Florida approved science standards that actually use the word ‘evolution’, but as I noted at the time, the creationist compromise was that it had to be referred to as “the scientific theory of evolution”. It was weird: it is the scientific theory of evolution, as opposed to the non-scientific guesswork of creationism, so what was the advantage to the creationists? All I could imagine is that they somehow thought this enthroned their misunderstanding of the word “theory” as official policy.
Well, the word is out that the creationists screwed up big time, and their own ignorance has turned around and bit them on the ass. They really did think inserting the word “theory” would help discredit evolution (it may still do so, as they try to frantically spin it in their church newsletters, but it’s only going to work among their true believers), but it’s going to have the opposite effect in the public schools.
Not only will Florida’s students learn about evolution; they’ll also learn that the scientific definition of a theory is different from the everyday definition,
referring not to wild-eyed speculation but to a vast body of observation
and testing that confirms a hypothesis so strongly that it might as
well be considered fact.
You might argue that that is only Wired‘s interpretation, and that maybe the creationists actually have some secret nefarious plan to turn that bit of language into a propaganda victory. We’ve got confirmation, though: the Discovery Institute is furious, and Casey Luskin is squeaking madly about how they were tricked into a compromise that added a harmless phrase to the standards, while allowing the “dogmatism of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS)” to stand.
This may have an added benefit. Creationists have benefitted from the public’s colloquial understanding of the meaning of the word “theory,” which differs from the scientific meaning. Now they’re getting chastised by their own for screwing up and mistaking their own quirky ignorance for a useful strategem. We’ve been yelling at them for years that a scientific idea that has reached the status of a theory is a good thing — it means the idea is powerful tool for integrating many lines of inquiry — but maybe now the message will sink in.
Now we just have to do this a few more times.
Creationist: There are no transitional whale fossils!
Scientist: Oh, dear, really? That’s terrible! We should teach the students about that, don’t you think?
Creationist: Yes, we should. That information must go into the science standards for our state.
Scientist: I quite agree. When we mandate that our teachers must offer instruction in the details of whale transitional fossils, the gaps will be so obvious.
Creationist: Good. Let’s insert, “Teachers will discuss the nature of evolutionary transitions, emphasizing the kinds of evidence needed to support claims that land animals evolved into whales, and that cats give birth to dogs.”
Scientist: Well, as a compromise, let’s leave out the bit about cats and dogs, and we’ll have to clean up and standardize the language in committee, but let’s do it. The committee might even make this broader, pushing for discussion of all kinds of transitional fossils, which, of course, are absent. Boy, you sure got me over a barrel, forcing me to include discussion of an evolutionary flaw in our public schools. I hope you aren’t going to continue to outwit me with your Mastery of Science.
Creationist: <preening smugly> Ha ha, our cunning plan is working!
Love the little discussion you made :-)
Terry Kemple, president of the Tampa Bay Christian public policy group Community Issues Council, is apparently fuming over this decision as we speak. I awakened this morning to find a comment by him on one of my old anti-creation posts. I’m looking forward to giving him a reply…
I completely agree with your analysis; when the creationists made that insistence regarding the word “theory” it reminded me of Dr. Evil threatening to Do Whatever Nefarious Thing unless he was given “…a Million Dollars…!”.
Remember, there is no end to what can be done with an opponent who is not only wrong about the subject, but fundamentally ignorant of it. Out-thinking them is the easiest part, as the subject they are fundamentally ignorant of encompasses most of reality as we know it.
I am doubly enthused that the kids of my home state will not be short-changed and that Florida is irking the Creationists. It’s such a warm and fuzzy feeling. :)
Of course this will mean they’ll just redouble their efforts to out-flank the standards and Florida cannot be complacent for, as we saw, there are many anti-evolution sympathizers here.
the standards still retain dogmatic language and reject the excellent suggestions of the Minority Report
Well, the whole telepaths thing was never going to be practical.
Oh, they mean the minority report. Don’t they understand that, by definition, the ideas in the minority report have already been rejected, it’s just that at least two people doggedly insist they’re kept on record?
“Please, please don’t throw me in ‘dat brier patch, ‘brer Fox!”
Who knew that science standards would prove to be the creationists’ “tar-baby”?
LOL! Still giggling over the the Luskin article.
“Tricked” my dog’s left bollock – how is it our fault if their self-imposed delusions about the term scientific theory came back to bite them in the arse? FSM knows we’ve tried explaining what it actually means to them enough times.
Take home message to cdesign proponentsists:
The Wages of Ignorance are Public Humiliation
I wonder if any of the creationists are familiar with the phrase “Pyrrhic victory”.
Some one used the ‘only a theory’ defense the other day. It’s all they can use when defeated. Explain and they still think they’ve stumped you.
Good to see it backfired.
All of this just seems so pointless and timewasting. Having to justify teaching the truth in school to pinheads!
Haha,
That’s great!
English teachers will benefit from this fiasco as well, as it will give them a new (and relevant!) scenario that they can use when showing examples of * IRONY *.
Now where’s a link to the Super Mario “Somehow I don’t think you thought your cunning plan all the way through” image when you need one?
As well as checking (once more) on the meaning of the word “theory” would perhaps do well to look up the meaning of the phrase “Pyrrhic Victory”. No?
;-)
One thing that really bothers me is that the ID movement really disturbs actual rational discussion about evolution.
How is one going to get a good grasp of when “problems” arrive as a living and evolving science like evolutionary theory will obviously produce when 99% of all talk on this subject is distorted by these people.
If a scientist really feels that evolutionary theory really isn’t a cornerstone in his particular field and don’t like teachers telling students that it is – what should he do. It isn’t really in his best interest to tell the board since that could result in something much worse…
This is annoying on so many levels.
One thing that really bothers me is that the ID movement really disturbs actual rational discussion about evolution.
How is one going to get a good grasp of when “problems” arrive as a living and evolving science like evolutionary theory will obviously produce when 99% of all talk on this subject is distorted by these people.
