[RichL]

Many arguments seem to boil down to the layman not knowing that a particular word can have one meaning in general conversation and a different though similar meaning within the context of a particular discipline.

To get to the meat of it, I wonder how many of these argument are because someone reads an article in Nature, a book like "A Brief History of Time" or, worst of all, they make a quick scan of a Wiki article (without reading the foot notes and related articles) then decide they know what they are talking about even though they have misunderstood half of what written because they misunderstand the meaning of a word or words within the context of the discipline they are reading about.