1) What is meant by the indefinite article "a"? Between scientists, they say "the theory", not "a theory". For example, it's "The theory of gravity" and "The theory of relativity", not "A theory of gravity" and "A theory of relativity".
2) It's "The theory" because there is room for only one theory for a given phenomenon. If one hypothesis becomes the theory, then other hypotheses are just hypotheses, not theories ... until/ unless the current theory becomes obsolete and some other hypothesis gets upgraded to become the new theory.
3) If the hypothesis of Intelligent Design comes to be accepted as the method of speciation by the majority of scientists, it would become "The theory of speciation by intelligent design" and there would no longer be "The theory of speciation by evolution"; there would only be "The former theory of speciation by evolution."
4) If scientists were to accept and start teaching "The theory of speciation by intellignet design", then would creationists start saying "Intelligent design is only a theory"? If not, why are they saying "Evolution is only a theory"?
On Thursday, August 21, 2014 2:46:36 PM UTC-6, Dingbat wrote:1) What is meant by the indefinite article "a"? Between scientists, they say "the theory", not "a theory". For example, it's "The theory of gravity" and "The theory of relativity", not "A theory of gravity" and "A theory of relativity".
Usually "theory" is prefaced by a person's name.
In popular usage, a theory is just a vague and fuzzy sort of fact and a hypothesis is often used as a fancy synonym to `guess'. But to a scientist a theory is a conceptual framework that explains existing observations and predicts new ones. For instance, suppose you see the Sun rise. This is an existing observation which is explained by the theory of gravity proposed by Newton. This theory, in addition to explaining why we see the Sun move across the sky, also explains many other phenomena such as the path followed by the Sun as it moves (as seen from Earth) across the sky, the phases of the Moon, the phases of Venus, the tides, just to mention a few. You can today make a calculation and predict the position of the Sun, the phases of the Moon and Venus, the hour of maximal tide, all 200 years from now. The same theory is used to guide spacecraft all over the Solar System.
A hypothesis is a working assumption. Typically, a scientist devises a hypothesis and then sees if it ``holds water'' by testing it against available data (obtained from previous experiments and observations). If the hypothesis does hold water, the scientist declares it to be a theory.
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