From: Tim Boyer 

On Sat, 05 May 2007 11:47:40 -0400, "John Beamish"
 wrote:

>"all theories are fact?"
>
>Nonsense.  The vernacular use of "theory" is not the same as the
>scientific use of "theory" (just as the vernacular use of
"size" is not
>the same as the manufacturing use:  to 'size' paper is to apply a compound
>that fills in cracks and crevices to preserve the paper and provide a
>'finish' to the surface).
>
>Consider Einstein's Theory of Gravity.  It was postulated and, since then,
>a variety of experiments have all confirmed it.  Yet it is still a theory.
>
>In short, dismissing something called a Theory simply because it is
>*called* a theory is intellectual "Luddite-ism".
>
>

There's never a bad time to repost this gem from the late great Stephen J. Gould:

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect
fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to
theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument:
evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about
many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and
scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what
confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument
before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope
was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific
theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of
science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as
infallible as it once was."

Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are
different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts
are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and
interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories
to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this
century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the
outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by
Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty";
there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final
proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and
achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world.
Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often
do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves
favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a
degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I
suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does
not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and
theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged
how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by
which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the
difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing
the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to
explain the mechanism of evolution.
--
tim boyer
tim{at}denmantire.com

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