If a scientist really feels that evolutionary theory really isn’t a cornerstone in his particular field and don’t like teachers telling students that it is – what should he do. It isn’t really in his best interest to tell the board since that could result in something much worse…
This is annoying on so many levels.
That would be here.
Take a peek at how the AFA spun this.
Florida decides ‘evolution as theory’ better way to go
http://onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=67923
Don’t be afraid of leaving a comment for the dim wits. Several folks have all ready corrected the article in the comments but a few more wouldn’t hurt.
Now let’s teach the Theory of intelligent designr alongside Evolution for balance and everyone can be happy with the new standards.
Bouncing Bosons: I have no idea, but will this do?
As a Floridian and parent of 3 girls that have gone through our states education system, I couldn’t be happier that at least it’s now a requirement to teach it.
They learned more about evolution from me than they did in 12 years of public school education! Hopefully this stays and one day my grandkids will benefit.
The one beef I have with science and the word theory is why the hell did string theorists decide to use the term String Theory when it’s at best a hypothesis?
“a vast body of observation and testing that confirms a hypothesis so strongly that it might as well be considered fact”
The above just doesn’t seem to apply to String Theory now does it?
Biology-types have never been too good at following the syntax rules for the hypothesis / theory / law thing – if we did, there’d be no laws (biology is a science of exceptions, after all) and we’d have to “promote” things when we just got used to saying them a particular way (like the heterotroph hypothesis – can’t lose that alliteration!).
But if we didn’t lie (it’s a fine line between oversimplification and fabrication) a bit about the basics, beginning students would never learn anything.
Brilliant! But you left this out:
Creationist: Evolution is only a theory!
Scientist: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
¡GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!
Unbelievable. Luskin writes:
The booklet he refers to actually writes “some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them” in the context of describing gravity as an example, and only later does it say:
I know it’s a standard creationist tool, but it still irks me to see them reassembling phrases out of context to create misinformation.
By his “logic” we shouldn’t teach gravity either because “there are fundamental questions among scientists” about that too. We have only conflicting ideas about how to unify gravity with the other fundamental forces, so it’s likely our theory of gravity will have to be modified somehow. Better replace physics classes with bible study ASAP. I see no other solution.
Andres,
I wonder, do the announcers get that excited when it’s an own goal?
Wait the good guys won one? Is reality going to come apart at the seams? Cause I really hate when that happens.
Of course they were “tricked.” Any creationist worth his salt knows that Darwinism is nothing but trick after trick after trick after trick.
[The one beef I have with science and the word theory is why the hell did string theorists decide to use the term String Theory when it’s at best a hypothesis?
“a vast body of observation and testing that confirms a hypothesis so strongly that it might as well be considered fact”
The above just doesn’t seem to apply to String Theory now does it?]
No, it doesn’t. String Theory doesn’t quite pass all of the definitions even of being science and this is not something that the field is trying to hide, these kind of stretches is not exactly new in the field of theoretical physics. To use the word theory here wouldn’t really be a huge problem though if it wasn’t for the creationists and their “it’s only a theory” talk.
The fact that the field of theoretical physics hardly even is touched upon even in secondary school, and this particular branch not at all coupled with the fact that even its proponents are a bit reserved about calling it scientific theory would under all other circumstances probably be enough for it not to be a problem.
To coin new phrases isn’t easy though, and I believe that we are stuck with “String Theory” for better or worse. But really, I would be surprised if the creationist argument really would have any effect on anyone who even has basic understanding of the problems of for example falsifiability, that would seem to hose ID more than us to be honest. :P
[The one beef I have with science and the word theory is why the hell did string theorists decide to use the term String Theory when it’s at best a hypothesis?
“a vast body of observation and testing that confirms a hypothesis so strongly that it might as well be considered fact”
The above just doesn’t seem to apply to String Theory now does it?]
No, it doesn’t. String Theory doesn’t quite pass all of the definitions even of being science and this is not something that the field is trying to hide, these kind of stretches is not exactly new in the field of theoretical physics. To use the word theory here wouldn’t really be a huge problem though if it wasn’t for the creationists and their “it’s only a theory” talk.
The fact that the field of theoretical physics hardly even is touched upon even in secondary school, and this particular branch not at all coupled with the fact that even its proponents are a bit reserved about calling it scientific theory would under all other circumstances probably be enough for it not to be a problem.
To coin new phrases isn’t easy though, and I believe that we are stuck with “String Theory” for better or worse. But really, I would be surprised if the creationist argument really would have any effect on anyone who even has basic understanding of the problems of for example falsifiability, that would seem to hose ID more than us to be honest. :P
Casey Luskin :
“inserting the word “scientific theory” before the word “evolution” is a meaningless and impotent change that will do absolutely nothing to actually inform students about the scientific problems with evolution.”
I actually have to agree here with Luskin, this will do absolutely nothing to actually inform students about the Discovery Institute’s agenda.
(as spreading false rumours that there are scientific problems with evolution is, and has always been, their prime objective)
Well, Mr Luskin, that’s really too bad (for you, not the students).
I notice that the only trackback to Luskin is from Josh Rosenau. This may be a way to end around their avoiding comments. Instead of avoiding using the trackback, trust your readers’ intelligence, and take advantage of the trackback facility’s quoting a few words around the link to get your comments on their page, with a link to more back at your blog!
I’m sure that active pro-evo bloggers would dominate the trackback mechanism if they chose to use it.
You know, I spent about an hour yesterday writing up a Br’er Rabbit vs. Br’er Bear and Br’er Fox dialog about this very thing. It went along the lines of the Briar Patch story — e.g. “No, Br’er Bear, PLEASE DON’T make me call it the SCIENTIFIC THEORY of evolution!”
Basically it made the same point — that the creos thought they had a win, but really they were just throwing us into our favorite briar patch.
In the end I decided not to post it, as the thread on the Florida decision was already falling off the main page. PZ’s dialog is a fine alternative.
PZ has a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.
PZ has a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.
