Induction and Science

That's pretty weak. Creationists are often making similar assertions about evidence supporting their Adam and Eve beliefs and their flood beliefs. And you don't let them get away with it.However, I'll weaken my request to make it easier. Can you provide evidence, or citations of evidence, explicitly supporting Newton's third law? That's not induction. That's pragmatism. You are accepting what works. I agree that science is very pragmatic. What I am questioning is the use of induction, not the use of pragmatism. I'm calling that a "Just So" story (a modern fable).

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Bullshit.Quoting myself from Message 224:

Acceptance of a scientific theory is a consensus acceptance by a large body of scientists. However, predictions are made by individuals and not by the body of scientists at large.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Hi, nwr. True. That mutations happen is a consistent feature of replication that can be demonstrated by observation. However, I was trying to refer to the pattern of occurrence, i.e. predicting where and when a given type of mutation will occur.I would argue that the lack of such predictive capacity is independent of the level of scientific development, i.e. a part of nature.----- I agree that Straggler always wants to be in the driver's seat, and is a bit of a bully about it, but I don't see why you think they're twisting the discussion and/or going off-topic. He's not going to deal with pure rationalism, and he doesn't do "defensive" posts, but he's still not really off-topic: he's just trying to force you to see the problem from his perspective.----- I agree. Still, we do keep proposing that our "scientific laws" and theories are a part of nature, and that they can be applied, so I still think the "inductive reasoning" shoe fits.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, nwr. I don't like this for two reasons:

1. I don't see how it's meaningful to separate "science" from "what scientists do" (unless, of course, "what scientists do" is unrelated to their professional life, e.g., watching a movie or learning to polka or something).
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2. In order to say that science doesn't make predictions, you would have to show that the predictions that scientists do make aren't an integral part of making the final product. And, I don't think you can actually do that.

Certainly, I agree that, in ecology, there is a lot of "observational" work, where we start collecting data and try to see what we can make of it; but, in ethology (behavior), for instance, we have to design our experiments based entirely on testing a prediction that we make before we design the experiment.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

But don't you think that scientists could predict that the pattern of future mutation occurrences will pass a randomness test? And don't you think that such a prediction would likely turn out to be correct?

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

So you are saying that when a creationist biologist such as Cornelius Hunter makes predictions that favor ID claims, then those predictions should be considered predictions of science and not merely predictions of a scientist?

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Not really. I didn't think the claim would be disputed. Sure - I offer 'rockets have worked as we have expected them to when we assume it is approximately true'. Induction is pragmatic. It allows novice birdwatchers to discount black and brown birds if they are looking for a swan.Pragmatism is a possible justification for using induction, but I wasn't doing that. I was talking about growing confidence in a hypothesis based on increasing supporting evidence. This is induction in science, and it is a pragmatic decision to allow it.

There's nothing there that explicitly supports Newton's third law. Maybe, though I think that's a stretch. Induction can often lead to wrong conclusions, and that does not seem very pragmatic to me. However, induction is usually described as a method for producing general statements from a collection of specific observations.I see Newton's laws as a package of procedures used to make predictions. The package is tested as a whole, and accepted based on pragmatic principles (how well does it work for making predictions). There's nothing in that pragmatic acceptance that has to do with forming general statements on the basis of specific observations. Induction is often asserted to be the basis of some of the components which are a part of Newton's package of procedures, and that is what I am disagreeing with. The overall pragmatic acceptance of the the package as a whole, based on how well it works - that I agree with.I have been raising Newton's third law for two reasons. Firstly, you referred to it in your first paragraph of Message 200. And, secondly, nothing could be more obvious than that Newton's third law is not any kind of generalization from specific observations.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

I've no idea what your qualifier 'explicitly' means in this context and how it differs from plain old scientific support. That's just wordplay. We use it, not because it is perfect but because it works often enough to justify using it. That's pragmatics. And it is far more pragmatic to be occasionally wrong (as long as you admit it ahead of time (principle of fallibilism)), than to not be able to make any general scientific statements based on limited evidence.It also ignores the methods used by science to minimise the frequency of erroneous inductions: statistical reasoning. (Again, a very pragmatic thing to do) Fine - but to deny that they are general statements would be foolish. And in science - we only have specific evidences to support those general statements. If we have 1,000 predictions that have gone positively, and 0 that have gone negatively, we have a 100% success record so far. It is an induction if we say that we have discovered a law or theory that applies to 100% of cases when in fact it only applies to 100% of tested cases - where the tested cases are fewer than the actual possible cases (as is mostly the case, in practice).As you said, we could be wrong. Just like we might stumble upon a black swan - It could turn out that in some small number of cases of macro objects in low energy conditions things work completely differently and our next rocket will accidentally escape the Moon-Earth gravitational influence. This possibility leads us to falsification. Indeed - every test from tomorrow onwards could completely contradict the relationships Newton described, or at least show them to only cover a small subset of cases.While it is something we can have more confidence in:

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To some actions there are sometimes equal and/or opposite reactions

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is unfortunately useless as far as science is concerned. Maybe this is what you mean by 'explicit'? Maybe you'd say the evidence explicitly supports this law and implicitly supports Newtons law as he worded it. But we can accept that it is a generalisation that science justifies by supporting it with a smaller set of specific cases.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Ah, sigh. That sounds like a good old apologetics argument to me. I would prefer actual evidence. I have never denied that Newton's laws were general statements. But that they are general statements does not demonstrate that they were arrived at by means of induction from specific observations. Oh, bullshit.How many specific evidences to you need to support the general statement "There are 100 centimetres in a metre"? No, that is not the point at all. So are we supposed to accept that on faith, without any actual evidence?Can't you tell that the total number of actual specific observations, of which the 3rd law is alleged to be a generalization, is precisely zero?

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Why, deductively, of course. Why, deductively, of course. Not sure what that means Straggler; but the application of Bill's epistemology has nothing to do with this thread. Ahhh... that explains it. Next time try not starting from a bullshit premise. Actually, asking a completely irrelevant question does nothing to back up your argument. If you really want to back up your argument, you can point to an inductive argument that cannot be shown to be a deductive one with premises removedi.e., one to which we cannot merely add premises that make it a deductive argument without altering the conclusion. I've made a falsifiable argument. To falsify it, you need only provide one example of an argument that is inductive that cannot be made deductive by adding missing premises. Really, Straggler, you're not being asked to do too much. Sure. Not sure how this has any bearing on whether inductive arguments are merely deductive arguments with unstated premises, though. Generally, yes. But, I'm not sure how this has any bearing on whether inductive arguments are merely deductive arguments with unstated premises. That is usually the hope. But, what bearing does this have on whether inductive arguments are merely deductive arguments with unstated premises? Okay. Still not sure how this has any bearing on whether inductive arguments are merely deductive arguments with unstated premises.So, Straggler, why not lay out an example of an inductive argument that cannot be shown to be a deductive one with removed premises? I've made a falsifiable argument. To falsify it, you need only provide one example of an argument that is inductive that cannot be made deductive by adding missing premises. You're really not being asked to do too much.I hope you're up for the task...Jon

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Check out Apollo's Temple!

I thought I should point out that this is a self-referencing statement.
"There are one hundred 100ths of a metre in a metre"
It is no different to saying that "Red frogs are red" or "wooden furniture is made of wood".
Maybe you should change your example?

It was intended to be a trivially obvious example that the existence of a general statement need not imply that it was derived by induction over specific statements.

Hi, nwr. So, you're arguing that even a random natural phenomenon could be considered a "consistent" phenomenon? The "Law of Random Mutations," if you will?I guess you could do that. But, that's not what I was thinking of.You and I are looking at this on a different scale of analysis. Picture a specific misrepair mutation, rather than a broad trend of mutations across many organisms. If we have a random chain of 100 base-pairs, can we predict which one(s) will mutate? Can we predict when?Any predictions we make will be relatively inaccurate. And, repeated observations are unlikely to noticeably improve our accuracy, because the incidence of a certain mutation is unlikely to be consistent.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi, Nwr. So, when you objected to Straggler's statement---

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Science does make predictions yes?

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---was it just the anthropomorphism that bothered you?If, when you say, "...those predictions should be considered predictions of science..." you mean, "...we should say that they are what the entire body of scientists worldwide would predict," then no, we should not consider those predictions to be the predictions of science.But, if, when you say, "...those predictions should be considered predictions of science..." you mean, "...should those predictions be considered to have conformed to the methodological standards of scientific reasoning..." then, yes, I suppose they should be. However, there is a string of if's attached to that: ...then, yes, it should be considered science.However, given that most scientists argue that at least one of the above conditions is violated in the process of doing ID "science," we generally do not consider ID-based predictions to be scientific.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.