In this way symmetry arguments acquire an explanatory power and help to minimize the unexplained basic assumptions of a theory.
As critics have pointed out (and almost all commentators have been critical), Friedman refers to several different things as "assumptions" of a theory and means several different things by speaking of assumptions as "unrealistic" (Brunner 1969).
Relaxing this assumption leads to a theory of defeasible planning.
Notice, though, the methodological assumption here: a theory of identity's plausibility depends significantly on how well it accounts for our practical concerns.
Note that Rickert is not questioning one of the inescapable assumptions of any theory of knowledge, namely, that there has to be some subject-independent yardstick or criterion that validates knowledge.
Nevertheless, it is not a necessary assumption of evolutionary theory that every feature of every organism is adapted to some purpose, much less optimally adapted.
Deep bed filtration theory cannot be used to estimate the transport and deposition of concentrated polyelectrolyte-modified NZVI dispersions (> 0.03 g/L) because particles agglomerate during transport which violates a fundamental assumption of the theory.
An experiment has been designed to test the density (competition) dependence of the vertical distribution as this is a basic assumption of IFD theory.
If immunopathological virulence is associated with gametocyte death, then the relationship between virulence and transmission could become negative, thus defying a major assumption of basic theory (Anderson and May 1982).
Instead, geometers showed that if one wrote down an up-to-date version of Euclid's other assumptions, in the form of a theory T, then it was possible to find models of T which fail to satisfy the parallel postulate.
Automatic adjustment of parameters is strongly recommended, because manually-adjusted parameters decrease the significance of the results, just like arbitrary assumptions decrease the significance of a theory.
