Can anyone name a scientific theory that has become a fact?

Question

We all see posts here by people saying "Evolution is just a theory, not a fact!"

So what? No scientific theory is ever a fact.

Scientific theories are based on facts, and with more facts to back it up, the theory becomes stronger. Facts are observations of natural phenomena.

In other words, the theory of evolution EXPLAINS the changes to life on earth over time. The FACT that life on earth changes is shown by observations of natural phenomena: one area where we get a lot of observations is paleontology. We see fossils of life on earth that show a progression from non-lilfe, to simple celular organisms to, simple sea creatures, and onward over time until the present day. That's how they have come up with the charts like this: http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/G/GeoEras.html

You don't get amphibians, for example, before the late Devonian period. They just aren't there. You don't get mollusks before the Silurian period. THOSE are the "facts."

Gravity is not a "fact."

The facts are that things fall to the ground, and things orbit each other, and the like. The theory of gravity explains WHY.

1+1 does equal 2. However, 1+1 is an expression, not a theory.

old school -- no, but apparently you weren't paying attention. Scientific method goes from Hypothesis to Theory. There is no step going from Theory to Fact.

Answer 1

Gravity

Answer 2

The word theory has a number of distinct meanings in different fields of knowledge, depending on their methodologies and the context of discussion.

In common usage, people often use the word theory to signify a conjecture, an opinion, or a speculation. In this usage, a theory is not necessarily based on facts; in other words, it is not required to be consistent with true descriptions of reality. True descriptions of reality are more reflectively understood as statements that would be true independently of what people think about them.

In science, a theory is a mathematical description, a logical explanation, or a proven model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theory which explains why the apple behaves so is the current theory of gravitation.

Answer 3

When non-biologists talk about biological evolution they often confuse two different aspects of the definition. On the one hand there is the question of whether or not modern organisms have evolved from older ancestral organisms or whether modern species are continuing to change over time. On the other hand there are questions about the mechanism of the observed changes... how did evolution occur? Biologists consider the existence of biological evolution to be a fact. It can be demonstrated today and the historical evidence for its occurrence in the past is overwhelming.

Answer 4

Einstein was the first to have deduced the mass-energy equivalence formula from the premises of a larger theory of relativity, he was not the first to have related energy with mass.

The connection between matter and energy was already known to Isaac Newton. In Opticks, published in 1704, Newton expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, ordinary matter of grosser corpuscles, and speculated that a kind of alchemical transmutation existed between them. "Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another; and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition? The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations."

During the nineteenth century there were many speculative attempts to show that mass and energy were equivalent, often within the premises of the electromagnetic worldview, though they were not regarded as theoretically successful The writings of S. Tolver Preston (1875) have been interpreted as presenting the mass-energy equivalence formula.

E = mc2 is accepted as a fact in the scientific community.

The total amount of mass and energy in a closed system (as seen by a single observer) remains constant. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and in all of its forms, trapped energy exhibits mass. In relativity theory, mass and energy are two forms of the same thing, and neither one appears without the other.

Answer 5

It used to be a scientific theory that the Sun orbits the Earth. Then it became a scientific theory that the Earth orbits the Sun. Now, I suspect it is consider a fact.

Answer 6

Theory has a totally different meaning in science than it does in the general community. A theory in science has verifiable proofs and evidence.

Answer 7

Copernicus's theory of a heliocentric solar system (the planets revolve around the sun). Prior to his work, Ptolemy's theory was that the Earth was the center of our solar system (all the planets and the sun revolve around Earth).

Answer 8

Any thing that is a Law is a series of facts that haven tested and proved and are concrete. However in the case of quantum and theory of relativity they are parts of laws or pieces of a bigger puzzle.

Answer 9

There isn't any.

I see that the ignorant are touting gravity, because of the "fact" that they experience it in their daily lives. They don't understand that, unlike evolution, the mechanism is not demonstrated, so despite everything we do know, gravity remains a theory.

Answer 10

I had one guy actually quoting Newton's "law of gravity" as immutable fact, and wow, I see it happening again.

APPROXIMATION, people. Newton's "Law" is an approximation and does not actually say anything about how gravity works and in fact is completely wrong in the time factor. Newton knew this (in fact it bothered him greatly), why don't you?