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Religion & Law

: Thoughts in a Haystack

The Theory of Law

By John Pieret

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Clive Thompson, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and a former Knight Science-Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a theory. Noting that creationists take advantage of the language used by scientists to inculcate doubt in the general public's mind about evolution, he seconds the call of Australian-born physicist Helen Quinn for the scientific community to revise scientific terminology. The obvious example is the use of the term "theory," as seen in this letter in the Tifton (Georgia) Gazette by an otherwise articulate and reasonable-sounding man, who has been obviously mislead about the present state of science by the Discovery Institute and its minions, through such things as its list of "dissenters" from "Darwinism" and the supposed "icons" of evolution. Central to his position, however, is the confusion over the meaning of "theory":

[A]s a parent, a Christian, and a concerned member of society, I simply cannot sit back and see evolutionary theory espoused as "fact" without offering my understanding of "the rest of the story." The truth is that evolution is, and always has been a "theory;" it has never been definitively proven ...

Thompson correctly diagnoses the problem:

[F]or most people, theory means a haphazard guess you've pulled out of your, uh, hat. It's an insult, really, a glib way to dismiss a point of view: "Ah, well, that's just your theory." Scientists use 'theory' in one specific way, the public another -- and opponents of evolution have expertly exploited this disconnect.

The justification for using tentative language in science is obvious:

Last summer, Australian-born physicist Helen Quinn sparked a lively debate with an essay arguing that scientists are too tentative when they discuss scientific knowledge. They're an inherently cautious bunch, she points out. Even when they're 99 per cent certain of a theory, they know there's always the chance that a new discovery could overturn or modify it.
So when scientists talk about well-established bodies of knowledge ? particularly in areas like evolution or relativity ? they hedge their bets. They say they "believe" something to be true, as in, "We believe that the Jurassic period was characterised by humid tropical weather."

So what do Thompson and Quinn propose:

There is a defence against this: a revamped scientific lexicon. If the anti-evolutionists insist on exploiting the public's misunderstanding of words such as 'theory' and 'believe', then we shouldn't fight it. "We need to be a bit less cautious in public when we're talking about scientific conclusions that are generally agreed upon," Quinn argues.
What does she suggest? For truly solid-gold, well-established science, let's stop using the word 'theory' entirely. Instead, let's revive much more venerable language and refer to such knowledge as 'law'. As with Newton's law of gravity, people intuitively understand that a law is a rule that holds true and must be obeyed. The word law conveys precisely the same sense of authority with the public as 'theory' does with scientists, but without the linguistic baggage. ...
Best of all, it performs a neat bit of linguistic jujitsu. If someone says, "I don't believe in the theory of evolution," they may sound reasonable. However, if they announce, "I don't believe in the law of evolution," they sound insane. It's tantamount to saying, "I don't believe in the law of gravity."

I don't agree. While the boundaries in science between "law," "theory" and "hypothesis" have always been somewhat fluid, a "law" has never been just a "grown-up" theory. Scientific laws are, for the most part, about simple physical relationships that are subject to direct empirical confirmation. Newton's law of gravity describes how two objects act in their mutual gravity fields (under "normal" conditions) and can be repeatedly tested under easy to reproduce conditions. Theories, on the other hand, are mostly broad explanations of the interplay of the many physical properties that go into complex systems and have to be tested piecemeal and, often, indirectly.

What, for example, would the "law of evolution" entail? Common descent? But that's not in any sense a "law," it is a fact about life on Earth that could have arisen from many different, and inconsistent, natural causes, including natural selection, Lamarckism or some sort of development inherent in genetics. That, of course, doesn't even include non-natural causes, such as directed variation or progressive creationism.

Natural selection may come close to being a "law," insofar as, if the proposed conditions exist, the occurrence of selection is a logical conclusion from the premises. But even the strongest adaptationists don't claim that natural selection is coextensive with evolution, which has additional causes, such as genetic drift. It wouldn't be close to correct to call natural selection "the law of evolution."

Worst of all, scientists would have to agree to such a change in terminology and that would necessarily require widespread discussion within the scientific community. How would the creationists be kept from learning of this change and the reasons for it? If their aim is discredit science and dismantle the trust the public generally has in scientists, and it is, what better weapon could scientists hand them but an admission that they were trying to practice semantic jujitsu on the uninitiated?

Not only would calling it "the law of evolution" be incorrect, it would be a public relations nightmare far worse than the present misapprehension of the scientific meaning of "theory." There is no linguistic "magic bullet" for the public misunderstanding of science. And even if there were, it would not lie in sleight of hand or adopting the tactics of creationists. Being as honest and clear as possible and working to improve the science literacy of society may not be easy -- and certainly won't be quick -- but it is the only path consistent with the principles that science itself is practiced by.
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Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on February 19, 2009 (boomark / email).