Re: Laws and Theories (was Creationists)

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

Yes, I think I can, understanding that the term's theory and law are
used with a variety of meanings.  Ohm's law, for example, or Coulomb's
law of friction, are "laws" in a very different sense than Gauss's law,
which is a precise mathematical statement. The theory of relativity is
a statement about when and where to apply Lorentz transformations; group
theory, on the other hand, refers to the totality of knowledge about
the mathematical entities called "groups".

        I used the term "theory" to refer to a statement about nature
from which one can make deductions that are subject to experimental
test.  "Theories" in my mind are highly deductive.
        Evolution is different.  Yes, one can predict that someone will
someday find a "missing link" which can be fit into its position as a
common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, but no one can predict in
any detail what the missing link would look like.  Yes, when paleologists
identified feathered dinosaurs, the discovery led to the deduction that
modern birds are dinosaur descendants, but there seemed to be no such
conclusion prior to the discovery.
        I'm saying the evolutionary biology seems to be pretty much a
reactive science.  The evidence is all dead and buried and waiting to
be interpreted.  So if you want to believe that it was all created and
buried yesterday, nothing much changes.  Cosmology is somewhat similar
in that we are retricted to a very parochial view of the universe bot
temporally and spatially.
        The definitions are vague enough that you are clearly justified
in asking for clarification of my views.
                                Regards,
                                        Jack

Adam was by constitution and proclivity a scientist; I was the same, and
we loved to call ourselves by that great name...Our first memorable
scientific discovery was the law that water and like fluids run downhill,
not up.
                          Mark Twain, <Extract from Eve's Autobiography>

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, David Bowman wrote:

> Regarding Jack's comment:
>
> >        More precisely, evolution is neither theory nor fact nor law.
> > It is a framework for understanding the evidence of the "past" as that
> > evidence accumulates.
>
> Could you please distinguish the concept of a 'theory' from the concept
> of "a framework for understanding the evidence" for me?   To my way of
> thinking the latter phrase nicely defines the former term.
>
> David Bowman
> David_Bowman@georgetowncollege.edu