Here, Feynman's remark below seems suggestive, although the intended analogy should be understood with a (large) grain of salt in light of such a huge gap between particle physics and language faculty science in terms of what has been accumulated over the yeara (in terms of the amount, and the precision of "facts" that are accounted for by theory and the deductive nature of theory).

"Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong. If the guess that you make is poorly expressed and rather vague, and the method that you use for figuring out the consequences is a little vague - you are not sure, and you say, 'I think everything's right because it's all due to so and so, and such and such do this and that more or less, and I can sort of explain how this works ...', then you see that this theory is good, because it cannot be proved wrong! Also if the process of computing the consequences is indefinite, then with a little skill any experimental results can be made to look like the expected consequences." (Feynman 1965/94: 152-153 (The Character of Physical Law))

What follows the above remark in Feynman 1965/94 is interesting and seems to warn against an attitude that categorically denounces "this jockeying around, this 'feeling' way of guessing at the results."

"When a subject is first new, and these particles are new to us, this jockeying around, this 'feeling' way of guessing at the results, is the beginning of any science. The same thing is true of the symmetry proposition in physics as is true of psychology, so do not laugh too hard." But he continues as "It is necessary in the beginning to be very careful. It is easy to fall into deep end by this kind of vague theory. It is hard to prove it wrong, and it takes a certain skill and experience not to walk off the plank in the game," and that is how Feynman concludes the paragraph.

One might take refuge in something like the above remark of Feynman's, and try to defend what one has been doing over the years, saying something like, "Even in physics, they have at times proceed without making everything explicit. So, there is nothing wrong with what we do. Demanding a very high degree of testability can in fact have more negative consequences than positive effects in our field at the moment." In light of the fact that we do not even know a priori what "facts" would qualify as a reflection of the language faculty (or more narrowly, as a reflection of properties of the Computational System (=CS) of the language faculty), it seems imperative, however, that we try our best in identifying what is a likely reflection of the CS. Merely accumulating speculative remarks in a rather sloppy manner, without pursuing rigorous testability, seems to me to result in preventing language faculty science from becoming an exact science more than anything.

The following remark by P. Dirac may be of some interest, in this connection.

　　"One can distinguish between two main procedures for a theoretical physicist. One of them is to work from experimental basis. For this, one must keep in close touch with the experimental physicists. One reads about all the results they obtain and tries to fit them into a comprehensive and satisfying scheme.
　　The other procedure is to work from the mathematical basis. One examines and criticizes the existing theory. One tries to pin-point the faults in it and then tries to remove them. The difficulty here is to remove the faults without destroying the very great successes of the existing theory.
　　There are these two general procedures, but of course the distinction between them is not hard-and-fast. There are all grades of procedures between the extremes.
　　Which procedure one follows depends largely on the subject of study. For a subject about which very little is known, where one is breaking quire new ground, one is pretty well forced to follow the procedure based on experiment. In the beginning, for a new subject, one merely collects experimental evidence and classifies it.

...

　　In any region of physics where very little is known, one must keep to the experimental basis if one is not to indulge in wild speculation that is almost certain to be wrong. I do not wish to condemn speculation altogether. It can be entertaining and may be indirectly useful even if it does turn out to be wrong. One should always keep an open mind receptive to new ideas, so one should not completely oppose speculation, but one must take care not to get too involved in it." (Dirac 1989 "Methods in Theoretical Physics" pp. 19-20, contained in From a Life of Physics, World Scientific.)

It is interesting to note that Dirac is famous for his "mathematical" approach. It is stated at the beginning of Weinberg 1992: chapter 6, 132 (Weinberg 1992 Dreams of A Final Theory. New York: Vintage.): "In 1974 Paul Dirac came to Harvard to speak about his historic work as one of the founders of modern quantum electrodynamics. Toward the end of his talk he addressed himself to our graduate students and advised them to be concerned only with the beauty of their equations, not with what the equations mean."

Weinberg continues as:

"It was not good advice for students, but the search for beauty in physics was a theme that ran throughout Dirac's work and indeed through much of the history of physics."

The remarks by Dirac quoted above are from his lecture in 1968, which is contained in From a Life of Physics 1989 by H.A. Bethe, P.A.M. Dirac, W. Heisenberg, E.P. Wigner, O. Klein, L.D. Landau (by E.M. Lifshitz). World Scientific. Singapore, New Jersey, London, Hong Kong. (The last paper contained in the volume is about Landau and by E.M. Lifshitz.)


Farmelo (2009: 428) attributes (i) to Steven Weinberg, Dirac Centenary Meeting, University of Bristol, 8 August 2002, noting in his endnote 1 (p. 492), "Weinberg wrote these words for me to read about at the Centenary meeting. Text checked by Weinberg, 22 July 2007 (e-mail)."
Graham Farmelo 2009 The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom, Basic Books.

(i) "Dirac told physics students they should not worry about the meaning of equations, only about their beauty. This advice was good only for physicists whose sense of purely mathematical beauty is so keen that they can rely on it to see the way ahead. There have not been many such physicists - perhaps only Dirac himself."