Robert Byers,
You say that PE just is gradualism at a different rate. Well yes but thats not the point. The point is that it replaced a previous idea. I understand that you are trying to say it only replaced a 100% all-the-time etc thing.
Yet this is not true. The men who suggested PE are famous for this new idea. It was not just a extension. It was a correThey were also attacked in evolution circles at first.
Sorry, mate, your 100% wrong, I've already explained why. You are just repeating yourself. It is both a new idea AND an extension of evolutionary understanding. In the same way that when electrons were discovered to exist in shells around a nucleus it in one way falsified the old "plum-pudding" view of atoms, & required a modification of the theory, & ultimately added to our understanding of what atoms were. Elements of the plum-pudding theory were correct but had been added to. Gradualism is correct, just not in the way Darwin thought. PE threw away the wrong bit & added to it.
Unlike you I have read Gould, & what he
specifically means PE to be. Read The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, the chapter on PE. One of the authors of PE should know what they mean, shouldn't they?
My last post stands.
My whole point about PE is not that it is opposed to gradualism. Rather it was brought in because the evidence of fossils,though not scientific evidence, insisted the old idea was untenable.
No, it insisted that gradualism occurs, but not at the same rate.
How can you say PE did not replace an important point in evolution thought?
Easily, see my last post for an explanation.
And so the process of replacing is open to scrunity. And creationists can demonstrate that the previous idea was not backed up by Science but rather was speculation based on evidence of fossils found.
No, it was inference based upon the evidence at the time, & was at that time not contradicted by evidence. Perfectly scientific.
It was never a scientic theory and so it was easy to overthrow it with another "idea". (which also one day will be overthrown in like manner).
No, it was inference based upon the evidence at the time, & was at that time not contradicted by evidence. Perfectly scientific.
INDEED you yourself said the old idea was falsified and tested and then found wrong.
Yes, it was inference based upon the evidence at the time, & was
eventually tested by new evidence. Perfectly scientific. THis is how science works.
....it is clear there was no previous falsification/testing. It was never a thing of science.
But there WAS falsification/testing, you agree with me in your previous post. See below.
And the replacement hasn't falsified or tested anything either.
I can't see why we disagree on this.
Yes it has, the notion that evolution proceeds via slow, constant phyletic gradualism & nothing else is falsified. That's why you said this:
Rather it was brought in because the evidence of fossils,though not scientific evidence, insisted the old idea was untenable
If it is now untenable because of new fossil evidence it has been tested/falsified. You say some bizarre things!
The evidence is perfectly scientific, it consists of direct observations of fossils, their character values, & the context of their discovery. What's unscientific about that? I guarantee a strawman argument.
Guarantee it.
Science works by inductively producing a hypothesis based upon observation. It then deductively tests that hypothesis via observations (predictions, falsifications, etc.). In the light of that, could you
please explain what is "scientific" evidence, as opposed to common or garden evidence?
Mark
This message has been edited by mark24, 08-03-2004 06:00 PM
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