By: Shelby Sherman
To: Jesse Hornbacher
Re: Evolution etc  3

29 May 94 12:07, Jesse Hornbacher wrote to Fredric Rice:

 JH> Evolution is not an observed fact.  The theory is to explain how
 JH> everything got here.

                    EVOLUTION AS A FACT AND A THEORY
                     version 2.1 (January 22, 1993)

When non-biologists talk about biological evolution they often confuse
two different aspects of the definition. On the one hand there is the
question of whether or not modern organisms have evolved from older
ancestral organisms or whether modern species are continuing to change
over time. On the other hand there are questions about the mechanism of
the observed changes... how did evolution occur? Biologists consider
the existence of biological evolution to be a FACT. It can be demonstrated
today and the historical evidence for it's occurrence in the past is
overwhelming. However, biologists readily admit that they are less
certain of the exact MECHANISM of evolution; there are several THEORIES
of the mechanism of evolution.

Stephan J. Gould has put this as well as anyone else,

     "In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect
     fact" - part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill
     from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power
     of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory
     and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory.
     If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even
     make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can
     we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument
     before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what
     I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): 'Well, it is a theory.
     It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years
     been challenged in the world of science - that is, not believed
     in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was.'

     Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and
     theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of
     increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories
     are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.
     Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to
     explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's
     in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair,
     pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors
     whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some
     other yet to be discovered.

     Moreover, 'fact' doesn't mean 'absolute certainty'; there ain't
     no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs
     of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and
     achieve certainty only because they are NOT about the empirical
     world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though
     creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of
     argument that they themselves favor). In science 'fact' can only
     mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to
     withhold provisional consent'. I suppose that apples might start
     to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in
     physics classrooms.

     Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact
     and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always
     acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the
     mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin
     continually emphasized the difference between his two great and
     separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and
     proposing a theory - natural selection - to explain the mechanism
     of evolution."

     Stephen J. Gould "Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981