In general, a theory is developed by a scientist who is aware of many empirical findings on a topic of interest. However, deductive reasoning does not explain where the theory came from in the first place. The method of investigation in which a hypothesis is developed from a theory and then confirmed or disconfirmed involves deductive reasoning. It just means that it is not a scientific explanation.
This does not mean that an explanation that cannot be tested is incorrect in some cosmic sense. A theory is not confirmed when correct hypotheses are derived from it.Ī key difference between scientific explanations and faith-based explanations is simply that faith-based explanations are based on faith and do not need to be testable. If a hypothesis derived from a theory is confirmed then the theory has survived a test and it becomes more useful and better thought of by the researchers in the field. The infant monkeys formed no attachment to the wire monkeys and frequently clung to the cloth surrogate mothers. Perhaps the most notable is one in which infant monkeys were fed by a surrogate wire mother while a surrogate cloth mother was available. The secondary reinforcement theory has been disconfirmed by numerous experiments. It is through this "secondary reinforcement" that the child-parent bond forms. For example, the secondary reinforcement theory of attachment states that an infant becomes attached to its parent by means of a pairing of the parent with a primary reinforcer (food). If a hypothesis is disconfirmed, then the theory from which the hypothesis was deduced is incorrect. Therefore, a scientific theory should lead to testable hypotheses. If a theory can accommodate all possible results then it is not a scientific theory. Scientific theories must be potentially disconfirmable. Theories in science can never be proved since one can never be 100% certain that a new empirical finding inconsistent with the theory will never be found. Theories and explanations are very important in science. Observational studies in the fields of astronomy, developmental psychology, and ethology are common and provide valuable scientific information. However, scientific investigation does not necessarily require experimentation in the sense of manipulating variables and observing the results. To be a proper scientific investigation the data must be collected systematically. One of the hallmarks of the scientific method is that it depends on empirical data. A thorough treatment of the philosophy of science is beyond the scope of this work. This section contains a brief discussion of the most important principles of the scientific method.
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