What illustrates the making of a theory?

Answer 1

A theory is simply a conjecture (a guess) but based on past experience, knowledge, and ability to imagine both known and the possibilities of unknowns. For examples:

• You park your car outside your house. You live in a windy area so your car is often coated with a fine layer of dust-dirt. Today you go outside and find paw prints in the dust on the hood of your car. You don't have a pet. You theorize that your neighbor or neighborhood might have a kitty cat who jumped onto the warm hood of your car. You wouldn't theorize your girlfriend made the marks, or that a big cat came from the woods around your house (unless the paws looked more like a small mountain lion AND you lived in an area with mountain lions).
• You are camping. You forgot and left out a box of sugar cookies. The next morning, you find the box torn on the corner and cookie crumbs on the ground below the table. A bear would have torn up the whole box. You hypothesize it must be a small animal, a field mouse, some other night scavenger, or maybe an early morning squirrel. You theorize it had to be an animal larger than a field mouse because the box ended up on the ground. You see some small animal tracks under the table.
• You have some matches. But none will light. Possible theories could include: The matches are old and got damp. The matches, of any age, were exposed to moisture. The surface you used to strike the match against was too moist. The surface you used didn't have enough surface friction. Those are theories.

Scientists and academics usually have harder questions to answer, but they use the same thinking processes anyone would use. They just have honed their thinking skills, and use academic language to word their theories and experiments.