Scientific Theories Imply Facts

Recently, I had a couple of people tell me that they don't believe in science because they think that science is "just theory".  This seems to be a misconception about science that runs deep in our society and it's a serious problem.  It seems science gets attacked from all quarters.  Christian Extremists disbelieve in evolution because they think it's "just a theory".  New Agers criticize science as "not having all the answers".  I recently got in a political discussion with someone in which I brought up some new developments in biology and was surprised that this person simply replied, "but that's biology," as if this person thought saying that alone would suffice as a counter-argument.

This issue gets muddled with issues like alternative medicine.  A typical pro-science, but anti-corporate argument I've heard is that there are good, scientifically proven, medical therapies that do not involve medications and that the pharmaceutical corporations squash them, because it would mean less money in pharmaceuticals.  However, I've also heard people make an anti-science but not-necessarily-anti-corporate argument that people should use alternative therapies that have not been scientifically proven instead of scientifically proven therapies.  I say "not-necessarily-anti-corporate", because there's nothing to stop big corporations from mass producing alternative therapies.  That is, alternative therapies aren't necessarily anti-corporate.

But, I digress.  This blog is not meant to be about alternative medicine, but simply to point out that there seems to be a prevailing anti-science attitude in just about all socio-political quarters of the American mileu that I can think of.

So, I'd like to clear something up about the term "theory" as scientists use it.  In science, there is a distinction between theory and hypothesis.  A hypothesis is something that a scientist proposes might be true and then designs a controlled experiment to prove or disprove.  Even after a hypothesis seems to have been proven by an experiment, the experiment and results are published in the scientific community so that other scientists all over the world can attempt to reproduce the experiment.  If there is a worldwide consensus among scientists that the experiment yields consistent results and that it does indeed prove that the hypothesis is true, we have a scientific fact.

However, facts don't automatically come with explanations for why they're true.  All scientists know about scientific facts is that they're true, not why they're true.  The experiment only proved the fact, it didn't necessarily explain it.  A very simple example of this is that Galileo proved that light and heavy objects fall at the same speed by dropping objects of different masses off of a tower and noticing that they hit the ground at the same time.  This did not explain why this was so.  It only proved that it was so.  (I myself remember reproducing this experiment in Sixth Grade science by rolling balls of different masses down a ramp.)

A theory, in science, is a proposed explanation for a fact.  It differs from a hypothesis in several ways.  First, while a hypothesis proposes something that might be a fact, a theory explains something that we already know to be a fact.  Secondly, a hypothesis does not imply a fact, but a theory does.  Wherever there's a scientific theory, there's a scientific fact, because saying that something's a theory in science implies that there's a fact to explain.

This is the case with evolution.  There is both a fact and a theory of evolution.  It's a scientific fact that living organisms evolve over time.  Darwin's theory to explain this is the Theory of Natural Selection.  Although I'm no biologist, from what I understand, this theory has been shown by biologists to be mostly true.  The only difference between modern biological theories of evolution and Darwin's is that modern biologists have now discovered that genetic mutation plays a minor role along side natural selection in the evolutionary process.

While we're on the subject of Darwinism, I'd like to point out that Social Darwinism is a pseudo-science.  Since it actually cropped up in Charles Darwin's day, Darwin himself was against it. (I learned this from Steven Pinker's book "The Blank Slate".)  Social Darwinism is a pseudo-science for several reasons.  First, because human beings are a social species and, as such, cooperation is one of our stronger evolutionary traits.  Second, Social Darwinism mistakenly assumes that anything that's best for survival is an evolutionary trait and that, therefore, anyone who's better at survival must be more highly evolved (also, there's really no such thing as being more or less "highly" evolved, since evolution is not intelligent and lacks any particular goal).

A counter-example to this is that a peacock's huge tail makes it difficult to flee predators, but it makes it attractive to peahens (I should note that the term "peacock" always refers to the male of the species, the female is a peahen and the species is peafowl) and all it has to do to pass its big tail genes on is to make babies with a peahen. 

Thirdly, Social Darwinism fails to see cooperation as being useful for survival.  The Social Darwinist concept of a "rugged individual" is fundamentally flawed.  The only person who lives without cooperating to some degree with the rest of society is a hermit and hermits are not known for having the sorts of wealth and power that Social Darwinists idealize.  All success in society is due to some level of cooperation.  Therefore, cooperation is a strong survival trait.  Anyone who benefits much more from society than they give back is also a parasite rather than a symbiote and a healthy society will punish parasites for taking without cooperating.  Only a sick society would reward parasites.

Okay... so I digress again.  Sorry for the political rant (well, not really :D).  (Actually, I should clarify that I'm thinking of CEO's who make way too much money as being the parasites and I'd analyze people on Welfare as people who wouldn't otherwise have a chance to contribute because they were born under-privileged -- that is I think it's also the duty of society to empower people to be able to contribute.)

The point is that scientific theories imply scientific facts and scientific facts can be proven by reproducible experiments.