::Ed - As far as I can see, the opening sentence of the article has it about right, and I'm not sure what you are suggesting here. In science a '''law''' ''describes what (always) happens'', while a '''theory''' ''proposes an explanation of why it happens''. It's nothing to do with whether it's "thoroughly proven" and "universally accepted". A theory never becomes a law; it's a completely different kind of thing. The law of gravity says (roughly!) that an apple will always fall to the ground, but does not explain why. Phlogiston theory was an attempt at an explanation of observed phenomena; evolution theory is another attempt to explain a set of observations. Whether they are true or not, and whether you (or "many scientists") accept them or not, has nothing to do with it. Theories are not "second-class" laws, and they do not (as it were) aspire to become laws. Nobody is saying "Since it's a theory, it must be true" - so I don't see where your line of reasoning comes from, or where it is leading. [[User:Humblpi|Humblpi]] 16:36, 21 March 2008 (EDT)
== Scientific Lexicon ==
Should it be added that, in the scientific community, a theory is the highest "rank", for lack of a better word, a scientist could hope for a hypothesis to achieve? Should we also differentiate String theory, so called because it's a hypothesis in the branch of theoretical physics, and the theory of evolution, so called because it's a scientific theory? Should we say that theories, under no circumstances, can become laws, but are rather an explanation of how laws interact with each other? I'm afraid that this article appears to liken theories to what most scientists call "hypotheses". I'm not sure if it was intentional, but it is incorrect to say the least.
[[User:MykalOfDefiance|MykalOfDefiance]] 21:52, 25 March 2009 (EDT)