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Originally Posted by bumab
So I was more looking for a practical definition... In science, we often call a preponderance of evidence (repeatability), as "proof," or rather a good basis for a theory. So where do you draw the line? I don't think the whole Creationism thing will go away because of this problem- they claim scientists don't have proof. And I don't think we do.
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I would just as soon see "proof" expunged from our everyday scientific lexicon. Creationists demand "proof" because they know we will say, "Of course I can't prove every single tiny little trivial point of evolution theory", at which they cry, "SEE? Gotcha! That's why you have to teach Itelligent Design!" "Proof" is a weapon, like a crude club wielded by a barbarian in a laboratory of test tubes and lasers.
While reading about "reason" not long ago, I found a reference to "abductive" reasoning, which in the 19th century enjoyed some popularity along with inductive and deductive reasoning. Abductive reasoning is, approximately, "using the best available evidence to arrive at the best (but always conditional) theory". The article went on to say that this fits scientific reasoning better than the other two in most cases, but that abductive had since been absorbed into inductive reasoning. I figure that happened so we wouldn't have to say, "Science is the process of abduction of truth".
NOTHING in science
or any other discipline is PROVEN. (Even a mathematical proof is conditional. What do the three angles of a triangle add up to? The answer and the proof depend on whether you're talking plane or spherical trig. cf. non-Euclidian geometry, the irreducibly statistical propositions of chaos theory, etc.)
While this might sound like postmodernist palaver, it isn't, because there's another dimension to science that creationists try constantly to downplay. Scientific knowledge has solidity, robustness, because, together with scientific theory, it is built as an interlocking WEB of observation, fact, testing, and conceptualization. In that environment, proposed knowledge that doesn't fit with the whole stands out like a sore thumb and demands attention. If its hypothetical structure can be supported with new evidence, the whole web needs to shift, e.g., Einstein's famous prediction that Sun's gravitation would deflect starlight. When it did, we had some shifting to do, and lots of followup to solidify the position of relativity in the scientific world view. This is different from postmodernism because postmodernism implies that things are true only according to the model (concept, theory, paradigm) you're comparing them to, and those conceptual pictures are culturally determined and therefore equal in stature. Creationists love that. It just doesn't happen to be true.
I wish I could find Stephen Jay Gould's half-facetious definition of fact (I'll look around for it and post it here asap) -- something like, "a fact is something so firmly supported that it would irresponsible not to grant it our conditional approval". Much better approach than "proof", which I consider an anachronistic term.
And to respond to creationists, challenge them to construct any kind of an integrated web out of their "theory" that in any way fits the observable world, that is, anything that doesn't come down to, "Cause God did it, and that's REAL science!"
