January 2010 UTC Thank you Dave and thank you for your welcome on My Talk This section was started with discussion of bias in favor of Darwin s theory raising the issue of misrepresentation of Darwin by anti evolutionists and as discussed above we have to give due weight to the overwhelming scientific majority view on the basic subject of evolution I certainly agree with that But on the issue of using realised I just have a couple of things to say But as a preamble if you like I want to make the distinction between a theory and the reality that scientists etc test it against I m not being insulting I assume everyone knows this already but I m making a case Scientists don t prove theories are true But by conducting experiments they falsify the bad theories again I assume you know this and obviously this is in agreement with the philosophy of Karl Popper Now I think it s bad practice to state things in such a way that a theory sounds like it s the truth meaning in perfect agreement with reality because it destroys this distinction between theory or scientific fact and reality or truth To say that X realised that Y where Y is a theory is suggesting that Y is in perfect agreement with reality Now I think the statement all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors does correspond perfectly with reality but I also think we need to remember that it is still a theory nothing is proven remember according to Popper consistent with the general scientific method and perspective I already briefly outlined Of course in the case of evolution someone arguing like this sounds rather silly it sounds like you re being pedantic bordering on obsessive Of course not all theories are the same Popper would argue that theories that have survived criticism and rigorous testing are more corroborated but never fully verified But even if you wanted to make some exceptions like the statement all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors for the sake of scientific consistency I think we should refrain from using realised in this context incidentally in regards to making exceptions I certainly wouldn t make any exceptions in respect to the sources given by David Wilson these seem to me to be much more egregious cases of the word realised Anyway so much for theory As far as concrete help is concerned have you thought about deleting who realised that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors altogether You probably know more about the history of evolution than I do but I thought that this idea didn t actually come from Darwin I could be wrong of course But if it does what about Charles Robert Darwin FRS 12 February 1809 19 April 1882 was an English naturalist who first proposed the fact that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors and also the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection or some variation on this Kind Regards M 01 05 21