With apoloies to Monty Python

I love Monty Python: some of their insanity was inspired brilliance: but they have left an ugly residue on the political process in the US. I refer, of course to "this theory, this theory which is mine...." which seems to have led large numbers of people in this country to regard any vaguely held belief as a theory, as equally valid as any other theory.

I am (surely even more obviously) referring to the "debate" over evolution: amongst the scientific community, there is a legitimate debate, about whether the details of the theory need to be tweaked: there are serious schisms about subtle points (for example, punctuated evolution): but there is really not a serious division about whether evolution, broadly described, happens. And it is to a very large extent, almost overwhelmingly, a scientific theory: that is to say that its premises can be used to generate conjectures, and these conjectures can then be tested: the theory can be proven to be false, or merely flawed, or in need of tweaking.

This is something that can't be said of the alternatives pushed by those on the anti-evolution side. They may describe their alternatives as "theories" just as they deride evolution as "just at theory": in this they misuse the word theory at least once. Evolution is indeed, just a scientific theory: their alternatives are merely "theories" in the Pythonesque sense.

I was prompted to these musings by the decision by the Florida school board to give the official thumbs up to the teaching of the theory of evolution: with the emphasis on "theory": perhaps we in the scientific community can now lobby the state (and other states) to mandate the teaching of what it means for a theory to be a theory!

Yours, speaking merely theoretically,
N.