All is theory

Most people do not know what a theory is. In the little narrow-minded country school with staff hand-picked by the fundamentalist school board, my daughter’s 7th grade biology teacher used to tell the class in a voice dripping with sarcasm that “Evolution is just a theory. . .” Exactly. A theory is a set of proposed explanations for observed events which is used to predict the occurrence of other events. A theory, by definition cannot be “proved”; it either predicts observed events successfully or it is discarded in favor of a new theory. (Hypotheses are different animals—they can be proved or disproved, mostly because they are by definition extremely narrow in scope). The fundamentalists reject Darwin’s theory because it does not happen to be mentioned in the Bible and because they are too insecure to feel comfortable about being related to bonobos. But the criticism they aim at evolutionary theory, that “there is no proof”, is exactly the point about theories. The Theory of Evolution predicts and explains observed facts of nature better than anything we have come up with yet and much better than the Pope can.

But I didn’t start this to bitch about fundamentalist school boards and ignorant teachers. I think it is interesting how as we grow along our paths, each of us tends to develop theories of the universe to help us explain why things are as they are. We behave exactly as scientists do—from the time we are babies we construct theories to help us navigate the world we find ourselves in, testing them against observations, discarding them as they become outmoded and developing new theories which serve us better to exist skillfully in such a universe. In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking proposes that theories of the universe are asymptotic, that is that there never will be a perfect theory but they can and do approach a limit and each new adjustment to accommodate new observations resulting from better resolution of the observing mechanism will be less and less drastic until to all intents and purposes, a “perfect” theory can be stated. That resonates with me; I believe that thinking humans do this all their lives. The concerns of a teenager are vastly different from those of a senior citizen and their theories differ as well. The extent of the difference controls the extent of their communication (if there is any). Some unfortunate people get too attached to an obsolete theory, either their own or one adopted wholesale from a religion or other archaic system (like astrology) and go on trying to force the events in their lives to conform to a theory with little predictive ability. This is rather like insisting that radio waves travel through the ether or that fire burns because of Phlogisten. I suppose there are some people (in the Vatican?) still combing through news reports in hope of finding mention of someone who fell off the edge of the world. So as not to get astrology buffs upset about being singled out, I should list some other theories I feel are outmoded and do not subject themselves to a test of their predictive value: Academic Philosophy, Psychology, Medicine, all organized religions, Atheism. Some interesting contradictions there? Not to me. I’ll explain them all some time. I am here just commenting on the lack of “accountability” of each of those systems. They tend to exist as closed systems and feel no pressing need to test their own predictive ability. If they do, and fail, they refuse to modify the theory. That refusal, to me, is the sign that a person is stuck, progress along their developmental path is blocked. That is sad—there is so much to be learned in the universe and so many amazing things all affecting one another, all related in yet-unknown ways—why would a person want to try to force it all into a box made in the past by people with less-developed minds and sensitivities?