


Scientific theories shape our understanding of topics in many different fields, from medicine to biology to astrophysics. The theory of gravity is the (much more complex) explanation as to exactly why and how these objects attract each other, encompassing all verified observations about such phenomena. It doesn’t say why the objects do this, however. For example, the law of gravity says that two objects will exert their gravitational pull on each other. A scientific law describes a scientific observation but doesn’t attempt to say why or how it happens, whereas a scientific theory explains exactly why or how it happens. The theory of evolution, for example, explains the incremental changes of all life forms on Earth over billions of years. Hypotheses also tend to be very specific, whereas scientific theories are sweeping explanations that cover a wide range of questions about a phenomenon. So what’s the difference between a scientific theory, a scientific hypothesis, and a scientific law? A hypothesis, unlike a thoroughly tested scientific theory, is an educated guess that has not yet been fully tested or subjected to research. In other words, a scientific theory is an in-depth, wide-sweeping explanation of a natural occurrence that can’t be proven wrong given our current scientific knowledge. That’s because a theory is not just a single answer but a consistent system of many, many answers backed by supporting evidence. For example, if you have big questions about the movement of the planets in our solar system, the theory of heliocentrism has big answers (spoiler alert: they orbit around the sun). Thus, the term phenomenon refers to any incident deserving of inquiry and investigation, especially processes and events which are particularly unusual or of distinctive importance.If you ever stop to wonder why some fundamental process happens the way it does, it will most likely be a scientific theory that has the answer you seek. This may make sense in terms of a communications-channel ( epistemology) feeding from an ensemble of inputs ( ontology) yet not in the sense of applying wise imagination (à la Albert Einstein, to partial success). He wrote that humans could infer only as much as their senses allowed, but not experience the actual object itself. In his inaugural dissertation, titled On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World, Immanuel Kant (1770) theorizes that the human mind is restricted to the logical world and thus can only interpret and understand occurrences according to their physical appearances.

In modern philosophical use, the term phenomena means things as they are experienced through the senses and processed by the mind as distinct from things in and of themselves ( noumena). In ordinary language 'phenomenon/phenomena' refer to any occurrence worthy of note and investigation, typically an untoward or unusual event, person or fact that is of special significance or otherwise notable. According to the Dictionary of Visual Discourse: The term is most commonly used to refer to occurrences that at first defy explanation or baffle the observer. In popular usage, a phenomenon often refers to an extraordinary event. Far predating this, the ancient Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus also used phenomenon and noumenon as interrelated technical terms. Kant was heavily influenced by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in this part of his philosophy, in which phenomenon and noumenon serve as interrelated technical terms. The term came into its modern philosophical usage through Immanuel Kant, who contrasted it with the noumenon, which cannot be directly observed. The combustion of a match is an observable occurrence, or event, and therefore a phenomenon.Ī phenomenon ( PL: phenomena), sometimes spelled phaenomenon, is an observable event.
