[Note: A version without pictures was posted at 4:48pm CST, on 3/4/10. This version was posted at 7:14pm CST, on 3/4/10.]
[12:50pm 3/5/10 Addendum: Yes, Keamy The Loan Shark "poaching" an egg is yet another in the long line of creator 'winks'/clues that the larger game of Lost is an educationally-oriented Easter Egg hunt, virally catalyzed through embedded clues prompting self-directed learning.... Poaching... Hunting for Easter EGGS.... And what kinds of goals are involved in the larger Lost educational game? As per commonly accepted dimensions of distinguishing among higher and lower levels of learning and intelligence, one prominent goal in the larger game of Lost is most certainly SPEED.... How quickly are you able to pick up on the eggs and their implications? Yes, with each new episode the race is on, scrambling as we do to be the first to find the Lost Easter Egg clues, some of us even resorting to posting on the internet during the airing of the episode. So one way to win points in the virally-encoded educational game of Lost is to be a successful EGG HUNTER, yet another game player role which I've just added below. Being first to market in finding a Lost Easter Egg scores points in the Lost learning community, and while some are adept at finding and claiming more obvious eggs, others (SCANNERS, see below) pour phenomenal amounts of time and energy in hunting for eggs that lie beneath the shadow of surface contents, poring over each episode in a frame-by-frame manner, striving to score points for unearthing more deeply embedded/encoded eggs. Of course, once an egg has been found, the name of the learning game/hunt now shifts to exploring the breadth and depth of the egg's implications for the show and beyond, and this is where DECONSTRUCTERS like Doc Jensen and Joley Wood come to the hunting party and shine.... Points earned here dovetail with a second common dimension for distinguishing higher learning and intelligence: WISDOM manifest in the nature and extent of the broad and deep connections that are interwoven into the tapestry of one's egg-enabled observations.... Points may also be earned for displays of learning as manifest in ADEPTNESS, i.e., the ability to adroitly 'think on one's feet', as often represented in dialogical learning exchanges playing out through Lost chat rooms and threaded discussion boards. Of course, additional roles like NERD are relevant, as well (just added, below.) What additional roles, goals, and game dynamics can you identify, playing out right now at this very moment, in the larger game of Lost?]
[5:14pm 3/5/10 Addendum: Theta wave activity in high gear in the middle of a workout, and 'flashed' on two more real-world Lost game player roles: DATA MINER, and SEER, now added to the list below.]
________________________________________________________________________
THE LOST GAME:
21ST CENTURY VIRAL LEARNING,
YIN/YANG DIVERSIONARY INVERSIONS,
MAPPING TO REAL WORLD ROLES
IN THE LARGER GAME OF LOST
In my 3/2/10 "Sundown" posting I posed the question looming in the shadows of some of our minds... Is this all there is to it.... a black/white mirror-mattered dualistic video game? All along, we've correctly intuited that there is some larger game in play, and we've been working to drag that reality into the full light of day, out from the shadowy recesses of our intuitions. And that day has now finally come....
We are living in an undeniably exciting age of technological advancement, transforming the very nature of our entertainment and educational experiences, producing a vast social networking phenomenon heretofore unseen in the history of humankind. Yes, it is not so far-fetched at all to consider that Philip K. Dick's vision of a VALIS-- a Vast Active Living Intelligence System-- has now arrived at our very doorstep, leaping off the pages of our computer screens, permeating the bits and bytes of our information-formed everyday lives.
Here on my campus we are witnessing this transformation firsthand, not only through infusions of new learning technologies transfusing the learning process with new power and life, but also through radical reinventions of the very structures undergirding our learning delivery systems, moving beyond antiquated 20th Century face-to-face-only 'classroom-based, content-delivery-focused' approaches to a broader and richer palette of educational choices ranging from innovative 21st Century fully web-based courses to hybrid online/face-to-face approaches, all designed and implemented in a contingency-theory manner, focused as they should be on how to best leverage the power of each tool in our expanded learning delivery toolbox in order to best meet the desired learning outcomes.
Yes, this expanded 21st Century toolbox includes social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, and we've all served witness to the diffusion of a range of different social networking tools to the tech-linked Lost community over the years. A recent 'Exhibit A' is our ability to follow the good 'ol Doc Jensen around through Twitter. Of course, students of the history of innovation know full well that while new inventions-- especially new 'paradigm-changing' waves of related inventions as in the cases of the Industrial Revolution and the Information Revolution-- can provide a wealth of benefits transforming our everyday lives, they do not come without a price....
Thus it should come as no surprise to find that we are wrestling with problems and challenges associated with technology over-use and addictions borne out of the very seductive effects of these technologies. Recently documented cases of depression following in the wake of viewing the tech-immersive AVATAR are not isolated incidents, but rather they are the latest in a series of siren calls to arms, warning us of the dangers of letting our tech tools and toys take over our lives and minds. No, this is not some Ludditic rant against new tech; I love the new tech just as much as the next person, but we must all be mindful to remain vigilant lest the seductive tech suck us into spending too much time in mindless activity substituting as it can, for meaningful achievement.
Soberingly, neuroscience is now revealing the very physiological bases for documented addictions to World of Warcraft and other video games. These studies are revealing how tech use is literally rewiring the neural connections within the brains of our next generation New Kids On The Block... Additional studies have revealed an optimum screen refresh rate to keep television viewers engaged while avoiding the mirror twin extremes of: (1) boredom through experiencing refresh rates that are too slow, and (2) over-stimulation through exposure to refresh rates that are too fast....
So how does all of this dovetail with the question raised in my 3/2/10 posting, restated above? All along, our suspicions regarding the operation of a larger, heretofore hidden 'game' have been correct.... Lost has been liberally sprinkled not only with numerous game references throughout the show, but also with a vast range of overt and embedded literary, religious, philosophical, historical social, scientific (etc.) references pointing to and VIRALLY catalyzing a self-organized, web-enabled, asynchronous, collective, globe-spanning real-world educational game....
Yes, the larger game set in motion by Lost has been hard for us to see, since we are the trees constituting the veritable forest; we are the real players in the larger game of Lost. In a stroke of pedagogical and curricular genius, Darlton and the entire Lost creative combine have conceived, designed, and orchestrated what may just turn out to be one of the first truly globe-spanning, web-enabled collective learning experiences.... And yes, this means they have achieved a tangible, real-world instantiation of Philip K. Dick's visionary VALIS... transforming Dick's vision into reality through enacting a Viral Asynchronous Learning Intelligence System....
All humble protestations to the contrary, what Darlton and company have orchestrated is a massive and masterful achievement in the history of learning and entertainment. Yes, it is both/and, yin/yang. Lost is a video game, and the Lostisagame site ranks among the best feats of analysis and intellect on the internet. Kudos to the author of that site, for a truly phenomenal work of sustained insight on a grand theory level. 1
But is there more to Lost than the video game subtext? Yes, and this does not diminish at all the depth and breadth of what the Lostisagame site has achieved to date. Hmmmm.... What better way to design, package, and deliver a learning 
system geared for a tech-savvy and video-game-playing generation than to divert their attention into thinking it is just a video game, while simultaneously sprinkling VIRAL MATTER throughout the show, catalyzing SELF-DIRECTED and SELF-ORGANIZED LEARNING ACTIVITY focused on solving a 'diversionary' puzzle?
What a stroke of genius! Lost is a seminal 'textbook' example of how to render, package, and deliver effective learning experiences on a global scale, leveraging the power of new technologies, unleashing learning not through an outdated teacher-driven pedagogical approach, but rather through one of the first truly 21st Century approaches: Viral learning, self-directed and self-organized, web-enabled, asynchronous, fractally-forming and reverberating throughout the global community of Lost learners at large....
Diversional Inversions In The Larger Game Of Lost-
So which is it... is Lost a video game or is Lost a game of learning, a self-organized, real world contest to figure the show out, with the real heuristic purpose hiding just beneath the surface of that collective puzzle-solving enterprise? The answer, of course, is both. By sprinkling both game and educational references to Great Ideas and Great Persons into the show, in effect they have created a dualistic yin/yang learning delivery structure that not only is overwhelmingly seductive in its siren call to solve the puzzle, but it is also quite irresistably tempting in its siren call to learn more about TAWERET and AMMIT, Quantum Physics, Karma, Alice In Wonderland, Parallel Universes, Interpersonal Relationships, Good vs. Evil, Alchemy, and much, much more.... and not only how these things relate to the show, but also how they relate to and inform our understandings of ourselves, our loved ones, our work, our search for meaning in our everyday lives, and our fundamental place in the history of the universe, the ongoing, interweaving spacetime tapestry-in-progress....
Yes, there is a place for everyone in this larger, more inclusive Lost game. From this vantage point, we can now discern the true nature of the DIVERSIONARY INVERSIONS now at work in the Lost community at large. While an interest in the VIRAL LEARNING educational 'software' components encoded into Lost-- references to science, religion, philosophy, literature, etc.-- may be viewed by some as mere 'diversions' from the true 'game' at hand, it is not surprising to learn that the opposite is just as true, when viewed from the vantage point of those caught up in the larger game of Lost....
Why is this so? Because the 'game' of Lost is fundamentally larger in scale and scope than the show itself, and the vast, complex set of embedded viral learning references liberally encoded into and sprinkled throughout the show have achieved their intended effect by infecting us with a compulsion to engage in self-directed, self-organized, web-enabled, asynchronous, collaboratively-enacted learning on a global scale; we are compelled/driven to learn, and the force and success of this process goes back to the genius of insight Lost's creators brought to their conception, design, and implemention of a tech-enabled, 21st Century approach to learning that seductively and virally pulled us in without us knowing what was happening....
On this view, we can see how a focus on the puzzle-solving minutiae on and near the surface contents of the show may be perceived as the real diversions, seductively sucking us into the puzzle-solving game, while all along, playing out on deeper levels and in the field of our real-world lives, we were sucked into 'hidden' levels of an educational game whose software/code was embedded in plain sight within the very contents and structure of the show.
In a Quantum Superpositional way, both views are correct; Lost is both a video game and a larger educational game, writ virally and at large, across the entire globe. And one person's diversions are another person's raison d'etre... It all boils down to where you are sitting as an observer in the game. Pick your Maxwell's Demon and flash on Heisenberg.... This is why at times the show appears to be focused so much on and aligned with the game angle, and at other times it keys on the educational, viral learning 'game' angle. Moreover, at other times it touches on both angles simultaneously, while stretches will pass where neither angle is referenced. In a nutshell, this demonstrates the fundamentally 
quantum superpositional nature of the yin/yang tensions undergirding the larger game of Lost, as we are simultaneously: (1) OBSERVERS watching a 'video' game being played by others, through character interactions on the show; and (2) PLAYERS engaged in a real-world 'game,' ostensibly focused on merely solving the puzzle that we perceive in our role as Observers of the show, with the real game resulting instead from the effects of the 21st Century Viral Learning Software embedded throughout the show weaving its way through our self-organized learning experiences, infecting and compelling us to examine the great ideas and persons of our time and throughout history, and to materially apply what we learn to our own lives, achieving greater knowledge and meaning, for our own and for the greater good of all....
Yes, the real DHARMA Initiative of Enlightenment was hidden from us, right in plain sight.... A process of DHARMIC Enlightenment through Collective, Self-Organized, Web-Enabled Viral Learning was coded into the educational software 
lying just beneath the surface of the contents and structure of the show. Knowledge is power, indeed, and one of the lasting legacies of the show will be its sustained power in catalyzing and compelling self-directed Viral Learning processes, thusly ramping up the collective IQ of the planet, increasing our chances for averting future disasters in Valenzetti-like manner. Just as the Star Trek franchise has served as a non-trivial stimulus for learning and for stimulating some viewers to pursue careers in science, so too will Lost continue to stimulate our thoughts and hearts, and open up new vocational and avocational avenues through exposure to great ideas and great persons past, present, and on the cutting edge of the future.
