On the Success of Scientific Theories

[Alex K]

I am so confused by this. No wonder I did poorly in science class. I was lost with the first post, but kept reading in the hopes that I would understand. I am even more lost now.

So, imagine a thought experiment where you let a ball drop (in a vacuum to get rid of complications like air resistance). With Newton's formulas, you can now calculate how long it takes to fall and what its velocity will be etc. You get some numbers out.

It'll be very accurate, but we already know that the theory is not perfect - if you use Einstein's formulas, you'll get a slightly different, more precise result (not noticeable in practise when dropping balls, but let's not get distracted by that technicality). So a question you might ask is now - in which sense do the Newton theory, and the things it talks about (such as Forces) exist in nature, or at least be reflections of aspects of nature. Can one say that relativity, which talks about somewhat different things such as curved spacetime, to achieve similar results, somehow gives us more truth about Nature?

I think the point is that we would like to use these theories for more than just calculating numbers such as how long does the ball take to drop, but would like to use them as explanations for what happens in the world, such as "earth attracts this ball with gravitational force" (Newton), or "earth curves spacetime, and thus the ball gets moving" (Einstein). In which sense are these explanations a true reflection of what happens in nature, and in which sense do the explanations of newer more precise theories come closer to that goal of explaining what is "really going on in nature".

Is this clearer?