What is science?

I think you're stating your intrepretation of how scientists define science. What scientists actually say is that you must have evidence supporting your explanations, and that the evidence must be apparent to us in some way, either directly through the five senses or indirectly through instruments like microscropes and thermometers.So if you'd like to include God as the phenomenon upon which you base your explanations, then in order to be scientific you must have evidence of God.--Percy

I agree. And what I said in my previous message was that you must have evidence supporting your explanations, and that the evidence must be apparent to us in some way, either directly through the five senses or indirectly through instruments like microscropes and thermometers.Do you agree?--Percy

The way discussion works is that you make your arguments here. Cite whatever you like in support, but make your arguments here.I asked earlier if you agree that you must have evidence supporting your explanations, and that the evidence must be apparent to us in some way, either directly through the five senses or indirectly through instruments like microscropes and thermometers. Assuming you agree, then the argument for ID reduces to claims that biological organisms couldn't have developed by natural means. But there's no evidence for the unnatural means, no mechanisms proposed for how it was done, no examples of any such thing, and no argument eliminating the natural possibilities.--Percy [Hit submit too early, added last paragraph right away. --Percy]This message has been edited by Percy, 05-07-2004 07:53 AM

This thread isn't about ID, so let me focus on just this one small part of your post in order to return to the evidence issue. In several messages, the last in Message 26, I've asked what you think constitutes scientific evidence, and I proposed an answer. If you have a different answer then this is a good time to enter it into the discussion. What constitutes scientific evidence is a key issue in answering the question of this thread, "What is science?"--Percy

Intelligent design and irreducible complexity are the opinions and conclusions of Creationists, not evidence. We're trying to answer the question, "What is science?", and to that end I'm trying to see if we agree on the nature of scientific evidence. Do you agree that evidence must be apparent to us in some way, either directly through the five senses or indirectly through instruments like microscropes and thermometers?Once we've reached agreement on the nature of scientific evidence, we can move on to consider whether science should limit itself to explanations for which there is evidence.This thread keeps drifting toward an evolution vs. ID debate, which is not the thread's topic, and so I'm reluctant to use these as examples, but they *do* offer an excellent contrast between your position and the position of science. Science says that you should propose explanations for which you have evidence. Therefore, science proposes that life, and later species diversity, arose through processes known to us and that we have much evidence for, in other words, that they obeyed all the laws and principles of physics, chemistry and biology.You, on the other hand, propose that life was designed by some intelligence. But there is no evidence for that intelligence, and it fails to address the key question of life's origin, i.e., if life can only be designed, then who designed our designer?Without evidence for the key phenomenon behind your explanation, it fails as science.--PercyPS - Some of the discussion seemed to hint at some confusion about whether my definition of evidence might be implying that if we don't see it then we can't know it happened. I meant to imply nothing of the sort. Most science today applies the hypothetico-deductive process. What this means is that we can deduce what happened from the evidence - it is by no menas necessary that we be eyewitnesses, and indeed in many cases such would be undesirable - we couldn't even imagine first-hand observation of ground-zero of a thermonuclear explosion or of the interior of a star or of a nuclear pile. We make our observations and measurements from a safe distance and deduce what happened based on the evidence.

First, science is a consensus activity engaged in by scientists. You cannot separate the two and sensibly say, "Scientists make that proposition, not science."Second, of course there are no scientific laws that say life came from non-life. It would make no sense to propose a law that merely encapsulates and restates more fundamental laws. Science doesn't propose laws theories to cover processes already covered by existing laws and theories. What sense would that make?Life is just matter obeying natural physical laws, and science has no evidence for anything else. Scientific speculations about the origin of life only include processes for which we have evidence. The problem with your perspective, from a scientific standpoint, is that you have no evidence for the mechanism you're proposing. Added by edit: I don't want to lose sight of the original point I was making, because the thread is "What is Science?" I gave a general definition for evidence that said it was whatever was apparent, either directly or indirectly, to the five senses. You never addressed yourself directly to this definition, though I sense you have no quarrel with it. If you accept this definition, then how can you believe it scientifically valid to propose mechanisms for which you have no evidence?--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 05-21-2004 08:02 AM

