Undermining long-held paradigms

I just started reading this thread, and I think several people made the same interpretation you did. I don't know if NJ has chimed in yet as to what he really meant, I'm still in mid-thread, but I agree with WJ that though not unambiguously expressed, what NJ was trying to say was that evolutionists believe that small mammals eeking out an existence were contemporaneous with dinosaurs.A couple other people misread fascial in NJ's post as facial.--Percy

Hi NJ,I think you're confusing the theory of evolution with evolutionary scenarios. How the dinosaurs became extinct and mammals came to dominate the earth is not evolutionary theory. It's just an interpretation of the evidence in an evolutionary context in order to construct scenarios of what might have happened. These scenarios will change as new evidence is found, as better analytical techniques are developed, and as better scenarios of what happened are constructed. But how the mammals replaced dinosaurs is not evolutionary theory. It's a reconstruction of past events made by interpreting evidence in an evolutionary context. {AbE: The following paragraph was written under the assumption that NJ was correct about dog-sized mammals being found. After reading the rest of the the thread it appears this has been cast into doubt.}Evolutionary theory doesn't say anything about what fossils still lie undiscovered. Until recently there was no evidence of dog-sized mammals. This new find is completely consistent with evolutionary theory, but it is brand new information and completely unexpected given that up until now only fossils of small mammals had ever been found from this period. There were no millions of years of discrepancies. No one ever said, "This dog-like mammal never existed millions of years before such-and-such a date." The dog-like mammal is a new discovery, so there could never have been any prior statements about when it lived.When evolutionists construct scenarios based upon available evidence, it will always be the case that the scenarios will change as new evidence is discovered. Since paleontologists haven't all closed up their digs, packed up their bags and gone home, we can expect that new discoveries will continue to roll in. Some discoveries will be about periods for which we already have well developed scenarios, and so the potential strongly exists that new evidence will change our understanding and interpretation of these periods.This isn't just true of the dinosaur/mammal transition but of all evolutionary scenarios. The descent of man is a good example. Every discovery brings about revisions in our view of hominid evolution.The important point to take from what I'm saying is that evolutionary theory is one thing, interpretations of evidence in an evolutionary context is another. Discoveries that force changes in evolutionary theory are momentous (but good). Discoveries that force us to revise evolutionary scenarios of things like the dinosaur/mammal transition are mundane, completely expected, and happen all the time.--Percy.Edited by Percy, : Insert a comment.

There were a few posts strongly objecting to NJ's determined characterizations that evolutionists claimed that only mammals 4-5 inches long lived during the Mesozoic. I concur that NJ should critisize evolution for things it really says, but I think arguing this point distracts from the primary issue.What's really important, and this has already been said a number of times in this thread, is that our interpretation of the evolutionary history of life on this planet will change as new evidence is discovered. Since new evidence is always being discovered, these views will always be changing.So what if we really did believe that mammals in the Mesozoic never exceeded 4-5 inches because we'd never discovered any larger fossils, and then one day we discovered a cat-sized mammal. What NJ has to realize is that this is a big "So what!" if what he's looking for is challenges to evolutionary theory. We'd never found a cat-sized mammal before, and now we have! What a wonderful discovery! Our knowledge of life's history has increased. And it's completely consistent with evolutionary theory.To NJ:What would you have science do? Ignore new evidence and cling to initial interpretations no matter what? This would make sense to no one, I'm sure, including yourself. It is an inherent part of the scientific process to build accurate models that interpret and explain available evidence. The available evidence keeps growing, and so the interpretations and explanations must change to keep pace with newly available evidence. Science has to be this way. There is no other possible way it can be.In other words, you're critisizing science for doing precisely what it is supposed to be doing.--Percy

I think you're drifting way off-topic. This thread is about long-held paradigms. If you believe there are people touting evolutionary scenarios as facts then that would be an interesting topic for a new thread, but it isn't the topic of this thread. Facts are not a paradigm. Reconstructions of natural history based upon evidence are not paradigms.The theory of evolution is a paradigm. Everything you've said in this thread is completely consistent with the theory of evolution. New evidence is interpreted within the same evolutionary paradigm as old evidence, a strong indicator of how powerful and encompassing it is. Only if new evidence were incompatible with evolutionary theory could it have the potential for undermining it.To put a finer point on it, interpreting the evidence as indicating that all mammals in the Mesozoic were no larger than 4-5 inches is not a paradigm. It is a reconstruction of natural history based upon evidence interpreted with the evolutionary paradigm. When new evidence is discovered that changes our reconstruction of natural history, it has no impact on the interpretative framework.In other words, your approach in this thread is off-target. If you want to undermine a paradigm then you have to find evidence that contradicts it. You don't topple a tree by pulling off the leaves.--Percy

