the FoE - Fact of Evolution

[Iasion]

Gday,

is there a law of gravity?
I'm pretty sure I've heard that expression.

Yes, there IS a "law of gravity" (the inverse square law) which covers one tiny factor about gravity.

But the the "Law of Gravity" did NOT get elevated from a "theory of gravity". That is not how it works at all - there are still 2 theories of gravity, they will never become laws.

The main point is this :
Theories are not elevated to laws when they are "proven".
That is just NOT how it works.

(For anyone who DOES think that, I ask you : name one theory that was elevated to a law - when was it elevated ? who elevated it ?)


Perhaps you have confused the two meanings of the word theory, UV ?


THEORY has 2 meanings

In popular terms, "theory" means a guess, or speculation. Thus the common phrase "just a theory" meaning "just speculation".

But,
in scientific terms, there is another, different, meaning to the word "theory" - it means an EXPLANATION.


Theories EXPLAIN facts

Theories explain the facts we observe :

Gravity is a fact, we observe its effects.
Gravitational Theory describes how gravity works.

Electricity is a fact, we use it everyday.
Electromagnetic Theory explains the details of how it operates.

Germs are a fact.
Germ Theory explains how they cause disease.

Evolution is a fact, it is observed.
The Theory of Evolution explains how it works.


the ToE is an EXPLANATION, NOT speculation

The Theory of Evolution is NOT "speculation about evolution" - that is NOT what the phrase means at all. (The theory of evolution is NOT waiting for "proof" so it can be elevated to "the law of evolution".)

Rather -
the Theory of Evolution is the EXPLANATION for how evolution works, it models the behaviour of the FACTS of evolution, and allows predictions to be made.

Just as Electromagnetic Theory is the explanation or model of how electricity works.
Would one say "electricity is just a theory" ?
Of course not.

And Gravitational Theory is the explanation or model of how gravity works.
Would one say "gravity is just a theory" ?
Of course not.

And Germ Theory is the explanation or model of how germs cause disease.
Would one say "germs are just a theory" ?
Of course not.


Yet
some people say "evolution is (just) a theory"
as if it means "evolution is merely untested speculation" (false)


EVOLUTION = FACT & THEORY

Evolution is a FACT.
We observe evolution.
And,
the Theory of Evolution is the EXPLANATION, or model, for the observed facts of evolution.


Iasion

 

[KnightOwl]

Yes, there IS a "law of gravity" (the inverse square law) which covers one tiny factor about gravity.

Actually if I recall correctly from Hawking's "A Brief History of Time," the inverse square law of gravity to which you refer and I believe is also known as Newton's law isn't really precisely accurate and Relativity changed that but we still use it for practical purposes 99.9% of the time because it is accurate enough for almost every application.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

Gday,



Why do you insist on using the phrase "ToE" every time, even after my post ?

Are you a creationist too?


Iasion

Because that's what it is. It's the Theory of Evolution. The ToE is both fact and theory...(scientifically speaking).

To answer the last question.....NO....You obviously have not paid attention to the symbol as well as my signature below......(and I don't mean that in a bad way)....You may have just overlooked it is all....

 

[camanintx]

what elevates a theory to a law?

"the Law of Evolution" LoE
(or whatever qualifies as scientific law)

just wondering

Facts are things that we can observe. For example, organisms evolve. Things fall.

Scientific theories are explanations for those facts. Organisms evolve through the process of random mutations and natural selection. Things fall because of the gravitational attraction between masses.

Scientific laws are concise statements (usually mathematical) describing the relationship between elements of the process. The Law of Independent Assortment, also known as "Inheritance Law" states that alleles of different genes assort independently of one another during gamete formation. Newton's law of universal gravitation states that every point mass in the universe attracts every other point mass with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

 

[newhope101]

Oh your post was hilarious. Thanks for the laugh first thing in the morning.


These results show that slight changes in the control regions of genes lead to slight changes in the organism, and accumulation of such small differences may result in the creation of a new species. While this is widely accepted by evolutionary biologists, actual examples directly linking small changes in regulatory parts of genes to morphological differences have been scarce. While it may not be possible to swap regulatory sequences to turn a man into a banana, or even into a mouse, examination of these sequences may tell us how different organisms evolved.
What's The Difference Between Mice And Men?


The more I learn about your evolutionary hypothesis the more I realise your researchers have no clue and are graspping at straws.

The fact that evos speak to is they believe all life evolved some how from something else. This does not change. Everything else does so all you actually have is a wish list and flavour of the year to provide as irrefuteable evidence prior to being designated to the garbage bin of delusionary evidence past eg knuckle walking ancestry, LUCA, bird ancestry, hippo ancestry, brain size connections to bipedalism etc etc.

TOE is a theory and a sad one at that.

