Darwinism Cannot Explain The Peacock

One wonders exactly how one did science back in Galileo’s day.Let’s take a look at one of Galileo’s great(?) discoveries — that of tides. You see, Galileo was riding on a barge one day that was ferrying water. He noticed that whenever the barge changed speed or direction that the water inside sloshed around. It is from this that he deduced why tides occur.You see, he thought the Earth moved around the center of the universe (aka the Sun) and that it was also revolving. As such, he reasoned, the outer part of the Earth was invariably moving faster than the inner part. It was this difference of velocities that varied every day (as half the time the body of water will be on the slow side and the other half on the fast side) that produced the tides.When he was criticized that his theory would only explain one high tide a day and not two Galileo was quick with ad hoc hypotheses concerning the length of the body of water in general, depth, etc., that allowed his theory to avoid falsification. He also never subjected it to any experiment to confirm or falsify it.And that’s just one of the reasons why Galileo was such a great scientist, right?

Wow, NPR radio — that beacon of truth, justice, and unbiased reports.Of course it would help if you knew how to read.As the article says (if you can piece it together with all the technical difficulties) that no one knew what to call all of these different people doing different things and that some people were using natural philosopher whereas others were using cultivators of science.The article goes on to say he was actually writing a book that became very well known, "The Philosophy of the Inductive Science," at this time, where he was trying to set up - how do you come up with a hypothesis? How do you prove it? Should it be universal? And you know, this all seems, you know, so basic to us today. But (technical difficulties) back in 1830s, 1840s, when real science, as we understand it, was just being laid out.Now I know you are anxious to claim posthumously that everyone you approve of was indeed a scientist because it fits in well with your theory of the world. Unfortunately, it’s not going to work.Great pyramids were built in Egypt without science and based on nothing more primitive mathematics — or are you one of those who claim that it must have been aliens?My ancestors were gold plating things with a thickness of no more than a few microns more than 3,000 years ago without doing science.Coca and tobacco was cultivated and shipped round the globe at the time of the Egyptians landing in their tombs for modern-day archaeologists to find and all without science.Nowadays, of course, we have science which has made wonderful contributions to our lives like chemotherapy — that magical anti-cancer procedure that is all of 2.1 percent effective (see The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies - PubMed ). Forgive me if I’m underwhelmed.

You seem to be under the impression that anyone here cares whether Galileo, Newton, various Egyptians, my mum or whoever was a scientist or not. I doubt anyone give a flying tea trolley. We're only interested in what they discovered.Do you have a different point you're trying to make or am I missing something?

Well, I for one am always interested in mocking the egregiously wrong. Character flaw or hobby? --- you decide.

As far as I know, all animals need vitamin C, but most animals synthesize it while some don't. So how then do those who don't synthesize it get the vitamin C that they need? Through their diet. Not just with vitamin supplements (very rarely, actually! -- only domesticated animals could get those!), but rather through their diet. For example, guinea pigs can get it through fresh, raw fruits and vegetables (such as broccoli, apple, cabbage, carrot, celery, and spinach) and not just through dietary supplements, so your statement, "they must receive vitamin C supplementation" is factually incorrect.I don't know whether their most probable wild ancestor (Cavia aperea, C. fulgida, or C. tschudii), is able to synthesize vitamin C or whether guinea pigs had lost that trait through the process of domestication as you seem to suggest, but those questions are moot. Whether loss of that ability is deleterious depends on whether they can still get that vitamin through their diet. If they cannot, then it is deleterious; if they can, then losing the ability to synthesize vitamin C is neutral, it doesn't matter.Why stop at guinea pigs? What about humans? We also have lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C. But since we can get it from our diet, that doesn't matter. Until we change our diet to one that doesn't include vitamin C, in which case we develop scurvy.Now consider cats. To my knowledge, their diet doesn't supply vitamin C, so if a cat were to lose the ability to synthesize vitamin C, then that would indeed be deleterious. But cats, unlike humans and dogs, have lost the ability to synthesize vitamin A. Is that deleterious? No, since their carnivore diet amply supplies them with that vitamin. The only time their inability to synthesize vitamin A would be deleterious would be when their environment changes; ie, when they are owned by an extreme vegetarian who imposes a vegetarian diet on his cat, in which case the cat will suffer severe problems unless also given vitamin A supplements. Feed your cat a proper diet and there's no need for supplements.Go back to the basic question of what makes a trait deleterious and you will find that the primary answer to that question is the environment. And if a population is in an environment in which a given trait is deleterious, then that trait will be selected against.

