Those I think I would call "laws", as they are simple instructions that result directly from observations applied to certain basic conventions and definitions.

And still isn't! I'd call the aether more like a theory than a law, but with the Lorentz transformation it becomes like a theory for how many angels fit on a pin. If we someday learn more about angels and pins, it might become a more concretely (pun intended) applicable theory, rather than one primarily of the imagination.
I think the way I'd say it is:
1) there's a maximum speed limit for influences
2) the laws of physics are the same in all frames
3) the Lorentz transformation
Pick any two, and it "accounts for" the third.

It's a neat example of the limitation drawn out by hhEb09'1 and Warren Platts-- it's easier to know when you've falsified something than it is to know what you've falsified.

Thanks.

I think further discussion of this particular example will become either increasingly surreal or will need to be so laden with long statements of the context as to become almost unreadable (and all the other possibilities too).

One reason for the surreal: anachronistic perspectives, e.g. seen in the light of SR, 'pick two' from the list (of 3) above is easy; but how was it seen by physicists of the time, between 1887 and 1905? Ditto the status of the transformations?

Just to close on it: DrRocket introduced this topic as a specific example of an experiment falsifying something more general than a hypothesis; of 'falsify' having some utility. And indeed it may well have utility in terms of an organising principle for the history of physics ... after the dust has settled! But did it have any utility at the time (assuming, anachronistically, that the concept could even have been said to have been posed)?

But when you're in the thick of it, before CDM or MOND have lost their usefulness in terms of what to do on Monday (for example), how to understand "{X} observations have falsified galaxy scale CDM" (for example)?

While we are the Lorentz transformation there is one more point that I think is worth making. If one goes through the derivation of the Lorentz transformation for SR, (see for instance Introduction to Special Relativity by Wolfgang Rndler), one finds that the Lorentz transformation follows from the existence of any phenomena that propagates at any fixed speed, call it c, in all inertial reference frames.

This implies, that there can be no more than one speed at which any phenomenon can propagate which is the same for all inertial frames. It just so happens that light does this and that the speed happens to be 3 x 10^10 cm/s.

If there were a phenomenon that could propagate at infinite speed, then it is reasonable to expect that it would do so in all inertial reference frames (infinity tends to transform to infinity), and that would result in a Lorentz transformation with c = infinity, aka the Galilean transformation. But since you cannot have two distinct Lorentz transformations for one consistent theory, this is impossible. Specifically, if information were able to be transmitted instantaneously in SR, then light would be propagated instantaneously as well.

Falsification has always struck me as a highly confusing term. The claim that the earth is round is 'falsifiable' in the sense of testable against observations. However, we know the claim is true, so it cannot be falsified. This opens the problem of the status of knowledge in science. True statements cannot be proven false, so cannot be falsified. We know that 'the earth is a planet' is a true statement. A heroic level of solipsism - ie logical pedantry - is required to doubt it, but this is where Popper invokes Hume's ridiculous statement that we do not know if the sun will rise tomorrow. The Popper/Hume theory of knowledge may be logical, but so is doubt that the world exists. I prefer to use testability and verifiability as criteria to separate science and non-science, getting away from the confusing double-meanings inherent in falsification. Acceptance of empirical axioms, such as the existence of the universe, undermines the whole rationale for falsification, shows the special status of scientific knowledge compared to untestable beliefs, and provide foundations for all scientific knowledge. The 'falsification' theory amounts to saying there is no such thing as scientific knowledge.

Yes, it would be necessary for the "instantaneous" to be only in one special frame-- (the aether), but in other frames the signal would have to be able to travel backward in time. That was the connection with causality. If it is instantaneous in all frames, you are right that the Galilean transformation would have been right, and that was falsified by experiment.

__________________
Logic is the grammar of truth.

Meaning and absolute certainty are incompatible, and profound meaning and absolute certainty are profoundly incompatible.

The only thing intelligence is capable of is recognizing itself.

I think that's the "in principle" part-- falsifiable in principle. It doesn't have to be falsifiable in practice, that would essentially require that something had to be false to be considered true! I think it is not really different from "testable", it just rules out the kinds of rigged "tests" that some people use in nonscience that had to work because they are always interpreted as working. The old "let's test if she's a witch by poking her with a fake knife" sort of "test" is ruled out by falsifiability.

__________________
Logic is the grammar of truth.

Meaning and absolute certainty are incompatible, and profound meaning and absolute certainty are profoundly incompatible.

The only thing intelligence is capable of is recognizing itself.