At 5:52 PM -0400 6/12/07, frank theriault wrote: >On 6/12/07, frank theriault <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> -As close to fact as a theory can be. > >To clarify, > >It seems that what I should have said is that the fact that there ~is~ >evolution seems to be considered beyond dispute among the vast >majority in the scientific community. What appears to be not yet >settled (and therefore theory) is ~how~ evolution works. But, >evolution itself is considered fact. >
There is a lot of confusion among non-scientific types as to what the word "theory" means. In common usage "theory" often means an idea, a supposition, or perhaps even educated guess. In science, though, a theory is about as close to a fact as you can get...but a theory is not an absolute fact. A scientist may observe something, comes up with a hypothesis that might explain the observation, then conducts experiments and makes predictions about future behaviour. If the experiments and predictions work out then the hypothesis becomes a theory. The theory then holds until a better one comes along to explain the observed behaviour. -- Steve Sharpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://earth.delith.com/photo_gallery.html -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
