Comment by CPLX
3 hours ago
No, the one that is actually explaining the phenomenon is the true one. The concept I'm conveying is sometimes called "mechanism of action"
There's a basic principle called Ockham's Razor that I'm sure you're aware of, which proposes that the simplest theory is the most likely candidate, but that's a heuristic, not a rule.
Another relevant concept here is that the map is not the territory. All theories are attempts to express some kind of underlying truth via some sort of formal system. Some of those theories map much more closely to the truth than others, in a way that's independent of accurately predicting observed behavior to date.
The philosophical problem of that approach is that it's impossible to assess whether you've arrived to the underlying truth, as you have no way to perceive it directly.
All you have is the different theories, so there's no definitive way to assess their closeness to truth other than by their predictive accuracy. If you don't have the physical capacity to leave the room and observe the world, all you've got is the maps themselves and how well they predict travel times and features found along the way.
I question whether a unique mechanism of action exists for all phenomena, but let's suppose that it does. Can you always know which one it is?
The only tool you have is the inductive strength of a big pile of observations in which correlations emerge. You can do experiments to prune certain causal stories, but there's never time to eliminate all possible stories. You end up with something that makes sense for you, in terms of the equipment that you have, and the theories that you and your peers use, and it's good enough, so we move forward with it.
I can see how it might be useful to document a particular explanation as "the" explanation, especially if you're communicating why a drug works because it will lead to useful conclusions about who should or shouldn't take the drug.
But when it comes to speculation about whether a given astronomical body will be visible at a particular time, I think science would have progressed much more quickly if we had not held so tightly to the notion that one explanation is intrinsically correct, and we're probably holding ourselves back now in other domains by doing the same.