What is a hypothesis?

Often we come across phenomena that need to be explained. However, far from always we can explain them by analogy with other, similar phenomena. Then we make an assumption, knowingly not knowing whether it is true or false. Such assumptions, the truth of which still needs to be proved, are called hypotheses.

Instruction manual

one

The hypothesis, in the sense of scientific methodology, has an uncertain assumption - about the properties, causes, structures, relationships of the studied objects or phenomena. By virtue of its hypothesis, the hypothesis needs verification, during which it will either be confirmed or refuted. Whatever the hypothesis turns out to be - false or true - it has heuristic value, because new facts, empirical material, appear during the verification. So, our knowledge is expanding.

2

Hypotheses are divided into general and particular. General hypotheses are about the properties, causes, structures, relationships of entire classes of studied objects. For example, "all mushrooms are edible" or "not one of the cats flies." Particular hypotheses are about the properties, causes, structures, relationships of individual phenomena or their groups. For example, "some mushrooms are edible once" or "this cat flies during the day, because the owners are not at home."

3

Hypotheses, as a rule, are made with respect to so far unknown properties, causes, structures, relationships. However, there is a variety of hypotheses in which all phenomena are already known and well investigated. This kind of hypothesis is called the ad hoc hypothesis (for this case). A special kind of hypothesis is the "working" hypothesis. A working hypothesis is not even an assumption, it is rather a “guiding idea” that does not need any substantiation, or even often a strictly logical formulation. This, in fact, is a hypothesis about the path to a hypothesis.

4

The hypothesis underlies the so-called hypothetical-deductive method, a characteristic feature of which is the deduction from statements of the hypothesis of statements that contradict known facts or true statements, with their subsequent experimental or theoretical verification.