“Just a Theory”

The following essay was submitted to NPR’s This I Believe by me today.
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“Just a theory.” God, how I hate that phrase.

Before I give context, dictionary.com definitions of the word “theory” as

1) A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

2) An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

I believe that the word theory is hurting the state of science in American culture.

I came across an article in the New York Times reporting how George Deutsch, a White House staff member, was pressuring NASA scientists to make a scientist include the word “theory” whenever he referenced The Big Bang. Obviously, by the first definition this is 100% accurate. The problem is that this is generally not what the public understands as its definition. The danger is that the scientific community is largely unaware of how the language is being used to subvert our culture. This, I believe is the largest and most effective tool that is used by those who attack science.

When a school board hears the arguments whether or not a sticker should be added to biology books about how “evolution is a theory,” the scientific community seems to accept this wording as being correct and therefore somewhat acceptable, if biased. Unfortunately, when a student or parent reads this they typically do not see it to mean that evolutionary theory is “a set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena,” but instead see it as “an assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.”

This is what must be stopped. The Intelligent Design advocates are using Orwellian tactics of controlling language to control thinking. Unfortunately, I believe that it is also too late to educate the public on the difference between an assumption or hypothesis and a theory. I believe that the term should be abandoned completely in favor of the word “model”.

The word model conjures the many images of the model cars, each with different degrees of detail. They are tangible, and immediately recognizable as representing a larger picture in a simplified form. Models are useful tools in understanding the original: precisely the image that the scientific community should promote. After all, the goal of science is not to find the truth, but to continuously and systematically get closer to the truth.

It is important to realize what is being done and how it is being accomplished. Science should not be allowed to be redefined. The wrong definitions of words corrupt our understanding of the concepts which they describe. Watch for the redefinition of scientific terminology, and understand the definitions and connotation of the terms.

When someone says to me that Evolution or the Big Bang is just a theory, I reply, “No, it’s just a model.”

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On submitting the essay, they also ask about your experience in writing the essay, and this is how I responded.
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The original version of this essay was over 1000 words in length. This is a subject that I am rather passionate about, so it is easy for me to write on, but much more difficult to edit. It was however a great challenge. Ultimately, I believe that the 500 word limit made it a better essay as I was forced to revise it around 6 times. Each pass shaved words, and increased the content density. I was forced to combine concepts, and remove superfluous ones.

For example, the original talked about how my being an atheist colors my opinions on the validity of Intelligent Design, but only my knowledge of the true definition of the word “theory” lead me to feel the way I do on the subject. Unfortunately I did not have room to elaborate on this belief, but Penn Jillette has already said how I feel about this in his wonderful “This I Believe” essay. As I successively made pass after pass, I realized that while this may be important, it is easily inferred from the way I present the topic. This ephemeral paragraph is now lost to the passage of history and simply folded into the rest of the essay.

Originally included was an ending that referenced one of my favorite movies, The Princess Bride. In it a character named Inego, who touts himself the smartest man alive repeatedly and inappropriately uses the word “inconceivable,” until Fezik, a simple minded but honest giant, tells him “I do not think that word means what you think it means.” I felt that this quote was rather appropriate to end the essay with the preceding sentence using inconceivable in it. On my last pass, I still needed to shave 80 words from the essay, and I knew that it was time to make tough choices. I realized that while I am sure that there are many that have seen this movie and would catch the reference, I would not be writing to as wide an audience as I would like, and reluctantly I replaced it with the current ending. I now believe that this too is a better choice as it helped to tie back in the concepts which I was presenting.

With each pass of my backspace key swept across my essay, my essay evolved to a more refined work, and in a way it even illustrated how flawed the Intelligent Design argument is in discounting Evolution. Obviously, the essay was created by me, but it was not a part of my original design. It had to go through several generations, and each successive generation lost members (words) which did not fit the new environment (design). While the ending result bears a resemblance to the original, they are very different. This was due to my continual adaptation of my design. Many Creationists believe that God does not fit into the Evolutionary Model, but I say it does. Life is just God’s continuous work in progress.

Ultimately, I hope that others will enjoy reading this essay as much as I enjoyed writing it.