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| Urbain Le Verrier |
Science
studies facts and tries to explain why they occur. Scientific
theories are the more credible, the more facts they explain or predict.
A single fact in opposition to a theory, or a single unconfirmed prediction, is
enough to make us consider revising the theory. With the
scientific method, theories are never final and facts must always take
precedence.
We have a
classic historical example in the theory of universal gravitation, which
allowed Newton to explain events like the fall of bodies and the movement of planets
and satellites. Its first achievement, by Newton himself, was the mathematical deduction of Kepler’s three experimental
laws, obtained empirically from the observation of the orbits of
the planets. But the greatest success of the theory was a correct prediction
when discrepancies were detected between the orbit of Uranus deduced from the theory
and the observed orbit. When something like this happens, the problem can be
solved in two ways:
