Exactly this. A hypothesis is postulated to explain phenomena (observations). An adhoc hypothesis is one that explains already-selected facts/observations/phenomena. That's why it is very important for a hypothesis to explain novel facts, solve novel problems. That's why Late Philosopher of Science Larry Lauren made a distinction between confirming instances and positive instances.
Disagree. The scientific method is an attempt at ascertaining the truth. It makes sense to extract a technical definition of what this process is devoid of human factors like “explanation”.
Similar to formalization where we determine the grammatical rules of a language in linguistics or formalization of a physical system to develop models for by using the statistical definition of hypothesis I am doing the same technical extraction here.
Sure informal definitions of hypothesis are useful but formal models are also useful and thus a formal model of science as defined by statistics is useful as well.
I am not denying alternative definition of hypothesis.
I am just saying that for the rigorous categorization of the term “theoretical computer science” we find that it doesn’t fit into the rigorous definition of the scientific method. There is a clear delineation here. If you want to use other definitions where “usefulness” and “explanations” are a factor then what literally stops knitting from being a science? Knitting can be useful and technical in terms composing fabric together…. why isn’t it a science?
You see the issue here and why technicality or formalization is needed? Intuitively we know knitting isn’t a science but we aren’t sure technically why… The technical definition of science elucidates the reason why knitting is not a science… because knitting doesn’t involve hypothesis testing. Plain and simple. We discard fuzzy terms like “usefulness” and it ultimately becomes clear why knitting isn’t a science.
The other reason why the statistical definition of hypothesis is useful is because it helps us delineate categories for terms where our intuition fails and becomes ambiguous. We aren’t sure where “theoretical computer science” fits into terms of science or mathematics. Using technical definitions we find that theoretical computer science is actually a math and not a science.
If we use informal definitions then nobody is sure what computer science is. The mind is confused thinking it’s both a science and a math at the same time and the op starts to use analogies in attempt to justify certain categorizations. Any time you use analogies as proof you hit a sort of failure because analogies don’t prove anything. You need to use definitions as proof.
Hence the need for formal definition's. Your philosophers definition of hypothesis is unfortunately too informal.
You should better read up research done in the domain of philosophy of sciences. I was not providing a definition of hypothesis. Instead, treat as a hypothesis about hypothesis. Definitions don't settle any dispute, whatsoever, because they just replace one symbol (definiendum) with another set of symbols (definiens).