So this evo below reckons the human/chimp split was only 4myo.....

Primate evolution is a central topic in biology and much information can be obtained from DNA sequence data. A key parameter is the time “when we became human,” i.e., the time in the past when descendents of the human–chimp ancestor split into human and chimpanzee. Other important parameters are the time in the past when descendents of the human–chimp–gorilla ancestor split into descendents of the human–chimp ancestor and the gorilla ancestor, and population sizes of the human–chimp and human–chimp–gorilla ancestors. To estimate speciation times and ancestral population sizes we have developed a new methodology that explicitly utilizes the spatial information in contiguous genome alignments. Furthermore, we have applied this methodology to four long autosomal human–chimp–gorilla–orangutan alignments and estimated a very recent speciation time of human and chimp (around 4 million years) and ancestral population sizes much larger than the present-day human effective population size. We also analyzed X-chromosome sequence data and found that the X chromosome has experienced a different history from that of autosomes, possibly because of selection.
PLoS Genetics: Genomic Relationships and Speciation Times of Human, Chimpanzee, and Gorilla Inferred from a Coalescent Hidden Markov Model


This evo below reckons life is 10 billion years old and predates the formation of the earth.
Genome increase as a clock for the origin and evolution of life


Maybe chimps evolved on another planet, advanced, came to earth in a space ship 4mya, genetically engineered humans as pets by crossing themselves with some other life form, and then degenerated. We are now the dominant degenerate ape cross on our way to devolution ourselves......just another theory as good as any I reckon.


Gee..the good thing about TOE is there are so many options to choose from, I reckon you guys could prove a teletubby is an ancestor....truly incredible science.

 

[AfterGlow]

Gee..the good thing about TOE is there are so many options to choose from

So many options to choose from, yet only one that correlates with the evidence in front of your eyes. It's your loss that you choose not to accept what you see, and trying to convince others that wandering in the dark is actually the path to truth won't help you any.
I hope for your sake that one day you'll read these old posts and realise just how silly you've been.

 

[camanintx]

So this evo below reckons the human/chimp split was only 4myo.....

This evo below reckons life is 10 billion years old and predates the formation of the earth.

And yet both accept that life evolved.

If Genesis is such an accurate account of creation as you claim, how come seed bearing plants (created on the 3rd day) don't appear in the fossil record until over 100 million years after fish (created on the 5th day)?

 

[Skwim]

You shouldn't use fact, fact isn't scientific terminology, you'd have it held against you if you used the word fact in a scientific paper.

If Dick, Carl, Steve, and Al can use "fact" I feel more than comfortable using it.

Richard Dawkins: Scientist
"while it is inevitably true that there are incompletenesses in evolutionary science, the positive evidence for the fact of evolution is truly massive, made up of hundreds of thousands of mutually corroborating observations.

The weight of the evidence has become so heavy that opposition to the fact of evolution is laughable to all who are acquainted with even a fraction of the published data. Evolution is a fact: as much a fact as plate tectonics or the heliocentric solar system.
source


Carl Sagan: Scientist
"Evolution is a fact, not a theory,"
Source: Carl Sagan, "Cosmos," Random House, Page 27.


Stephen Hawking: Scientist
This means that the initial state of the universe would have to have had exactly the same temperature everywhere in order to account for the fact that the microwave back-ground has the same temperature in every direction we look.
source


Albert Einstein: Scientist
Experiments on interference made with particle rays have given brilliant proof that the wave character of the phenomena of motion as assumed by the theory does, really, correspond to the facts. ( 1954)

The de Broglie-Schrodinger method, which has in a certain sense the character of a field theory, does indeed deduce the existence of only discrete states, in surprising agreement with empirical facts. ( 1954)
source

 

[tumbleweed41]

Facts are facts.
Scientific Laws state obvious and simple concise facts.
Scientific Theories are complex explanations of facts.

Biological Evolution is a fact.
The Theory of Evolution explains the complex and varied mechanisms of Biological Evolution.

Theories do not become Laws, they are two very different things.

 

[painted wolf]

UV- Laws are reserved for pure mathematics.

Thus this part of gravity is a "Law":

This is essentially "all things pull on each other, but bigger things win"

But the rest is the "theory" of Gravity... and can never be a "law" because it also deals with quantum mechanics as well as the classical Newtonian mechanics.

Biology is a bit trickier to sum up in a single mathematical formula. Not that evolution doesn't have a lot of math backing it up... but there is no single formula that can sum it up.

Basically to sum up...

A "law" is a simple formula that can explain a part of a natural system. (ie. things fall)
A "theory" is a complex body of formulas that explain the entirety of a natural system. (ie. how gravitation works universally)

I hope this helps. It's a tough distinction to explain sometimes, I hope I didn't bugger it up for you.

wa:do

ps... evolution does have some "laws" like "Dollo's Law"... but again, these sum up aspects of the theory not the entirety.

