> Hello Rog,
>
>>From the article you referenced:
>
>>
> Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the
> middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a
> law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to
> the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a
> well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that
> can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No
> amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a
> descriptive generalization about nature.
>>
>
> Does this mean, then, that in science, "theory" ranks higher than
> "law"?
How about this paragraph from the same article:
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain
the origin of new species and higher orders of life.
Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural
selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called
allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population
of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical
boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures.
Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes
became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would
not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be
reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.
GEORGE: Coulda, woulda, shoulda amounts to neither theory, law, nor fact.
The above at best is an argument for the Macro-Evolutionary "hypothesis".
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