Theme 2 - Reflections

This week we got to learn more about theory and what theory really is, and maybe more important, found out what is not theory as this is a common misconceptions in student and more scientific papers. We learned about different categories for theories as to what type of theory they might be. Theory is often a mislabeled word that is thrown about it common conversation where a person says that he or she has a theory when in fact its probably just a hypothesis taken from the believes or predictions from that person. and not a scientific study with underlying logical train of thought.

Theory is something abstract and is pretty hard to define and pinpoint. We had a discussion i the seminar about when a hypothesis becomes a theory, if any one person is even able to have a theory, or that it has to be recognized by others even thou its actually “correct”, for example My group brought up in the seminar about Copernicus having a theory of the sun being the center of our solar system instead of the earth. Today this is well known and considered fact, but when he came up with this people laughed at him and it wasn't until much later that people understood that he was right. So my question was, did he come up with a theory back then, or was it at that time only a hypothesis that years later when it became recognised transcended into a theory?

On the whole I thought that the subject was very interesting, even thou it asked more questions than it did answered them. Compared to the previous theme this felt much more relevant for our studies as this will be directly applicable when i write my bachelor and master thesis.