This is a splinter from the thread, “Scientific theories taught as factual”. Rather than the approach that thread took this thread is to discuss the nature of the following terms and their variants: Fact and Proof.
Percy wrote: My guess is that your thinking of the claim that people like to make that it is a fact that evolution has occurred, while the mechanisms thought to lie behind evolution, what we would call evolutionary theory, are tentative. I blame the former claim, that it is a fact that evolution has occurred, on Stephen Jay Gould, and I believe it is false. For the purposes of that statement, Gould defined fact only as something that had so much supporting evidence that it would be perverse to withhold at least provisional acceptance. If you define fact in that way, then clearly it is not beyond any shadow of doubt that evolution has occurred, since that would mean 100% certainty. In science nothing is ever 100% certain, even what we consider our facts.
http://
EvC Forum: scientific theories taught as factual -->
EvC Forum: scientific theories taught as factual Percy wrote: Yeah, this pretty much nails what I was trying to say. Too much time and effort is wasted on the evolutionist claim that it is a fact that evolution has occurred. If evolutionists are involved in any bait-and-switch tactics, this is it. While it wouldn't quite be correct to say that calling evolution a fact is wrong, it certainly is misleading to attempt to give the impression that evolution is the same type of fact as the height of your desk. Something that took Darwin years of investigation during a round the world voyage followed by many more years of thought and analysis to discover and understand is by no means the same type of obvious fact as the height of your desk or the color of a flower, and I wish Gould had never made the claim as it's a cause of endless and unnecessary trouble.
http://
EvC Forum: scientific theories taught as factual -->
EvC Forum: scientific theories taught as factual
It isn’t my understanding that the word ”fact’ means 100% certainty either within or without the realm of science. Even if certainty is a synonym for fact, then clearly the use of 100% is a qualifier. ”100% certainty’ seems more comparable to ”an absolute’ or ”absolute fact’ than to the unqualified term ”fact’.
Same with the use of ”proof’ and ”prove’ in the previous thread. My understanding is that ”proof’ means, “sufficient to a standard” while ”prove’ means, ”meeting or exceeding a standard’. I do not claim these are exclusive definitions, but as far as I know they’re acceptable ones.
So where comes the authority within the field of science to assert that the definition of fact precludes saying evolution is a ”fact’ or that evolution hasn’t been ”proven’?
™ Version 4.2