How is Evolution a fact?

In the article "Evolution is a fact and a theory" it states that evolution is a fact. The article is here Evolution is a Fact and a TheoryHowever I am a little confused, because by scentific definition evolution cannot be a fact."In science a fact is an objective and verifiable observation, in contrast with a theory, which is a explanation of or interpretation of facts." -wikipediaLike gravity, evolution is not something you can directly observe. You can observe the effects of the theories on certain objects, but not the theories themselves. Of course both theories are very credible, and I can be about 99% sure they are true, however it's a little confusing as to how evolution can be a fact.It states in the article:
"There are some readers who are not anti-evolutionist but still claim that evolution is "only" a theory which can't be proven. This group needs to distinguish between the fact that evolution occurs and the theory of the mechanism of evolution." -Laurence MoranI understand that there are two parts to evolution, however if you consider evolution as a fact, "the fact of evolution" would need other facts to back it up. And to my understanding facts shouldn't need other facts to prove it. I dunno though maybe my definition of fact is different from the scientific community. What do you all think?

I'd like to promote this topic but it isn't ready for promotion just yet, I'll make a post explaining what needs to be put in the OP to get it promoted (by me at least) in a moment.

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Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Looks like Herr Wounded promoted this anyway, so I'll copy paste what I was going to say as an Admin, with slight editing.The problem I'm having is that of equivocation. The thread will be dominated with issues surrounding definitions before it gets off the ground. Such debates are rarely constructive, and I don't want to see yet another debate about this article that falls into this state.The article under discussion "Evolution is a fact and a theory" goes to great lengths to define what it means by 'fact' when it says that evolution is a fact so appeals to third party definitions are not necessary.

quote:

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The honest scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you that nothing whatever can be or has been proved with fully 100% certainty, not even that you or I exist, nor anyone except himself, since he might be dreaming the whole thing. Thus there is no sharp line between speculation, hypothesis, theory, principle, and fact, but only a difference along a sliding scale, in the degree of probability of the idea. When we say a thing is a fact, then, we only mean that its probability is an extremely high one: so high that we are not bothered by doubt about it and are ready to act accordingly. Now in this use of the term fact, the only proper one, evolution is a fact. For the evidence in favor of it is as voluminous, diverse, and convincing as in the case of any other well established fact of science concerning the existence of things that cannot be directly seen, such as atoms, neutrons, or solar gravitation ....

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Do you want to debate whether or not the definition of fact offered in the article is a widely accepted definition or do you want to debate whether or not the definition offered is a good definition or do you want to debate whether or not evolution is a fact as defined within the article?As you can see, the wiki definition (or even your definition) are irrelevant to all but the first debate direction. Please give some thought as to exactly what you want to debate and it will save us spending 5 pages of debate debating this very issue and the inevitable accusations of equivocation that are sure to follow.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

The answer to your question depends on what one means when one says "evolution." The most basic definition is descent with modification. In other words, the characteristics of a daughter population will be different from the parent population. This change can be, and has been, observed in a laboratory setting and in nature.If one restricts the term to require that the change result in speciation, this, too, has been observed.If we wander away from the arena of science and restrict the term to mean a change in kind, as creos attempt to do, we run into the problem that they never define what "kind" means.As the article you link to explains, there is a distinction between the observed fact of evolution and the theories about what mechanisms drive it and exactly how those mechanisms work.The observations of change in a population through successive generations, including the creation of new species, has been directly observed and does not require any ancillary facts to "back it up."

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin Franklin

Is it possible that you are confusing the term Evolution with the theory Theory of Evolution.Evolution is simply a look backwards. It is the remains of what once was, fossils, genetic evidence, those things that can be examined. We can look at that evidence and say "Before this point there was no grass", or "At this point we find this particular critter, earlier it looked like this, later it looked like that."When you say, "I understand that there are two parts to evolution, ..." you are likely referring to the Theory of Evolution and to modification (mutations etc) and Natural Selection.That is simply an explanation, the best we have found so far for the facts we see, that evidence mentioned earlier.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I would like to debate all of them but if you want me to choose it would be the first question.

