soft question - Laws of Atomic Theory - how is this possible?

Not sure if this is the right place to post, but how is it possible to have laws of a theory?

A theory is not able to be a law, since it's just an explanation that can always be disproven. So how is there a law of a theory?

Answer

There are theories which are just not going to be disproved, ever, ever, ever. The story people tell about this is a "noble lie", in the sense that it is designed to get them to distrust authority, and this is good. But the way this is done by drawing a false equivalency between garbage that gets accepted and disseminated, like Aristotle, and science that get superseded in certain domains, like Newton. Aristotle's stuff was completely wrong, and Newton's stuff is completely right. Newton made a few mistakes, but by and large, was honest and accurate scientist. What he discovered does not get undiscovered, it will stay valid forever. It can only be forgotten.

The statement that Newton's theory is valid for macroscopic objects of normal atomic density and size less than the sun, moving at less than $10^{-4}$ of the speed of light, to a certain accuracy which is fairly perfect, will never be overthrown. It is just a fact. These types of facts when organized with some mathematics are usually called the "laws", and Newton's laws continue to be laws of nature in certain restricted domains even after Newton's theory is superseded. Newton's theory was much more overarching than the modest claim above: Newton claimed that his laws are true for all regimes--- it aspires to be a complete theory. In this aspiration, it fails, and it gets modified at high velocities, small distances, and high densities.

But you never backpeddle on the experimentally established facts. You never unlearn Kepler's laws, you never unlearn that you can make as much heat as you want by drilling a cannon, you never unlearn that Aristotle is garbage, and you will never unlearn that quarks exist. These are laws of nature, forever immutable, like the restricted Newton's laws.

Similarly, relativity will never be superseded in its domains of validity. If you discover that relativity is wrong, it will be in another regime which hasn't been seen. The way science proceeds is different from the stories. It's a ratchet, with forward motion, but its wobbly, and it takes a long time for the tooth to drop. The design is to ensure that bullshit like Aristotle is not made dogma.

The design of science was for another time, with literature which was not instantaneous, and no ability for people to cross check everything by themselves. We live in a better media environment, and this will mean that the mechanism of science can relax a little. It is much harder for bullshit like Aristotle to get accepted today, because anyone can call it out publically with no effort.