Towards a science of FEA: Patterns, predictability and proof through some case studies

Three essential elements of any enterprise that can establish a body of kno wledge as science are: recognizing singular patterns from phenomenological evidence; establishing predictability from a core of first principles; and confirming by proof that the predictions match the observed patterns. Or, p erhaps more accurately, show that the observed patterns fail to disconfirm (falsify) the predicted singular patterns. In this paper we offer a meta-sc ientific reflection on how the Popperian strait-jacket can be applied to a successful computational engineering field like Finite Element Analysis.