Is evolution a scientific theory or law? What name Scientists give it? In our textbook, it’s termed as theory not law. Is theory an unalterable, absolute scientific statement?
Can biologists prepare DNA molecule (that has the ability to transcript) from the constituting elements without the help of any natural living cell?
So it’s not like the general definition of “just a pretty good idea of what happened”.
Second, in science there are no “unalterable, absolute scientific statements”-if evidence changes, if facts change, the theory is adapted, or rewritten entirely, to fit the facts.
The only place I have previously seen the ‘theory or law’ question is posed by creationists who apparently understood the meaning of neither term. ‘Law’ in the context of science usually describes the behaviour of something that can be expressed as a mathematic formula (such as the expansion of a fluid in response to heat).
Others have explained how a theory in science is really a comprehensive framework but I’d like to address this bit. There really isn’t such a thing as an unalterable scientific statement. Scientific statements are better understood as “not false so far” instead of “true”. We could always be wrong, but as we expand our understanding and accumulate evidence and experimental validation the chance of being wrong drops.
Tagging scientific discoveries as Laws (the Law of Gravitation, the Ideal Gas Law) or Theory (the Theory of Evolution, the Theory of Relativity) is a matter of history.
In the earliest days of discovery, people thought they were finding out the literal laws of Nature, which is why they called themselves natural philosophers. By applying math to the world around them they felt they could not merely understand what was happening but predict to a certainty what was going to happen in the future, if only they had enough information.
By the mid-nineteeth century, however, some of this certainly began to erode. James Clerk Maxwell was probably the last person whose work was termed laws at the time, the 1864 set of equations that united the electric and magnetic force. Today they’re merely called the Maxwell Equations.
Charles Darwin wasn’t working with math. He used scientific principles to explain species through natural selection but understood that although this gave a general picture of how nature worked, it could not predict specifics. Remember, his 1859 book was titled On the Origin of Species. Although the term “theory of evolution” had been in use earlier, it didn’t become common until the 1870s when people were deeply involved in the debate over its value.
Generally speaking, applying Laws to science became an outmoded style of language by the end of the 19th century. The work of Einstein and others were universally known as Theories. It’s primarily a change in language but also a change in the way scientists looked at nature. Nature wasn’t just the conditions here on Earth: it was all conditions everywhere and possible conditions that might occur under unseen extremes. Nobody could know whether their math worked under every possible condition, so the certainly implied by Law was no longer a good way to think about the world. Theories, as the others have stated, are known to work for a very wide range, provide explanations about the past and predictions about the future. That’s modern science.
A law is something that can be proven true.
A theory is something that through observation and assumptions appears to be true.
A law should never change.
A theory is not completely fixed and if new or missing information is discovered can be adapted to the new information.
An example of a theory is that the earth was flat and the sun went around the world. More information proved that incorrect.
An example is there was a theory that man would die if they traveled faster than the speed of sound. As more information was gathered man now traveles faster that sound. The design of planes had to be changed in order for pilots to control them as they approached the speed of sound. Theories changed.
Another example is it is not possible to travel faster than the speed of light. And only time will prove if this is a theory of fact.
Evolution is still a theory, it is still called a theory by scientists. So it is still a assumed fact.
I have always found it odd to assert that a theory has to be supported by a vast body of evidence to qualify as a “theory” in a scientific sense, as it doesn’t chime with how the word “theory” is used in science.
Take physics for example: Fatio-Le Sage theory, Kaluza-Klein theory, string theory, aether theory etc. Some physical theories have little supporting evidence and some have been shown to be downright wrong or even lacking self-consistency, yet they are still described as “theories”. Sometimes the term is used to describe theories such as (2+1)-dimensional topological gravity which were never intended to be accurate physical descriptions of nature. In physics words like “hypothesis” and “conjecture” are usually reserved for unproven results of theories or unproven physical restrictions on theories (e.g. cosmic censorship hypothesis, the Belinkskii, Khalatnikov and Lifshitz conjecture)
Even beyond physics in disciplines like biology, where many might prefer to use the term “hypothesis” for a more speculative theory, a theory where there is no consensus as to whether it is supported by evidence or even a theory that is in direct conflict with the evidence, it’s not necessarily wrong to still use the word" theory", even if the odd pedant objects (e.g. aquatic ape theory).
It seems to me the insistence on the use of the word “theory” to describe something well-supported by evidence is a backlash against creationists and their ilk that has as a result become the prescriptive norm in some areas of science as a result, rather than a description of how the word is generally used in science.
You missed the part that it is both, Evolution took place, that is a fact. How and why it took place is where the theory (or theories) part comes from.
By the definitions of Theory, fact, and laws that I learned in school years ago. A law is an fact. A theory may be a fact, and good theory probably is a fact. A theory still has a question to it, it is based on assumptions. The sun goes up one side of the earth and down the other side, therefore it revolves around the earth. That is a theory, but it has been proven not a fact. Do I think the theory of evolution will be proven wrong? I don’t know, I doubt it will be proven either way by man.
One of my major problems with the theory of evolution is the assumptions that have been made over the years by scientists. The one that got me to begin to doubt major parts happened when I was in High school or college, the 60’s. I think it was in South America they discovered an jaw bone with sharp teeth. Because it had sharp teeth it that meant the this pre man could stand up and defend itself it was the first step of evolutionary man standing up right. This theory was being accepted by the scientific community. May the news papers got it wrong but I never saw this theory questioned at the time. And I though if they base solid theory on such weak ideas then they are reaching for the whole theory. I can not give a site because it was in the news years ago and I am not even sure the year.
Sorry, that does not even fit what anthropologists are reporting, I have not seen any evidence coming from South America that tell us that early man fossils were found there.
This doesn’t bear any resemblance to any case I am aware of. It seems like you’ve gotten your information so completely garbled that it’s no wonder it doesn’t make sense to you.
That’s not the way I learned it. A theory is an explanation supported by facts. It may or may not be true, but it stands upon facts unless other facts disprove it.
Not really, the theory of evolution has stood upon facts, other facts that would disprove it have not materialized, as you yourself found when you thought that pre human fossils where found in South America, that did not happen. Until then it is not good at all to think that it is in dispute like a controversial issue, it is not.
I agree that often creationists don’t know the scientific meaning of theory but I think many do and are deliberately misleading others to imply that evolution is not a fact.
None of this actually coincides with the way that scientists use these terms. This being GQ, we are looking for factual information, not your personal opinions or misremembered information from school.
Even if we accept that you confused Southern Africa with South America, that still makes absolutely no sense, and does not correspond to any known description of a fossil human ancestor that I’ve ever heard of. If you can’t produce a cite, please consider that your memory is faulty.
