A rainbow is a classic example of ex suppositione reasoning – reasoning which provides an explanation of a phenomenon that is not always verifiable by experimentation.
Rainbows form the refraction and reflection of light through water droplets in a particular position with respect to an observer, but they don’t form after every rain shower, so the reasoning is correct but it is not verifiable.
Galileo was a practitioner of such reasoning – observing first, his reasoning then explaining his observations.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Comments on this entry are closed.