what is the name of this scientific (I think) concept?

August 17, 2013 11:44 AM

There is a concept I remember reading about but can't remember the name of, and none of my flailing Google searches are coming up with anything. Basically it's the concept of... repeatability? Our assumption that the laws of physics remain constant? The notion that if something occurs once, that given the same circumstances it will happen again, eg every time you add vinegar to baking soda it will foam up and after repeating things enough times we can assume that it will always happen- it won't suddenly burst into flames or turn into a radio or whatever. I remember reading that this assumption is both what science is based on and something we can never know for sure, since all it takes is one instance of flammable baking soda and vinegar to disprove it and maybe that'll happen tomorrow. I'm also not 100% sure this is a real scientific concept and not something I read in science fiction. :[
posted by insufficient data to Science & Nature (16 answers total)

The word you're looking for may be determinism. I.e. a series of events is deterministic if, given the same inputs, the same outputs would always occur.
posted by gmb at 11:48 AM on August 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Forgot to add: it's been ~10 years since I used that word in a Physics context, but I use it in software development and mathematics all the time.
posted by gmb at 11:49 AM on August 17, 2013

It's sort of the opposite of chaos theory. Could also be slightly Bayesian: you have an expectation that something will occur based on prior experience.

Yes, also determinism (as opposed to stochasticity, which is related to chaos.)
posted by supercres at 11:50 AM on August 17, 2013

Sounds akin to Occam's Razor.
posted by timsteil at 11:51 AM on August 17, 2013

Inductive reasoning?
posted by bethnull at 11:51 AM on August 17, 2013

I've seen it mostly in a Philosophy of Science type context, though I don't know a specific name for it.
posted by Lady Li at 11:53 AM on August 17, 2013

uniformitarianism - idea that the laws are the same throughout time and space

induction - the type of logic that takes you from repeated observed instances to a generalized prediction that the same thing will happen in the future
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:57 AM on August 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Re: the "we can't ever know", you might find it interesting to read about "Hume's problem".
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:59 AM on August 17, 2013

Perhaps you are thinking of falsifiability. A principle is regarded as scientifically reliable if it is falsifiable (can be established to be false with testing) and has not been shown to be false with testing. Many claims are not accepted as scientific because they cannot be falsified.
posted by megatherium at 11:59 AM on August 17, 2013

Best answer: I've heard this called the principle of uniformity - similar to what LM said above.
posted by crocomancer at 12:07 PM on August 17, 2013

Best answer: As others have mentioned (though I thought it might be good to include a link to the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on the matter in this thread), this is the problem of induction:

"The original problem of induction can be simply put. It concerns the support or justification of inductive methods; methods that predict or infer, in Hume's words, that “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (THN, 89). Such methods are clearly essential in scientific reasoning as well as in the conduct of our everyday affairs. The problem is how to support or justify them and it leads to a dilemma: the principle cannot be proved deductively, for it is contingent, and only necessary truths can be proved deductively. Nor can it be supported inductively—by arguing that it has always or usually been reliable in the past—for that would beg the question by assuming just what is to be proved."

posted by kilo hertz at 12:08 PM on August 17, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Principle of uniformity! That's it! Oh man that has been bugging me all week.
posted by insufficient data at 12:14 PM on August 17, 2013

It is reproducibility. To quote Wikipedia: "It is one of the main principles of the scientific method." Determinism has nothing to do with it (Q.M. is a probabilistic theory, not deterministic), nor has uniformity...
posted by aroberge at 12:21 PM on August 17, 2013 [3 favorites]

I was also I was going to suggest reproducibility, or else falsifiability or repeatability, however these all seem to be more about the scientific method, theories and hypotheses, or measurements, rather than about our assumptions about reality, or the assumptions about reality upon which the scientific method is based.

Uniformitarianism/ the principle of uniformity seems to fit quite well, but not completely. What you are describing sounds to me a bit like a mix of all of this.
posted by miorita at 1:54 PM on August 17, 2013

Another term you might be interested in is "transnational symmetry" and here's Richard Feynman to tell you about it.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 8:40 AM on August 18, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You've got two distinct issues entangled in your question: one is uniformitarianism (or the principle of uniformity), and the other is the problem of induction.

The latter is a question of epistemology: how do we know what we know?

The former is a question of ontology: what is the nature of reality? Have the laws of nature and the forces at work in it always been the same, or have they changed over time? Some of the key debates in early 19th-century geology involved those questions: were the forces that could be observed acting on the earth in the 1800s adequate for explaining the geological history of the planet, or did catastrophes have to be invoked?
posted by brianogilvie at 5:45 PM on August 18, 2013 [1 favorite]