Evolving wrote:I disagree, and I refer you to VazScep's contribution. Even a primary school teacher may have learned to drive, or encountered people who learn about harmony, sonata form and musical terms.
Well, I sense umbrage at a perceived slight aimed at primary school teachers, but none was intended. One of my best friends in fact, is the most fantastic primary school teacher I could ever imagine; I've seen her in action and she's utterly brilliant. But I expect she knows very little about theories, scientific or mathematical. Nor would she, of course, step outside her expertise to talk crap about things, but that's about judgement, which she has in spades.
That some primary school teachers are well educated in some particular detail isn't the same as all so being.
Equally, to use the fact that driving instructors all know the difference between practical driving, and the book learning that constitutes the 'theory test' - despite it being based on facts with the implicit link between fact and theory - proves nothing about whether 'theory' as pejoratively used by creationists is a common colloquial misunderstanding or not.
Not sure what you're disagreeing about. Have you never heard people say "my theory is this..." or "I have a theory..." when they manifestly mean that they have an idea, or a hunch?
Of course theory is colloquially misunderstood, just as it's often used relatively correctly (as in driving theory, or musical theory).
All I'm saying is that if even 'scientific' language uses the word to mean two distinct things, it's not surprising if laymen have an incomplete understanding of the term as well.
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