Friday, January 28, 2005
Playing in the back seat
It should come as no surprise that intelligent design proponents who passed notes or slept through their high school science classes -- got their first, and most vivid, introduction to biology in the back seat of a car -- should still be a bit fuzzy about the difference between fact and theory.
Although science educators have been explaining the difference for years, the notion that a theory -- such as the theory of evolution -- is somehow less certain than a fact keeps coming up at school board meeting across the country.
So here, once again, for ID proponents who were playing in the back seat while Sam Cooke was playing in the front, are the definitions from the National Academy of Sciences:
Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.
Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as "true." Truth in science, however, is never final, and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow.
Although science educators have been explaining the difference for years, the notion that a theory -- such as the theory of evolution -- is somehow less certain than a fact keeps coming up at school board meeting across the country.
So here, once again, for ID proponents who were playing in the back seat while Sam Cooke was playing in the front, are the definitions from the National Academy of Sciences:
Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.
Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as "true." Truth in science, however, is never final, and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow.
