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Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun. It is not a theory, and for pity's sake, let's stop confusing the philosophically naive by calling it so. Evolution is a fact." [37] Neil Campbell wrote in his 1990 biology textbook, "Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate ...
Objections to evolution have been raised since evolutionary ideas came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution (the idea that species arose through descent with modification from a single common ancestor in a process driven by natural selection) initially met opposition from scientists with different ...
Marston [113] [114] has argued that, although the creationism argument (that because evolution is "merely" a theory, it therefore cannot also be a fact) reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the concepts, the scientific countering of the creationist position by the simple stipulation that evolution is a fact may be counterproductive; a ...
Some people are indoctrinated against the theory of evolution and simply do not think about it. But evolution is a well-established explanation of how life developed on Earth.
[127] [128] "Scientific fact and theory are not categorically separable", [129] and evolution is a theory in the same sense as germ theory or the theory of gravitation. [130] The theory of evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life [131] or the origin and development of the universe.
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]
A fact "about which there is disagreement" is not a fact. An irrefutable fact is a fact. Anything else is an opinion. Hence we do not present "evolution" as a fact. We should, however, note that it is an opinion very widely held and with extremely strong supporting evidence. The reader is free to make up their own mind. Ditto for "Flat Earth ...
Where the fact of evolutionary change was accepted by biologists but natural selection was denied, including but not limited to the late 19th century eclipse of Darwinism, alternative scientific explanations such as Lamarckism, orthogenesis, structuralism, catastrophism, vitalism and theistic evolution [a] were entertained, not necessarily separately.