(February 15, 2018 at 6:51 pm)LadyForCamus Wrote:(February 15, 2018 at 6:15 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: Not all of them. Most of them begin as conceptual model which are then described by mathematics so that their construct are made specific enough for any internal contradictions to be made manifest, or their predictions made precise and thereby possible to verify with precision or falsify.
But you’re saying it is true that they are mathematical models before scientists go out into the physical world to tests them, yeah?
The example of Faraday is interesting. He did a lot of the groundwork on electromagnetism, but he was primarily an experimentalist. The mathematical theory came later. So the engineers were able to start making practical objects before we had a mathematical theory. Faraday's conceptual models didn't really go that far. It was his experiments that opened up a whole new area.