- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
I think Paul Dirks was calling Ron Paul either a liar or a moron because Ron Paul was making the dishonest or moronic claim that he doesn't know how 'theory' is defined in regards to the 'theory' of evolution.
But ol' Bucky has his fangs out now and will continue to use his newest loved word 'SAVAGE' or 'SAVAGED' to define what it is anyone is doing who makes statements that disagree with Ron Paul's approach.
The word theory has a number of distinct meanings in different fields of knowledge, depending on their methodologies and the context of discussion.In science, a theory is a mathematical or logical explanation, or a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theories commonly used to describe and explain this behaviour are Newton's theory of universal gravitation (see also gravitation), and general relativity.
In common usage, the word theory is often used to signify a conjecture, an opinion, or a speculation. In this usage, a theory is not necessarily based on facts; in other words, it is not required to be consistent with true descriptions of reality. This usage of theory leads to the common incorrect statement "It's not a fact, it's only a theory." True descriptions of reality are more reflectively understood as statements which would be true independently of what people think about them. In this usage, the word is synonymous with hypothesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory
