Only a Theory


"Intelligent Design" proponents love to point out that Evolution is "only a theory." So is everything else in science.

School officials in Cobb County, Georgia adopted a "disclaimer " (or you might term it a "warning sticker") on biology textbooks in 2002. The disclaimer states: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

Why just evolution? Why not disclaimers for every scientific theory? Perhaps physics textbooks should come with a sticker that says "This textbook contains material on Quantum Mechanics. Quantum Mechanics is a theory, not a fact, regarding the behavior of subatomic particles. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

Or perhaps astronomy texts? "This textbook contains material on stellar evolution. Stellar Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin and development of stars. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

Or maybe economics textbooks: "This textbook contains material on purchasing parity. Purchasing parity is a theory, not a fact, regarding the relative value of national currencies. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."

I'm wiling to state for a fact that the purpose of this disclaimer in biology textbooks has nothing to do with fostering a spirit of free inquiry and open-mindedness. Science is littered with theories (string theory, relativity, information theory, supersymmetry, games theory, the Big Bang theory, genetics, number theory, plate tectonics, etc. etc. etc.), many of which are far less well-established than evolution. But I don't see any move from local school boards to point out to students that these other theories are "merely" theories.

The authors of this "disclaimer" don't understand the distinction between a "theory' and a "fact." A "Theory" isn't just something that hasn't been proven yet. The theory of relativity has been so extensively proven by experiment that there are no serious challenges to its validity. But it doesn't become the "fact of relativity." The same is true of Evolutionary Theory.

A "fact" is some simple, obvious piece of data. The sun rises in the east. The moon is a satellite of the earth. A liter of distilled water has a mass of one kilogram at standard temperature and pressure. A "theory" is a complex body of knowledge of explicative power which has substantial evidence to support it and none to contradict it—at least so far. Superstring theory is considered a theory, even though it hasn't been proven yet. It may well be disproved some day, at which point it will no longer be considered a theory.

"Truth," in science, is always contingent. Theories, in general, can never be "proven" to be true, but they can often be "proven" to be false. This is the fundamental distinction between science and religion: falsafiability. Evolutionary theory could at least in principle be proved to be false. How would one go about "proving" that "Intelligent Design" (i.e., that God makes organisms evolve) is false? Articles of faith cannot be proved or disproved, even in principle.

Also, let's state for the record that "Evolution" is a fact. No reputable biologist disputes this. Even a lay person with no credentials other than an open mind is aware that dinosaurs once walked the earth when there were no humans, and now humans walk the earth but there are no dinosaurs. There is controversy in the scientific community as to the mechanisms of evolution, but none to the fact of evolution. It is true that evolutionary theory is a theory, but evolution itself is a fact, and no biologist doubts it.

So what is going on in Georgia? It's pretty obvious that the parents there who insisted on the inclusion of this "disclaimer" in biology textbooks aren't remotely interested in investigating evolutionary theory "with an open mind." They are interested in providing equal time in a science class for an utterly unscientific body of belief (which cannot honestly be described as a "theory") claiming that evolution doesn't just happen; rather, God interferes in a more-or-less continuous fashion in directing the evolution of living organisms. "Intelligent Design" has no predictive powers, cannot be used to develop explanations for how one species developed from a previous species, and cannot be used to investigate the nature of diseases, interactions among various populations of organisms in the environment, and in fact basically can be boiled down to one sentence: "Life is the way it is because God made it that way."

How helpful is that?

America is falling far enough behind in the sciences as it is. We don't need these kinds of sand traps for America's future scientists.


Posted: Wed - November 10, 2004 at 12:05 PM          

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