Is it better to be happy or right?

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
What is lacking in this dialogue is Charitibility in Interpretation and so far I have seen very little given by those who wish to deny that observation is worth more than a fart.

If you want to get technical, try this: It would be very unlikely that lobsters (quarks, muons, leptons, whatever) exist if their empirical consequence had never been observed.

[/ QUOTE ]

(I trust you mean "charitability".)

The consequences do not all have one explanation; they can be attributed to numerous causes or sources, all of them "theoretically" sound and consistent. Experimental verification, when achieved, only eliminates the many-states solution, leaving us with one concrete (version of) reality.

The usual example, I believe, is in quantum phyiscs, where experimental "verification" came about much later than the theory. Noentheless, the tenets of the theory were accepted (admittedly, not by all) before experimental verification - because they explained the consequences observed better (and more fully) than the other mind constructs. This despiote the fact that some of the latter carried the badge of experimental "verification".