I agree with the String Theory nomenclature, although maybe it is more than “just” a theory and I don’t understand because I’m not a String Theorist.
Unless you put it in the context of the FSM “Strings Theory.” Then it makes perfect sense.
Technically I think the place it is at the moment could most accurately be described as “String Hypothesis Shading into Theory” but thats a wee bit of a mouthful for teaching purposes wouldn’t you agree?
All Hail The FSM, May you feel the touch of his Noodly Appendages : )
Hey Intelligent Designer: Cool site you have, but just like a real ID site, there is no way to post any responses or questions.
Darnit people! Sure it’s a bit of an own goal, but you weren’t supposed to tell them that! You were supposed to just make sure that the proper definition of “theory” was buried in the standards where no illiterate creationist would ever read it and then they’d find out only if they kept on top of what their kids were actually being taught!
Well, here’s to hoping the next generation comes out smarter anyway. Hasn’t evolution acceptance been increasing with every cohort anyway?
I’ve asked before (and I imagine I’ll end up asking again):
Can anyone give me any evidence for the claim that “theory” is used as a success term among scientists? Can you offer an example of something that’s been promoted to the status of “theory” at some point in history?
As far as I can see, we have good theories and bad theories, theories that are fantastically well-supported and theories that fly in the face of all evidence. In addition to Quantum Theory and Evolutionary Theory (successes), we have Caloric Theory of Heat, the Ether Theory of Light, and the Steady-State Theory of Cosmology (failures).
I’d say that the status of “theory” is a matter of breadth (subsuming a wide variety of phenomena/laws), not a matter of being well-supported by evidence. Thus I’d say it makes perfect sense to call String Theory a theory — even if you think it’s a crappy theory.
Please correct me if I’m wrong. If I’m right, please stop claiming that “theory” means a “vast body of observation and testing that confirms a hypothesis so strongly that it might as well be considered fact.”
I’m not a physicist, but it always seemed to me the nature of String Theory is such that the “Theory” part of the title has more of a mathematical flavor, as in, say, Number Theory.
Are you talking about a real or hypothetical example? What could be an example of such a field?
“”a vast body of observation and testing that confirms a hypothesis so strongly that it might as well be considered fact”
The above just doesn’t seem to apply to String Theory now does it?”
Nor the Big Bang theory, at least since we discovered that the universe is, apparently, accelerating.
Is it possible that in the twentieth century theists fled the life sciences to preserve their faith, and many wound up in theoretical physics where you can still pass woo off as science?
This is one of my pet peeves. Creationists, often use the Big Bang theory (and to a lesser extent String Theory) to denigrate Evolutionary theory and the idea of “theory” in general. For once, it is not just the creationists’ fault: The highly speculative “theories” in theoretical physics make the rest of science look bad.
New Scientist has a good editorial:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19726425.800-comment-is-big-physics-peddling-science-pornography.html
(Damn just a preview.) Whoops, here’s the whole thing:
“IF SOME Russian mathematicians are right, then 2008 will be a year to remember. Extraordinary as it sounds, this could be when humanity unwittingly creates its first time machine and we receive our first visitors from the future – presumably wearing, as future-fashion dictates, silver jumpsuits and driving flying cars.
These theorists speculate that at the much-delayed opening of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN on the French-Swiss border, the assembled scientists and dignitaries may be treated to a big surprise. The LHC could, thanks to some mooted possibilities crashing around on the wilder shores of physics, become a time machine – specifically, the end of a “closed timelike curve” connected to the future (see “The accidental time machine”).
This is not the first time we have been told that the LHC could change, or rather end, life as we know it. A few years ago someone calculated that the collider might create a mini black hole which would promptly set about eating the planet, starting with Switzerland. Or worse, create a weird subatomic particle called a strangelet that could devour the entire universe. Physics and cosmology stories are like this these days. Once it was all hard sums and red-shifted galaxies; awesome enough one would have thought. Now it’s time machines and universe-eating particles.
Does any of this bear any relation to reality? Or is Big Physics guilty of some serious sexing-up, drifting away from the realm of hard data and into the softer universe of science pornography?
As well as accidental time machines we are told of cosmic strings – gigantic filaments of super-stuff that warp and tear space-time like ladders in a pair of celestial stockings – and crashing branes, titanic slabs of maths that give rise to the big bang in the exotically lovely ekpyrotic universe of Neil Turok.
Not crazy enough for you? What about the multiverse? One of the biggest sell-out lectures at last year’s Hay-on-Wye festival in Wales starred the UK’s astronomer royal, Martin Rees, who entertained his audience with a discussion of the possibility, indeed the probability, of multiple worlds – endless parallel realities existing in a gargantuan super-reality that makes what we think of as the universe as insignificant as a gnat on an elephant’s backside. Or there’s the simulation argument, philosopher Nick Bostrom’s delicious idea that since it should be possible to replicate an entire universe in a computer, and that this could be done countless times, statistical cleverness proves that we are not the real McCoy but the figments of some electronic entity’s imagination.
Don’t get me wrong, I love parallel universes. I love the idea that, 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 100 light years away is an identical me, sitting down at his computer writing this very same article in a world exactly the same as mine except that the gear stick on the Honda Accord is a slightly different shade of grey. And I love the idea that every time a subatomic particle goes hither or thither, a whole new creation is invoked; forget half-dead cats in boxes, we are talking worlds in which Hitler won the second world war, or where there was no Hitler, and no second world war and no Honda Accords at all.
It is fun to know that serious scientists believe the fabulous alternate realities of the Philip Pullman novels could be accurate descriptions of reality (for in a multiverse of infinite size and scope there will, somewhere and somewhen, be a world where a little girl called Lyra befriends a talking polar bear and where people’s souls take the form of animal familiars).
