Reviewer of texts points out theories don't equal facts

Your article ("County school board adopts controversial science textbook," July 6) says that there is a science textbook that says evolutionary theory is a fact: That seems extremely unlikely to me.

I've reviewed dozens of science textbooks for California schools, and I have never found even one that says evolutionary theory is a fact: They say that evolution is a fact (because it is); evolutionary theory defines, describes and makes predictions regarding the fact of evolution (which is what a theory does), but it is not a fact. No theory is a fact. Atomic theory, for example, is not a fact; the theory of gravity is not a fact. Atoms and gravity, however, are facts.

Did Ed Rockland really say he has studied "every scientific journal"? All 600 of them, many of them published weekly? It sounds like an impossible task to me. He is also quoted as saying, "In order to be scientific, it must be testable, supportable and disprovable."

Evolution, of course is not testable, nor "disprovable" (that is, falsifiable); evolutionary theory, however, is both testable and falsifiable.

If Mr. Rockland "wanted to see the other side in the debate over the origin of human existence included," the first thing he needs to do is discover an "other side": So far there is only evolution and evolutionary theory- there is no known "other side."

Evolution and evolutionary theory are two different things entirely: The former is an observed natural phenomena; the latter defines and describes how that natural phenomena works.

If the science textbook says evolutionary theory is a fact, then it should be changed to say that evolution is a fact instead.

The bottom line is, while evolutionary theory is not a fact, evolution is: Creationists will just have to get used to that fact. David Rice Abiquiu, New Mexico