NoBull.ws - Dictionary of Terms Used in This Website

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On the Origin of Species

by Charles Darwin

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Table of Contents

Click the down arrow to make your selection.

The items in this Table of Contents are divided into categories, but there is a lot of overlap in some cases. For this reason, a few articles may be listed in two or more areas.

Theories, Hypotheses, and Laws

Most people use the word theory to mean uncertainty, guesswork, or a rough idea, but in science it has a different meaning. A scientific theory explains facts or phenomena that have been shown to be true by repeated independent tests and experiments. An educated guess in science is called a hypothesis.

Scientific theories are not laws, which describe phenomena thought to be invariable. Theories are generally used to describe why certain laws work. For example, the law of gravity is known to be true for falling bodies, but how and why it works is explained by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein's theory was accepted as true only after repeated experimentation and observation. Yet not even laws are absolute. They are rarely overturned, but they may be amended should new data warrant it.

Maia Weinstock, "Delineations," Discover, November 2005, p.12. (Used here as educational material under the Fair Use Docreine.).

Dictionary of Terms Used in This Website

Alfred Russel Wallace
See Wallace, Alfred Russel

Animal
Animals are organisms of the Kingdom Animalia. This kingdom generally includes the moving things made of flesh, including birds, mammals, fish, mollusks, reptiles, insects, humans, and many others. A few animals, like the sponge and sea cucumber, might appear to be plants or fungi at first glance.

Articulated
Language: Composed of distinct, meaningful syllables or words, as normal human speech is.
Anatomy: Consisting of sections united by joints. For example, fossilized bones may be found individually in different places. These are not articulated. However, if a partial or complete skeleton is found with the bones still in place and positioned as in the living animal, they are said to be articulated.

Asimov, Isaac
Late president of the American Humanist Association. Asimov was also one of the most prolific writers who ever lived, writing almost 500 books and many thousands of short stories, articles, and essays. He is probably best known for his science fiction; but he was also a scientist, and wrote more about various scientific, mathematical, and philosophical topics. He also wrote mysteries, guides to Shakespeare and the Bible, and a wide variety of other materials.

Asimov wrote for the layman in a simple style that made difficult subjects easy for ordinary people to understand, and he sometimes referred to himself as a "professional explainer." He died in 1993 at the age of 72. According to recent reports, his death was caused by complications of AIDS contracted from a blood transfusion. (Tragically, his transfusion took place before the powerful screening methods were put in place to prevent the use of such contaminated blood.)

Asimov was definitely one of my heroes. His death was a tremendous loss for the world.

Atheism
Lack of belief in any god. It may or may not also include a belief that there is no god. These are two very different, but mutually compatible, propositions.

From the Skeptic's Dictionary: "Atheism is traditionally defined as disbelief in the existence of God. As such, atheism involves active rejection of belief in the existence of God. This definition does not capture the atheism of many atheists, which is based on an indifference to the issue of God's existence." http://www.skepdic.com/atheism.html

In other words, who cares whether or not there might be a god of some kind hiding somewhere in the far reaches of the universe? Or beyond? If he/she/it ever decides to show up on earth or do something that affects us, then we can spend some time thinking about him/her/it. Until then, why bother?

Atheist
One who has no belief or faith in any god. The prefix "A" means non or no or none, so an a-theist is a non-theist, or one who recognizes no god. In the absence of very strong evidence that a god exists, it seems to me this should be the default position for all rational people.

An atheist may or may not also have a strong belief that no god exists. Some people refer to "weak atheists," who simply have no faith in any god, and "strong atheists" who strongly believe there is no god. I generally make no such distinction.

It was the first President Bush who made the remarkably irrational, unconstitutional, and insensitive comment that "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." He was wrong on all counts. Atheists are just ordinary people who happen to have a different opinion about a hypothetical god from that held by theists.

Many of us are certainly patriotic citizens of our country, which has never been "a nation under God," but under the Constitution of the United States of America.

Big Bang
The initial explosion-like event about 13.7 billion years ago that "created" the known universe. The word "created" is a figure of speech, since there is no scientific evidence of a creator. We don't know yet what was before the big bang or what caused it. Neither can we be sure we'll ever have any way of knowing.

Of course, science may or may not find clues in the future that we can't even imagine now. As Arthur C. Clarke once said, "Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The "magic" of future technologies may very well provide the tools our descendents will need to see through the Big Bang into the time before our present known universe existed.

Fred Hoyle coined the phrase 'Big Bang' during a 1949 radio broadcast, as a derisive reference to a theory with which he disagreed. So much evidence has accumulated since that time that nearly all scientists agree with the theory now.

Billion
The word "billion" is used differently in different parts of the world. No Bull and most of our readers are in the United States. Therefore, on this site, I follow the American custom that a billion is a thousand million, or 1,000,000,000, or 10⁹. In this sense, earth is about 4.6 billion years old; the known universe appears to have existed about 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang; and there are currently about 6.7 billion humans on our planet.

This is different from the traditional usage in Europe and some other parts of the world, but most countries are using this American system more and more.

I am aware that some sites avoid this problem by simply eliminating the use of terms like billion and trillion. Instead, they refer to "a thousand million" or "a million million" or even "a million million million." Since the usage more or less worldwide appears to be changing to the American system, there seems to be little reason to use anything else here.

By this same reasoning, a trillion is a thousand billion; a quadrillion is a thousand trillion; etc.

Bull
Literally, a bull is an intact (i.e., non-castrated) adult male bovine animal; the male counterpart to a farmer's cow. Figuratively, bull means nonsense. That's the way it's used in the title of this website.

Charles Darwin
See Darwin, Charles

Clone
A clone is an individual, living organism that is genetically identical to one or more other individual living things. They may be plants, animals (including humans), or other organisms.
Identical twins are natural clones. Many plants, bacteria, and even a few species of animal routinely create natural clones as they reproduce. Many plants are cloned by taking cuttings and rooting them so they become new plants with identical genetic structures.

The mammal "clones" various labs have been producing recently are not true clones in this sense, because only the nuclear genes are identical. Genes in the mitochondria -- outside the cell nucleus of the egg -- are currently ignored. Since they come from a different individual from the one donating the nucleus, the alleged clones are maybe 99% or so genetically identical rather than 100%; and this can sometmes be important.

Cells from a plant or animal may be cloned in the laboratory to produce a large number of identical cells for medical or research purposes. It is important to note this distinction: the process of cloning cells does NOT produce cloned organisms; it produces cloned cells of multi-cellular organisms. These cells may then be used for a variety of experimental or medical purposes.

Darwin, Charles
Darwin was the author of On the Origin of Species, first published in 1859. In this book he coined the phrases "natural selection" and "sexual selection" as two methods whereby biological evolution works. These two processes are still considered primary forces driving evolution, though we now also understand many related processes that Darwin had no way to know.

Decay
Disintegrate, decompose (sometimes through microbial activity), to decrease gradually (voltage in a circuit or the size of an orbit), decline from a state of normality, excellence, or prosperity; deteriorate. All forms of decay result in increased entropy.

In radioactive decay, the nucleus of an unstable atom will decompose, usually forming a smaller nucleus and giving up energy in the form of one or more photons, protons, electrons, neutrons, neutrinos, or other particles. Statistically, radioactive decay is very precise; so it is possible to calculate precisely what percent of a sample of material will decay over a given period of time. This is the basis of more than 100 separate methods used to calculate the ages of various rocks and minerals and estimate the age of the earth.

Each method has its own strengths and weaknesses. However, when used appropriately, they agree so very well that they support each other and give scientists great confidence in their accuracy.

Ebook
An electronic book, or ebook, is a document that may be downloaded from a website or stored on a CD, DVD, or hard disk and read on a computer screen. Most can also be printed out on a home or office printer. Adobe's PDF format is one of the most popular document types for ebooks, but some are compiled into executable programs. Either way, they may combine text with graphics, video, sound, and other media.

Anther kind of ebook is a special software product designed to display text and sometimes multimedia on a portable ebook reader.

Evolution
Evolution simply means "change over a period of time," so it is used in reference to many changing phenomena. For example, languages may be said to evolve. Technology evolves. The entire universe evolves. Most commonly, though, it is used to mean the biological process whereby a species of living organism changes.

To distinguish this process from inanimate evolution, it may be referred to as "biological evolution." Biological evolution is currently defined by scientists in terms of changing gene frequency within a population of organisms over a period of generations.

However, it’s easier for most of us to think in terms of differences in plants or animals. The results are ultimately about the same, since genes (in cooperation with environment) determine how a creature looks, what size it is, what it eats, how it behaves, and everything else about it. So that’s the way I’ll discuss it here.

Biological evolution includes small changes like a group of moths or butterflies changing color over a few generations. This is sometimes referred to as micro-evolution.

It also includes larger changes like one species of life giving birth to another species, as described by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, and updated by E. O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, and many other biologists.

Biological evolution is often said to be "just a theory." This is half true, in the scientific sense of the word; but people who say it usually try to make "theory" sound like "guess." On the contrary, biological evolution is one of the most successful scientific theories we have. It is supported by a vast amount of evidence from every relevant area of science.

Many doubters claim that even the scientists who study it argue over whether it is real or not. With almost zero exceptions, this is simply not true. Nearly all scientists believe in evolution. The arguments are over the details of how it works. Life on earth is so incredibly complex that we'll never understand exactly how it all evolved. Therefore, there will always be disagreements about the details.

