Asklemmy

44004 readers

532 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

127

Who in history (either present or in the past) do you think has had the biggest positive impact on humanity? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

254 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I dont think evolution should be considered just a theory now,, its basically proven.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Theory doesn't mean what people think it means.

Culturally, we misunderstand theory to be equivalent to "hypothesis," meaning "We have an idea, now we need to prove or disprove it."

But accurately, theory means "We have a framework of interrelated ideas that fit the observable evidence." In that sense, evolution is an EXTREMELY well supported theory.

Gravity is also a theory. So are general and special relativity. So is all of quantum physics.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I see, thanks for the nice explanation

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

You are wonderful. Well put.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

In addition to what The Bard In Green said, while we know that evolution does happen, there is a lot of debate over what is its main driving force. Darwin argued that the main force was natural selection, and most biologists agree with him. But there are also other schools, such as Kimura's neutral theory (evolution is caused primarily by luck) and Margulis's symbiosis theory (evolution is caused primarily by mutualism).