Hypothesis testing

This is one of the fundamentals of traditional science. It's actually
quite a fine art.

Simple it's saying something absurd then proving it right using evidence.

An example comes from Roman times or whenever when armies used to sling
rocks at a besieged city. Conventional wisdom said that rocks would fly
until the energy ran out, then they would drop immediately. Some
scientist (Archimedes probably) said that the rocks start with an energy
and it reduces slowly so they follow a parabolic path.

The conventional scientists used their equations but the rocks kept on
missing the target. They went too far. Their hypothesis was incorrect
but they clung to it like a faith. The scientist with the new idea of
how force, mass and acceleration combine with gravity to make objects
flung from catapults follow a parabolic path had his hypothesis
confirmed because his strikes hit the target again and again.

In modern times it seems obvious that mathematics could determine the
right settings for a siege engine. It was absurd when the first military
scientist suggested the idea.

Hypothesis testing is just the beginning of what's know as positivistic"
methods in science. It's a concept I find hard to explain but I hope to
do a few more posts on it.