Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
String theories are scientific, although since the theorists haven't come up with any experiments to tell which, if any, of their theories correspond with reality, they are more unconfirmed hypotheses than theories as yet.
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Indeed. One of the hurdles that science has to overcome when dealing with the general public is of course that the word "theory" has a completely different meaning in the language of science to its usage in everyday English. In science, a theory is a proposition that makes predictions that can be experimentally tested in order to demonstrate the validity (or falsehood) of the proposition. In everyday English a theory is widely understood to mean "an idea that I've come up with but have no proof for".