Annafan writes:
I think one of the issues here may be that theories are always about a part of reality. Which means that whatever conclusions you come up with, most of the time qualifyers will have to be added at some point because it was impossible to include *everything*. So the first theory was "water boils at 100" and can be considered correct in its scope, and when that scope was enlarged a replacement theory was adopted "water boils at 100 when the pressure is 1 atmosphere".. Maybe it later turns out that the specific isotope of water also matters, which would require another change of the scope. Ultimately one could imagine qualifyers like "... and in a universe like our own (with the same fundamental constants)"
Keeping all this in mind, I don't think it's unreasonable to declare theories right in their own scope, even after it is discovered that additional qualifyers are needed.
As theories are as you say,
’part of reality’. I think we can take it a bit further and say that some qualifiers do not need to be added but are implied by the reality/context. I see no requirement to talk about a lack of atmosphere if we’re talking about deep space, nor does it seem necessary to talk about the atmospheric make up of Earth when I say, “Water boils at 100”. At least that's the way I see it.
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