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Theories don't become laws
by JGC

“You may be thinking of a Law like the law of gravity, which was proceeded by the theory of gravity. A law is just a theory that has been tested so many times the data does not support any other hypothesis.”

>>I’m sorry, but laws and theories are two different entities, and theories remain theories forever—they don’t somehow ‘graduate’ to become a law.

Theories and laws are separate constructs, with the fundamental difference being laws describe while theories explain, and we have both laws of gravity as well as a theory of gravity.

A scientific law is statement which in a precise but limited manner describes what has always been observed to occur under specific defined circumstances, frequently expressed as a single mathematical equation. Laws are postulates, lacking complex external proofs.

Scientific theories, on the other hand, are unifying and self-consistent explanations of fundamental natural processes or phenomena that are constructed of corroborated hypotheses, and which comprehensively, predictively, and tentatively explain all observations within their scope.

So we in fact have both laws of gravity (such as the inverse square law, which describes observed changes in the magnitude of gravitational attraction as the distance between the masses varies) as well as the theory of gravitational attraction (which explains how that attractive force results from mass distorting local space-time.)

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