7 minutes ago, haroonkhan87 said:

I see your point about things we have no perception of until someone teaches us. I’ve had teachers myself, and they were essential for understanding things I couldn’t grasp on my own, like integrals or more complex concepts.

So you were wrong to say always.

8 minutes ago, haroonkhan87 said:

Every discovery recorded in a textbook started as perception,

No it didn't.

Many textbooks are 'Treatises'

A treatise attempts to systematically work through all possible presentations and/or applications of a topic.

There is no 'notice, think, explore' involved' either by the author or the student.

Any Engineer will tell you how much they value this kind of textboook as it provides example to follow, replacing the above.

That is not to say there is no room for 'notice, think, explore' - of course there is - but it need not and is not always involved.

12 minutes ago, haroonkhan87 said:

When people observed the Sun rising and setting, they didn’t understand the heliocentric system or the motion of planets, but their perception of motion existed.

How many more times ?

Their perception was wrong.

There was no motion of the Sun.

That is why they did not understand what the saw and why their perception was wrong.

4 hours ago, haroonkhan87 said:

Since you asked, people once thought Earth was the center of the universe, gravity was just a guess, and meteorites were myths, all once “perception,” now proven science.

As an independent theorist, not a full-time physicist, I may not have spent years in formal study, but I still observe the same reality that physics tries to decode. Consciousness itself can spark insights before they’re ready for instruments to test. I understand the rule about testability, and that’s fair, but some ideas begin as frameworks waiting for the right tools or perspective. The curiosity to ask “what if” has always been the first step before “how to prove.”

It’s what we require, because vague claims leave too much wiggle room about whether the conjecture has merit, and you end up with something that “explains” everything in a completely/mostly useless way.

35 minutes ago, haroonkhan87 said:

Every discovery recorded in a textbook started as perception, intuition, or questioning.

A Question yes but not perception obviously, how can you perceive something when you have no idea what is going on?

You gather data via observation and experiment THEN try and work out what is going on. Science is empirical.

42 minutes ago, haroonkhan87 said:

they cannot replace the process of noticing, thinking, and exploring,

For your information there are some very good exmaples of this process happening to lead to great and important discoveries.

The discoveries of both Roengten and fleming happened like this.

I myself discovered a very tiny, mathematical routine, not by noticing something but by wanting something.

In the days when we programmed computers in Fortran I wanted a instruction to calculate eastings and northings from angular measurement, without involving a branching decision loop.

I did find such a routine, that I have never seen before or since, though it was published in the Survey Review.

So yes thinking and exploring but no noticing in that case.

Many engineering innovations come that way.

As I hold my laptop to type this, I perceive it to be solid.
And If I push against it, I don't see any part of my fingers 'entering' the laptop.
Since this is the germination of a theory, as you are claiming, should I start formulating a theory of continuous matter ?

Or should I make observations, such as an electron microscope pic of individual atoms, that prove matter is 99.99% empty space ?

Edited October 20Oct 20 by MigL

12 hours ago, studiot said:

So you were wrong to say always.

No it didn't.

Many textbooks are 'Treatises'

A treatise attempts to systematically work through all possible presentations and/or applications of a topic.

There is no 'notice, think, explore' involved' either by the author or the student.

Any Engineer will tell you how much they value this kind of textboook as it provides example to follow, replacing the above.

That is not to say there is no room for 'notice, think, explore' - of course there is - but it need not and is not always involved.

How many more times ?

Their perception was wrong.

There was no motion of the Sun.

That is why they did not understand what the saw and why their perception was wrong.

12 hours ago, swansont said:

It’s what we require, because vague claims leave too much wiggle room about whether the conjecture has merit, and you end up with something that “explains” everything in a completely/mostly useless way.

12 hours ago, pinball1970 said:

A Question yes but not perception obviously, how can you perceive something when you have no idea what is going on?

You gather data via observation and experiment THEN try and work out what is going on. Science is empirical.

12 hours ago, studiot said:

For your information there are some very good exmaples of this process happening to lead to great and important discoveries.

The discoveries of both Roengten and fleming happened like this.

I myself discovered a very tiny, mathematical routine, not by noticing something but by wanting something.

In the days when we programmed computers in Fortran I wanted a instruction to calculate eastings and northings from angular measurement, without involving a branching decision loop.

I did find such a routine, that I have never seen before or since, though it was published in the Survey Review.

So yes thinking and exploring but no noticing in that case.

Many engineering innovations come that way.