One of the eye-opening 'tells' that a larger 'game' of learning was unleashed by Lost and is now virally proliferating around the world hearkens back to a 
response by a Lost fan to one of Joley Wood's columns past. The paraphrasical gist of the response was that the fan wished Joley were teaching an online course about Lost, and now I can see the forest lying in the shadow of the trees in that comment.... By virtue of and enabled through his erudite web-based Lost columns and chats, JOLEY WOOD was ALREADY teaching the online course...! And yes, this course precisely documents and demonstrates the 21st Century game of learning unleashed by the virally-embedded references to great ideas and persons coded into the hidden educational 'software,' resident in the nature and contents of the show....
This very same phenomenon is being played out right now, right in front of our very eyes, across the nation and the globe, from Joley Wood to Doc Jensen, from Lostisagame to Mirror Matter Moon, and beyond.... Course fee: zero! Required or Elective: fully and freely an Elective course, as this is 21st Century self-directed, self-organized study/learning. And self-appointed instuctors, placing their courses online, enabling the free market of self-directed choice to operate, said choices resulting in a self-organized, asynchronous, distributed, web-enabled, collective learning experience, intrinsically and compulsively driven not merely by a surface-awareness perceived need to solve the puzzle, but also incented by an ingeniously disguised learning motivation tool, cleverly adapted to and designed for a tech-savvy, videogame-playing audience....
Does this larger game of Lost have its share of recurring roles and dynamics? Yes, to be sure, it does indeed.... And while these roles may not have been 
intentionally mapped in advance by the Lost creative combine, the roles we are now playing in the larger game have an undeniable reality to them, rooted as they are in observable real-world phenomena. Although the following list is by no means intended as a final and exhaustive cataloging of the entire range of extant real-world game roles, it is instructive and interesting to consider where we may each fit within this schema, including those roles which we find ourselves enacting in a primary manner, as well as recurring patterns of shifting (sequencing) among the various roles we play with respect to Lost, in the broad, expansive fields of our everyday lives.
Real-World Roles In The Larger Game Of Lost-
Given the richly complex and collaborative nature of the 21st Century learning approach identified above, the following list of real-world roles will not be sorted into a simplistic binary categorization scheme, although the roles certainly may be arranged in any of a number of different ways, to tease out additional heuristic insights into the nature, contents, and dynamics of the larger Lost game.
Accordingly, the roles will be listed in alphabetical order....
ARCHIVIST- Keeper of Lost files, a collector, organizer, and access-granter to stored information about the show. (See Lostpedia and other related sites for evidence of their valuable work in this role.)
COLUMNIST- Typically a professional critic employed by an established publication, privileged with an elevated position from which to pontificate, while simultaneously saddled with the not-so-envious task of keeping readers coming back for more, week-in and week-out, during the Lost season (see Owen Wilson's plight in Marley & Me). Jeff 'Doc' Jensen certainly is one of the more prominent examples of persons playing this real-world role. (Doc: I greatly admire your prowess in producing engaging, creative, thoughtful, intelligent columns, week-in and week-out.... Thanks!)
CREATOR- Producers, writers, and other key members of the Lost creative combine. Thank you again for sharing your visionary genius with us!
CRITIC- One who reviews the show with an eye toward normative and comparative judgments. Among other things, they point out good and bad aspects of episodes and often invoke ratings scales provide bases for identifying and ranking better and worse episodes.
DATA MINER- One who derives pleasure from constructing and mining vast datasets containing rich deposits of detailed information regarding Lost. Not to be confused with SCANNERS, DATA MINERS work primarily with quantitative and qualitative datasets in forms such as Excel spreadsheets, facilitating broad and deep connective insights into Lost. Of course, work by SCANNERS mining the direct deposits of visual and auditory stimuli captured in the show itself is indispensible in generating the data which miners subsequently arrange in datasets and scour for addtional insights. SCANNERS, DATA MINERS, and GRAND UNIFIED THEORISTS benefit from mutually-rewarding relationships and may in fact involve one and the same person.
