Hi Roger - and Ara and John and Don...

We have to be a bit careful with semantics - I'm not so sure that the words theory and hypothesis mean the same thing to a scientist as it does to the non-scientist.

That may be some of what appears to be a communication problem here. Ara is from Japan and I'm not sure but, english may be a second language (correct me if I'm wrong) - though it is very well spoken.

The extra characters around the words in Ara's posts make it a bit hard to filter.. must have something to do with browser differences or something...

As for what should be the accepted definition of these words here - it should conform to the scientific method:
Hypothesis: An hypothesis is a limited statement regarding cause and effect in specific situations; it also refers to our state of knowledge before experimental work has been performed and perhaps even before new phenomena have been predicted

Theory: or law represents an hypothesis, or a group of related hypotheses, which has been confirmed through repeated experimental tests.

People casually use the term Theory when maybe Hypothesis is a better term to be using.

I'm sure John's use of the word theory would be the correct use.

Canie

• On the Scientific Method