Re: [asa] Theory of gravity

One way that I have put it to my science students is that a law is like
a theory that has withstood the tests of time; which is not the same as
calling something "proven" (a term more apropos to mathematics than
science), but it just shows the highest degree of confidence that
science confers by means of a label. This is more simplistic than the
nuances into which you delve below. But I would venture that those who
want to refer to the "law" of evolution (and I have heard this
expressed), do so with more political / metaphysical motivation than
other more purely scientific motives. Scientists themselves, I think,
are not so caught up in these attempts at hard categorization because
they are aware of the constant flux between those two concepts as you
allude to. And the "only a theory" retort against evolution also
betrays a lack of awareness about that same flux, and how highly
regarded a "theory" can actually be.

--Merv

The enlightenment ego, the one that put the capital 'S' in science, has
become an arms race to put every other metaphysic under the microscope
while trying to preserve for itself the privileged position of hovering
over the eyepiece. --merv

Jon Tandy wrote:
> Having now finally watched the rest of the PBS special on the Dover
> trial, I have a few questions. I'll just start with one for now.
>
> I recall it being mentioned that the "theory of gravity" is the same
> as the "theory of evolution" -- both are tentative and could
> potentially be disproved, although both have substantially large
> bodies of evidence in support of them. I thought that was a good
> argument at the time, but later I imagined that someone will criticize
> that argument on the grounds that Newton's "laws" are no longer
> considered scientific theory but laws. As an example of the confusion
> of terms, Wikipedia's article "Newton's law of universal gravitation"
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%E2%80%99s_law_of_gravitation)
> starts with the statement: "Isaac Newton's THEORY of universal
> gravitation is a physical LAW describing the gravitational attraction
> between bodies with mass."
>
> As someone with a fair amount of education in science, I realized I
> didn't have a completely solid grasp of the difference between a law
> and a theory. My first thought was a law is more sufficiently proven
> or demonstrated than a theory. However, on reflection, I think a
> better explanation is that a scientific law attempts to describe an
> observation in nature with empirically derived analytical
> formulas, while a scientific theory attempts to explain the
> observations (causes, etc.). So is gravity a law or a theory? If I'm
> not mistaken, it's both. The law of gravity (Newton's generalization,
> now superceded by Einstein's equations) is given by F=G(m1*m2)/r^2.
> This is empirically derived and demonstrable (again, with
> qualification by Einstein in special cases). However, the theory of
> gravity seeks explanation by proposing the source of the force of
> gravity, such as gravitons, etc., which is still in the theoretical
> stages, with various alternative proposals. Is this a fair
> assessment? Is it true that gravitation, or at least some aspect of
> it, is still "only a theory" (to use derogatory YEC-speak)?
>
> The "theory of evolution" attempts to explain the mechanisms of
> observed phenemona. It's clear that this is still a theory in flux,
> with new discoveries such as lateral gene transfer, DNA replication
> errors, etc., contributing to biological development in ways not
> completely understood. But if a "scientific law" describes
> observations in nature, at what point could the observations of
> evolutionary inheritance be called a "law"? Could there come a point
> where certain observations or mechanisms of biological evolution could
> become quantified to an extent like Newton's formula for the law of
> gravity? Is it there yet? I don't know of anyone using the
> terminology "law of evolution" on either side of the debate, although
> there was something (either in the program or in a forum discussion on
> our local PBS station after the program), where the assertion was made
> by ID advocates that "evolution is not the 'law of evolution', but
> only the 'theory of evolution' ".
>
>
> Jon Tandy
>

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Received on Wed Nov 21 08:20:46 2007