Fun yes, but is it harmless? Scientists, and people like me who stick up for science, are happy to pour scorn on astrologers, homeopaths, UFO-nutters, crop-circlers and indeed the Adam-and-Eve brigade, who all happily believe in six impossible things before breakfast with no evidence at all. Show us the data, we say to these deluded souls. Where are your trials? What about Occam’s razor – the principle that any explanation should be as simple as possible? The garden is surely beautiful enough, we say, without having to populate it with fairies.
The danger is that on the wilder shores of physics these standards are often not met either. There is as yet no observational evidence for cosmic strings. It’s hard to test for a multiverse. In this sense, some of these ideas are not so far, conceptually, from UFOs and homeopathy. If we are prepared to dismiss ghosts, say, as ludicrous on the grounds that firstly we have no proper observational evidence for them and secondly that their existence would force us to rethink everything, doesn’t the same argument apply to simulated universes and time machines? Are we not guilty of prejudice against some kinds of very unlikely ideas in favour of others?
Believing in ghosts takes a different mindset to advocating parallel worlds or cosmic strings. But do we really believe that we are all the creations of a computer sitting in some higher-dimensional adolescent’s bedroom, or that time travellers will land at the LHC? Or are we, too, seeing fairies at the bottom of the garden?”
You know, with that closing line about the “cunning plan,” I cannot help but think of the creationists as Baldrick from the Black Adder TV show: “I ‘ave a cunning plan…” A very apt image, though Baldrick is a bit smarter and more capable than most of those guys…
The key here is the insertion of the word before “theory.”
By itself, without considering anything else, a theory is a guess. Ah, but as soon as you insert the modifier “scientific” before the word “theory”, you have a whole different ballgame. “Scientific Theory” does NOT mean, “The best guess our scientists have made.” It DOES mean that entire bodies of evidence have been assembled to support the theories.
“Theory” means “Guess.”
“Scientific Theory” means “We have a lot of evidence (frequently, the evidence is overwhelming).”
Creationists don’t understand this point. To which I say, serves ’em f-ing right.
gg:
I read the comment you linked to and this struck me:
“And double shame for wanting to force your unproven belief into the impressionable minds of our young people.”
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Matt
I think it’s rather telling that a bastion of the ID/Creationist argument has to do with semantics. It’s entirely off-point.
Even if we accept theory’s colloquial meaning, in which it is just a possible explanation, what’s the point? Evolution is supported by facts, and any alternate explanation should concentrate entirely on evidence and experiments rather than waving your arms, yelling “It’s a possible explanation! It’s a possible explanation!”
Matt wrote: “Pot. Kettle. Black.”
Indeed! It seems that another common symptom of crackpots and dogmatic types is an uncontrollable need to engage in psychological projection…
@ MikeM (#40): I don’t know whether that was supposed to be a response to my #35, but if it was, I don’t see that “scientific theory” is any better off. Ether theory, steady state theory, etc. are all “Scientific Theories” — they’re just theories that are wrong. Has there ever been an example in the history of science when a community has decided, “Ah, now we have enough evidence to call this a Scientific Theory (and not a mere hypothesis)!”? I suggest that there has not. ‘Theory’ is simply not used as a success term.
MikeM wrote:
I think that’s a great way to put it. Traditionally scientists have used the term ‘theory’ rigorously as ‘scientific theory’, but modern scientists have dropped the ball in a big way and used the term more colloquially: I know I certainly do that on occasion. (Though not in any formal papers or presentations.)
A lot of the criticism of “string theory” probably comes from the use of the word “theory” to describe it. It still really falls under the category of “hypothesis”, and the researchers are fighting to find experimentally testable predictions of their hypothesis. The “big bang” seems to really fall into the level of “theory”, since it has resulted in confirmed predictions (like cosmic microwave background radiation). There are, just like in evolution, unanswered questions about that theory, but the basic principles are well understood and confirmed.
Well, okay, a few weeks ago, my car blew out a spark plug. Took it to a garage and had them fix it, and when they were done, the car sounded terrible.
I theorized that the sound was caused by a bad lifter. They changed that, and that didn’t fix it.
My theory was bad. The physical evidence did not support it. It was a guess, and it was not backed up by the physical evidence.
So we’re putting a new engine in the car.
This is the best example I can pull out of thin air.
You can find a recording of my engine here.
Some disjointed observations:
1. The Universe is accelerating. This does not make the Big Bang theory invalid; indeed, it synergizes with the ideas of inflationary cosmology, which by now are a more-or-less standard part of the Big Bang package.
2. Tangentially: New Scientist has a track record of being sensationalist, stupid and wrong. Remember the time when they said astronomers were going to destroy the Universe? Or when they endorsed that crackpot “EmDrive”? Or when they gave a thumbs-up to Masaru Emoto’s water woo? Or pentaquarks? Or “Heim theory”? Or the machine translator they billed as “the next best thing to a Babel fish”? Or, also in the language department, “Computer decodes dog communication”? Or the time they botched the description of Boltzmann Brains? Or when they got quantum entanglement completely wrong? Or. . . I should stop now to save my blood pressure.
3. Quantum gravity research has been stuck for about fifty years trying to find ways to connect to experiment. Fortunately, the spin-offs have been quite nice, from supersymmetry to the AdS/CFT correspondence. (By the way, the latter is a subject in which mathematical tools from the most There-Be-Dragons-Here reaches of string theory are giving testable predictions, in the area where string theory began — nuclear physics — rather than in quantum gravity.)
@gg (#45): Can you offer any support whatsoever for your claim that “traditionally” scientists have reserved the term ‘theory’ (or ‘scientific theory’) for a well-supported hypothesis? I think you’re simply wrong. The term has not been used this way. You have in the history of science both scientific theories that are supported by evidence and scientific theories that are refuted by evidence, and the term ‘theory’ is used in the same way in both cases.
It’s not a term that implies that you got it right, or even that you have a lot of evidence for it.
4. The use of language in physics is completely screwy. Some of the best-tested and most widely applicable ideas we’ve got are called “theories” (the special theory of relativity, quantum field theory). Then we have the Standard Model of particle physics, which we know is basically right as far as it goes, though we’re all expecting new physics to exist beyond it.
