How we determine facts.

[Jenny A]

[quote='Jenny A' pid='838770' dateline='1420688019']
Now regarding scientific conclusions....we begin to draw conclusions the moment we observe and reflect and we do begin to make conclusions after just one observation. The number of observations just increases our confidence in those conclusions.

Actually, no. My dog makes conclusions from one or two incidents. She makes some odd conclusions, such as all men with beards are bad. So do some people, particularly children and the superstitious. Science, on the other hand, is based on not drawing unwarranted conclusions. Instead, you make a hypothesis based upon the data (which ought to be a better sample than three) and then proceed to test the hypothesis (by either designed tests or by looking for contrary evidence).

In the case of three marbles in a bag, all you have to do is look at all the marbles. Guessing about one marble at a time would be silly. Sampling hundreds of bags might tell you something about the likelihood of marble in the bags in that area.

But let's make this a more likely scientific problem. You find a bag of three marbles in a 1000 year old tomb. Two of the marbles are black, one white. What do you conclude? They had marbles. Find more bags in more tombs and you might form a hypothesis about the marbles. If there are more white marbles than black by two to one, you might conclude that black is more costly and begin to look at the resources necessary to produce white as opposed to black. If it's always two white and one black in every bag, you might look for symbolic meaning or evidence it was part of a game. And so on. You might never figure it out. But you probably would at least falsify a few hypotheses.

If you always found three marbles two white and one black and found directions for playing a game of chance with the devil involving two white and one black marble, and a mural showing the devil playing the game in another tomb, you'd be well on your way to a theory about why there are always two white and one black marbles in each tomb.