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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4483501" data-attributes="member: 710">No, that is not the defining characteristic. The defining characteristic is that it makes predictions you can test. In essence, the fact that you could go and try to falsify (disprove) is its defining characteristic. For example, Newtons Laws make predictions about planetare movement. We can measure them and see if the predictions fit. They did in most cases, but some differed, so it meant the theory was either wrong or we missed something. (And both was true - we missed something, explaining some measurements consistent with the theory once we accounted those objects, but there were still errors we couldn't explain, until Einstein provided us with a new theory that could also explain these measurements. And then he predicted even more, and those predictions where also tested, one requiring a Solar Eclipse to allow us to observe something his theory predicted)That's one of the problems of the string theories - they give models to describe something but they don't give us predictions we could test. It's not possible to prove scientific theories. You can prove math, but not science. Math starts with a set of defined axioms and rules that are defined as true, and from there you don't make predictions, you use rules of logic to gain new formulas. In science we don't have this fixed point. We use math to model the world, but there we have to make assumptions on what the axioms of our model are. (Most basic assumptions are stuff like "conversation of energy and momenum"). From there we create a formula and use that to predict something in the real world. If the prediction holds true, the assumptions we used might be correct. But maybe the next experiment will show an error, and we have to revise our assumptions (the model axioms).</blockquote>

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