Induction and Science

The topic is supposed to be about the use of induction in science, not about whether or not I can be said to use it in my private life. I am quite certain that we will still have the same theory of gravity tomorrow as we have today. However, I have no basis at all for judging whether the phenomena of gravity will continue to be much as they are today. I was quite clear when I said that was a guess, rather than a conclusion. If you don't know what Platonism and nominalism are, and if you don't understand why they were highly relevant in the post where I used them, then why not just admit your ignorance instead of trying to turn it into an insult.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

I'm not sure that science has a conclusion about that. I expect that many individual scientists have opinions. But I don't think that there is anything that can be called "the scientific conclusion."

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Okay. I certainly agree that there are natural phenomena. I'm a bit puzzled as to why the term "law" would be used for them, but I have seen that usage elsewhere. And yet I'm pretty sure that many evolutionists would say that the random occurrence of mutations is a consistent feature of replication.I raised the question, because I'm not sure that "consistent" is all that meaningful. Or, to say it differently, people are quite inconsistent in the way that they use "consistent."When we say X is consistent with Y, then we are saying something that is at least a bit clearer. And when we say that a logic system is self-consistent (with "self" often being dropped), we are being quite precise. But it is often hard to make sense of other uses of "consistent." That's about what I thought they were arguing, until I questioned their conclusion. But now it seems that they all want to twist the discussion into something else. Thank you for being the exception, and actually sticking with the topic. I'll grant that. For the most part, scientists don't try to analyze how they do science. They just do it. So when asked about how they are doing it, they just use what philosophers of science often say. I'm not questioning the science, but I am questioning the claims of philosophy of science.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Scientists and engineers make predictions. Science doesn't.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.I'll note, also, that predictions can turn out to be wrong. If it is made using scientific theories, then it is a scientific conlusion as contrasted to "unscientific conclusion". But it is still the conclusion of individuals rather than of science.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

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

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

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

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

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.

My main point was that the word "consistent" was being used in a way that I could not work out what was meant. It's a bit hard to respond to an argument when you can't tell what is being argued. I'm not a biologist. I don't know enough about the situation to be able to hazard a guess.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

No, it was the confusion between the actions of science as an institution, and the actions of individual scientists. I see it as important to keep those distinct. I thought I was asking a rhetorical question, and not actually saying anything.To get back to my point, it seems to me that scientists make predictions, but science as an institution does not.Here's a recent headline: Odds of Life on Nearby Planet '100 Percent,' Astronomer Says
That's a prediction by a scientist. Should we say that science, as an institution, is making that prediction?

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

For the moment, I'll go with my response to Blue Jay in Message 249.When we use an expression of the form "science predicts ...", I'm inclined to say that is a metaphoric way of speaking. That sounds like creationist (as in ID) reasoning.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

I'm calling foul on that. The particular discussion was on inductive support for Newton's third law. You are twisting it to pretend that it was about pragmatism. You still don't get it, do you.Newton's third law is a convention, an empirical principle. It is prior to any evidence.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie