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the·o·ryYou're describing a hypothesis, not a theory. To become a confirmed theory, a hypothesis must make testable predictions, which must then be verified.
My experience is people are sitting around in the break room, and someone says "the oddest thing happened today..." And people start saying "well did you check...?" or "Maybe it's..." And eventually, someone tries to see. If one of those ideas is confirmed by evidence, someone writes a paper and it's on its way to being a theory. Next step is for other scientists to see if they can duplicate the results. If they can, then they write papers, and eventually after a lot of confirmations, scientists conclude that the idea is right. And that's what a theory is.
In science, that is. I've been told that lawyers use the term as "not confirmed but what I'd like it to be." But if you do science, you should use scientific terms.
/ˈTHirē/
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noun
- a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.
"Darwin's theory of evolution" - a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based.
"a theory of education" - an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action.
"my theory would be that the place has been seriously mismanaged"
- a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based.
hy·poth·e·sis
/hīˈpäTHəsəs/
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noun
- a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.
"professional astronomers attacked him for popularizing an unconfirmed hypothesis"
PHILOSOPHY- a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth.
"the hypothesis that every event has a cause.
- a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth.
So, instead of saying, "I have a theory", I should be saying, "I have a hypothesis", etc...?
God Bless!
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