Well we can come to the others once we have reached a conclusion or impasse on the first then, how about that?Is this definition of fact in wide use? Well we know that Gould, Futuyma, Muller and Moran use fact in the sense described. I imagine the vast majority of historians use 'fact' in the same way (and evolution is a historical fact, not an empirical fact). Paleontologists, Archaeologists included. One could deny, for example, that there was a battle at Hastings in or around 1066 that resulted in the Normans successfully invading England (such as it was).And I think that this has lead to your confusion. Empirical facts are what you think all 'scientific facts' are. This is a gross oversimplification. A fact is a fact. Some facts have been obtained through directly observing phenomenon and these are empirically derived facts. Other facts are derived from inferring from evidence. For example a dead body with a bullet wound and a bullet in them would render factual that the victim was shot at some point (the more lines of independent evidence the more confidence we have in the fact). These facts are historical facts. We could also call them forensic facts because they are referred to as facts when the conclusions are beyond any reasonable doubt.We can then use theory to build an explanatory framework around the facts we have gathered both by empirical means and through inferring from physical evidence.Do you dispute that the word 'fact' is used in the way described throughout the historical sciences from geology through to forensic science?If you still debate that this is so, present your evidence or reasoning.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Ok that sounds good. It seems as though scientists are distorting the scientific definitions in order to get more credibility in the media. I don't blame them considering a lot of people just view a theory as a estimated guess, when in actuallity a theory can be very credible. Such as the theory of evolution, which is extremely credible. However it does not follow actual scientific definition when saying evolution is a fact. There are two sides to science. "Observation, with careful experimentation and measurement, is one side of the scientific process. The other side is the invention or creation of theories to explain and order the observations." -Giancoli P. 2 Evolution explains why we see changes in life over time. In technical scientific terms, he being shot would not be a fact, but a theory based on the evidence that he has a bullet wound. They came to the conclusion by studying the facts and observing that he was shot. But that is forensics, and not science.
"Theories are never derived directly from observations" -Giancoli P.2 Because according to the article, Evolution is both a theory and fact, it would be deriving the theory directly from the observation. Evolution is something that cannot be seen, like gravity. For both theories we can only see the effect these have on objects and life. And yes I do dispute the word fact to be used in historical sciences. We can only gather evidence from the present, and using facts from the present we can theorize what it was like in the past. It's a theory that the world is 4.5 billion years old. 1. no measuring tool is perfect. 2. It is not possible to test for every possible set of circumstances.Further more, it seems as though the author of the article contradicts himself.
"The honest scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you that nothing whatever can be or has been proved with fully 100% certainty, not even that you or I exist, nor anyone except himself, since he might be dreaming the whole thing. Thus there is no sharp line between speculation, hypothesis, theory, principle, and fact, but only a difference along a sliding scale, in the degree of probability of the idea. When we say a thing is a fact, then, we only mean that its probability is an extremely high one: so high that we are not bothered by doubt about it and are ready to act accordingly. Now in this use of the term fact, the only proper one, evolution is a fact. For the evidence in favor of it is as voluminous, diverse, and convincing as in the case of any other well established fact of science concerning the existence of things that cannot be directly seen, such as atoms, neutrons, or solar gravitation ...." -Laurence Moran"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered." -Laurence MoranSo which is it? Are facts and theories just considered to be different degrees of certaintity, or are theories used to describe facts?