In the past, haven't you distanced yourself from YECs and the flood?I know someone else has already replied to this part of your post, but I have a different slant. Asking for refutation of global flood claims tells me that you're not using any accepted definition of science. Modern science relies primarily upon the hypothetico-deductive process. It is definitely *not* the case that anything not refuted must be true.In science, you must have evidence for what you claim. You deduce what happened from the evidence. If you want to argue that there should be a different standard then you should address yourself to that point. What you're instead doing is arguing ID and other specific Creation/Evolution issues, and ignoring the main topic of this thread. Why don't you tell us what *you* think science is?--Percy

One's opening post is the beginning of the discussion, not the end.If you check the Forum Guidelines you'll see that members are encouraged to debate in a constructive manner by avoiding repetition, and by moving the discussion forward through the introduction of new information and argument. I've been trying to nudge you in this direction as Percy, but I will switch to Admin mode if that becomes necessary. Ignoring the guidelines may result in a gradual reduction of privileges over time. If you'd like further clarfication, please contact me by email to Admin.--Percy

The topic of this thread is, "What is science?", and there still seems to be a lot of disagreement about this. Until a broader consensus is reached, it seems unlikely that the ID discussion will be productive.Areas where I've noticed the most disagreement:

1. The nature of objective evidence.
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2. What is natural and what is not. In contrasting the natural versus the supernatural, man is natural. In contrasting man versus nature, man is not natural. Using the word natural in two different ways brings with it the potential for much confusion.
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   Since we're talking science and not theology, man is natural and part of nature. In some of the posts analogies were drawn between unnatural and natural objects, but what was really meant was man-made versus non-man-made.
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   In the terminology I'm proposing, a rock, a bug, a human and a vase are all natural. The vase is also man-made.
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3. Specified complexity. I think this term needs to be clearly defined because it lies at the core of this discussion.
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4. The definition of the TOE. For example, that whales are descended from land animals is not part of the theory. We could discover that whales actually followed a different evolutionary path without affecting the TOE at all.

A couple other random observations:

• In a debate, one must be able to articulate one's point of view. This is fundamental. It was at one point said, in effect: "The argument in favor of my position can be found over there. I'm not going to make the argument myself. You have to go there yourself and find it." This a form of evasion.
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• The words "proof" and "prove" are simply everyday vernacular among scientists for providing evidence. Everyone here understands that science isn't in the business of proving things or providing formal proofs.

--Percy

Hi, MisterOpus1!Either I mis-clicked, or the software has one more bug than I thought, but I intended a general reply. My Message 118 wasn't directed at you, but was an attempt to clarify the context of the discussion and identify issues requiring clarification. I hope the other participants give it a look.--Percy

I wish you had responded to my earlier Message 118, because one of the points addressed this issue (all the points are attempts to lead us toward common use of terminology). I believe you're again referring to areas like archeology. These sciences are looking for evidence not of design, but of human presence, activity or involvement. The issue is rarely whether something is designed, but rather if something is man-made or man-caused.Even at those times when the issue is one of "designed or not", archeologists and anthropologists are not looking for specified complexity or irreducible complexity. For example, the anthropologist may examine a rock for signs of human modification, but your criteria of specified complexity and so forth are not something he considers, and they appear singularly unhelpful in making such a determination anyway.If it were really a fact that science already uses your approach for detecting design then we wouldn't be having this discussion because we would already agree with you. The evolutionists here are for the most part just trying to represent the current state of science, and they are not trying to introduce novel, new or controversial science. The true fact here is that the approaches you advocate are not currently accepted within science. I think you may have misinterpreted what MrH was saying. Certainly he wasn't advocating a process so boneheaded it couldn't tell the difference between a man-made and a natural bridge. Whatever the reason, it isn't used in any of the other branches of science, either, probably because it's so subjective. You need to develop a set of objective criteria that enables independent researchers to arrive at similar conclusions. I haven't heard of Joseph Francis before, but if Behe has some company than more power to them. The fact of the matter is that ID has very few advocates within the scientific community, and it is still not an accepted idea within science, let alone an established theory with a history of successes. This would be much more persuasive if there were anything to ID beyond opinion and a subjective set of criteria. If IDists are encouraged and energized by what they find then I hope they move forward and gather enough evidence to convince others within the scientific community. As it stands right now, what you're doing constitutes a special pleading for scientific status for a concept that most scientists believe doesn't qualify.--Percy