5. On top of that, mathematics has a strong influence on physics, so physicists are sometimes inclined to use the word “theory” as in group theory, number theory, category theory and so forth.
6. At a guess, “inflationary theory” might be an example of models promoted to theory status, though I’m going off my own vague recollections of terminology usage here.
Physicalist wrote: “Has there ever been an example in the history of science when a community has decided, “Ah, now we have enough evidence to call this a Scientific Theory (and not a mere hypothesis)!”? I suggest that there has not. ‘Theory’ is simply not used as a success term.”
There are a couple of reasons why you don’t see such a ‘collective decision’ in the scientific community:
1. The transition of a scientific hypothesis to an accepted theory is usually a gradual process, in which a gradually accumulating body of evidence gradually convinces more and more people of the truth of the hypothesis. There’s no well-defined ‘tipping point’ in which everyone votes: the acceptance of quantum theory, for instance, was a prolonged process which took probably 30 years or more. In the end, one day everyone looks around and realizes that the vast majority of scientists are on the same page and all the evidence fits.
2. Until the creationists started to obsess about it, very few scientists cared about semantics. Every physicist has seen the evidence for Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics, and understands that they are ideas which are well-supported. It is a similar situation for biologists and evolution. Whether you call it a ‘theory’ or a ‘scientific theory’ or a ‘law’ or a ‘snipperdoodle’, everyone who understands the science knows that relativity, quantum mechanics, and evolution are in essence the ‘truth’. From a scientific point of view, the semantics are meaningless: what’s important is that the ‘theory’ has been confirmed countless times and has huge predictive power.
These theories in physics(string, branes,etc) have little evidence yet.
Only, (from what I understand) because they need to probe tiny scales that are beyond our technological ability at this point.
So it’s only a metter of time before data is collected and the theories are either proven right, or proven wrong and ammended.
With Evolution, the data is in (and still poring in) and it supports it.
Creationists,
We don’t know EVERYTHING yet. Be patient. We’ve come a long way in just 200 years! THink what little they knew in 1808!
To be fair to string theorists (some of whom I know and who are very bright people), string theory does have a lot of evidence to back it up, in a sense. See, the problem is that any beyond standard model physics must, necessarily, reproduce the standard model in the appropriate limit. So technically all the evidence supporting the standard model carries over. The problem with string theory is not that it makes no testable predictions, it’s that it makes no testable predictions that you can’t get by jazzing up the standard model Lagrangian and doing vanilla quantum field theory. doesn’t make. Even the extra dimensions can be removed from string theory, as in James Gate’s work. Occam’s Razor is what’s bleeding it out at the moment.
As for the others, yes, physics has it’s share of crackpots that have snuck in, there’s no denying that. Feeding into the media hype-machine is very much frowned upon. Unfortunately things get out of hand quickly. A simple idea that a collider may produce a micro black hole (which would technically have no stronger a gravitational field than anything else with it’s mass, I.E. a couple of nucleons) which we would get to see evaporate quickly and provide direct evidence for Hawking Radiation becomes a death machine sucking up the United States or Europe when the media gets a hold of it. It reflects poorly upon theorists and they don’t appreciate it.
Creationist : God is real, and science should acknowledge that!
Richard Dawkins : You mean treat God like a science theory?
Creationist: Yeah! Keeping God out of our explanations is acting like He’s only some kind of symbol or myth or something.
Richard Dawkins: But … but … but that would mean that we’d have to examine the supernatural foundations of religion to see if they’re consistent with our modern discoveries, and are the sorts of conclusion we should draw from the evidence. That would mean we scientists have to take God seriously!
Creationist: Yes, you should have to take God seriously, and do all that.
Richard Dawkins: Oh dear. God as a hypothesis. Well, okay, if you insist….
Ah, but Luskin is cunningly diverting scientists concerns. :-P
As nothing prohibits the IDC scammers and their followers to preach about ‘just a theory’ in church I don’t think they gained much even if they will continue to milk it for all it’s worth. On the contrary I hope Wired’s prediction may come true.
Ah, but Luskin is cunningly diverting scientists concerns. :-P
As nothing prohibits the IDC scammers and their followers to preach about ‘just a theory’ in church I don’t think they gained much even if they will continue to milk it for all it’s worth. On the contrary I hope Wired’s prediction may come true.
Physicalist wrote: “Can you offer any support whatsoever for your claim that “traditionally” scientists have reserved the term ‘theory’ (or ‘scientific theory’) for a well-supported hypothesis?”
Giving it more thought, I don’t think it really matters. As I mentioned above, most scientists didn’t really give much thought to the precise meaning of the word ‘theory’ until creationists went all gaga over the semantics. Lots of untested explanations of natural phenomena are called ‘theories’: those that are proven false are no longer considered scientific theories. Those that survive numerous tests and challenges over decades of research get to keep the title ‘theory’. In other words, if scientists still feel comfortable calling something a ‘theory’ after a hundred years of attacks, it must be a good one.
The term ‘theory’ in this sense is kind of like a game of ‘King of the Hill’: anyone can push themselves to the top and be ‘King’ for a second, but the title only becomes meaningful after you’ve survived numerous attacks and held your ground.
@gg (#50): I agree with both of your points, but I don’t care about whether there is a well-defined transition. I’m asking for evidence for any such transition. Was it the case that Darwin’s account was referred to as a “hypothesis” in 1860, but by 1960 it was considered a “theory”? I’m not a historian of biology, but I submit that it was not. It was always thought of as a “theory” in the sense that it was broad explanatory framework that (if successful) could unite a wide variety of phenomena. The term “hypothesis” (I tentatively suggest) typically refers to a much more specific claim, one that could (paradigmatically) be tested in a single experiment.
I do sometimes pretend to be a historian of quantum theory, and it just seems completely false to suppose that quantum mechanics became a theory in virtue of getting more and more empirical support. The “Old Quantum Theory” of Bohr’s was discarded, but it was still a “scientific theory.”
