Re: Somebody Help Me, I can't Hypothesize

Sometimes, the way that scientists work does not neatly fit into the schemes

that Philosophers of Science devise and describe as "the Scientific Method",

or "hypothesis testing", or some such thing. The way that scientists really

work is much more varied than that.

One type of scientific enterprise that is often overlooked or undervalued is

simple exploration. Somebody invents a new type of instrument - say a 

microscope, or a hydrophone, or a radiotelescope. Often the first science

that is done with it is simply checking out its possibilities by pointing it

at various things that are appropriate, and that happen to be around. And 

that is really what the Science **IS** at that stage - pure exploration, not

hypothesis testing. That is the way that pulsars were discovered, the moons 

of Jupiter, the phases of Venus, the element helium, the songs of whales, 

etc.

When something interesting is discovered with the new instrument, that is 

when the hypotheses are formulated and tested - what is the explanation for

this unexpected thing that I have seen? or for the pattern in these

observations?

A classic case is that of a scientist called Leeuwenhoek in the 17th century.

He started as a craftsman who could produce particularly clear and accurate 

lenses. He started using his "microscope" - actually just a single lens of 

short focal length - to look at various things, including a sample of cloudy

water from a local lake. He was amazed to find it teeming with thousands,

perhaps millions of tiny living creatures. He spent the rest of his life

investigating water from different sources, body fluids, organic mixtures,

etc., and describing the different types of creature that he saw. His

purely exploratory investigations with an optical instrument turned into a

major scientific programme of investigation that revolutionized biology,

and opened up vast new areas of science! His story is well worth reading, if

you can get hold of    "Discoverer of the Unseen World" - Payne.



Having had my philosophical say, let me get back to your immediate problem.

If your teacher insists on an hypothesis, it is possible to construct one,

though you and I know that that is not really what your type of

investigation is about. Try something like "My instrument can be used to

distinguish between different types of materials", and then home in on more

specific hypotheses like "Denser materials give a higher frequency/lower

frequency/stronger/whatever signal." Or "Harder materials give a .....

signal". Or "Liquids seem to behave differently from solids in the

following ways" (and in that case, what about gels, that are sort of

in-between?). You can then relate it back to what we know from seismometry.

How do we know whether the core of the Earth is solid or liquid? for example.

Could we use the equivalent of your instrument to tell us?



By the way, I am actually not a Geophysicist, nor a Biologist, but a

Physical Chemist. The sort of question that you ask is one that can and 

does come up in any field of Science.



Best wishes for the rest of your project, which sounds truly impressive.



John.