Facts Needed To Establish Theories

Theories are like chickens, and facts are like eggs.

This essay will discuss the statement “facts are needed to establish theories, but theories are needed to make sense of facts” and will do so by raising the question as to whether scientific conclusions can be justified.

Facts and theories are necessary components in all areas of knowledge. Similarly to the argument as to whether it was the chicken or the egg that came first, it can be difficult to establish whether the facts or the theories are reliant on which. Facts are pieces of information found to be true, and are needed to establish theories. Theories are explanations about questions of our world that are required to make sense of fact. The two are thus known to be interdependent

If a theory has been made valid by thorough evidence, then there is no reason as to believe that the conclusion is false. Dalton is an english chemist and mathematician, who was the first person to prove the existence of atoms. His theory is the first complete attempt to describe all matter in terms of atoms and their properties. The theory is called the “Atomic theory” and can be explained in four key concepts—all matter is made up of atoms that are indivisible, all atoms of a given element are identical in mass, properties and compounds are combinations of two or more types of atoms and, atoms are the products of all chemical reactions. During the 1800’s Dalton explored the genetic makeup and nature of air. He conduced a gas experiment in which he measured the amount of water vapour that air could absorb at different temperatures and discovered that rather than being a chemical solvent, it was made up of minute, singular particles that are in constant, random motion. He also researched the properties of compounds and found that compounds are combined full of particles that can be different but are not able to be subdivided. This proved that atoms then exist, and proves the theory that scientific conclusions can be justified so long as there is enough evidence to support

Since Dalton’s atomic theory was created in the early 1800’s people were fixed that this was in fact the correct structure of an atom. Recent discoveries however, have been led to disprove the original theory. In part one, although Dalton originally stated that atoms are indivisible, it is now known that atoms can be divisible due to them being made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. Other experiments by Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden show that rather than an atom being a “solid, massy” particle they are in fact mostly made up of empty space. Part two of Dalton’s theory has also had to be modified after it was also proven that atoms of the same element may have different masses due to different isotopes of the same element being able to have varied numbers of neutrons. It can therefore be proposed, that while scientific conclusions can never really be justified as they are only able to be true until disproven. No matter the evidence to support the original piece of knowledge, there is no assurance that such a piece cannot later be