Terms like “theoretically” or “in theory” are over used, and often used inappropriately Most of the time, the term “hypothetically” is a more appropriate term for what they mean. For example, people say things like “I have a theory that…”, when it would be more appropriate to say “I have a hypothesis that…”
My question is, when is it *actually* appropriate to use a phrase like “in theory” or “theoretically”? Please give an example when you answer.
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“Theoretically” basically means “according to the predictions of a theory”. Theories predict outputs from inputs – if *this*, then the theory predicts *that*.
That theory might be formal (“Newtons laws of motion predict that the pool balls will move *like this* when they collide”), or it might be informal (e.g “don’t worry about declaring your income from mowing my lawn on your taxes, because in theory the IRS won’t audit you” , where the theory is “the IRS only audits people who earn more than $X per year”).
Either way is fine, in terms of language. There just has to be a set of rules to follow that lead to a prediction of an unknown for something to count as a theory.
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