Some theories are eventually proven to be fact. At one time, the earth was thought to be round. The ancient Greeks had even estimated it's size, but with what was known and what could be observed at the time, we would have to say it was a theory. Today, we have seen it for our selves. It's no longer theory, but fact. Other theories, a few, were eventually proven to be fact through mathematics. Others have had to wait a long time before enough data was available to show the theory to be fact.
It should be noted that "theories" proposed from "tested" hypotheses by the accepted scientific community have a dismal record even up to and including the our time. Evolution will become a fact the moment we see new species arise from old, signified by populations that have diverged from an original species that are fertile among themselves, but no longer fertile with the original species. For me, that is the only objective test to offer proof of a separate species arising from a progenitor signifying that evolution has taken place. Note that logically this will never prove that some form of "creation" did not ever take place. We should all probably come to terms with the fact that there are some things we can never prove or disprove. Regards, Bob Blakely --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes." - Robert Frost From: "Steve Sharpe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
