Question

Many people argue that evolution is “only a theory”. Compare and contrast the way that theory is used among lay people and scientists. Describe how evolution does or does not fit the definition of a scientific theory.

Answer 1

Evolution is a theory but it has obviously deeper connection and understanding of how things occurred in life. According to a layman, evolution is a concept where the parents are producing offspring and with change in the environment and time, there are gradual changes taking place in the next generation that is passed on. According to layman, it becomes a sudden change in the environment that contributes to changes in the organisms in an attempt to adapt to that particular environment. The individuals are subjected to changes and one who is able to survive the changes is taken forward and rest is not. Evolution according to layman is the gradual change an organism needs to adapt in order to survive.

According to the theory of evolution as per the scientist, it is the change in the heritable traits or characteristic that takes place over the successive generations. The traits are changes due to the expression of the genes contributing to genotypic and phenotypic characteristic and genes are passed from the parent to the offspring during the process of reproduction. Evolution is a change that occurs due to multiple processes like natural selection, genetic drift and hence at the end creates a number of biodiversity amongst the organisms that originally branched out from the same species.

When we talk about a scientific theory, we are talking some of the facts that are scientifically explained and when we talk about the evolution facts, they are accumulated or drafted together based on some of the observational evidences. We can say that evolution is a combination of both scientific theory and facts where the observable traits of an organism are examined and studied over generation and the mechanism of evolution is mapped.