What is true is that people didn’t think they had a full theory until it was sufficiently unified and comprehensive. I think these are hallmarks of a “theory” as scientists use the term. But you can have a unified comprehensive account that is refuted by evidence. That’s a false theory. It’s still a scientific theory, however.
I think so too, theoretical physics connections with mathematics lends itself to such an interpretation. And indeed the mathematical tools such as treating diverse dualities will remain even if the theory wouldn’t be physically validated.
As for the reasons why string theory seems to be a little bit more, I refer to Blake’s and Bouncing Bosons’ comments.
I believe I see your point, but while I would agree with such a description I don’t see how it conflicts with various hypotheses and their predictions being confirmed by a larger body of theory.
Btw, perhaps it is easier to describe a more or less isolated hypothesis than a theory. As noted in other comments, the terminology is such a mess that the only time it makes sense to discuss definitions is when trying to engage a philosophical discussion. And that is by definition besides the actual topic. :-P
I think so too, theoretical physics connections with mathematics lends itself to such an interpretation. And indeed the mathematical tools such as treating diverse dualities will remain even if the theory wouldn’t be physically validated.
As for the reasons why string theory seems to be a little bit more, I refer to Blake’s and Bouncing Bosons’ comments.
I believe I see your point, but while I would agree with such a description I don’t see how it conflicts with various hypotheses and their predictions being confirmed by a larger body of theory.
Btw, perhaps it is easier to describe a more or less isolated hypothesis than a theory. As noted in other comments, the terminology is such a mess that the only time it makes sense to discuss definitions is when trying to engage a philosophical discussion. And that is by definition besides the actual topic. :-P
Oops, sorry Physicalist, I see your latest comment makes the very point I (might have contrived to) make out of your earlier.
Oops, sorry Physicalist, I see your latest comment makes the very point I (might have contrived to) make out of your earlier.
@ Blake (#49):
I’d like to know more about the history of the development of these names, but my impression is that we label something a “theory” when there’s a coherent set of equations and techniques. It would be natural to call both Q.E.D. and Q.C.D. theories, wouldn’t it? My guess is that the Standard Model got the label “model” because it’s natural to see it as a particular way of putting together the results of QED & QCD, rather than a fully unfied fundamental account. It’s not a new theoretical treatment. It’s not a new theory.
Again, I submit that the success of a theory, or a model, or a hypothesis is irrelevant to whether it is a theory, model, or hypothesis. Nothing gets changed into a theory through the accumulation of evidence.
I feel impelled to make some disjointed observations of my own, inspired by Blake:
1. Time machines and cosmic string/multiverses have widely different observational status. Time machines would be easy to observe but are naturally rejected by most theories as hard or impossible to construct. AFAIU the reverse connotes cosmic strings and multiverses, they are harder to observe but follows easily and naturally from several more or less independent theories.
2. It can’t be harmful to make fanciful speculations (time machines) or follow where theories goes (cosmic strings, multiverses) as long as it obvious that still unvalidated science differs from debunked pseudoscience (astrology, homeopathy, IDC). Observational evidence is ultimately the arbiter here.
3. I don’t feel up to collecting the disjointed bits here and now, but testing multiverses may be easier than initially thought. Colliding bubble universes may give observational traces under mild or even natural conditions (there are papers on that), and while IIRC exactly what observations that would be wasn’t determined at the time there has been speculation that the largest void in the CMBR (presumably statistically significant) may be such an observation. I’m not sure what become of that.
I feel impelled to make some disjointed observations of my own, inspired by Blake:
1. Time machines and cosmic string/multiverses have widely different observational status. Time machines would be easy to observe but are naturally rejected by most theories as hard or impossible to construct. AFAIU the reverse connotes cosmic strings and multiverses, they are harder to observe but follows easily and naturally from several more or less independent theories.
2. It can’t be harmful to make fanciful speculations (time machines) or follow where theories goes (cosmic strings, multiverses) as long as it obvious that still unvalidated science differs from debunked pseudoscience (astrology, homeopathy, IDC). Observational evidence is ultimately the arbiter here.
3. I don’t feel up to collecting the disjointed bits here and now, but testing multiverses may be easier than initially thought. Colliding bubble universes may give observational traces under mild or even natural conditions (there are papers on that), and while IIRC exactly what observations that would be wasn’t determined at the time there has been speculation that the largest void in the CMBR (presumably statistically significant) may be such an observation. I’m not sure what become of that.
Creationist: It’s the scientific theory of evolution!
Hitchens: There are no statements worth arguing here, all you can do is underline them.
Creationist:You better believe it, and I’m going to underline it again and again and again! It’s the scientific theory of evolution!!
Hitchens:Okay, you do that my friend.
Creationist: Okay thanks!!
I teach a biology course to Teachers In Training, some of whom are staunch creationists. We spend the first class sessions looking at the meaning and relationship of scientific theories and hypoteses, and how observations of living things are turned into knowledge in science. It helps in the discussion to spend several hours observing pond life. As the course progresses, students frequently engage in small group discussions about key concepts of the course (mainly evolution and ecology content). Creationist arguments often come up, but even the most forceful ID pushers are countered effectively by student colleagues armed with a good understanding of what is, and is not, science.
I’m sure Casey Luskin is shaking in his boots about Florida students. Arming them with an understanding of science is certainly going to hamper his ability to control their minds.
Physicalist wrote: “I agree with both of your points, but I don’t care about whether there is a well-defined transition. I’m asking for evidence for any such transition. Was it the case that Darwin’s account was referred to as a “hypothesis” in 1860, but by 1960 it was considered a “theory”?”
You know, I’m willing to grant you that the usage of the term ‘theory’ is historically inconsistent. As I’ve said, scientists aren’t concerned so much with how to label a hierarchy of ideas as they are with actually developing that hierarchy.
