Text (What is a Scientific Theory?)

New words

• arbitrary     subjective    capricious    base on whim    random        authoritarian    not according to rule    arbitrary standard    arbitrary     power
• gravity    
• proportional
• inverse        opposite or reversing    opposite    
• provisional         temporary of conditional    somebody hired temporarily    temporary postage stamp
• disprove
• modify
• competence
• metaphysic
• omnipotent    religion same as God
• partial        incomplete    fond of something     biased
• inconsistent    varying and unpredictable    conflicting or incompatible with    something    lacking common values in equation
• incorporate    joint with something that exists         merge things    
• mass
• falsify    falsify records 窜改记录。falsify certificates 伪造执照。Alter fraudulently    disprove    misrepresent    
• survive
• fundamental
• devise
• isolation
• structure
• orbit
• endeavor    do one's (best) endeavor(s) 尽全力。make every endeavor 尽一切努力，不遗余力。Try hard to do something     effort     enterprise
• provisional        template
• quotation
• pessimistic        very negative person     pessimistic view    pessimistic outlook
• cloze
• observation
• previous
• motion

 

Phrases

• in principle     理论上
• in isolation 孤立地
• all in one go : combined; together
• partial theories: 局部理论
• quantum mechanic : 量子力学
• quantum theory of gravity    量子引力论
• on the basis of
• be made out of
• on the other hand
• be proportional to
• be concerned with
• a completed arbitrary way
• devise a theory to do something
• in a fundamental way

Cloze

    Not only must a good theory be able to accurately describe a large class of observation, but also it should be able to make the definite predictions about the result of future observation. However, any theory is provisional because it may be disproved sooner or later. The eventual goal of science is to prove a single theory that describes the whole universe, both its change with time and its initial state. But actually, it is almost impossible to do so. Therefore, scientists invent a number of partial theories, each of them dealing with a limited class of observations. Today two basis partial theories scientists use are the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanic.

Translate

In practice, what often happens is that the new theory is devise that is really extension of the previous one. For example, very accurate observation of the planet Mercury revealed a small difference between its motion and the predictions of Newton’s theory of gravity. Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicted a slight different motion from Newton’s theory. The fact that Einstein’s predictions matched what was seen, while Newton’s did not, was one of the crucial confirmations of the new theory. However, we use the Newton’s theory for all practical purposes because the different between its predictions and those of general relativity is very small in the situation we normally deal with.