Fertility, falsifiability, simplicity and elegance

Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) Tony Clifton Wed 22 Apr 2009 04:05 PM PDT: Well as stated in my essay all good scientific theories usually do the following things:

• predictive accuracy - the ability to forecast what we have not yet observed
• internal coherence - the various parts of the theory should not contradict each other
• external consistency - the theory should not contradict other accepted theories, or 'laws of nature'
• unifying power - the theory should bring together and explain previously disparate areas of knowledge
• fertility - the theory should generate novel hypotheses
• falsifiability - it should be possible to construct hypotheses that could lead to the rejection of the theory - this is an especially important scientific value
• simplicity and elegance - this is a value judgment i.e. it is a subjective judgment made by scientists. Consequently simplicity is a desired characteristic rather than a defining characteristic of a scientific theory
• It should lead to reproducible experiments that are empirically verifiable.

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Re: Devolution: Why Intelligent Design isn't by H. Allen Orr (The New Yorker) Tony Clifton