Zephan: What is Evidence?

Great Point Primordial!It all depends on what we want the evidence for. If we want to prove something without any doubt that it has to be 'x' way, science can't do that. It can't prove that all swans are black unless you define swans as black. Like special relativity, where you can never add enough speed to go faster than light, you can never add enough observations (science's only 'evidence') to come up with a 'law'. You never know if you will find a possibility that contradicts your 'law'. So science is limited to saying, "I saw 'y' whenever I do 'x' which is 'z' times in the past 'a' years." That's not a scientific 'law', it's not even evidence (i.e. by my definition, "it can't be used as a premise in a valid argument for the existence of any scientific 'laws'"). So science can only make observations, not laws? (rhetorical question)Another cool thing is that since the 'blue pen' can prove both a statement and it's opposite, it is irrelevant to the statement. It can't exclude the statement's alternative possiblities so it's not a valid premise:John: Are all swans black?
Harry: I have a blue pen.
John: What do blue pens have to do with swans?!?!?Cool, huh.Evan

Egg, (can I call you egg? LOL)Good point. I agree, I think we probably can safely assume that the laws of science are reasonable even if we can't "prove prove" them. But I'm a 'logic' kind of guy, so I like to see if I can "prove prove" things, and I can't prove science deductively. I am very interested in hearing how inductive logic could do this, I've never heard how inductive logic really works.But Primordial I still think that the blue pen would be irrelevant, let's arrange these statements into a logical argument:premise I see blue swans or I see black swans (or anything else)
premise I see blue pens
conclusion All swans are blue or All swans are blackBoth of these fall under an identified fallacy, for which I can't remember the name. But it's something like 'the conclusion is not supported by the arguments, ergo invalid'.So anyway, I'd like to hear what you think.EvanP.S. Does anyone know the HTML symbol for 'tab'. I can't remember.