Theory what is

All of this is ordinary in the realm of current knowledge-based system theory and can be found, in many variations, in the literature.

The psychological theory is based on the philosophical premises. From being purely historical and documentary, they are now turning towards an interest in theory.

But it would prove impossible to deduce a physical theory from such purely formal theorems. But the idea of an ageless self is also supported by developmental psychological theories, where the development after adolescence is seldom considered.

Promoting psychological well-being in the face of serious illness : when theory , research and practice inform each other. Page also correctly notes that localist representations not only can yield insightful and interpretable psychological theories, but neurally plausible theories as well. We do not understand the notion of a "psychological" theory that is "nonindividualistic"; the individual organism is psychology's focal level of analysis.

Using reflective practice to link personal and public theories. Distributed representations of structure : a theory of analogical access and mapping. In this commentary we raise two issues that we think are directly related to the theory's treatment of mental representations as emulations.

See all examples of theory. These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors. Collocations with theory. Click on a collocation to see more examples of it. See all collocations with theory. Translations of theory in Chinese Traditional. See more. Need a translator? Translator tool.

What is the pronunciation of theory? Browse theorist. Theory X. Test your vocabulary with our fun image quizzes. Image credits. The latter two terms also are well worth looking at in more detail because they are used differently by scientists and the general public, which can cause confusion when scientists talk about their work.

In common parlance, theory is often used to refer to something that is rather speculative. This definition strongly contrasts with the definition of theory as it is used in science: a theory is a carefully thought-out explanation for observations of the natural world that has been constructed using the scientific method, and which brings together many facts and hypotheses. The term hypothesis is good to define in this discussion as well: a hypothesis is an idea that we can test with further scientific observations.

With these definitions in mind, a simplified version of the scientific process would be as follows. A scientist makes an observation of a natural phenomenon.

If the test falsifies the hypothesis i. If the hypothesis is corroborated i. If it survives additional scrutiny, she may eventually try to incorporate it into a larger theory that helps to explain her observed phenomenon and relate it to other phenomena. That's all fairly abstract, so let's look at a concrete example involving some recent research I undertook with a group of collaborators. The theory of evolution states that the process of natural selection should work to optimize the function of an organism's parts if the changes increase the chances of the organism successfully producing offspring and the changes are heritable i.

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