I disagree with the web page, though I think they have a number of good points. A 'theory' is an overarching explanation. It doesn't just explain a single observation, but many different kinds of observations. The theory of gravity (despite the fact that according to Feynamn we have no mechanism for it) has immense explanatory power. It tells us why and how objects fall to Earth, what trajectory a projectile will take, how satellites can orbit planets, and how celestial objects from planets to things unimaginably bigger than mere planets orbit each other. Now *thats* a theory.


Evolution is comparable in scope, and Darwinian selection is one component of that. It tells us how every life form on Earth that ever existed is related - as a friend of mine once noted "that everything on life today is descended from the same life form." It explains a fossil record that extends back at least a billion years; it explains the existing diversity of life; why some humans are born with bony tails, and some whales are born with legs; why many things that look related physically are closely related genetically - even in baggage genes that so far as we know don't do anything. It also relates cosmic, geological, and biological evolution.

Not only are these theories, but they are "scientific theories" for the reasons pointed out in another thread - it's components are falsifiable.

However, there are some problems in terminology and one of the biggest tools of the creationists was (and is) to play on the general public ignorance about the difference between the scientific meaning of a word and the common definition of it. It's like trying to prove a mathematical theorem using the lay person's understanding of "only if."

Thought experiment: ask a random lay person how to accelerate his car and he will give you a strange stare and if he bothers to answer such a stupid question at all with anything other than a glare and a snide remark, he will look at you as if you're retarded and say, "You step on the gas." If he is familiar with algebra, he might recognize that a deceleration is just a negative acceleration and that therefore one might also step on the brake. A smartass might give clever answers like smashing into a wall or shifting weight or the like. But an engineer will say, in addition to those other answers, that a person can turn the wheel, even if he maintains the same speed. This is because acceleration is not just a change in speed - it's a change in velocity, and being a vector, velocity has two components, a direction and a speed. So a change in direction even at a constant speed, is an acceleration.


What does "order" mean? It means different things to a waitress, a lawyer, an artist, and a thermodynamicist. Take two identical bags of electron-marbles and from the marbles in one of the bags arrange them into a picture of the mona lisa and in the other glob them together into a mass. Which has greater order? Wild guess - the artist and the thermodynamicist would not give the same answer.


k