So you say. Then you continued "in this vein," just as before: But you weren't finding discrepancies within theory. You were finding changes in reconstructions of natural history in an evolutionary context that were driven by new evidence. The data both before and after the new discovery were completely consistent with evolutionary theory. Your use of words like discrepancy is just plain wrong. If your every post contains this basic error, how are you ever going to convince anyone. Doesn't it make sense to you that in order to persuade people that you at least have to say things that aren't obviously false?I'd like to see this thread actually address the topic at some point and discuss the undermining of long-held paradigms. Criticizing evolution for new-found evidence of the evolutionary history of mammals during the Mesozoic is as dumb as criticizing physics for discovering new particles. Your approach couldn't be more misplaced, and I wish we could actually address the topic at some point so we wouldn't have to go on and on and on about your persistent misunderstanding of theory versus the application of theory. Please take it to the right thread.--Percy

Hi, NJ, same comment. Challenges to interpretations of evidence within the evolutionary paradigm are not the same as challenges to the paradigm itself. You need to find evidence that contradicts the paradigm. All you're doing is arguing details of interpretation.--Percy

Good point. Since I'm participating in this thread I'm trying to resist the temptation of posting in Admin mode. I'm posting in this thread as Percy, and you're the only one replying to me. If anyone else had replied to me about mammal evolution and such I would have responded in the same way I've been responding to you. Not much, because your opening post contains a fundamental misunderstanding. The evolutionary history of mammals in the Mesozoic is not a paradigm. Here's the relevant American Heritage definition: The theory of evolution is a paradigm. The specifics of mammal evolution is not.In case an example from another field helps, theories in physics form a paradigm. The specifics of how the asteroid belt might have formed is not.The other mistake you're making is criticizing science for interpreting new evidence within the existing paradigm. It would make as much sense to criticize the science of archeology every time they uncover new artifacts that force them to revise their thinking about some historical period. Or to criticize physics every time a new particle is discovered that causes them to revise theory. Or to criticize religion every time another ancient document is discovered that causes revisions to ecclesiastical history. Finding new evidence is a good thing, not a bad thing.Of course, it does sometimes happen that new evidence is inconsistent with or even contradicts the existing paradigm. It happened in geology when Wegener began calling attention to evidence that contradicted the then view that continental positions were static.If you're going to seriously question long held paradigms like the theory of evolution then you need evidence that contradicts it. What everyone has been trying to explain to you is that new evidence that causes us to change our view of mammal evolution does not contradict the theory of evolution. The old evidence indicated one story of mammal evolution, but when augmented with the new evidence it indicates another story. But both stories are evolutionary stories. There's nothing in either one that contradicts evolution. And as said before, this new evidence and revised analysis is a good thing, a very, very, very good thing, because our knowledge has increased and the accuracy of our interpretation of natural history has improved.In other words, you're still seeking evidence that might undermine long held paradigms, including evolution. What I keep trying to point out is that no evidence of paradigm undermining has yet been introduced in this thread.--Percy