You have a point, and we can see to what extent it is a good point by seeing where your reasoning leads.If a fact is that which needs no other facts to back it up, then any statement based on observation is not a fact. If you say "there is a tiger over there", this is a theory which requires confirmation by my looking over there and experiencing certain qualia: patterns of orange and black and white which are consistent with the theory that "there is a tiger over there".We may notice that as with any other theory, the observations are in principle consistent with alternative hypotheses, e.g. it is a fake tiger, a paper tiger, a simalcrum, an alien being disguised as a tiger, the hallucination of a tiger, a leopard which has been given a dye job to avoid the leopard tax, et cetera.Tho only facts then, would be the qualia themselves. It would be a fact, from your point of view, that you are seeing certain colors in certain patterns, though it is not necessarily a fact that these qualia correspond to anything in the real world; you might be hallucinating. It would also (for you) be a fact that you have, say, a certain memory. It is not, of course, necessarily a fact that the memory corresponds to a genuine past event. The past is a theory which accounts for facts such as your memories, and there are of course alternate theories, such as Last Thursdayism.One interesting corollary of this is that you and I can never share knowledge of the same facts as facts, since you don't have access to my memories and my qualia. We can, however, communicate a hypothesis, e.g. "there is a tiger over there" and compare this each with his own set of facts to verify it.To summarize:(1) If a fact is something which doesn't require other facts to back it up, then the only facts (from your perspective) is that you have certain private experiences: qualia, memories, et cetera.(2) By this definition of "fact" and "theory", facts are certain, whereas theories have the character of being in principle subject to revision in the light of new facts.Now, philosophically, this is all perfectly sound; and the fact that point (2) above follows from the definition makes it very attractive. However, this does not quite cover the way that people actually use the word "fact".It seems to me that the way these scientists, in the main, are distinguishing between fact and theory is that they are taking the "facts" to be well-verified particular statements such as "amphibians are descended from fish", whereas a theory is a well-verified collection of general statements which explain and predict the facts (e.g. the laws of genetics, natural selection, et cetera). In the same way, an astronomer might say it was a "fact" that Jupiter (to a very good approximation) orbits the sun in an ellipse with the Sun at one focus; whereas the theory of gravity consists of general laws of motion and gravity.Now this has nothing to do with your epistemological fact/theory distinction.

OK, it sounds like you are conceding that the definition is indeed in widespread use. Even if the majority of 'scientists' are all using it in a ploy to distort a definition to gain credibility in the media in some kind of epic, perfectly orchestrated, evidence free conspiracy theory (and they're the best, no?) it is still in widespread use. Thus point one is no contest, right?Also, who defines scientific definitions if not scientists? A theory is an explanation of a phenomenon. Why would people's lay-understanding of 'theory' make any difference to how scientists define what a fact is? I have already agreed that evolution is not an empirical fact (which you insist on calling a 'scientific fact'. Evolution is an historical fact - not observed directly but inferred from the evidence. Electrons and a host of other subatomic particles have not been observed directly (nor could they ever be since they are smaller than the wavelength of visible light), but merely inferred from the evidence. Thus the existence of electrons is not an empirical fact, so the existence of electrons is not a 'scientific fact'. So forensic science is a misnomer, then? True, one cannot see a process, but one can observe the effects of a process. That gravity exists and existed 5 billion years ago is considered a fact. Indeed, for certain definitions of theory and fact that is the case. If we reject all facts that are not empirical, then the age of the earth could be described as a theory. The fact is simply that all relevant dating methods so far attempted agree with one another with regards to the age of the earth being 4.5 billion years old.However, rejecting all facts that are not empirical simply makes discussion impossibly obtuse. Suddenly it is no longer a fact that if I kick a football it will traverse a parabolic curve through the air. It no longer becomes a fact that if I accelerate something towards the speed of light there will be a time discrepency between various observers.In fact (heh) we have a word that describes what you would have us call 'scientific fact'. That word is 'data'. What you are attempting to do is rob us of a perfectly functioning word because it has a definition which is somewhat context dependent. I'm principally against taking away words even if having the word leads to the occasional ambiguity, because I love words and each word has its own uses. Ungiving words is double plus ungood. Which is why, in science, all inferred facts are considered tentative. That is why a football might not curl away from me, but instead stay where it is and lay an egg and call itself Brian. First off - you attribute the quotes to Moran when actually one of them was a quote from 1959 from Muller. The other was Gould in 1981.Yes, Muller's rather dated words when it comes to a sliding scale make sense when considering something like a historical event, but it isn't well phrased. I'll go with Gould quote over a high school science book from the 50s when there is doubt.However, the fundamental point being driven across by Muller (or rather the reason Moran pointed us to the quote) is that we don't have to have 100% confidence in a fact to consider it a fact. The entire point of the article is to discuss that a fact is something which one accepts as fact because it would be absurd to think otherwise.In science, technical disagreements like this are very common and different scientists have varying grasps on the state of the philosophy of science and particular implications of the definitions of various words and phrases.