Evolution is both a scientific fact and a scientific theory. That evolution happened (and is still happening) is a fact. That it happens primarily by natural selection is a theory explaining the fact.

Here's what the National Academy of Sciences has to say about Evolution

As with all active areas of science, there remain questions about evolution. There are always new questions to ask, new situations to consider, and new ways to study known phenomena. But evolution itself has been so thoroughly tested that biologists are no longer examining whether evolution has occurred and is continuing to occur. Similarly, biologists no longer debate many of the mechanisms responsible for evolution. As with any other field of science, scientists continue to study the mechanisms of how the process of evolution operates. As new technologies make possible previously unimaginable observations and allow for new kinds of experiments, scientists continue to propose and examine the strength of evidence regarding the mechanisms for evolutionary change. But the existence of such questions neither reduces nor undermines the fact that evolution has occurred and continues to occur.

Nor do such questions diminish the strength of evolutionary science. Indeed, the strength of a theory rests in part on providing scientists with the basis to explain observed phenomena and to predict what they are likely to find when exploring new phenomena and observations. In this regard, evolution has been and continues to be one of the most productive theories known to modern science.

Science, Evolution, and Creationism, National Academy of Sciences, 2008.

This free PDF was downloaded from: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11876.html

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for noncommercial, educational purposes, provided that this notice appears on the reproduced materials, the Web address of the online, full authoritative version is retained, and copies are not altered. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the National Academies Press.

Fact
Something observed to be true.

Falsify, Falsifiable
To a scientist, the word falsifiable means to be able, at least in principle, to prove that something is false. A hypothesis or theory is useless if it cannot be falsified.

Whatever your hypothesis or theory may be, ask yourself this question: "Could there be, even in principle, any evidence that would demonstrate to me this is not true?" If it cannot be proven false, even in principle, then you can never prove it true, either. It is a useless idea.

Flame
In the world of electronic communication, a "hate mail" is referred to as a flame. Letters and emails typed all in capital letters are especially suspect, because the excessive use of capitals is considered yelling, screaming, or shouting. It is considered to be very rude. (It is usually considered OK to type a word or phrase in capital letters for emphasis, but not much more.)

Hypothesis
A scientific hypothesis is nothing but an educated guess that attempts to explain something about your observations and make a prediction possible. The prediction should suggest experiments or other evidence from nature. The hypothesis may come from anywhere; but, in order to be useful, it must be testable and falsifiable.

Experiments are designed to try to disprove the predictions based on the hypothesis. Most hypotheses are proven false.

Isaac Asimov
See Asimov, Isaac.

Organism

A individual member of any species on the tree of life, whether now living or dead. This includes humans and all other animals, as well as plants, fungi, bacteria, and members of all five kingdoms of living things. In other words, a living thing, or a once living thing that has died.

Predator
An organism that preys on animals, possibly including humans. There were predators on earth long before the first humans. Many of them left teeth, claws, stomach contents, or feces that scientists have found and studied.

Significant Emotional Experience

Adults rarely change very much unless they have a "significant emotional experience," or SEE. "Being saved" in the religious sense surely qualifies as a significant emotional experience, regardless whether or not any literal god has anything to do with it.

Species

The usual definition of a species of sexual organisms is a group that cannot or will not interbreed with members of another group to produce viable offspring. The two groups are considered separate species.

For one example, horses and donkeys are closely related. They can and do interbreed and produce offspring which we call mules. But mules are sterile. They can have sex, but they produce no offspring; so mules are not considered a species at all. Horses and donkeys are different species.

Theory

In common usage, the word "theory" often means a guess or a rough idea. This is NOT the way a scientist uses the word. To a scientist, a theory is an explanation of something, and it must meet certain qualifications.

"A scientific theory explains facts or phenomena that have been shown to be true by repeated independent tests and experiments." (See sidebar above left, Theories, Hypotheses, and Laws)

By far the most important product of science is an explanation that permits scientists to make testable predictions and understand how something works. This explanation is what we call a "scientific theory."

A theory should be as concise, coherent, systematic, predictive, and broadly applicable as possible. It must be testable by experimental results, observations, or other means.

The most important product of science is not a fact. It is the best theory we can devise. Theory is what lets us make progress.

Wallace, Alfred Russel
Co-discoverer of natural selection with Charles Darwin.

Notes:

This page will probably never be finished; because there'll be a need to add words and phrases to it as long as the website exists. I try to add to it whenever needed, but I always seem to be behind the curve.
Many of these definitions are controversial, especially since some of them deal with religious topics. I try to use the most common definitions or descriptions, or specifically Biblical or Koranic definitions (in the case of religious topics), or definitions that make sense in the context of this website.

This page was last updated 08/21/09 04:43 PM.

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