The Forms of Law

The word theory has many distinct meanings in different fields of comprehension, depending on their methodologies and the context of a conversation. Broadly speaking we can say that a theory is some kind of credence or claim that (evidently) explains, asserts, or consolidates some group of claims. Furthermore, in contrast with a conjecture the statement of the theory is usually accepted only in some cautious fashion as opposed to regarding it as having been convincingly recognized. This may simply indicate, as it does in the sciences, that the theory was arrived at using potentially faulty inferences (scientific induction). In these cases the term theory does not suggest a low confidence in the claim and many uses of the term in the sciences require just the opposite. However, In common usage, the word theory is often used to signify a speculation, an opinion, a conjecture, or a hypothesis. In this usage, a theory is just a claim with the additional suggestion that the claim isn't suitably warranted to be more than a theory.

In science the word theory is not a synonym of fact. For example, it is a fact that if an apple was to fall from a tree it would drop straight to the ground, all because of gravity, Even though gravity was originally a theory. However, even inside the sciences the word theory picks out several different concepts reliant on the context. In casual speech scientists don't use the term theory in a particularly accurate manner, allowing historical accidents to conclude whether a given body of scientific work is called a theory, law, principle or something else. For instance Einstein's relativity is usually called "the theory of relativity" while Newton's theory of gravity often is called "the law of gravity." In this kind of casual use by scientists, the word theory can be used lithely to refer to whatever kind of clarification or prediction is being examined. It is for this example that a scientific theory is a claim based on a body of facts....