11 hours ago, MigL said:

As I hold my laptop to type this, I perceive it to be solid.
And If I push against it, I don't see any part of my fingers 'entering' the laptop.
Since this is the germination of a theory, as you are claiming, should I start formulating a theory of continuous matter ?

Or should I make observations, such as an electron microscope pic of individual atoms, that prove matter is 99.99% empty space ?

Thank you all for your perspectives. I want to clarify my point carefully, because I think there’s been a misunderstanding.

When I talk about perception, I do not mean it is automatically correct or sufficient as proof. I mean it is the first spark of inquiry. Before there were instruments, experiments, or textbooks, someone had to notice a pattern, ask a question, or sense that something was happening. That is perception in the broadest sense, awareness and recognition, even if imperfect.

History shows this clearly: the heliocentric system, atomic theory, germ theory, and quantum mechanics all started with observations, intuitions, or questions that were incomplete or misinterpreted at first. Tools and experiments came later to confirm, measure, and formalize these ideas. Perception did not give the final answer, but without it, the process of discovery never starts.

To say textbooks or instruments are the beginning is to ignore the human noticing, thinking, and wondering that preceded them. Textbooks collect and formalize knowledge, but every single line in them was once an idea in someone’s mind, first perceived, first questioned, first explored.

So yes, perception can be wrong in detail, but it is always the origin of inquiry. Science itself evolved by turning perception and curiosity into observation, measurement, and proof. Denying that step is to deny the history of every discovery that led to what we call established knowledge today.

19 minutes ago, haroonkhan87 said:

Thank you all for your perspectives. I want to clarify my point carefully, because I think there’s been a misunderstanding.

When I talk about perception, I do not mean it is automatically correct or sufficient as proof. I mean it is the first spark of inquiry. Before there were instruments, experiments, or textbooks, someone had to notice a pattern, ask a question, or sense that something was happening. That is perception in the broadest sense, awareness and recognition, even if imperfect.

History shows this clearly: the heliocentric system, atomic theory, germ theory, and quantum mechanics all started with observations, intuitions, or questions that were incomplete or misinterpreted at first. Tools and experiments came later to confirm, measure, and formalize these ideas. Perception did not give the final answer, but without it, the process of discovery never starts.

To say textbooks or instruments are the beginning is to ignore the human noticing, thinking, and wondering that preceded them. Textbooks collect and formalize knowledge, but every single line in them was once an idea in someone’s mind, first perceived, first questioned, first explored.

So yes, perception can be wrong in detail, but it is always the origin of inquiry. Science itself evolved by turning perception and curiosity into observation, measurement, and proof. Denying that step is to deny the history of every discovery that led to what we call established knowledge today.

I doubt anyone disagrees with what you are saying here. It is just that the mere act of perception does not get one very far on its own. One then needs two further things: to identify the perception as relating to a physical phenomenon and to check that the perception - of the phenomenon- is shared by others, i.e.not just a one-off misattributed experience, due to something other than the presumed phenomenon). Only then can you say you have something concrete, relating to the objective physical world, which can be explored and eventually fitted to some theory of the physical world.

32 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I doubt anyone disagrees with what you are saying here. It is just that the mere act of perception does not get one very far on its own. One then needs two further things: to identify the perception as relating to a physical phenomenon and to check that the perception - of the phenomenon- is shared by others, i.e.not just a one-off misattributed experience, due to something other than the presumed phenomenon). Only then can you say you have something concrete, relating to the objective physical world, which can be explored and eventually fitted to some theory of the physical world.

That’s exactly the kind of thoughtful clarification I appreciate - thank you.
Yes, I completely agree that perception alone doesn’t establish truth. It’s only the starting point that alerts us to something worth investigating.

What I’m trying to highlight is that every verified phenomenon - from gravity to quantum behavior - started as a raw human experience or observation before instruments or models refined it. The tools give structure to what perception first revealed.

So in that sense, perception and verification are two halves of the same process: one awakens curiosity, the other confirms reality. Both are essential.

2 hours ago, haroonkhan87 said:

So yes, perception can be wrong in detail, but it is always the origin of inquiry. Science itself evolved by turning perception and curiosity into observation, measurement, and proof. Denying that step is to deny the history of every discovery that led to what we call established knowledge today.

So by your own argument, perception and curiosity do not move you into the realm of science. (The latter requires objective observation and some kind of testable hypothesis - science doesn’t do “proof” as such)

But this is a science discussion site. Your proposal needs to be developed further before it fulfills our requirements.