DECONSTRUCTER- Someone who takes 'recapping' to the next level, digging and drilling far down beneath the surface of more obvious Lost insights and connections. This is a truly erudite role, requiring the ability to draw and flesh out a myriad of non-obvious yet compelling connections, often with reference to a veritable cornucopia of literary and popular works, spanning from books to film and beyond. Exhibit A is, of course, one Joley Wood, with Doc Jensen rapidly evolving into a close second. Wood sets the paradigmatic mold for this role.
EGG HUNTER- One who is driven to track down the numerous and varied EASTER EGGS embedded by CREATORS into the show, these eggs serving as one of the primary means of encoding the hidden Viral Learning educational 'software' into the game. Points are earned by being the first to bring the egg to market, posting the fruits of one's hunt on the internet, thereby staking a claim in the larger Lost learning community. EGG HUNTERS may also be SCANNERS, but not all scanners are EGG HUNTERS. The latter may be distinguished from the former by their drive to be the first to track down and post their finds/'kills' on the internet, for all to see, a pursuit more closely aligned with achieving the 'first-to-market' learning goal of SPEED ala RECAPPERS. SCANNER activity is more closely related to the learning goal of WISDOM-- broader and deeper learning connections-- pursued by DECONSTRUCTERS and GRAND UNIFIED THEORISTS.
FLAMER- One who knowingly and intentionally disrupts and diverts the collaborative learning environment through inflammatory comments. (See also TROLL)
GRAND UNIFIED THEORIST- Someone who aspires to find the Lost, legendary TOE (Theory Of Everything), thereby 'solving' the game. The best example here is the phenomenal Lostisagame site, a pinnacle of analytic achievement to which we all aspire. Another example in this category is the fascinating Mirror Matter Moon site. Telltale signs of a Grand Unified Theorist (GUT) site are: (1) a detailed, thoughtful overview of the GUT, accompanied by (2) updates and expansions as dictated by new clues and content gleaned from the most recent episode. Work by SCANNERS is invaluable in realizing and sustaining the dream of the GUT, and these roles may be played by one and the same person.1
INSTRUCTOR- Avoiding the negative conotations of 'Teacher" (Pink Floyd) and the cloying faddishness of phrases like "Learning Coach", the INSTRUCTOR is one who willingly enacts the role of a leader in helping to organize and direct the shared web-enabled learning experience. To stimulate learning, the INSTRUCTOR may post a Lost review/blog that they have written and/or pose a series of questions or issues to be discussed. In typical
21st Century fashion, 'daisy chains' of Instructor-Learner interactions may be observed in freely evolving states in contexts like chat rooms and threaded discussion forums, with Instructor/Learner roles shifting in a Quantumly Superpositional manner.
LURKER- Typically a Lost fan occupying a passive role in the process, learning through reading what others have previously learned and are now learning through the ongoing, on-screen dialogue,
MENTOR- An established member of the Lost learning community who self-directedly takes a NEWBIE under their wing, helping them climb the Lost learning curve more quickly, all in a distinctly more nurturing manner than the SCHOOLER.
MODERATOR- A key role in enabling free-flowing, collaborative 21st Century learning on the web. Helpful in putting out flames and killing trolls. Not the same as a WEBMASTER, of course, but at times these roles may be held by the same person.
NERD- One who derives primary pleasure from tracking and pondering the range of different scientific references in and applications to Lost. For this person, it is less about who wins the war of good and evil, and more about the fascinating worlds of insight opened through pondering how mainstream and cutting edge science helps us to understand seemingly 'magical' phenomena playing out on the island, as well as intriguing connections to the nature, conduct, and possibilities associated with our everyday lives. Yes, Urkle could qualify both as a NERD and a NEWBIE. (Contrast with SHIPPER.)
