A fact is something that has specifically been observed, zero inference. It is a fact that this apple I dropped fell to the ground. It is a fact that Earth orbits the sun. It is a fact that the solar system orbits the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.
I wouldn’t even go that far. We didn’t even know that galaxies existed as a concept until about 100 years ago, believing that spiral smudges we saw in the telescopes were just weird nearby nebulae. It was at the Great Debate of 1920 that the consensus shifted into believing in multiple galaxies spread across large distances. Galileo notably got into trouble for promoting the other mentioned theory. If you start calling these “facts”, you yourself are giving into OP’s world view that a theory becomes fact if it is strong enough.
This. The concept of a “fact” doesn’t work in science, because anything can theoretically be disproven.
The main concept of science is that we observe things and infer models and rules. Since we do not observe rules but only infer them, all is a theory, which means “This is our currently best understanding of things. We treat them as if they were fact. But we also understand that our current understanding might not be perfect and thus we call things theories instead of facts.”
Calling something a “fact” means it’s perfectly finished and there’s nothing to add to it. That’s inherently unscientific.
Btw, when a theory is replaced, it’s hardly ever replaced with something entirely different. Usually it’s just expounding. Newton’s physics remain valid in almost all situations, but Einstein’s relativity fixes the edge cases where Newton doesn’t work.
Which is why when building a bridge you use Newton’s physics to this day, and not Relativity (unless the bridge is moving at close to the speed of light).
I was using “fact” basically synonymously with “observation”. It is a “fact” that the apple I dropped fell to the ground. It is my hypothesis that this apple I am about to let go of will also drop to the ground, based on the theory of gravity.
Not in a scientific sense. In a scientific sense an observation is just that: an observation. And an observation can be wrong. In fact, with more complex issues than apples dropping, it’s a quite frequent thing that observations are wrong.
If, for example, the simulation hypothesis turned out to be correct, then not only did the apple not actually fall to the ground, but the apple actually never existed in the first place.
That’s why “facts” have no place in science and why even something we are really really sure about is labelled as a “theory”. Because nothing can be 100% verified and everything can hypothetically be subject of chance.
And that’s the main difference between religion and science. With religion the premise is that you already know the truth in advance and you try to find evidence to support it. With science you begin with Sokrates (“I know that I know nothing”) and work from that, trying to build models upon models to make sense of the world, fully understanding that the models might be flawed and will likely end up being changed in the future.
I wouldn’t even go that far. We didn’t even know that galaxies existed as a concept until about 100 years ago, believing that spiral smudges we saw in the telescopes were just weird nearby nebulae. It was at the Great Debate of 1920 that the consensus shifted into believing in multiple galaxies spread across large distances. Galileo notably got into trouble for promoting the other mentioned theory. If you start calling these “facts”, you yourself are giving into OP’s world view that a theory becomes fact if it is strong enough.
This. The concept of a “fact” doesn’t work in science, because anything can theoretically be disproven.
The main concept of science is that we observe things and infer models and rules. Since we do not observe rules but only infer them, all is a theory, which means “This is our currently best understanding of things. We treat them as if they were fact. But we also understand that our current understanding might not be perfect and thus we call things theories instead of facts.”
Calling something a “fact” means it’s perfectly finished and there’s nothing to add to it. That’s inherently unscientific.
Btw, when a theory is replaced, it’s hardly ever replaced with something entirely different. Usually it’s just expounding. Newton’s physics remain valid in almost all situations, but Einstein’s relativity fixes the edge cases where Newton doesn’t work.
Which is why when building a bridge you use Newton’s physics to this day, and not Relativity (unless the bridge is moving at close to the speed of light).
I was using “fact” basically synonymously with “observation”. It is a “fact” that the apple I dropped fell to the ground. It is my hypothesis that this apple I am about to let go of will also drop to the ground, based on the theory of gravity.
Not in a scientific sense. In a scientific sense an observation is just that: an observation. And an observation can be wrong. In fact, with more complex issues than apples dropping, it’s a quite frequent thing that observations are wrong.
If, for example, the simulation hypothesis turned out to be correct, then not only did the apple not actually fall to the ground, but the apple actually never existed in the first place.
That’s why “facts” have no place in science and why even something we are really really sure about is labelled as a “theory”. Because nothing can be 100% verified and everything can hypothetically be subject of chance.
And that’s the main difference between religion and science. With religion the premise is that you already know the truth in advance and you try to find evidence to support it. With science you begin with Sokrates (“I know that I know nothing”) and work from that, trying to build models upon models to make sense of the world, fully understanding that the models might be flawed and will likely end up being changed in the future.