Re: The term "theory" as in "database theory"

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 17:04:02 GMT
Message-ID: <6Opvh.6621$1x.115279@ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca>

Bernard Peek wrote:
> In message <1169879616.314041.298460_at_p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
> Marshall <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> writes
>

>> 3 and 4 are best. 5 is close.
>>
>> 2, 6, and 7 are the layman's use of the term, which basically means
>> a wild-assed guess.

>
> Even so those guesses are a valid aspect of any forum discussing
> theories. That is unless you believe that everything has already been
> invented and the current accepted theory is not capable of further
> refinement.

Bernard, I direct your attention to the remainder of the definition Dawn omitted:

—Synonyms 1. Theory, hypothesis are used in non-technical contexts to mean an untested idea or opinion. A theory in technical use is a more or less verified or established explanation accounting for known facts or phenomena: the theory of relativity. A hypothesis is a conjecture put forth as a possible explanation of phenomena or relations, which serves as a basis of argument or experimentation to reach the truth: This idea is only a hypothesis.

If this were rec.databases.theory or alt.sex.databases.theory, I would say our discussions happen in a non-technical context. This newsgroup, however, is comp.databases.theory, which suggests quite strongly the appropriate context is a technical context.

>> Occam's razor is in the same domain as 1, and doesn't really apply,
>> except perhaps as a design principle. I'm not clear why you're
>> focusing on an offhand comment of FP's in an old dbazine article.

>
> If you want to exclude the "wild-assed guess" then you pretty much have
> to exclude Occam's razor too, because that's all it is. Occam's razor
> has never offered proof of anything, it's a socially acceptable way of
> introducing an unsupportable hypothesis.

If you say so. Should we toss out the remainder of the scientific method while we are at it? Or should we just file everything under solipsism? Received on Mon Jan 29 2007 - 11:04:02 CST