How can hypothesis become a theory

Since this casual use does away with the distinctions upheld by the scientific community, hypothesis and theory are prone to being wrongly interpreted even when they are encountered in scientific contexts—or at least, contexts that allude to scientific study without making the critical distinction that scientists employ when weighing hypotheses and theories.

The most common occurrence is when theory is interpreted—and sometimes even gleefully seized upon—to mean something having less truth value than other scientific principles.

The word law applies to principles so firmly established that they are almost never questioned, such as the law of gravity. This mistake is one of projection: since we use theory in general use to mean something lightly speculated, then it's implied that scientists must be talking about the same level of uncertainty when they use theory to refer to their well-tested and reasoned principles.

The distinction has come to the forefront particularly on occasions when the content of science curricula in schools has been challenged—notably, when a school board in Georgia put stickers on textbooks stating that evolution was "a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. A theory is a system of explanations that ties together a whole bunch of facts. It not only explains those facts, but predicts what you ought to find from other observations and experiments. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Log in Sign Up. What to Know In scientific reasoning, a hypothesis is an assumption made before any research has been completed for the sake of testing.

More Words At Play. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Oct. Time Traveler. Love words? Need even more definitions? What do these terms mean to you? What do you read that contradicts or supports what you thought? A fact is a basic statement established by experiment or observation. All facts are true under the specific conditions of the observation. One of the most common terms used in science classes is a "hypothesis". The word can have many different definitions, depending on the context in which it is being used:.

The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world.

The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact. Scientific laws are similar to scientific theories in that they are principles that can be used to predict the behavior of the natural world. What are some common mistakes students make with the scientific method? What are hypotheses according to the scientific method? What is a theory according to the scientific method?

Do scientists have to record all data precisely in order to follow the scientific method? What is the goal of peer review in the scientific method? Why is the scientific method important to follow? How did Tycho Brahe and Kepler employ the scientific method?

Do all scientists use the scientific method? There is a progression from a hypothesis to a theory using testable, scientific laws. Only a few scientific facts are natural laws and many hypotheses are tested to generate a theory.

Find out how scientific hypotheses, theories and laws describe the natural world. What is a hypothesis? A hypothesis is an idea or proposition that can be tested by observations or experiments, about the natural world. In order to be considered scientific, hypotheses are subject to scientific evaluation and must be falsifiable, which means that they are worded in such a way that they can be proven to be incorrect.

Example: When Gregor Mendel in studied the pattern of single trait inheritance of garden peas he formed a hypothesis on the manner of how these traits were inherited. The hypothesis he formed based on his observations included the following:. To scientists, a theory is a coherent explanation for a large number of facts and observations about the natural world.

In popular use, a theory is often assumed to imply mere speculation, but in science, something is not called a theory until it has been confirmed over many independent experiments.

Theories are more certain than hypotheses, but less certain than laws.