Re: What are "principles" in science?

[Larry Woolf <larry.woolf@GAT.COM>]

A nice discussion on this topic by Stephen Jay Gould is at:

<http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html>

"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 less than 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 when scientists debate rival theories
to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but
apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And
humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's
proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered."

Larry Woolf
General Atomics
3550 General Atomics Court
Mail Stop 78-110
San Diego CA 92121
Ph:858-526-8575
FAX:858-526-8568
http://www.ga.com
http://www.sci-ed-ga.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Denker
> Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 11:02 AM
> To: PHYS-L@LISTS.NAU.EDU
> Subject: Re: What are "principles" in science?
>
> Mark Sylvester wrote:
> > I don't know what support I should provide for distinguishing
> > theories from empirical laws beyond referring doubters to a
> > dictionary - I'm not proposing something different from standard
> > usage within scientific circles. I am cautioning against the
> > widespread further use of "theory" in common English to denote
> > something uncertain or tentative as in "...that's all very well in
> > theory".
>
> I checked a half-dozen dictionaries, all of which support
> the view that the word "theory" has two divergent meanings
>   a) a mere conjecture or speculation, or
>   b) a collection of results giving an overview and a
>      refined understanding of a particular subject.