Probably just one cent's worth here, but to follow up Jannie's
point, I'd give my opinion that the falsifiability thing popularised
by Popper is not such a good criterion of whether a scientific
hypothesis is good or not, since it is (i) not itself falsifiable
[as pointed out by Imre Lakatos], (ii) subjective (as Jannie poiints
out you don't automatically assume the summation theorem is wrong if
FCCs don't add up to 1. Experiments may be wrong or - may heaven
forfend - we might be using e-coefficients and not noting that v is
not proportional to [E] when there is channelling).
As we all know, the history of science is full of examples where
beautiful hypotheses were not in fact destroyed by single ugly
facts.....and a good few where they should have been.....
I don't know if Hans Wff reads this group, but he told me years ago
that his view on this terminology (which I hope I reproduce
correctly) was that MCT is effectively the body of the theorems that
make up the formalism and MCA is when you actually apply the
formalism in real wet work. I thought and think that to be a pretty
sensible distinction.
All the best,
Douglas.
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*(Prof.) Douglas B. Kell Phone: +44 1970 622334 *
*Director of Research *
*Institute of Biological Sciences Fax: +44 1970 622354 *
*Cledwyn Building *
*University of Wales, Email: dbk at aber.ac.uk *
*Aberystwyth SY23 3DD, U.K. http://gepasi.dbs.aber.ac.uk/*
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