Why does a hypothesis not have to be correct to be valuable?

Question

Why does a hypothesis not have to be correct to be valuable?

Answer 1

Most of what we know is science is the result of coming up with a hypothesis, testing it, and discovering that we were wrong.  Also, it's common that part of of the hypothesis is true, but it only works in certain situations.

Elimination of all other possibilities is a common way of figuring out what is probably correct, too.

A good example is Newtonian physics.  These work almost 100% of the time for anything that you normally deal with in a normal life.  They describe how objects fall, what happens when you throw a ball, how acceleration works, what happens when two cars collide going opposite directions versus going the same direction--everything that is actually relevant to your life.

Well, they're wrong.  They don't really describe everything that goes on.  They only work for a limited range--it just happens to be the USEFUL range that they work for.  Does this invalidate Newton?  Does this make it worthless to study his equations?  No!  They're much simpler than the other types of equations, and they do work.

There are some common examples in science where someone formed a hypothesis about how an experiment should go, according to how everything we currently know behaves.  When the experiment ends up turning out in a bizarre way, we've suddenly discovered something new and amazing!  Great leaps in science can occur due to this.