Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
..the word theory in particular.
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One thing that really "grinds my gears" is when someone attempts to discredit any scientific theory (but Evolution in particular) by saying "But it's
only a theory".
A theory is
SO much more than a mere conjecture - it requires a sound theoretical basis, conformance to and consistency with all of the observational and experimental data, and as I said in my previous post, the ability to make predictions which distinguish it from all the other theories.
The best scientific experiments are specifically designed to filter out the competing theories, to progressively build a better and more complete model of what is actually going on. If Theory A predicts "this" and Theory B predicts "that", then a well-designed experiment will test the two predictions to reveal either Theory A or Theory B to fit the data, or perhaps both may be found wanting, in which case we go back to the drawing board and amend our theories and devise new predictions and experiments to test them.
It is a truism that Science cannot prove anything to be "true", but it can demonstrate that something is false (or perhaps "incomplete").
Sometimes, scientific theories lead to predictions which cannot be tested (yet) due to the limitations of our observational / experimental capabilities - hypotheses about multi-verses, and what is "out there" beyond our "observable universe" etc spring to mind. This does not mean that such theories are not "Science", but we may have to "park" them for a while (perhaps forever?) until we think of a way of actually testing them. Indeed, it is entirely possible that there are some things which are "true" but are not provable or testable. (Read up on "Gödel's incompleteness theorems" - it is bound to "do your head in" if you haven't come across them before!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6...eness_theorems )
Any "theory" which cannot make any testable predictions (testable in theory, if not always in practice) is not "Science", and has no place sharing time in our Science curriculum. So-called "Intelligent Design" is a case in point. Saying that
"life is simply too complex to have evolved by chance, so there MUST be an Intelligent Designer behind it all" fails to ask any questions or provoke new thought or experimentation. Darwinian Evolution, on the other hand, explains how complexity can arise from simple beginnings, and indeed makes predictions about intermediate life forms which must have existed, and we do indeed find them when we know what we are looking for, and where we should look (also explained by the theory).