When did evolution become a fact and not a theory?
I think you’re getting confused. Microevolution is fact. It has been observed. Macroevolution (which is how molecules would get to man) is theory. Wikipedia said: Microevolution is the occurrence of small-scale changes in allele frequencies in a population, over a few generations, also known as change at or below the species level [1]. These changes may be due to several processes: mutation, natural selection, gene flow, genetic drift and nonrandom mating. Population genetics is the branch of biology that provides the mathematical structure for the study of the process of microevolution. Ecological genetics concerns itself with observing microevolution in the wild. Typically, observable instances of evolution are examples of microevolution; for example, bacterial strains that have antibiotic resistance. Microevolution can be contrasted with macroevolution; which is the occurrence of large-scale changes in gene frequencies, in a population, over a geological time period (i.e. consisting
I would just like to point out that the principals of microevolution and macroevolution ARE EXACTLY THE SAME. If you constantly take one step after another, how can you not walk a mile? Evolution is a fact. It is a verified hypothesis. It has made predictions. For the past 150 year, evidence for evolution has been found by scientists around the globe independently. It is inevitable. It is the only unifying scientific theory in biology, no other stand close to it. However, evolution is also a scientific theory. A scientific theory is different from a hunch theory, which is how the word theory is normally used. Creationism isn’t even a theory, it’s barely a hypothesis. A theory explains facts. It explain why fossils are in strata of rock that appear gradually changing, why HIV becomes drug resistant, why agricultural crops change, and so on. Evolution by natural selection is BOTH a fact and a SCIENTIFIC theory, just like the theory of gravity, atomic theory, the theory of relativity, ger
A theory can be a fact inasmuch as there is so much corroborating evidence that the explanatory system (i.e. the theory) is beyond reasonable doubt (what we usually mean by a fact). If we define facts only in terms of what we can prove absolutely then we might find ourselves with no fact – after all, it would only take one object that does not fall down to the Earth for us to be required to rewrite the theory of gravity, yet we have no problem treating gravity as factual. When Darwin wrote, fossils of ancestors of human beings had not been found yet, nor had transitional fossils such as archaeopteryx. Darwin’s theory predicted them, and their discovery could be considered confirmation of his theory of evolution. Likewise genetics did not exist, but Darwin’s theory predicted that there must be an underlying system that transmits characteristics from one generation to the next yet also allows new mutations to arise. Genetics thus provides another confirmation of Darwin’s theory. We can a
First, you should be aware that there has been pressure from Christian parents on high school biology teachers to emphasize the “only a theory” argument. And of course, some high school biology teachers have been personally reluctant to teach anything stronger than that stand. So, even if you recall being taught that evolution is “only a theory”, you should realize that the real community of scientists specializing in biology in academia have for decades considered the modern theory of evolution to be a proven Theory with a capital T, on par with Issac Newton’s Theory of Gravity or Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Note that Theories can change in the light of new evidence, which in fact happened when Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity (which unified Gravity with Special Relativity) shows that Newton’s Theory of Gravity was incomplete. Evolution might go through such corrections in the future, but not that even though Newton’s Theory was found to be incomplete, its basic cla
