There’s a big difference between theory and practice. Theory can be whatever you conceive, whatever works in your mind. You see the world operating in a certain way, and you believe that things are that way.
But isn’t our knowledge incomplete? How can we know that things are the way we suppose if we don’t have all the information that exists? Aren’t we just generalizing? Isn’t a generalization just an easy way of encapsulating a vast and complex array of phenomenon into an idea that we can comprehend?
But there is a larger question at hand. The question is, do our ideas have application in reality? Can we be sure that if we take a certain course of action, that things will go our way, or at least the way we predict?
A theory can be born from a single moment of inspiration. From there, it can be mapped out, studied, analyzed, scrutinized, systemized, and defended down to the smallest infinitesimal detail. But how does it stand up to reality where things break down and at every second, decisions are made by billions of people, changing the course of history–the future?
When we put an idea into practice, we are usually the first ones to try it out. It must bear some truth in the reality we experience. We hypothesize, come up with experiments, test out the idea to see if there is some sort of regularity between the expectation we hold and the actual event that occurs.
If an idea maintains itself despite the opposition it faces in reality, then there is some merit behind it. If it passes the tests many times over, then it becomes reliable, useful even. And once it becomes applicable to anyone across the globe with a high degree of consistency and reliability, then the theory rises to a state of fact rather than just an idea. It’s no longer just a product of our mind, but the way things are.
Fallton Havenstonne 