 

[outhouse]

ps... evolution does have some "laws" like "Dollo's Law"... but again, these sum up aspects of the theory not the entirety.

despite laws not fitting evolutions descriptions, another problem with laws are the exceptions that come with many of them.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

is there a law of gravity?
I'm pretty sure I've heard that expression.
or it means the same thing as theory of gravity?

In science, laws are expressions of universal constants. There is a law of gravity, but the explanation of that law is the theory of gravity. Hence, theories never become laws, since there are entirely different things. Theories remain theories, facts remain facts.

 

[outhouse]

I do understand OP's point

evolution should be described differently as to show that its solid and not up for debate at all. If I follow OP right he wants to keep creationist foot comepletely out of the door and shut them down by name alone.

I think its a valid thought despite sience just ignoring creation.

 

[Alceste]

I do understand OP's point

evolution should be described differently as to show that its solid and not up for debate at all. If I follow OP right he wants to keep creationist foot comepletely out of the door and shut them down by name alone.

I think its a valid thought despite sience just ignoring creation.

I take it more this way: using the word "theory" creates unnecessary confusion, so it would be better to simply describe the phenomena we observe in the field of biology as "evolution".

 

[outhouse]

I take it more this way: using the word "theory" creates unnecessary confusion, so it would be better to simply describe the phenomena we observe in the field of biology as "evolution".

unnecessary confusion is certainly the key word.

 

[Iasion]

Gday,

Because that's what it is. It's the Theory of Evolution. The ToE is both fact and theory...(scientifically speaking).

So it's BOTH.

But you always pick the one that plays into the hands of creationists.


Iasion

 

[Iasion]

Gday,

I do understand OP's point
evolution should be described differently as to show that its solid and not up for debate at all. If I follow OP right he wants to keep creationist foot comepletely out of the door and shut them down by name alone.
I think its a valid thought despite sience just ignoring creation.

Yup, thanks

When discussing falling - no-one talks about ToG - we just say "gravity'.

When discussing disease, we don't insist on referring to the Theory of Germs - they are just "germs".

When discussing microscopic particles - it's not about the ToA - it's just about "atoms".

But when it comes to evolution - ah no !

THEN - it's different, and we see many people insist on always adding the word "theory", or saying "ToE".

A habit which opens the gate for those who do not understand the meaning of "theory" (and they are legion) and thus confirming their mistaken opinion that is "just a theory" meaning "merely un-tested speculation". Which is not correct, but tragically believed by many creationists.


Iasion

 

[Alceste]

Gday,



Yup, thanks

When discussing falling - no-one talks about ToG - we just say "gravity'.

When discussing disease, we don't insist on referring to the Theory of Germs - they are just "germs".

When discussing microscopic particles - it's not about the ToA - it's just about "atoms".

But when it comes to evolution - ah no !

THEN - it's different, and we see many people insist on always adding the word "theory", or saying "ToE".

A habit which opens the gate for those who do not understand the meaning of "theory" (and they are legion) and thus confirming their mistaken opinion that is "just a theory" meaning "merely un-tested speculation". Which is not correct, but tragically believed by many creationists.


Iasion

In fairness, whether it is most accurate to say "evolution" or " the theory of evolution" depends on the context. Gravity is not so different, (except for the fact that the theory of gravity is relatively weak compared to the theory of evolution).

 

[blackout]

UV- Laws are reserved for pure mathematics.

Thus this part of gravity is a "Law":

This is essentially "all things pull on each other, but bigger things win"

But the rest is the "theory" of Gravity... and can never be a "law" because it also deals with quantum mechanics as well as the classical Newtonian mechanics.

Biology is a bit trickier to sum up in a single mathematical formula. Not that evolution doesn't have a lot of math backing it up... but there is no single formula that can sum it up.

Basically to sum up...

A "law" is a simple formula that can explain a part of a natural system. (ie. things fall)
A "theory" is a complex body of formulas that explain the entirety of a natural system. (ie. how gravitation works universally)

I hope this helps. It's a tough distinction to explain sometimes, I hope I didn't bugger it up for you.

wa:do

ps... evolution does have some "laws" like "Dollo's Law"... but again, these sum up aspects of the theory not the entirety.

PW,

Nope, it was a very comprehensive explanation.
I'm pretty sure I get the idea now.

Wa:do!

 

[AfterGlow]

If Dick, Carl, Steve, and Al can use "fact" I feel more than comfortable using it.

I'd probably use it too if I were writing a book or article in layman's terms. But the fact is () it's a sloppy, inaccurate word to use for describing empirical observations.