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So in summary:Fact, as with other words has different meanings that are context dependant.A fact can be data (or empirical fact). Empirical facts are used to infer general facts. An empirical fact, for example, would be when some dense objects have been dropped on earth they have fallen to the ground. A general fact (arrived at by induction) would be that when a dense object is dropped on earth, it falls. An historical fact is that 15,000 years ago, the same principle occurred based on evidence gathered from testing and observation of empirical facts.This usage of fact is widespread.There is no evidence that scientists have colluded and conspired to change definitions to improve their media image.I contend that the definition is good in that it is functional and a reasonable person is able divine the intention of the user of the word provided suitable context.That life has changed on earth over the history of earth has so much supporting evidence that it would be perverse to try and deny that it happened. Thus, according to the definition laid out in the article, that life has changed on earth over time is a fact. The theoretical aspect surrounds the mechanisms responsible for this change.If we stop calling natural history/evolution of life on earth a fact then just about everything else we generally call a fact in our language would also be thrown out with it as facts too - all that would be left to call fact is that which we call data. What we could call data? The word data would be redundant.

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If we wanted to continue deconstructing things here we could say, for example, that him having a bullet wound is a theory and not a fact. That he has a wound is a theory. That the metal object found in him is a bullet is a theory. That he was ever alive is a theory.Indeed, in the murder there are no facts at all! Of course, at some point we have to decide what a fact actually is and at what point we can dispense with the absurdity. In historical sciences that happens when multiple lines of evidence all lead (to someone employing correct reasoning) to the same conclusion. Eventually there is so much compelling evidence that says the same thing, that there is no reasonable doubt left that the conclusion is accurate.It is simply the way the word is used. Unfortunately you don't happen to like the word usage, but language is about pragmatics. As long as you know what the fellow means when he uses a word, it doesn't matter what word he uses. The word fact has been defined to death and by that definition the fundamental aspects of natural history are factual.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Correct, I do now agree that it is in widespread use now, however because of that they should change the way they define theory and fact. Stephen J. Gould defines them like this.
"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts."Now the way they use fact does not fit with this definition. Like he says "Facts are the world's data" and I am assuming that data is measureable. Obviously they care about what other groups think, such as creationists. In Stephen J. Gould's article "Evolution as Fact and theory" he mentions the word creation/creationists/creationism 35 times. They keep mentioning this "In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"”part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is "only" a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is less than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it?" -Stephen Jay GouldIt's because of creations not being able to understand that we can have confidence in a theory. Me myself have probably 99.99% confidence in the theory of evolution. If it is not a empirical fact, how do you measure it? Remember facts are the world's data? And that data is always measureable? All science is tentative. However there is a line between theory and fact that is specifically defined by the definitions. Last time I checked fact is more related to data than to theory. The first definition for data in Merriam Webster is "Factual information." Whoops my mistake. Yeah I'll go with Gould too, it's just too bad that Muller's definition fits the way scientists today use the word fact better than Gould's.It is now that i jsut realized how pointless this debate is, however you make a good point about how the only point is to be able to understand each other. As long as we can do that the meaning of fact dosn't really matter.

