In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Facts are confirmed, not absolute

Most of us think of facts as absolute truths—things that are simply true, period. But this quote cuts through that confusion with something more useful: a fact is really just something so thoroughly confirmed that refusing to believe it would be stubborn and unreasonable. Apples falling down, not up, isn't true in some mystical sense. It's true because countless observations back it up, and every time you toss something up, the same thing happens.

The tricky part is that this definition actually makes science stronger, not weaker. It explains why we can be confident enough to build airplanes and medicine on scientific findings, while still staying honest about uncertainty. We're not claiming absolute certainty—we're saying the evidence is overwhelming enough that it would be weird to treat fringe possibilities as equally valid. That's why schools teach evolution as fact, not as one opinion among many. The evidence has passed that threshold where withholding agreement becomes perverse.

This matters now because we live in an age where everything feels like opinion. But some things really aren't. The question isn't whether we can be 100% sure, but whether the evidence is strong enough that treating it as established fact is actually the honest position. Usually, it is.