As I said in Message 118, I think it important to define the term specified complexity. I know you've said you believe DNA has specified complexity, arguing that we only see complexity of this nature and magnitude being produced by people, but I think most scientists have the opposite perspective, that man-made designs pale in comparison to those produced in nature. The multiplicity of interacting subsystems seems orders of magnitude beyond what we're able to produce.To me we seem more like the bumbler who has chanced across a magnificent contraption and who is able by sheer perseverence to tease out some of its workings and mechanisms, but who is completely unable himself to produce anything of similar complexity. As has been mentioned many times, it only pushes the question of life origins from earth to elsewhere in the universe. The complexity of life derives from its self-replicative and inheritance properties, since they enable complexity to accumulate. Your argument would only make sense if arrowheads and tools also had these properties.--Percy

You've mistaken PS's desire to keep things simple for a belief that reproduction really involves only DNA and nothing more, and this couldn't be further from the truth. His point is that if you look at cell replication you see only chemical reactions. There is nothing non-natural in the process. This is really your entire point in a nutshell: if we don't have direct evidence of an event, it not only didn't happen, but it constitutes disconfirming evidence for evolution. Leaving this issue aside for now, I'll instead say that though we will likely never tease out the specific evolutionary pathways for the popular IC examples, though any proposals are likely to be speculative, these issues have no bearing on the validity of the TOE. The key issue here is the lack of available evidence to interpret, and this doesn't bear on theory at all.We do know that reproduction is imperfect and that change is accumulative, and we have cross-confirming evidence across many fields and levels. This is the only mechanism observed to ever happen, and so we can be very secure that evolution has produced the variety of species we see today.We can use the TOE as an interpretive framework for looking at biological structures and species in order to speculate on evolutionary paths, but these speculations are not part of the TOE, and the TOE does not stand or fall based upon whether we ever figure this out. The basis for the TOE is evidence, and this shouldn't be confused with speculations based upon its interpretive framework.--Percy

Much of your argumentation today consists of non sequiturs like this. Reproduction is ubiquitous in nature and not unique to humans, and we certainly made no contributions to the nature of the reproductive process. As the song says, "Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it," and we can take no credit for it. (Actually, the song is about love, but you get the point.) We can only twiddle as best we can with the reproductive process that was already in place when we came along.You appear to be evading MrH's point that no intelligent agent has ever been observed playing a design role in biology. Or playing any role at all anywhere ever. This point itself is mere twiddling around the edges of the main point concerning the definition of science, and it all comes back to evidence. Science requires it and you have none.--Percy

Who do you think you're kidding? I've seen numerous instances from you today of fairly strained misinterpretations, this just the latest. Either you have a problem with the English language, or you're doing it on purpose. I know it's one-on-many, but the Forum Guidelines have no requirements on the timeliness of replies. If the problem is needing to make too many responses then slow down and take your time. There's no hurry. Take a month if you need to, but please cut out the nonsense. I've invested some effort asking the evolutionists to engage you seriously and sincerely, and you need to respect that your ideas are getting some worthy attention and not just blow it off with replies like this. And in this case, not once but twice! This specific question is part of a much broader theological issue, one quite appropriate to this thread given its title What is science?. How do we know that what we observe is really all there is? But this is a question that goes far beyond biology, and it's why we have to answer the question of what constitutes evidence and valid inference before we can have a meaningful discussion. We're not very likely going to find common ground if one of us believes evidence need not be confined to that which is available to observation, or if one of us believes that proposed mechanisms do not have to be well founded in evidence. You can't define terms any way you choose. We're not going to have a Humpty-Dumpty "my words mean just what I choose them to mean" kind of discussion. If you're going to discuss issues in biology then you're going to have to use terms the same way everyone else in biology does. You can correct people's usage of terms, you can suggest alternative definitions if you like, but you must persuade others of the value of using your definitions, not just use them and let comprehension wither.--Percy