Re: OT: Religion and Science (WAS: Making money from Java)


"Richard" <riplin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1134714620.655734.55080@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Evolution *IS* a theory.
>
> No. Evolution is an observable phenomenon. There are theories about
> what causes it, about which ancestral forms begat later species, about
> why certain characteristics are advantageous. Of course, if you study
> the world on your knees with your eyes closed then you will have
> difficulty observing anything.
>
>> Much like, as you say later in this post, that gravity is a theory.
>
> No. Gravity is not a theory. There are theories about what causes it.
>
>>"Tomorrow, when I let go of the ball, it will fall to the ground." That
>> is a prediction, and we do NOT know it will be true.
>
> Some things in science are so certain that we raise them to the level
> of 'laws'. You will find, if you look, that gravity is one of these.
> Not only the fact that gravity is certain, but the strength of it and
> how it varies with distance. Gravity is not a 'theory' though certain
> interactions with light are theories and black holes have not, for
> obvious reasons, been directly observed, so they remain theoretical.

I think we're just arguing about the definitions of terms here, and
there is no substantial different between what you believe and what I
believe with respect to the content of this post. That being said, I was
curious as to what the different was between a "Law" and a "Theory" in the
scientific meaning of the words, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. Given,
Wikipedia is not nescessarily the final authority on such definitions, but
it seemed as good a starting point as any.

<quote>
Physical laws are distinguished from scientific theories by their
simplicity. Scientific theories are generally more complex than laws; they
have many component parts, and are more likely to be changed as the body of
available experimental data and analysis develops. This is because a
physical law is strictly empirical. It is a summary observation of things as
they are. A theory is a model that accounts for the observation, explains
it, relates it to other observations, and makes testable predictions based
upon it. Simply stated, while a law notes that something happens, a theory
attempts to deal with why or how it happens.
</quote>

So to me, there is the "Law of Gravity", which is an empirical
observation: Matter seems to exert attractive forces to other matter, and
this force is proportional to the mass of the matter, and inversely
proportional to the distance seperating the two units of matter. Then there
are theories of gravity. One such theory might involve graviton particles;
another theory might involve space-time curvature. Maybe these two theories
are equivalent.

Then there is the "Law of Evolution", which is an empirical observation:
new species seem to come into existence that are slight modification of
existing species. And then there are theories of evolution. Perhaps this is
a non-law, in that it doesn't exibit the "general properties of physical
laws" listed on the Wikipedia page, but that may be because evolution is not
so much physics as it is biology.

But given the above definition of "law" and "theory", it seems like we
do not "promote" something from the status of "theory" to that of "law" just
because we have more confidence in the latter. Rather, they seem to be
addressing two seperate facets of reality.

- Oliver


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Evolution confuses an observation with a theory
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