I noticed a similar thread on another forum and I figured that perhaps this would be very useful for those of you who are only just beginning to learn about the sciences.
I have my own ideas as to what I perceive to be a significant "disconnect" of sorts between the knowledge and advances of the scientific world and those of the "public" world so to speak. Without getting too deeply into this (I want to save it for another thread), suffice it to say that I feel that what we would generally call "mainstream society" is isolated to a certain extent from the scientific world, and that scientific knowledge doesn't have the bearing and influence on society that it should. Keeping this in mind, there are many people in society who, not always by a fault of their own, do not understand even the most basic of scientific concepts.
One of these important concepts is the "theory." What the average person sees as a theory is perceived in a significantly different way as far as scientists are concerned; to this end I have made this thread for two reasons:
1. To educate comrades who may not understand these concepts and want to learn them. To bring them up to speed so that future dialogues in this forum can be continued on a basis of mutual understanding of terms.
2. To illustrate one of the significant problems with an argument that creationists often use when arguing for the teaching of creationism in schools and how this argument epitomises a fundamental lack of understanding of scientific concepts on their part.
I will be using the example of the "creationism in schools" debate in the US in this thread.
Many creationists will argue that the modern evolutionary theory (which incorporates darwinian evolution and genetics) is "only a theory" and that because it is "only a theory" that it should not be taught as fact. This argument clearly shows that they have a fundamental lack of understanding of what a scientific theory is. They exploit the meaning of theory as if it is "blind speculation" and not a fact, but scientific theories are not actually guesses or conjecture. They confuse the concept of "theory" in society in general which is somewhat different:
-Theory in the realm of general public knowledge and pop culture is something that is usually something "you made up on the spot", a wild guess, or a musing one made over a cup of tea. "My theory is that he made the bonfire while gathering leaves and throwing Molotov cocktails." "I have a theory as to why The Dark Knight should have won Best Picture at the Oscars this year." These are not scientific theories and this usage of the term 'theory' is so often used and confused with scientific theory that many people actually believe that thats all a scientific theory is; just baseless conjecture or somebody's opinion of data a guy gathered.
Scientific theories are usually not just an idea some guy wrote about in a book; they are usually actually entire fields of study and there are multiple steps an initial concept must undergo as per the scientific method in order for it to gain the status of theory and warrant the field of study that develops.
A scientific theory is a set of observed related events based upon accumulated evidence: laws, hypothesis, proven facts of other scientific theories and then agreed upon and reviewed by multiple scientists - until there is a scientific consensus for such to become a theory.
Theories and fact are not mutually exclusive; evolution is both a theory and a fact; just as the theory of gravity is a theory, a law of science, and a fact. Just as the theory of bacteria and cell theory, and the theory of heliocentrism are all theories and facts. Scientific theories are also falsifiable and analysing falsifiability is one of the reasons for the constant reproduction of results and attempts to reproduce experiments.
This is also why creationism is not a scientific theory and it can never be; You can not disprove that god did it the same way as you can disprove other scientific theories; for example, the evolution of one creature from another may be disproved by the fossil record being out of order, or genetic evidence not supporting.
Here are some further writings and a video that you can follow up on if you are interested in this subject matter and gaining a stronger understanding of scientific theory:
| + YouTube Video | |
http://www.cesame-nm.org/index.php?n...rtid=32&page=1
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html (scroll to the fifth point on evolution as a scientific theory)
I hope this has been an informative and useful thread for those of you who have been seeking to learn a bit about this topic or those of you who did not know or understand what a theory is in the scientific world.