The more I think about it, though, the more another question comes to mind: Who cares? I sure don’t, any more than I care about whether the Founding Fathers wanted me to have AK-47s via the Second Amendment. Fuck ’em; I’ll make my decisions based on observations, not word-parsing. The more time we spend parsing the etymology of the word ‘theory’, the less time we spend defending good science: and we play into the creationists’ hands.
As far as I’m concerned, all that really matters is: (a) The ‘theory’ of evolution, regardless of what we call it (I vote ‘snickerdoodle’), is a well-tested and highly accurate description of reality. (b) We decide here and now what we mean by the term ‘theory’, to avoid future confusion and demagoguery.
From what I see, MikeM gave a good concise way of describing it. We could spend all day here trying to parse the most accurate and consistent semantic terms but, as Torbjörn Larsson put it, “the only time it makes sense to discuss definitions is when trying to engage a philosophical discussion. And that is by definition besides the actual topic.”
@The Physicist and discussion of the elevation of hypothesis to theory.
While there is certainly an inconsistency in word usage, researchers know at each step of an investigation which ‘animal’ they are dealing with. Also, this discussion is almost a ‘cdesign proponentsist’ problem (Editing deep in a text with transitional forms). Where are hypotheses found? They occur in the discussion sections of research papers and in (for example) NSF grant proposals. Where are theories found? They are found in the titles, abstracts and results sections of research papers whose authors investigated hypotheses buried in a discussion from in a different paper. [Occasionally one outstanding scientist shepherds an idea from inspiration all the way to theory.] The point is, hypotheses are not vigorously held up and given ‘catch phrase’ names. Hypotheses lurk is the discussion section of research papers and they are only definitively
named when they become supported by research (evidence) and at that point they are theories.
@ Torbjörn Larsson & gg
Well, overall I agree. (I am a philosopher, which might explain a lot . . . ) I’ve just been hearing many claims lately to the effect that a scientific claim can graduate from being a ‘hypothesis’ to being a ‘theory’ once it meets with enough empirical success. This seems false to me (as a matter of how the terms are actually used in the history of science, and among practicing scientists today), and I simply want to know whether I’m missing something.
Mothra (#55)
Can you offer an example? I’m happy to accept that this might be the case in biology. (I’m pretty sure it isn’t the case in physics, but that’s OK.) I’d just like an example. It seems more likely to me that if a suggestion is well-developed enough to rival some other well-developed account, then we might be likely to refer to the X theory of process Y (where X explains Y, or something). But I still doubt that a mere hypothesis transforms into a theory, or that anyone would stop calling something a theory if it were refuted by experiment.
Thanks.
Physicalist wrote: “(I am a philosopher, which might explain a lot . . . )”
Aha! That’s why this conversation has been so frustrating!!! :)
You’re probably not missing anything. On further reflection, I suspect that you’re right on the history of science. Some people probably used the terms in this way, but far too many others probably didn’t.
For my money, though, the important thing is how we use the terms now, as I mentioned above, and, of course, the actual science.
The Florida Baptist is reporting that House Speaker Rubio might support legislation supporting academic freedom. I guess citizens for science will have to keep fighting. See article here http://www.floridabaptistwitness.com/8463.article
Creationists use the phrase “academic freedom” the way quacks use the phrase “health freedom.” In both cases it means “the freedom for the public to be deliberately mislead by pseudo-scientists who are not held accountable to the scientific process, the scientific community, or the consumers they exploit.” Caveat emptor
To recap, we have at least:
Theory:
1. Theory of Evolution, Theory of Relativity, Electromagnetic Theory: well supported, well accepted complex of observations and explanatory principles regarding a particular set of phenomena within a particular domain.
2. Radioactive Beach Theory: A use where ‘Hypothesis’ is probably a better fit, but it’s just a word, and nobody gets kicked out of Science for using it ‘wrong’. It’s not necessarily the case that the name for some scientific idea actually goes through a well defined transition from “Hypothesis” to “Theory”. Sometimes something just sticks. It’s especially difficult to control how something might be picked up in the press or the public imagination.
3. Caloric Theory, Ether Theory of Light, Theory of Spontaneous Generation, Flat Earth Theory: Something like 1., but obsolete or disproven. Depending on age and provenance ‘well supported’ might have never really applied. Continued support by various fanatics is pseudoscience.
4. Newtonian Theory of Gravity: A lot like 1., but superseded by a more refined or complete theory. Unlike 3., still valid and useful within well understood limits.
5. Set Theory, Ring Theory, Measure Theory: a branch of mathematics: a complex of interrelated concepts, axioms, and theorems.
6. “my theory is the cat ate it”: Conversational use ranging from something roughly synonymous with ‘guess’, to something like “the prosecution’s theory of the crime”, which is hopefully rather more like 1., or at least 2. (Note again that nobody gets kicked out of Science for using the word when they really mean guess or hypothesis. Even in print.)
7. String Theory: Heavily mathematical theoretical physics use that looks an awful lot like 5., but may shade into 1. as experimental results winnow down the pretty mathematical constructs and turn them into something more firmly connected to the real world.
Usually the context makes the intent pretty clear, and if you have any idea about what’s going on, the concepts will not obscured by a single word. There’s really no problem with all the mixed uses.
Unless you’re a creationist: either genuinely confused because you stuck Jack Chick tracts inside your science textbook while you were supposed to be reading in class, or because you’re a liar trying to cloud the air with misuse of language.
Denning, #63:
Refreshing to hear a comment by someone so engaged with advancing the civilization.
gg, #64:
Agreed. And perhaps also, the more time we spend fuming at creationists, the less time we spend engaging the entrenched, massive, sluggish and dismally ineffective system of science ed.
Related to this, can I do a little poll? How many of you learned in school that while nearly all the dots of light in the night sky follow a fairly uniform year-to-year pattern of nightly trajectories, a few exceptional dots follow squirrely paths, and, that this was the main clue that allowed the advance from Ptolemy’s system to Copernicus’?
@ The Physicist (and sorry for the poorly edited previous post).
