Analysis Of Evolution As Fact And Theory By Stephen Jay Gould

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In the essay Evolution as Fact and Theory by Stephen Jay Gould, he argues that generally, creationists miss use the terms “fact” and “theory” to attack the indisputable concept of evolution. He argues that the question scientists are attempting to answer is not whether evolution occurred, this is a fact as he defines it, but rather the question should be how evolution occurs. The essay begins by bringing forward the idea that old issues should be brought up only if there is new evidence. That being said, the author argues that creationists haven’t come up with any new ideas, and are using the same arguments they have been using for over a decade. He states that creationism is more of a political issue grounded in a single idea, which by his …show more content…
To be considered a science, the concept must be able to be proven wrong like many scientific theories can. However, in order to promote something as a scientific theory, one would have to prove something is wrong by bringing forward something better in its place, something that is more accurate. The author argues that creationists try to prove evolutionists wrong without ever proposing something new and different. They try and use what the author refers to as the Popperian model, but they only use it in their favor without it ever going in the opposite direction. He uses the evidence that there are many experiments to prove scientific theories such as evolution to be false, but there is no experiment that can be done to make creationists change the way they believe, and therefore by the definition provided, creationism can not be considered a science. The author provides the readers with the three main points that prove evolution. The first one of these points is that scientists have an abundance of evidence that they have produced in a lab setting. Within this point he discusses experiments they have conducted with fruit flies and British moths where they saw the physical changes the species went through in a short amount of time. To this, creationists responded by presenting the idea that the creator made different groups of animals and within that group there can be small changes over time but they can’t

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