Talk:Hypothesis

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An eyepothesis or A Hypothesis? Susan Jayne Garlick^talk 10:59, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Well I was wondering about this myself. It's a bit like an "honest man", "an HTML page" or - as some people would write "an hotel" depending on how or if the "h" is aspirated. If it offends you cut it out. :-) --Bob^{bing up and down} 11:08, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Actually a quick Google search on "an hypothesis" gives me a vast number of hits.--Bob^{bing up and down} 11:17, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Our Murcan friends would also say an herb. Edit clash - I'm fed up with my speed - must get broadband.Susan Jayne Garlick^talk 11:20, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

No doubt that wonderful firm "BT" will fix you up soon. .-) --Bob^{bing up and down} 11:30, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

BT contract expires early december - am gonna change operatos possibly then - I'm in house now - electrics only upstairs - cooking with microwave in #2 bedroom! Phone working but router etc not replaced yet. - poss tis weekend. Susan Jayne Garlick^talk 14:57, 4 September 2007 (CDT)

Improvements

As I may see "edit conflicts" are stronger than the company that kept them here (the company is gone, yet the edit conflicts stay). BTW, it is "an herb" since the purpose of "n" is to make pronunciation smooth (an illiterate Jim teaches native speakers of English the rules of English grammar).

But I came here not as an English teacher but as a science teacher: I propose to modify the opening joke with "beautiful science and ugly fact" to "beautiful magic" and "cold fact" since if it goes, it was surely "magic" (I thought also about "beautiful religion or ugly magic" but religions rarely go, and if, then once per few centuries, so "beautiful magic" won). The folks who don't know what hypothesis is may start understanding why the hypothesis is always a magic (something looking as beautiful fact but ain't). It may also repalce the attitude towards magic and science. The original version might sound smart but ain't true.

BTW, I also do edit conflicts since I'm not only a sculptor (who likes the best to sculpt nude women, this highest achievement of evolution of humans) but also a retired software engineer, which kept me alive for well over quarter of a century (since sculpting nude women alone doesn't keep men alive), and a physicist who noticed that Einstein's science abolished beautiful magic of Big Bang with cool truth that the univese is not even expanding. JimJast (talk) 08:18, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It's a herb In the UK! Don't assume that what you know is always right! --Pippa (talk) 08:26, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Pippa, thanks for turning my attention to the existence of British pronunciation. Here (in the ugly states) we say "erb", however in Baaahstin they may say "herb" (or even "heb"). I never understood their lingo though. When I came here I couldn't even understend "4" (fo-wah) and it took me a while to recognize this number. Which is real pain in the ars when someone is comming from Poland where our "r"s are "rrreal" "r"s (like Scotish) and most of the time people write as they speak. One doesn't need to learn two languages (one spoken and one written). JimJast (talk) 09:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to add to this language discussion that a Polish lady is rolling her "r"s not only when wearing high heels. JimJast (talk) 09:59, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

hee hee! Anyway, to get back to the original point, the joke at the top is a quote, so we can't change what it says. 86.157.97.15 (talk) 13:29, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Actual improvements

I'm concerned that the definition soup is confusing. If people are aware of the "common" definition we don't need to explain it, if they're not, we don't need to confuse it. Let's just stick to the whole "scientific method" thing and leave it there. ADK^{...I'll masturbate your boat!} 13:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't hypotheses always have to be testable?

I got stuck at the sentence: "Often, hypotheses can be tested — unless, of course, they are in the form of the argument from God; but in that case they are not science anyway."

I think hypotheses have to be testable by definition. I thought that's what distinguished them from a guess. Not that the testing has to be immediately possible with the current means but that they'd always need to be provable and disprovable. Wikipedia says: "For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it."

So by definition, if you can't test for the existence of a god, there's no hypothesis. The sentence should look more like this: "Hypotheses can be tested by definition, whereas <whatever crap goes here - I don't know the 'argument from God'> cannot be tested and is therefore not compatible with the scientific method." --178.0.222.23 (talk) 06:19, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree. This is a wiki you know, you're allowed to edit it yourself. Christopher (talk) 17:24, 13 April 2017 (UTC)