• Copernican@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    When folks conflate a scientific law with a scientific theory. Theories are scientific explanations about why things happen. Laws are descriptions, that don’t provide explanation.

    • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s not a distinction generally used by scientists.

      Newton’s laws of motion and Einstein’s theory of special relativity are both sets of equations that describe motion, but they do not explain why gravity obeys an inverse square law, why c is invariant, etc.

      In contrast, Gause’s law of competitive exclusion and Darwin’s theory of natural selection both explain population distributions in nature.