Beer goggles theory:
http://www.lovespeaks.net/study-beer-goggles-theory-proven/
Pretty simple theory, even if you disagree with.
Again I must say, it is too a theory, although it is not scientific. Popper intended falsifiability to be a criterion of scientificness, not of theoryhood. Indeed, he specifically argued that Marxism, Psychoanalysis, etc were theories, and even that they had started off as scientific theories, but that they had lost their scientific status (but certainly not their theoretical status) because they (their original versions) had been falsified but not abandoned.
Of course, many would argue that Popper’s theory of the nature and methodology of science has itself been repeatedly falsified by studies of how science actually works in practice, but that is another matter.
However, I’ve always found the Atomic Theory pretty simple to grasp the basics of:
An atom is comprised of three parts:
A positively charged proton. A negative charged electron, and a neutron with no charge.
One of each of these makes hydrogen (okay, an exception here, but you can get into isotopes later). Two of each makes helium. Three, lithium and so on…
I love this. Mind if I use this explanation (with all due credit to here) to help others understand how the scientific method works? It’s a wonderful metaphor.
If a=b and b=c then a=c
Except in Kansas
Re: Germ Theory
While they may deny it, I think very few of them will say “I don’t get it.”
I wouldn’t normally say that knowing what the consistent observations are constitutes understanding of the theory. But the OP doesn’t specify a definition for ‘theory’ or ‘understanding’, so your interpretation is as valid as anyone’s. And that makes it difficult to answer the OP. Even when restricted to scientific theory, the responses have shown that there are differences in the meaning of the word theory in different areas of science. As far as the word understanding goes, there’s a continuum of definitions. At the bottom, minimal knowledge of a theory is a better understanding than something that is a complete misunderestimation. At the top, complete and total understanding is usually hubris.
Or more simply put, “I don’t understand the question.”
Based on the various threads we get in this forum about the Big Bang Theory, I’d say it’s not a good example of the theory everyone can understand.
It is a theory according to the dictionary definition of the word ‘theory’ and answers the OP, as I feel most people can understand it, along with many other related theories based on ‘myths’.
It may not qualify as a scientific theory, but that was not what was asked. Scientific theory may not be able to satisfy the OP as it requires the learning of the validity of science and the very young don’t have that.
Please do. I’m glad you like it.
Heck, I don’t think anyone today understands *why *there is gravity, other than in the weak anthropic sense of “why”.
“Why” questions are always the hardest because the search for a cause drives to an infinite regress. Ultimately you get to “It’s a fundamental property of the universe.” And as your science improves, you learn that your former “fundamental property” has some complex causation which in turn rests on what your new improved science calls “fundamental properties”. Lather rinse repeat.
My personal take is there really is some set of things called opaque “fundamental properties”, many of which are as yet not fully known to us. Other scientists, philosophers, & epistemologists would argue it really *is *an infinite regress.
There is also the eternal confusion between “why” asking about causation and “why” asking about purpose. The latter form is irrelevant to the physical sciences, but may be the more important form of “why” when dealing with social or biological sciences. For example, in the hoary old “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke, the answers I’ve heard are about 80% purpose & about 20% causation.
My favorite, easy to understand theory goes like this.
Quite true. I was doing my usual over enthusiastic spiel about science and confuting theory and scientific theory.
As has already been eloquently mentioned, there are definition issues with terms in the OP’s question. Key among them, as I see it, are theory, everyone and understand, with a possible additional one for example.
May I suggest that any theory put forward that involved an inventor, discoverer, or original postulator, already escapes the concept of everyone since it took that original person to point out that such a theory was possible.
Referring back to my simplistic earlier post, I would suggest that unless children, primitives, mentally challenged or otherwise restricted in their worldview types are to be included in everyone, then the OP needs some major restrictions added before a meaningful example can be presented.
I still put forth demon/spirit theory as a solution to the OP, as this is very possibly the earliest form of cognition/learning and may happen in the womb and may be why we learn to use out senses and minds.
Darn, I wanted to post that.
Ahem.
Surely just because someone had to be the first to come up with a theory, it does not follow that other people cannot understand it. I am fairly sure the OP must mean a theory that is understandable by everyone (which I think we can safely take to mean non-retarded human adults) once it has been clearly explained to them
However, then we run into the issue that I mentioned in my first post. Almost every reasonably intelligent adult can understand almost any theory (well, maybe not QM :p), provided they put enough time and effort (maybe sometimes several years of dedicated study) into it.
I understand the confusion over my statement, and it’s probably tied into a tacit assumption I have been making about the OP’s query. I think I have been assuming the theory has some real world relevance and is accepted as valid by an educated or intelligent subset of human beings. (I’m not trying to be snide or cute here, honest.)
Before Newton’s proclamations on Gravity or any of the other facets of Physics and Mathematics that he propounded, some people may have had some intuitive ideas along similar lines, but I question whether they would have understood the final proposition before Newton explained it in detail. Similar things may be said about Einstein, Hawking, and other such geniuses.
It seems to me that most of the “intuitively obvious” theories we have had to work hard to debunk have been wrong! Flat Earth as a case in point.
So as long as theory doesn’t imply valid I guess anybody could understand it.
Maybe so, but when Newton initially published the Principia he did get a lot of flack for not being able to explain gravity (or rather, why things fall down) in the sense that the rival theories of the time actually did purport to do: Aristotelian theory explained it in terms of the natural propensity of earthy matter to seek its natural place (which was tied in with an elaborate and sophisticated theory of the nature of substance and causation); Cartesian mechanical theory explained it in terms of etheric particles swirling in a vortex around the Earth pushing objects down by direct contact. Newton himself was aware of this as a “defect” of his theory, and even did attempt to develop his own version of an “etheric pressure” account of gravity. However he could not make it work in such a way as would fit his equations and abandoned it, saying to his critics, in effect, “No, I can’t explain this force, but it must be real because the equations fit the facts.” That is what the whole “Hypotheses non fingo” thing was about. Newton won, of course, because his equations did indeed fit the facts (observed planetary, and other, motions), and with far greater quantitative precision than any other theory could offer, and for the next couple of centuries people forgot about this defect of Newtonian theory, or else tried to make it out to be a virtue (as some people today try to make out the incomprehensibility of QM to be a virtue).
However, both General Relativity and theories of gravity that appeal to notions like gravitons and the Higgs boson do seem to be attempts to explain gravity, the causes of gravity, in the sense that Newton failed to do. I suppose you are right that all scientific explanations eventually reach their limit where you have to say “Well, it just is!”, but that does not mean that you should just stop trying to explain when you reach such limits. Indeed, pushing against, and sometimes going beyond such limits is one of the most important ways that science advances.