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Evolution is not the Enemy; Intelligent Design is not the Solution

Page history last edited by pinkhamc@... 2 years, 10 months ago

On the 23rd-28th of July, 2006, I was participated in an Oxford Round Table on the topic: "Faith and Science: The Great Matter." Along with 41 other scholars from across the U.S. we spent 5 days presenting and debating papers on the topic in the Debating Hall in the Oxford Union, Oxford University, England.  It was a fascinating time.

 

What follows is some of the fruit of this opportunity.

 

My paper: "Evolution is Not the Enemy; Intelligent Design is not the Answer"  (This version is a slightly improved version of the one prepared for Oxford.) (pdf file)

 

My presentation: "Evolution is Not the Enemy, Intelligent Design is not the Answer" (ppt file) (pdf file)

 

For a version of my presentation given at my church with pictures from Oxford and the surrounding area, please email me.  It is a large file (12 MB).

 

A shortened version of the paper has been published on line: Pinkham, C. F. A., 2007, Evolution is not the Enemy, Intelligent Design is not the Answer, Forum on Public Policy Online, Winter 2007 edition, http://www.forumonpublicpolicy.com/archive07/pinkham.rev.pdf

 

Program for the week with presenters' information (to be added)

 

The diversity and credentials of the participants (ppt file)

 

Photos of the participants (doc file) (pdf file)

 

Our position paper (most attendees signed it.)

 

Hypothesis, Thesis, Theory, and Beyond

The following is an expansion of one small part of the presentation.

 

All too often, the words, "hypothesis," "thesis," "theory," "principle," and "law" are used incorrectly by the scientist.  This carelessness leads to confusion on part of the public, to whom the word "theory" is equivalent to "idea."  That leads to the erroneous statement often used by the uninformed, that "evolution is only a theory."

 

Let me present a simple way to bridge the gap between the public's understanding of idea and the scientifically correct use of these more technical words.  An hypothesis is an idea that may or may not have a leg to stand on.  If it has been tested and its null hypothesis rejected, it has that leg to stand on.  If it has not been tested or it has, and the null hypothesis has been rejected, it does not have a leg to stand upon.  A thesis is an idea with several legs of sufficient length that they are stable.  By stable, I mean they are hypotheses that have been tested and accepted and/or they are convincing arguments, or they are supported by sufficient evidence.  A theory is an idea with many, many legs that work together to move it forward.  These legs consist of many theses. 

 

Where is the boundary between these three?  That's were things start to get less clear.  How many accepted hypotheses does it take to make a thesis?  The number is undefined, but it is at least greater than two.  In other words, a thesis is an idea with some complexity to it.  How many theses does it take to make a theory?  Again the number is undefined, but in this case it is many, many more than two.

 

Now for principle and law

Before going further, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by “law,” “principle,” and “theory” and “idea,” “hypothesis,” “fact,” and “thesis” as they are used in science, because their proper understanding and use will bear on what follows in several places.

 

The first set of three words is applied to concepts that are widely accepted by the scientific community. A law is a way of describing reality or a limited part of reality when it can be captured in a mathematical expression, a principle can be a law, or it can be a collection of laws that are related to one another, a theory is a way of describing reality when math cannot (or the mathematical expression is so involved or complex that it has not yet been worked out in its entirety, or if it has been, most people could not comprehend it). Accepting a proposed law or principle is relatively simple.  It must describe reality every time it is applied within its limits, including when that application makes predictions about outcomes. For a theory to be accepted by the scientific community, it also must be found to describe reality every time it is applied, however, a law or principle is generally accepted after a relatively few examples of its application successfully predict reality, in part because it is couched in provable or derivable formulas. A theory cannot be confirmed so easily, thus its acceptance rests upon its being able to describe reality as observed, over and over again.  A theory is accepted based upon the weight of the accumulated evidence for it. There is no established number of how many times a theory must be found to describe reality or how much accumulated weight must occur before it is accepted, but it is huge (AHSD, 2005)

 

The second set of four words is applied to concepts that may be on their way to being widely accepted by the scientific community. An idea is a concept that has yet to be proven by rigorous observation or scientifically-designed tests. Often ideas begin with observations that may be anecdotal in nature and not rigorous. An hypothesis is the way of expressing an idea in a scientifically testable framework. It involves a “null” hypothesis, which states that the idea is false and a way to test that null hypothesis. A fact is an hypothesis that has been tested and its null hypothesis rejected, usually at a 0.05 confidence level (meaning the results could lead to an incorrect rejection of the null hypothesis 5% of the time). The use of “fact” is particularly warranted when that outcome is consistently produced after several replications of the test of the hypothesis. A thesis is above both a hypothesis (as the word “hypothesis” implies) and a fact. It generally encompasses a broader idea or observation than either. This broader idea has been examined numerous times in different ways under varying conditions and has stood up under these examinations each time. Nevertheless, it is subject to rejection or refinement upon further examination and testing.

 

In other words, knowledge progresses from ignorance, to idea, to hypothesis, to thesis. If it is not rejected, the knowledge in a thesis can be expressed as either a law, a principle, or a theory. to law or principle or theory depending upon the mode of expression and the breadth of its coverage.

 

Generally, a large number of facts and theses must be accrued before their corpus is elevated to a theory. Finally, once a theory has been widely accepted by the application of the above rigorous processes, it may even come to be referred to by the scientific community without any modifier (AHSD, 2005). For example, instead of the “theory of evolution,” it is simply referred to as “evolution.”

 

The above represents the ideal, not the real. It is not based on any single published definition, but on years of observation, application and thought. The scientific community intends these terms to be used in this way, but the difference between intent and practice is often wide and these terms frequently are used more carelessly as synonyms of one another, rather than as distinctives. However, in the case of the “theory of evolution,” they are used as described.

 

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