Why Evolution Is a Scientific Explanation

This lesson explains why evolution is treated in biology as a scientific explanation: it organizes evidence, makes testable predictions, and can be revised when new evidence appears. Students distinguish everyday uses of words like “theory” from their scientific meaning, and learn why evolutionary theory is not a guess but a broad explanatory framework supported by many independent lines of evidence.

The lesson focuses on how science evaluates explanations, not on every mechanism of evolution. Later lessons will examine natural selection, genetic drift, speciation, fossils, molecular evidence, and human evolution in more detail.