Posted by blue on August 23, 1999 at 20:48:23:
A key point to remember in evaluating theories is that a theory is, essentially, a hypothesis with supporting evidence.
Anyone can invent a hypothesis about anything. But such hypotheses are only given credibility, and promoted to "theory," when verifiable (repeatable) supporting evidence is found. The key is the verifiability. Harken back to the "cold fusion" fiasco of a few years back for evidence of poor science.
The trouble is, you can never actually "prove" something that you can't repeat. You simply accept it as a definition, and try to show that it makes sense. Now, some great advances in science have been done just this way. Einstein's little 1905 work, "Does the inertia of a body depend on its energy content?" in which he first proposed this century's most famous equation, isn't a proof. It's simply a definition that he showed to make sense. Many years later, repeatable experiments confirmed that, indeed, e=mc^2, (although, last I heard, nobody yet knows just what inertia, the mc^2 part of the equation, really is or why objects have it).
But when we compare Einstein's work to Darwin's, or at least to the popular theories of macro-evolution that began with Darwin, we see some striking differences. Macro-evolution can't be directly proven: We can't simulate millions of years in a laboratory. All we can do is gather evidence to show that it makes sense. And to this end, much work has been done. Yet, with due respect to the sketchy data in the link rpcman has now provided me with twice, the fossil evidence still fails to convince the skeptic. There is no evidence a cat has ever been anything but a cat. The gaps remain too large to dismiss.
Einstein's greatest strength is said to have been his skepticism, which led to his willingness to prove Newtonian physics wrong. Perhaps the great minds of the coming century should learn from Einstein and look at speciation and macro-evolution with a skeptical eye as well.