Re: [Phys-l] Global Evolution as fact

[Hugh Haskell <haskellh@verizon.net>]

At 13:06 -0500 01/10/2011, ludwik kowalski wrote:
> I already wrote that "atoms" used to be nothing more than products 
> of imagination (theories). And then they were recognized  as real 
> things (facts). The same was true with "flying machines," with 
> "talking or seeing over long distances," with "submarines,"  with 
> "going to the moon," etc. etc.
I would argue that "products of the imagination are hypotheses, 
rather than theories. To qualify as a theory, an idea must have some 
factual basis upon which it can rely for support. All of thoses 
things you mention wee originally hypotheses, but many of them had 
advanced to the status of theory before they were actually 
accomplished. Certainly manned flight and space travel had a pretty 
sound physical basis well before they were actually achieved.

Even if the development of a new species of organism from existing 
species has not yet been observed (and I'm not at all sure that it 
hasn't, at some level), there is little doubt among biologists that 
such an observation is only a matter of time, and that confidence has 
a pretty thorough grounding in both theory and fact.

Scientists should resist the denigration of the perfectly good and 
well-defined word "theory" by making it a synonym for "hypothesis." 
And as I said earlier, "fact" and "theory" are not even in the same 
branch of the linguistic taxonomy.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
mailto:hugh@ieer.org
mailto:haskellh@verizon.net

It isn't easy being green.

		--Kermit Lagrenouille