“Oh gravity? It is just a theory! We
can fall up if we just think hard enough about it.” Does that sound ridiculous?
It should. Gravity is not something to be questioned or brushed off as “just a
theory”. It is the combination of postulations, evidence, and rigorous testing.
It is the culmination of lots of hard work to understand how the universe
works. It is the Theory of Gravity.[1]
There is a fundamental misunderstanding within
everyday conversation about what a theory really is. It is all too common to
hear people say, “That is just a theory” and imply that because it is “just a
theory” it is not to be trusted. However, a theory is not a wishy-washy
speculation that can change in seconds or even days. A theory is the combination of evidence to produce
the best possible explanation given the current facts. The National Academy of Sciences
defines a theory as “a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that
is supported by a vast body of evidence”. Scientific theories are explanations
for natural phenomenon that are not likely to change unless really startling
and convincing new evidence is uncovered, not mere speculation as is often
inferred in daily conversation.
To fix this common misuse there are two
options. The first is to try and educate more people about the meaning of
theory so that the true meaning becomes what is used in everyday conversation.
The second is to scrap the word theory all together and use a new word in place
of it. I argue that we need to use the first approach because the issues riding
on the use of theory, specifically climate change, do not have time to wait for
a new word to be coined and to make its way into everyday usage.
Now some people might say that this is just a
question of semantics. Why should we care so much about how the word theory is
used in everyday language? Isn’t that the least of our problems right now? The
answer is that we absolutely should care because understanding the meaning of
theory has tremendous implications for how people respond when presented with
the implications of a given theory. If people think that a theory is just
speculation and not backed up by a substantial body of evidence, then they are
not likely to act based upon what the theory says. However, if they understand
that what backs up a theory is a tremendous body of evidence and carefully
detailed research, then they are more likely to take what a theory predicts
seriously and act accordingly.
The actions people take based
on proper understanding of the word theory are particularly important when it
comes to the theory of climate change because understanding the predictions of
this theory is a matter of life and death. Places like the Marshall Islands that are already starting to
be flooded out due to rising sea levels don’t have time for people to say “Oh
climate change is just a theory!”. They need a world that is crystal clear on the
fact that when scientists call something a theory, it is backed up by
substantial evidence and not likely to change.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “Scientific evidence for warming of the climate
system is unequivocal” and according to NASA 97% of scientists are in agreement that
climate change is happening and that it is caused by human activities. There is
an overwhelming amount of scientific data that supports the existence of
climate change that has been documented and analyzed since the early 1980’s. It is a
theory and that means that we need to pay attention to it.
The implications of the theory of climate
change are far too important to keep debating its legitimacy as a theory; we
simply do not have time to wait. By midcentury the Arctic Ocean is going to be
ice free every summer. This means devastating weather changes up and down the Eastern
Seaboard. By the end of the century sea levels will have risen 1-4 feet. More than half of the US population lives within 50 miles of the coast so rising sea levels will
displace countless people while simultaneously destroying infrastructure. It
does not take much time looking at projection maps to see what a harmful effect climate change will have on the US, let
alone on island countries. We need to start talking about climate change as the
theory it is so that we can start acting to mitigate the devastating effects of
climate change.
The good news is that changing people’s use of
the word theory is not as hard as it may first appear. I offer my experiences
in learning about evolution in my AP Environmental Science as evidence that
correcting the use of theory is not as daunting a process as it may seem. My
teacher started our unit on evolution by differentiating between meanings of
theory and hypothesis to show what it means for evolution to be a theory. He
explained the definition of each to the class and made clear that a theory is
supported by tremendous amounts of evidence. After class that day I heard my
classmates correcting other people when they used the word theory incorrectly
in conversation. This proves that the change does not take the same drastic
measures that it would take to put a new word in circulation, it just takes a fifteen-minute
lesson.
Imagine how fast the misuse of the word theory
could be corrected if all science teachers spent fifteen minutes teaching that
lesson or if newspapers stuck in a sentence or two explaining the meaning of
theory the next time they report on anything theory related. This is not a
terribly difficult problem to remedy, but it is an extremely crucial one. As a
society, we need to move past pointless debates over the validity of climate
change because people’s lives are at stake. There are concrete steps we can
take to start working as a society to mitigate climate change and one of those
strategies is returning to the true meaning of theory. By returning to the
proper use of theory, we can start conveying why climate change is not
something to be debated, it is something to trust the evidence for, and it is
something to act on now because it is just a theory.
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