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Re: possibly OT: NYT article on GA creationism/evolution debate



John Clement wrote:

... the theory of relativity is not a law. A theory would be a complex
model designed to explain a variety of phenomena and sometimes may be more
universally applied than a law. As such theories would sometimes be used to
explain laws. For example kinetic theory is used to explain the gas laws.

I agree with that 98%. That's how scientists use the words.
That is consistent with the _main_ dictionary definition of
the words.

Perhaps in a perfect world, that's how everybody would use the
words. But there are two problems.

First of all, there is a _legitimate_ second meaning to the
word "theory". To "theorize" is to speculate. So people are
not entirely wrong when speak of "a theory" as if it were
merely "a speculation". This usage goes back thousands of
years.

Secondly, we live in an imperfect world where people use
words in bad faith, deliberately twisting the meaning.
These people increase the cost of doing business. Sometimes
the added costs include rephrasing things in order to make
them more twist-resistant. I don't like neologism for
neologism's sake, but sometimes we are forced into it.

==========

I agree with John C. that a theory (in the scientific sense)
is more than a law; it is a system of laws affording a
more-or-less unified view of a subject. Note that in my
previous posting I spoke of the laws of evolution, not the
law (singular).

I agree that we lose something by abandoning the word
"theory", but the benefits outweigh the cost.

Therefore, unless somebody can come up with a constructive
counterproposal, I will continue to recommend:
-- Speak of the laws of evolution, rather than the theory
of evolution. To scientists it means the same thing, but
lunatics will have a harder time twisting the meaning.
Note that we already speak of the law of natural selection
and the laws of heredity.
-- Better yet, speak simply of evolution. There's no need
to make the word "theory" or "laws" part of the name. It's
just evolution. Note that most people on this list already
speak of general relativity and special relativity without
prefixing the words "theory of ..."

I apply word evolution both to the physical processes, and to the
system of laws that describes these processes.