It's a recurrent phrase with the brazen presumption that, whatever theory it refers to, should be outright dismissed as an abstract speculation somewhat devoid of reality. Interestingly enough, anyone that expresses that "it's just a theory", intrinsically acknowledges that not all theories are made equally, and the qualifying adjective "just" gives precisely this sense: it is handily used to try and undermine not, for example, Newtonian gravity or classical electromagnetism, for which demonstrations are straightforward and simple, but less evident ones such as climate change or evolution.
A Google search will reveal plenty of efforts to explain that it's not really just a theory; the phrase triggers me not only because the intention behind it is clear but also because even if it's not right, it is nevertheless true: trying to explain why this is so, however, feels like a bit of an ordeal if not somewhat futile, as if said without bad intent, it only means the person who said it has no idea whatsoever of what a theory is and how it differentiates from a hypothesis.
More generally, this phrase can be said to belong to what Daniel Dennett calls a deepity:
It's understandable that some people might find comfort in some deepities (e.g. "love trumps hate" or "everything happens for a reason") and use them as inspirational mantras or whatnot, which at least superficially is harmless. Similarly, the transition from a deepity or some other pseudo-profound bullshit to purely metaphorical language might seem a bit blurry, but perhaps when the intention is clear the first can indeed be innocuous and the difference somewhat irrelevant. Anyhow, Dennett, in telling the story of how the daughter of one of his friends coined the phrase, tells how a deepity was originally conceived as "an idea masquerading as Truth in order to elevate the speaker" (also in Intuition Pumps).
Precisely, the "it's just a theory" seems to be a good example of deepities that can actually pervade and negatively influence at least a large subset of people, in this case those who ignore what a theory is and how it differentiates from a hypothesis in the first place. The general form of this deepity is most probably "science is just another belief system", which should alarm anyone who listens or reads it. A quandary then is deciding if it's worth it trying and walking the fine line explaining why this is not so while having to acknowledge that it is fundamentally true; perhaps the problem in dealing with anyone who utters such a phrase is that in essence they don't really care if their statement is logically true or not, but rather to presume significance in it and artificially validate their own position. This class of deepities are indeed, I find, harmful when they're able to persuade people into them, as they give empty answers to meaningful concepts that such people don't have clear in the first place. The solution to this is, I guess, far from simple.
A Google search will reveal plenty of efforts to explain that it's not really just a theory; the phrase triggers me not only because the intention behind it is clear but also because even if it's not right, it is nevertheless true: trying to explain why this is so, however, feels like a bit of an ordeal if not somewhat futile, as if said without bad intent, it only means the person who said it has no idea whatsoever of what a theory is and how it differentiates from a hypothesis.
More generally, this phrase can be said to belong to what Daniel Dennett calls a deepity:
A deepity is a proposition that seems both important and true–and profound–but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous.His example in his book Intuition Pumps is the phrase "love is just a word". Coincidentally here again the qualifier "just" aims to trivialize what love is, and even though when the statement is obviously true, it is simultaneously clear to almost all human beings that love is not just a word.
It's understandable that some people might find comfort in some deepities (e.g. "love trumps hate" or "everything happens for a reason") and use them as inspirational mantras or whatnot, which at least superficially is harmless. Similarly, the transition from a deepity or some other pseudo-profound bullshit to purely metaphorical language might seem a bit blurry, but perhaps when the intention is clear the first can indeed be innocuous and the difference somewhat irrelevant. Anyhow, Dennett, in telling the story of how the daughter of one of his friends coined the phrase, tells how a deepity was originally conceived as "an idea masquerading as Truth in order to elevate the speaker" (also in Intuition Pumps).
Precisely, the "it's just a theory" seems to be a good example of deepities that can actually pervade and negatively influence at least a large subset of people, in this case those who ignore what a theory is and how it differentiates from a hypothesis in the first place. The general form of this deepity is most probably "science is just another belief system", which should alarm anyone who listens or reads it. A quandary then is deciding if it's worth it trying and walking the fine line explaining why this is not so while having to acknowledge that it is fundamentally true; perhaps the problem in dealing with anyone who utters such a phrase is that in essence they don't really care if their statement is logically true or not, but rather to presume significance in it and artificially validate their own position. This class of deepities are indeed, I find, harmful when they're able to persuade people into them, as they give empty answers to meaningful concepts that such people don't have clear in the first place. The solution to this is, I guess, far from simple.
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