, researchers weighing up alternative hypotheses may take into consideration:
- Testability (compare falsifiability as discussed above)
- Parsimony (as in the application of "Occam's razor", discouraging the postulation of excessive numbers of entities)
- Scope – the apparent application of the hypothesis to multiple cases of phenomena
- Fruitfulness – the prospect that a hypothesis may explain further phenomena in the future
- Conservatism – the degree of "fit" with existing recognized knowledge-systems.
Read more about this topic: Hypothesis
Famous quotes containing the words scientific and/or hypothesis:
“We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall—which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)