NEWBIE- A recent convert to the game, they typically need to be ''brought up to speed' by more established members of the learning community. Characterized by exuberance and, at times, accompanied with postings incorporating previously established knowledge/insights in the Lost compendium, albeit unintentionally. Not to be confused with PLAGIARISTS, who intentionally attempt to pawn off the ideas of others as theirs.
PLAGIARIST- One who knowingly and intentionally attempts to mislead others into thinking the ideas they are sharing are their own.
RECAPPER- Someone whose postings focus predominantly on recuperating and cataloging key aspects of the most recent episode of Lost, all with comparatively less depth and breadth than the DECONSTRUCTER.
SCANNER- A person playing an absolutely crucial role in the detailed analysis of each and every Lost episode, using an array of technologies to evaluate the show on a frame-by-frame basis, thereby teasing out clues and references that would otherwise escape detection. Indispensable to the efforts of the GRAND UNIFIED THEORIST. (See EGG HUNTER for further clarification of key differences from SCANNERS.)
SCHOOLER- Someone who takes it upon him/herself to move a NEWBIE rapidly up the learning curve by abruptly and curtly pointing out shortcomings in the NEWBIE's postings, effectively 'SCHOOLING' them in the process. (Contrast with MENTOR and INSTRUCTOR.)
SEER- One whose motivations lie in predicting events that will occur in future Lost episodes. Gifted seers are those who have accumulated enough game points through previous predictive 'hits' that their sites and postings are frequently visited by others who are interested in seeing what lies beneath the shadow of future Lost plotlines. For example, the first person who correctly predicted that the island was not stationary but was in fact moving is a Lost seer.
SHIPPER- One who derives primary pleasure from tracking and pondering the ever-changing universe of character relationships on Lost. For this person, it is less about who wins the war of good and evil, and more about who ends up with whom, in the end. Will Kate end up with Jack, or Sawyer, or? Etc. (Contrast with NERD.)
TROLL- "In
Internet slang, a
troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an
online discussion forum,
chat room or
blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an
emotional response
[or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion."
WEBMASTER- Someone who willingly adopts the non-trivial and sometimes thankless job of overseeing one of the myriad Lost websites serving such a crucial function in enabling the proliferation of
21st Century Viral Learning around the globe. Doc Arzt is one prominent example of this admirable breed of characters in the larger game of Lost
learning.
ZEITGEISTER- One who has independently arrived at the same or similar learning insights as another. Darwin and Wallace's independent development of the Theory of Evolution is one claimed example of the Zeitgeist Effect, from which this real-world role derives its name.
Again, while the above is not intended as a final end-all, be-all listing of the myriad existing and emerging real-world roles in the larger Lost game, it does serve to illustrate some of the different roles we have naturally self-selected into, during the course of our self-directed participation into an ongoing, self-organizing collective, web-enabled, 21st Century Viral Learning process. In addition to moving between roles and playing more than one role at a time, the partial list of SUBSTANTIVE FOCI /FIELDS provided below helps to further clarify real-world role-taking:
Artist
Historian
Mathematician
Mystic/Person Of Faith
Philosopher
Physician
Physical Scientist
Political Scientist
Social Scientist
Writer/Person Of Letters
Etc....
When used in conjunction with the aforementioned Roles, the partial list of Substantive Foci/Fields helps us more precisely label the exact manner in which a particular person is enacting the role. For example, someone developing a Grand Unified Theory of Lost focusing primarily on themes of reincarnation, karma, and enlightenment could be labled as a "GUT Mystic". (I know, I wished the acronym were different here..!) Of course, pundits like Joley Wood, Doc Jensen, and others alternate in a Superpositional manner among these and other Substantive Foci/Fields....