I don't think that is necessarily the case - once again it depends on how you define data. For example, a list of monarchs of England could be called data, but it is not measurable. Indeed any historical fact is unmeasurable by definition of it not existing to be measured. Gould went on to say that facts are not 100% certain, which should give perspective on what he is talking about. When you can measure the building of the pyramids, I'll concede that historical facts have to be measurable. Anybody who agrees that the word 'fact' has any meaning at all, will agree that the statement "The pyramids were built" is a fact. I didn't ask that, I asked why people's lay understanding of the term theory would make a difference to the way scientists define 'fact'. Excellent - I agree. However, the section you quoted was me saying that the word fact is not perfectly synonymous with the word data. The word fact has its own meaning, but it sounds like you would have us throw out the meaning and replace it with the word data. I would agree that that sometimes data and fact are synonymous, however they can be used to mean slightly different things.It is a little like the difference between data and information. When the two are contrasted it is to say that data doesn't really contain useful context for humans. It is possible to use the terms synonymously, but information can be untrue where as data could be something that has no true/false status at all. Likewise, facts can be said to be conclusions drawn from data. The data could be sequence of times. These times have been measured, so would be by your understanding of it 'scientific facts'. The fact could be that acceleration due to gravity is 9.8ms^-2. We can't measure that fact, but we can test it and gather more 'scientific facts' that support it.All of this is completely insane pedantic semantics basically, as you say later on. The logic of language is not like the language of logic - and trying to fit a word into a single box would be to invite madness. Better, is to understand what is meant by the word and try to either argue that there is a better word that could be used, or to accept that the word 'fact' is the best word to describe historical near-certainties.Essentially I was simply saying that pragmatics is more important than semantics. The word fact is stressed to not meaning 100% certain, but instead to mean beyond any reasonable doubt, or that it would be perverse to deny it. Thus, the holocaust is a fact. The moon landing is a fact. That Henry VIII was king is a fact. I don't see that as being the case at all, quite the contrary. You will find scientists stressing that the fact of evolution is that life on earth has changed and that extant life shares common ancestry with one another, if you ask them they will continue that the theory of evolution is not a fact but a theory that is used as an explanatory framework within which to understand the facts (eg natural selection, mutations, epigenetics, recombination, horizontal gene transfer, drift, game theory etc). The debate we are having now, or the EvC debate? It has a point, in that it is entertaining, educational, thought provoking and provides a resource for the many readers of this forum that do participate to gain a glimpse into what the EvC debate involves.The meaning of fact is what we understand it to mean, and that we understand what others mean when they use it. We can all have different definitions of fact, but as long as we understand what another person means by it when they use it - we need not worry too much.All we have to watch out for is that when a person says 'x is a fact' that is indeed true according to their definition of fact - and that their definition of fact is understood by anyone making that claim. We also have to watch out for equivocation, where somebody uses two definition but tries to give the impression that they are only using one definition.

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If you feel that our debate has run its course, and there is no further point in it, allow me summarize what has gone on so far:

• There are different definitions of the word fact. Empirical facts are facts that are gained by direct observation. My pen accelerated to the ground at 9.8 metres per second per second by my observation is an empirical fact. Historical facts are facts about the past which are regarded as almost certain to have happened.
• It is almost certain that life on earth has changed over time. It is beyond any reasonable doubt that this is so. It is also a fact that all current life shares a small number of common ancestors, and it would be perverse to deny this. Thus: evolution is an historical fact.
• The article under dispute makes it clear that 'evolution as a fact' means the above. It also states that 'evolution as a theory' is an attempt to understand how evolution could have occurred.
• When I did theory work at college, I did not make up reasonable sounding ideas. Theory is a word that is contrasted with practice. Theory is the reasoning behind something. A scientific theory is not the facts, a scientific theory is not the experiments. A scientific theory is a collection of explanations for the facts that which forms a framework from which we can engage in further investigation, prediction and so on.
  

I do not want to muddy the waters again, but I would like your view on a simple idea.I have been under the impression that a fact is just some proposition that is regarded as true. The phrase "false fact" seems clearly nonsensical. If something we thought was a fact is found to be false, if ceases to be a fact. So, the statements of a theory that is very well supported could also be facts.We do have other words such as observation, measurement and datum to refer to a particular item of information.

lost-apathy Facts are determined by concensus of course. We make the determination of facts by agreeing on certain basic principles of investigation of our world. Since we can paralyze ourselves through philosophy of definition on a matter under observation,{humans love to dissect beyond need or applicability} it is found that we progress when we take the consensus route and then see if those assumptions can be found to hold up under further investigation.
Thus we take those ideas that seem to be a best explanation of the information we have {germ theory, atomic theory etc} and we put them to the test. Given a certain set of ideas we now ask what we should expect to find about areas of the world we have not investigated based on those ideas. If upon further investigation into those areas we find that the ideas tend to be supported by the evidence then the level of confidence we have in the theory is bolstered. It is true that in principle a thoery is never certain it is found that in all practicality it can be assumed that facts are as certain as can be.