The best example of from hypothesis to theory that immediately comes to my mind is the hypothesis of Continental Drift (CD) proposed by Alfred Wegener. He proposed CD based upon the observation that the continents, South America and Africa in particular, ‘fit together.’ He spent much of his life looking for evidence to support his view which was not accepted during his lifetime. In particular, P.J. Darlington rejected it in his classic work on Zoogeography. CD was ultimately subsumed within the theory of plate tectonics but is still referred to as the theory of Continental Drift. I will have to go back to the text and check if Wegener actually used the term hypothesis.
In the case of outstanding scientists, the theory of Island Biogeography was independently shepherded from conception to published mathematical theory twice within the 20th century. The well known MacArthur and Wilson version which, with much supporting evidence, appears to have started with Ernst Mayrs taxonomic work on the kingfishers of Micronesia. The lesser known but prior published version was in the Ph.D. Dissertation of Eugene Munroe who was looking at Pyralid [now Crambid] moths of the West Indies. Again, from conception to mathematical treatment.
This is so good, that I only have one adequate response:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!
I dunno. I’ve been giving the creationists (at least those that appear to be aware of the mechanisms for evolution and wish to alter public opinion for their own gain) the benefit of the doubt and just figured they were evil liars.
Now it would seem they are just stupid liars.
Sheesh. To think they are given millions of dollars with which to lie about something. What a waste of everyone’s time and energy their very lives have become. Even the life of a rat or a fly has more significance any purpose if any must be attributed.
It seems to me that, if creationists want cause confusion over meaning of the word ‘theory’, we should just let them get on with it and start using a term that more accurately describes what evolution is.
The Process of Evolution?
The simplest clarification is: The FACT of evolution and the scientific theory of Natural selection.
I am just a simple EE, but what I was taught in science class way back in High School, is that what people call a theory colloquially is typically a hypothesis in science. That is, the layman may say “my theory is that an object willl fall at the same rate independant of its mass”, but this is really a hypothesis derived from the theory of gravity. That hypotheses are the “guesses” dervived from theories that test the validity of the theory. For example, the periodic table of the elements. By arranging the elements, Mendeleev was essentially proposing a theory of chemical behavior. There were elements missing from his original table, but based on the theory hypothesized their chemical attributes. This gave a way to search for those elements and test whether they fit the theory.
So, I think that it may be possible to construe the PToE as a hypothesis at first, but I would prefer to call it a “proposed theory” or just “theory”. The point being that all theories are really only provisional and it is by forming and testing hypotheses within that theory that the theory gains validity. In a sense, then, I guess I’m sayinf that even though theories may be “hyp[othetical”, the difference is one of scope. A theory is an entire framework to explain a range of phenomena, while a hypothesis is essentially a single question that can be asked about that phenomena.
And then there are “laws”, which I believe are not superior to “theories” but are simply the equations that compose a theory (e.g. Ohm’s Law is just one equation composing electromagnetic theory). So this whole idea that a hypothesis becomes a theory becomes a law is a misunderstanding of the terms. They do not represent a “heirarchy of truthfullness” (hypothesis = guess, theory = “really good guess” and law = “truth”]. No, they are instead different, related, components of “Science”.
Academic freedom! Yes!
So, todays agenda:
English: Esperanto: English Plus!
Math:Pythagoras and Why the Square root of Two is Evil
Social Studies: The Full Moon and Crime
Physics: Phlogiston and Ether: a deadly combination!
Art: Idolatry and You: Make patterns not heresy!
To be clear (I hope), I do agree with that this would be the ideal.
Reasonably, a hypothesis may be restricted to a single prediction, while a new theory must predict all what the old theory did and something different or new. And an existing theory may be shown to be wrong, incomplete, or approximate, et cetera, regardless of earlier status.
The problem is that scientists, while often very aware of the status of their work, may be less than coherent in their naming.
A good example, over a longer history, would be the characterization of laws. Earlier it would be fundamentals of an area, say the more or less disjointed postulates (axioms) of Newton mechanics. Today such formal systems are often more coherent (as we know more), so the postulates of say quantum mechanics aren’t considered laws as such.
But observational universals have remained to be considered more or less “laws”, such as the uncertainty principle.
To be clear (I hope), I do agree with that this would be the ideal.
Reasonably, a hypothesis may be restricted to a single prediction, while a new theory must predict all what the old theory did and something different or new. And an existing theory may be shown to be wrong, incomplete, or approximate, et cetera, regardless of earlier status.
The problem is that scientists, while often very aware of the status of their work, may be less than coherent in their naming.
A good example, over a longer history, would be the characterization of laws. Earlier it would be fundamentals of an area, say the more or less disjointed postulates (axioms) of Newton mechanics. Today such formal systems are often more coherent (as we know more), so the postulates of say quantum mechanics aren’t considered laws as such.
But observational universals have remained to be considered more or less “laws”, such as the uncertainty principle.
In a Reuters story reporting on the action taken by the Florida State Board of Education, both the author & the editor of the piece apparently passed over what can only be called one of those incredibly dumfounding remarks that make you wonder whether editors even read what is put in front of them. A “YIKES!” Award to author Michael Peltier and a “Holy Crap” award to story editor Jane Sutton.
Emphasis is mine. Yes, the story really says that. If Peltier was trying to be cute or ironic, he should be ashamed of himself. If Sutton noticed the phrase and passed it as acceptable, she should be flogged.
Either way…. holy crap!
In all senses of the phrase.
@ Mothra: At some point when I have time I’ll look more into the history of continental drift to see what terms were used. The island biogeography example is interesting too. I’m sure there are times when people are faced with a puzzle, have a couple of hypotheses that might help explain some of it, but wouldn’t want to say that they have a “theory” until most of the pieces fall into place. A theory should have broad explanatory scope, and should be coherent. But I’m getting more and more convinced that empirical support really isn’t an important part of deciding whether something deserves to be called a ‘theory.’
@ Torbjörn Larsson: That sounds right to me.
@Fortunalee: Holy Crap, indeed!