Law, Theory, Hypothesis or simply a Fact - which is it?

I thought I'd post this but I may still return to the previous blog afte a few days, unless something else occurs to me.

A brief aside in one of the posts on the besslerwheel forum, gave me pause for thought.  When someone comes to a reasoned explanation for Bessler's wheel, without having actually made a working model, that explanation might be termed a hypothesis, however the three terms, hypothesis, law and theory have similarities and may overlap in places.

I found the critical feature that enables gravity to work on weights so that they cause the wheel to rotate. I called my discovery about why Bessler's wheel did not break any physical laws, a principle or an observation.  I read that a hypothesis is an educated guess based on an observation. So it might be a hypothesis, but apparently a hypothesis can be disproved, but not proven to be true.  I can prove my hypothesis is correct so it can't be a hypothesis.

A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. A theory is valid as long as there is no evidence to dispute it. Therefore, theories can be disproved.  So my discovery can't be a theory because it can be proved and it can't be disproved.

A law generalizes a body of observations. At the time it is made, no exceptions have been found to a law.   As my Bessler-Collins principle lies within the scope of an existing set of laws it is already covered and cannot be a law on its own.

So my problem is this; I have reasoned an explanation for why Bessler's wheel worked and how.  The principle which I have called the Bessler-Collins principle still escapes a valid definition.  I can prove it works both by describing it with illustrations, and by physically making a testing model which performs as predicted.

Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as “true.”  So it is just a fact, an observation or a description of something that is well-known but has so far escaped everyone's noticed, or as I think Bessler put it, 'I found it where everyone else had looked'.

JC

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