Wednesday Jun 20, 2007
In the recent Republican debates, three of the Republican candidates raised their hands when asked if any of the candidates did not believe in evolution. In the ensuing media attention to this, more than once I heard the old canard "It's not a law, it's just a theory."
Why do I say this is a canard? Because it shows a profound mis-understanding of scientific terminology, a misunderstanding that the opponents of evolution deliberately encourage.
Just what is a scientific law and how does it differ from a scientific theory? A scientific law is an observation about the behavior objects in the physical world. Newton formulated the law of gravity. He observed how objects attracted each other and was able to deduce formulas that quantitatively described how they interact. This is actually a very weak assertion. What a physical law says is that we have seen a particular behavior and have not seen any exceptions, so we guess that it always holds and we probably can use the law to predict future behavior.
A scientific theory, on the other hand, is an attempt to understand why and how a particular behavior occurs. Thus we have a single "law of gravity" but many "theories of gravitation". Once a phenomena is understood and explained, then we can make much stronger
assertions about the future behavior regarding that phenomena.
The only reason that we do not have a "law of evolution" is that evolution is more subtle and
happens over a longer time frame than most phenomena that have laws associated with them. Because of this, the law and the theory came simultaneously, and since a theory is the stronger claim, we now have a theory of evolution rather than a law of evolution.
In truth, now that we know where to look, evolution can be observed in action. New species have formed, existing species have changed. As the then-not-yet-famous Dr. Richard Dawkins said, "we have stronger evidence for the existence of evolution than we have for the existence of Julius Caesar."
Friday Nov 03, 2006
I hate it when politicians and journalists (and anyone else for that matter) lie to us. It drives me crazy. I recently had to turn off my car radio because I got so mad.
This week Senator John Kerry made a poorly worded remark. It was poorly worded because, taken out of context it appeared to disparage the fine Americans who do and did serve in the military. (Remember, Kerry is one of them) In fact, he meant to disparage the intelligence of our President, an American pastime of long standing tradition.
Well, the press had a field day with it, saying how insulting Kerry has been to the military, and calling for him to apologize. By this time he had explained what he really meant. But this did not
stop the criticisms. I even heard an interview with the journalist that broke the story. He said
he was amazed that none of the reporters that were there made anything of it. Of course not! In
context it is obvious what he meant.
The thing that makes me nuts is that it continues to be a big deal. I have continued to hear about how Kerry thinks that the members of military are morons. At first they played the quote itself. Then they paraphrased what they thought the remark meant, as if that was what he actually said. The closest thing to a nod to reality I heard was one commentator said that even though it wasn't what he meant, it was really how Kerry felt, which is rather speculative, since Kerry denies it.
I mean, come one. Isn't there enough to debate in the world that we don't have to make stuff up? It's as if I said "one plus one plus one equals three" and I was recorded and someone plays back "one plus one equals three" and claims that I think 1+1=3! What's the point of continuing the discussion about 1+1=3?
And it is not like this is abnormal. It happens all the time, usually more subtly though. I used to have a lot of respect for Al Gore, until I saw his propaganda movie, "An Inconvenient Truth". It is
full of half-truths and distortions and even the odd out-right lie. Now, I truly believe that Al Gore is sincere about his motives and goals, but I also believe that despite his good intentions, he fully knows about those lies and distortions, but thinks it is for "our own good".
Can't we just stop it!? Kerry didn't mean what you thought, stop going on as if he did. Let's talk about the environment using facts, not scare tactics. Is this really the only possible result of democracy and technology, that nothing matters more deeply than the sound bite?
Technorati tags: Politics John Kerry Al Gore Global Warming
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Evolution is an idea of how things came to be....