Lost's Enduring Legacy Secured: A Televisionary Masterpiece-
Lost's empirically-demonstrable heuristic effects in catalyzing a larger real-world game of virally-infective learning through educational 'software' encoding secures its place in the pantheon of televisionary masterpieces, for this and future 
generations to come. Indeed, Lost serves as a seminal, paradigmatical example of how careful and intelligent design can leverage powerful forces now in place to unleash a 21st Century viral learning initiative, catalyzing critical masses of self-directed, self-organized learning across the globe. In addition to participating in undeniably engaging puzzle-solving activity, on a larger scale we are witnessing the power of a web-enabled, distributed, asynchronous, self-organized, fractally-evolving, mind-expanding, meaning-making, collective, collaborative, globe-spanning Viral Learning approach....
As we progress through the years, over the course of the 21st Century and beyond, I have no doubt that future generations will continue to mine the wealth of renewed and renewable insights available in that richly woven masterful tapestry that is Lost.... In a day and age in which tech use all-too-often is directed toward the delivery of disposable empty-caloric entertainments appealing and appeasing to the Lowest Common Denominator, we are indeed grateful for such a puzzling show, stimulating as it does our hearts and minds, and infecting us all with the feverish desire of Viral Learning....
What lies ahead in the bright light of our futures....?
Time will tell....
Dr. Todd J. Hostager
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ENDNOTE:
1. Although this knowledge is not as widespread as it should be, the term THEORY is not limited to the more widely-known 'Standard Model' usage vis-a-vis science and the Scientific Method. Instead, THEORY is a broader term including non-scientific uses as in the case of PHILOSOPHICAL THEORY, which is not subject to the same restrictions regarding evidence and predictive power:
"The term
theory has two broad sets of meanings, one used in the empirical sciences (both natural and social) and the other used in philosophy, mathematics, logic, and across other fields in the humanities. There is considerable difference and even dispute across academic disciplines as to the proper usages of the term. What follows is an attempt to describe how the term
is used, not to try to say how it
ought to be used.
A theory, in the scientific sense of the word, is an analytic structure designed to explain a set of empirical observations. It must respect the scientific method. A scientific theory identifies a set of distinct observations as a class of phenomena, and it makes assertions about the underlying reality that brings about or affects this class. It is described in such a way that any scientist in the field is in a position to understand, and challenge it. A scientific theory generally comes with or generates potential applications in the real world, allowing solutions that were not previously possible. The word theory, in its philosophical sense, means that is the subject matter being discussed consists itself of ideas rather than empirical data. It is not supposed to be proven, nor does it follow a scientific method. Theory in mathematics hardly follows any of these definitions, and describes generally a corpus of knowledge such as number theory. Although the scientific meaning is by far the more commonly used in academic literature and discourse, it is hardly the only one used and it would be a mistake to assume a priori that a given use of the term "theory" is a reference to a scientific or empirically-based theory."
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory]
In addition to the existence of multiple types or forms of THEORY, there are different levels of theory, as well:
"The most abstract level of sociological theory is often referred to as Grand Theory. Grand Theory attempts to explain the inter-relationships among numerous concepts and intends to be independent of time and space. In other words, it intends to be universally applicable. An example would be Talcott Parsons' Action Systems Theory, which attempted to explain the workings of society at a very abstract level. Another example would be Marx's Historical Materialism, which argued economic relations were the foundation of social structure. Middle-range theories are also explanations of human behavior that go beyond one particular observation but are limited in scope and do not attempt to explain all of society. A classic example (with Grand Theory implications) would be Durkheim's research on suicide. He proposed a relationship between the breakdown of social bonds found in religions (Protestantism vs. Catholicism) as the reason for higher rates of suicide in specific areas. Micro-level theories are limited to explanations of specific observations and are not intended to be universal. For instance, current work on religious activity in the U.S. seems to indicate that religious pluralism and marketforces have played a role in reducing the apparent amount of secularization (defined here as 'decreased levels of religiosity'). As the U.S. is one of few examples of a modernized country where levels of religiosity have remained relatively high over time (perhaps the only example), the theory seems applicable only to the U.S. and only during a specified time period." [Source: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_(sociology)]