Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
1 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,819 Year: 3,076/9,624 Month: 921/1,588 Week: 104/223 Day: 2/13 Hour: 0/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   The Nature of Scientific Inquiry; Is Evolution Science?
Parasomnium
Member
Posts: 2224
Joined: 07-15-2003


Message 11 of 86 (195505)
03-30-2005 3:56 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Faith
03-30-2005 3:41 PM


Faith writes:
my point is that testing that could lead to falsification cannot be done with events in the past
Crime: Victim was raped and murdered - an event in the past.
Hypothesis: Suspect A did the deed.
Evidence: semen found on the body of the victim.
Test: DNA of the semen is compared with that of the suspect.
Outcome: there is no correspondence between the samples.
Conclusion: the hypothesis that A did the deed is falsified.
We have an event in the past, a test, and a falsification.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Faith, posted 03-30-2005 3:41 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 16 by gengar, posted 03-31-2005 3:37 AM Parasomnium has not replied
 Message 27 by Faith, posted 04-01-2005 4:51 AM Parasomnium has replied

  
Parasomnium
Member
Posts: 2224
Joined: 07-15-2003


Message 20 of 86 (195683)
03-31-2005 8:50 AM
Reply to: Message 19 by nator
03-31-2005 8:36 AM


Playing the Devil's advocate
Still, I sense a problem here, Schraf. You said:
quote:
for someone to say that this many scientists over 150 years have been completely wrong about something utterly fundamental and basic to their entire profession, seems unreasonable.
What if we replace the word 'scientists' with 'priests' and extend the period to 2000 years? Then what?
Sorry to be the Devil's advocate, but it seems a legitimate objection a creationist could hurl right back at you.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by nator, posted 03-31-2005 8:36 AM nator has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 21 by sfs, posted 03-31-2005 8:57 AM Parasomnium has not replied
 Message 22 by PaulK, posted 03-31-2005 8:59 AM Parasomnium has not replied

  
Parasomnium
Member
Posts: 2224
Joined: 07-15-2003


Message 29 of 86 (195984)
04-01-2005 7:51 AM
Reply to: Message 27 by Faith
04-01-2005 4:51 AM


It's elementary, my dear Watson.
Faith writes:
what you have for a starting point is something you KNOW happened in the past
Yes, we know a rape/murder happened in the past, but that is not what we are trying to falsify, that would be silly. We have a raped corpse, after all. What we do not know in the example is whether or not suspect A commited the crime. We hypothesize that he did, perform a test using the available evidence, and find that our hypothesis is falsified.
To translate this to your example of the frozen mammoth: we know a mammoth died in the past, we just don't know when. We can form a hypothesis about that, perform a test and have it falsified, or not as the case may be. (Translating this back to the murder case: the test might confirm the suspect's guilt.)

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by Faith, posted 04-01-2005 4:51 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 48 by Faith, posted 04-10-2005 5:24 AM Parasomnium has replied

  
Parasomnium
Member
Posts: 2224
Joined: 07-15-2003


Message 53 of 86 (198104)
04-10-2005 4:23 PM
Reply to: Message 48 by Faith
04-10-2005 5:24 AM


Re: It's elementary, my dear Watson.
Faith writes:
What test could you perform to determine its {the mammoth's, P.} age? Isn't radiometric dating the only possible empirical test and really, how does anybody know that that is reliable as it can't be tested either beyond historical time.
Several different radiometric dating methods are consistently pointing to the same results. If radiometric dating didn't work, you wouldn't expect that.
On top of that, radiometric dating is corroborated by other dating methods. For example, C14-dating - of special interest here, since you can use it for dating a frozen mammoth - is corroborated by tree-ring dating.
Faith writes:
Anyway, in a crime scene you have LOTS of clues that are testable and falsifiable. Not so much for the age of a frozen mammoth.
That's your assertion. There's no reason to assume that the age of a crime/death scene is a hinderance for gathering evidence. It's true that some evidence can be gathered only at recent scenes, but if a scene is older, you will simply have to look for other types of evidence. As science and technology progress, more and more ways emerge for scientists to evaluate data and use them as evidence for their theories.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

This message is a reply to:
 Message 48 by Faith, posted 04-10-2005 5:24 AM Faith has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024