Editor,
I am very glad that Lindsey McKay (It's hard work resisting dogma; 4/1/04) wants to encourage open criticism and critical thinking. Unfortunately, her column reveals a profound misunderstanding of the word theory - either she had awful science teachers in high school and college, or failed to learn the meaning of the most basic term in science (as well as English, history and social studies!). Without a good grasp of what scholars mean by theory, critical thinking is virtually impossible.
McKay sees fact and theory as opposed: facts are real things and theories are things we are free to accept or reject as we please. If this is what factand theory meant, there would actually be no need for critical thinking at all: some things are obvious, other things are frivolous. But science assumes that reality is not obvious, and our thoughts are not frivolous. For this reason, in science facts do not exist without theories, and theories do not exist without facts.
For example, if someone just looks at the real world they will see that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But this is not a fact - the fact is, the sun does not revolve around the earth, it is the other way around. And although we know this in part from observing the skies, we knew this long before anyone actually went into space to watch the earth and sun from a distance; we know this because of theory.
McKay seems to think theory means the same thing as opinion. No scholar uses theory this way, and no scholar would ever say ideas are merely theories. Theories are models of the universe, or some part of the universe, that enable us to understand what we see and to recognize facts. A good theory is one that accounts for many different observations, with relatively few assumptions. In short, no one should think that facts are real in some simple and obvious way, nor that theories are opinions that one is free to hold or reject as they please. Facts must be carefully established and sometimes radically altered; theories must be carefully considered, and are always subject to scrutiny.
I am glad that McKay invokes Plato's point that things are not what they seem. But were she to spend some time with Socrates, surely he would ask her what her words really mean. Words mean different things in different contexts. I know that what I have described is not the way most people use the words fact and theory. But it is how scientists, and most scholars, use these words. If you don't understand this, you have misunderstood most of what you have learned at college. It is only because fact and theory are two sides of the same coin that critical thinking is possible and necessary.
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
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