Hobby.Do I win the tea trolley?

No, you test it against a known population and a control group to see if it accurately picks up positive and negative results. And you think the researcher is unaware of this and will not run the same battery of tests, especially on the 15, an additional thousand times to tease out chance?You don't know much about clinical testing do you?

Do you have a point or do you make a habit of insulting people while reinforcing their argument?

We don't know. The same for humans by the way. We cannot synthesize C either.Couldn't have been too deleterious since both species are still here. And there may be a counter balancing advantage we have yet to discover.So there is a hole in our knowledge. So you think all of evolution fails because, unlike religion, science does not know everything? You stuff your god into that hole? One holey god?

Who cares? We're not here to convince brain-dead people.

Have you read On The Electrodynamics Of Moving Bodies?You really think this is a non-scientific treatment? Riding the light beam was a thought experiment. It was the "experiment" part after formulating his hypothesis. Yeah, he could do that in his brain, write down the results then justify it all with the most elegant proofs. You wonder why we hold him in such high esteem?

You loved making that analogy didn't you. It fits right in with the rest of your world view doesn't it.Do you really think all the peacock studies are analogous to your ... eh ... story? Or did you take an extreme not in evidence and twist it to fit your needs? I vote the latter.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Have you lived in a cave since your formative years?The scientific method is very well described and followed. It follows this precise set of steps:1. Make REAL world observations of particular events or of particular data sets.
2. Postulated hypotheses that may account for the data
3. Make predications with your hypothesis for what should be supported in the data set
4. Make predications about how the hypothesis can be falsified - hint: It's even more important to predict what your hypothesis can't do than what it can - i.e. scientific hypotheses MUST be falsifiable or they are NFG!
5. Look for multi-buttressing REAL WORLD data that supports the hypothesis and check that nothing falsifies it - with point no. 3 in the affirmative and point no. 4 in the negative, move ever more confidently to the more powerful 'theory' instead of 'hypothesis' whilst all the time being prepared to either modify or totally ditch the hypothesis in the light of new evidence.The 5 point sequence above is THE scientific method and has been for over the past two hundred years plus of science investigation. To say that (quote) "There is no such thing as the scientific method" is to demonstrate that you (somehow) avoided quality science investigative work at school and college level - presumably you did live in a cave of some sort!!To put a practical example of the scientific method lets apply it to the Theory of Evolution (ToE):1. The observation is made in the natural world that all the species of plants, animals, fungi etc are arranged in a Linnaean 'family tree'. How does this come about?
2. The hypothesis is that organisms derive from earlier common ancestors by the process of random mutation plus natural selection.
3. Positive predications will be that organisms will share inherited traits, and this will be evident in the fossil record, DNA profiles, population demography - to name a few relevant fields.
4. The clincher - falsifiability - the hypothesis predicts that if organisms evolve from earlier forms then there will be no sudden jumping backwards of later-developed animals into earlier eras - to quote JBS Haldane "No fossil rabbits in the pre-Cambrian.Also, there will be no 'jumping' of adapted features from lines into other lines that didn't evolve them independently - i.e. the correctly wired cephalopods eyes (with optic connections coming into the back of the retina and not obscuring the photoreceptors) won't suddenly ‘jump’ into late-vertebrate developed eyes which are 'incorrectly' wired and have the optic nerve filaments entering the photoreceptors from the front which obscures and reduces photosensitivity. If either of the two examples above were shown to happen this would immediately blow the hypothesis out of the water!
5. Over the past 150 years and over millions of observations and experiments point no. 3 remains in the affirmative and point no. 4 (falsifiablitlity) has NEVER been demonstrated. Therefore the hypothesis of the ToE moves confidently to the stronger Theory of the ToE.THIS is the scientific method in action. To say it doesn’t exist is to be utterly ignorant of the way in which science is conducted. You should hang your head in shame - or at least get some basic science books and start reading....Edited by Drosophilla, : No reason given.

Then how do they survive in the wild? How do we survive without producing our own vitamin C? In the wild, guinea pigs have enough vitamin C in their diet that they no longer need to produce their own. Therefore, mutations which knockout the de novo vitamin C synthesis pathway do not affect fitness.