Hi Nemesis_Juggernaut,I'm going to reply to both this and your previous Message 106 in this post. Addressing your most recent message first: Good point! The article you referenced, Dinosaur Fossil Found in Mammal's Stomach, was written by Joseph B. Verrengia, an AP science writer. In the article he says: I guess one way to look at this is to say that Mr. Verrengia has expressed himself clearly in the layman's vernacular, but scientifically this is just plain wrong. There is no "evolutionary theory of mammalian origins". It would be like calling the heliocentric model of the solar system a theory. The laws of physics are the theory. The heliocentric model is just an interpretation of evidence based upon the laws of physics.In the same way, views on mammalian origins are not theories. They are interpretations of evidence based upon the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is descent with modification with natural selection.It is possible that Mr. Verrengia understands the difference, but that he also understands his intended audience. Another possibility it that he's just an articulate noodle-head - let's keep in mind that he's the one who described it as dog-sized (think of range of size from chihuahua to Great Dane to see how dumb this is). In any case, don't let Mr. Verrengia's misleading statements contribute to your own misunderstanding.Now addressing your Message 106: The theory of evolution is not based upon reconstructions of natural history, such as mammalian evolution. Think about this. Evolution is descent with modification combined with natural selection. It says nothing about the size of mammals in the Mesozoic. Our views on the size of mammals in the Mesozoic is based upon the evidence we dig from the ground. These views are not theories, they're just views. When we find new evidence these views will change. And unless we find something incredibly novel and inconsistent with all other evidence, such as Homo sapiens fossils from the Mesozoic, the potential for challenging evolutionary theory is vanishingly small. I can only repeat what I've already said. There is no such thing as "mammalian evolutionary theory". There is only one evolutionary theory, and it unites all the various fields of biology. How many Catholic priest child molesters do you think it will take to invalidate Christianity? The question doesn't even make sense, right?Well, your view that examples of new evidence causing scientists to revise their reconstructions of natural history can somehow affect the validity of evolutionary theory is just as wrongheaded.Let me try yet another example. Astronomers sight an asteroid in an orbit that crosses earth. They make some calculations and determine that it will never strike our planet. But then somebody does some more accurate observations and gains new and more accurate evidence of its path, and the calculations show that it will strike the earth, and so astronomers are forced to change their views. The threat of collision causes even more resources to be put on the problem, and they track the asteroid for a longer time period to get even more accurate orbital data and they find that they have to change their views again. This time they find that the asteroid will approach closer than the moon, but still miss the earth by over 100,000 miles.Now, at any time during that description did you think that the laws of physics were being challenged? You never did, right?So now let's look at mammalian evolution more closely. There was a time when we had no mammal fossils from the Mesozoic, so our view was that mammals originated sometime during the Mesozoic, since they certainly existed after the end of the Mesozoic, but we didn't know any details.But then we found some mammal fossils from the Mesozoic. They were very small, the largest around 4-5 inches in length, so our view changed to be that mammals came into existence during the Mesozoic, but that they were very small nocturnal creatures.Then we found some fossils of mammal predecessors at the end of the Paleozoic, the period before the Mesozoic, and so our view changed again so that that mammals evolved during the Paleozoic, and they remained small and nocturnal during the Mesozoic.Then we found fossils of larger mammals from the Mesozoic, so our views changed again to include the larger mammals.Do you see anything in this recitation of changing viewpoints that challenges the theory of descent with modification combined with natural selection? Hopefully the answer is no and that you now see what everyone else sees, that our reconstructions of natural history are reflections of the available evidence, and as the evidence improves so will those reconstructions.It is important to remember that the theory of evolution never in any way developed out of our views of mammalian evolution. No one ever reasoned, "Well, let's see, mammals in the Mesozoic were small and nocturnal, and from this I conclude that life's diversity springs from descent with modification combined with natural selection." Since the theory of evolution was never dependent in any way upon the size of mammals in the Mesozoic, finding larger mammals did not present any problems to the theory.So once again I tell you that evolution is a paradigm and mammalian evolution is not. If you want to undermine a paradigm, "a way of viewing reality," then you need evidence that contradicts it. All our views of mammalian evolution, including all the discarded views, are completely consistent with the theory of evolution. You cannot look to them for contradictions.--Percy

