I think the list would find the following quotes of interest.
From Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983) by Stephen Jay Gould
p. 254.
"In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact" - part of
a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis
to guess. Thus, creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is "only" a
theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If
evolution is a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the
theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan
echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in
what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a
scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the
world of science - that is, not believed in the scientific community to be
as infallible as it once was."
Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are
different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts
are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and
interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival
theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravity replaced
Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the
outcome. And human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did
so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered."
p. 384
"The need to distinguish sturdy facts (pervasive pattern) from shaky factual
claim (single cases with dubious documentation) has never been more evident
to me than in the current debate between evolutionists and so-called
"scientific creationists." The fact of evolution is as sturdy as any claim
in science. Its sturdiness resides in a pervasive pattern detected by
several disciplines - for example, the age of the earth and life as affirmed
by astronomers and geology, and the pattern of imperfection in organisms
that record a history of physical descent."
Larry Woolf;General Atomics;6995 Flanders Dr.;MS 78-107;San Diego CA
92121-2975; Ph:858-526-8575;FAX:858-526-8568; www.ga.com; www.sci-ed-ga.org