Hi NJ,I'm happy to try to correct your misimpressions, but allow me to comment that if you're determined to hold on to them no matter what then I don't really think anything I can say will help. That said, I'll give this yet another shot. Just please keep in mind that no one is trying to play tricks on you. Theories do not become accepted through trickery and shell games and semantics. They have to establish a solid record of explaining existing evidence and predicting new evidence. If you'd like to understand why the theory of evolution is unaffected by the issues you're raising then we can explain it to you, but hearing and understanding the explanations is entirely up to you.It must seem very sinister to you that there are what seem to you so many falsifying evidences against evolution, and yet scientists carry blithely on as if nothing is wrong with the theory. There are two ways you can think about this. You can believe that evolution is just a conspiracy of thousands and thousands of evil and dishonest scientists around the world who hold atheism as their god and evolution as their icon. Or you can take a more realistic approach that understands that scientists are no different than any other people, and that they have good reasons for accepting the theory of evolution. If you want to take the latter approach then we can help you understand how scientists think about the theory of evolution. If you're determined to believe there's something fishy going on then I don't think anything we say will change your mind.About the Verrengia article, I have already explained at fair length how he misrepresents what comprises evolutionary theory. Scientists have no control over what popularizers write. I thought he wrote a very good article. But he's wrong when he implies that the theory of evolution has anything specific to say about mammalian evolution. The fact that this is so difficult to explain to you strongly implies that he made a wise choice to not draw a distinction between the theory of evolution and reconstructions of natural history. No matter when mammals larger than 4-5 inches first evolved, unless there's a significant discontinuity in descent, such as Homo sapiens in the Mesozoic, it's consistent with evolutionary theory. I appreciate that you have thought about it, but I think you need to think about it some more. When I said that the theory of evolution did not derive from reconstructions of natural history, I had in mind reconstructions like this one which are speculative. Verrengia makes this clear later in the article when he quite properly says, "Now, the discovery of larger mammals is reversing some of the speculation." This is an accurate assessment of the state of our views on mammal evolution in the Mesozoic: speculative. They are speculative because we know we don't have a very complete picture yet. The theory of evolution did not derive from speculative views on mammal evolution in the Mesozoic, and that's all I was saying. I definitely was not saying that evolution is unsupported by evidence. It is the mountains of evidence supporting evolution that makes this paradigm so hard to undermine. If you're unaware of this evidence, as now seems evident given what you've just said, then I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that you think finding a large mammal in the Mesozoic somehow threatens evolutionary theory. We can talk about the supporting evidence for evolution, though that would be a rather basic digression since the information is so widely available. Darwin did a pretty good job in Origins. When I said "evolution" I wasn't talking about the process of evolution, but the theory of evolution, as I was throughout my post. I consistently referred to examples of the process of evolution as reconstructions of natural history. The Discovery specials I've seen have been piss poor, I can't take most of them for more than a few minutes, so I can't say I've seen any Discovery specials about dinosaurs, but from what you say they are describing reconstructions of the evolutionary development of dinosaurs based upon available evidence. These reconstructions are *not* the theory of evolution. They are interpretations of evidence made within the framework of evolutionary theory, which is descent with modification combined with natural selection. Well, maybe not the best example for a non-Catholic. But evolution has evidence of much evolution supporting it. But that evidence doesn't include speculative scenarios about mammal evolution in the Mesozoic. I again refer you to Origins. Or if you you want some of the evidence for evolution presented here I guess we could do that if we can figure out how to keep it from getting ruled off-topic. My own feelings about discussing this evidence here is that it shouldn't be necessary. Your criticisms of evolution are uninformed, and in my view it is the responsibility of critics of integrity to properly inform themselves of the subject of their criticism. If you don't want to inform yourself of the evidence for evolution before criticizing it then that is a fault within yourself, not within evolution. This is the kind of misunderstanding that we can help you out of, if you want to.--Percy

It would be had it not been accompanied by much explanation, but you've chosen to reject it. The information is there should you ever decide to avail yourself of it, just ask.This isn't a case of "I'm right and you're wrong." It's a case of "We're right and you're wrong." All the evolutionists here are telling you the same thing. If the theory of evolution were not based upon cold, hard fact, then each evolutionist would be free to accept whatever viewpoint he liked. But evolution *is* based upon cold, hard fact, and so evolutionists are not free to accept whatever viewpoint appeals to them. We have to expound the view of evolution that is connected to the observational and experimental data, of which there is a great, great deal. That's why we speak with one voice, and that's why we're right.It's important to be clear about what we're telling you you're wrong about. Sure, you're wrong about the theory of evolution being undermined, but that's not what we're trying to tell you right now. We're trying to tell you that you're criticizing evolution for things it doesn't actually say. You've somehow picked up a large number of misimpressions about evolution, and you're using these misimpressions to criticize evolution for things it doesn't say. That's why the theory of evolution isn't particularly threatened by what you're saying.How do you think a skinny person would feel if you called him fat? He might question your sanity, but he wouldn't feel particularly insulted. In the same way, when you claim that changes in views of mammalian evolution in the Mesozoic mean that evolutionary theory is foundering, we might question your understanding, but we wouldn't feel particularly threatened or alarmed.So it isn't that you're wrong about evolutionary theory being undermined. It's that you haven't even approached the issue yet because you don't understand evolution well enough at this point to make meaningful criticisms. It's a "Know thine enemy" kind of thing. Knowing your enemy doesn't mean accepting him, but you have to know him to do battle with him. You don't know your enemy yet. I agree, and I think we've been able to understand much of what you've said. But I don't think the reverse is true, because very little of what we've said seems to have had any impact.Anyway, I hope my main point is clear. I'm not telling you at this point that you're wrong about evolution being undermined. I'm telling you that you're criticisms are aimed only at your own false impression of what evolution says. The suggestion is to correct your misimpressions before proceeding.--Percy