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Author Topic:   The Nature of Scientific Inquiry; Is Evolution Science?
nator
Member (Idle past 2170 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 1 of 86 (195303)
03-29-2005 7:00 PM


The thread containing this post from Faith was closed, so...
I think it should go in "Is it Science?"
Faith writes:
quote:
You guys are a riot. What a joke. By your standards nothing whatever is proof EXCEPT your own sometimes somewhat scientific guesses extrapolated from the present to the distant past which can't be tested, proved, replicated or falsified.
Faith, this is a very false statement.
I am going to start a new thread regarding the nature of scientific inquiry in order to help you understand that the ToE is, indeed, quite falsifiable, it's observations can be replicated, and is testable, contrary to your bald, baseless assertions that it cannot and is not.
If you decide to not join me at this thread, I'd like you to write, for the entire board to see, that you believe that the hundreds of thousands of scientists who have studied Evolution over the last 150 years are a bunch of moronic dunderheads that have been getting everything completely wrong in all of their millions of manhours of work over the decades.
You do realize that you are doing this when you make such statements, don't you?
You do understand how wildly arrogant you sound when you do so, don't you?

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by Arkansas Banana Boy, posted 03-30-2005 12:20 AM nator has not replied
 Message 5 by nator, posted 03-30-2005 7:08 AM nator has not replied
 Message 7 by Faith, posted 03-30-2005 12:00 PM nator has replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2170 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 5 of 86 (195379)
03-30-2005 7:08 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by nator
03-29-2005 7:00 PM


OK Faith, so how about it?
Let's see, where to start?
Why don't we begin with defining Evolution itself?
This way, we can be sure we are talking about the same thing.
I consider a good definition of what evolution is to be the following. There is a very good short essay at this site that explains things a bit more, and I advise you to read it:
What is Evolution?
Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual. The ontogeny of an individual is not considered evolution; individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are inheritable via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportion of different alleles within a population (such as those determining blood types) to the successive alterations that led from the earliest protoorganism to snails, bees, giraffes, and dandelions."
- Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986
Are you in agreement with this definition, as it is the one scientists use?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by nator, posted 03-29-2005 7:00 PM nator has not replied

Replies to this message:
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nator
Member (Idle past 2170 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 14 of 86 (195618)
03-31-2005 1:39 AM
Reply to: Message 7 by Faith
03-30-2005 12:00 PM


quote:
I've also said many times, though perhaps you haven't seen those posts, that I consider most scientists to be doing valid science IN SPITE OF the theory they are laboring under.
Um, how can their work be valid to you if their work is founded upon and deeply dependant upon a theory that you consider "dunderheaded"?
quote:
The dunderhead part is the theory, and since everybody accepts it and thinks their observations into it I don't consider the scientists themselves to be dunderheads at all, merely the victims of this theory which is unquestionable,
The Theory is certainly able to be questioned.
What do you think Gould and Eldredge did?
quote:
not subject to proof or disproof, testing, falsification or replicability.
False, false, false, false.
How can we test Evolutionary theory?
The same way we test any other scientific theory.
We make a prediction and then see if the evidence (all relevant evidence) observed confirms or falsifies our prediction.
It was predicted that genetic trees of life would have a high degree of similarity to morphologic trees of life. (remember that the discovery of DNA and the ability to map genes came along in the very recent past)
They do, thus our prediction is confirmed.
If we had not seen such a convergence, and there had been significant differences between the two trees, Evolutionary Theory would have been seriously compromised.
Do not confuse "unfalsified" with "unfalsifiable." The ToE is the former, not the latter.
We can replicate many, many observations regarding Evolutionary Theory, of course.
Remember, it's not the events which need to be replicated (although many experiments, such as gene sequencing, can be replicated), it's the observations that are replicated.
quote:
Remember it is the THEORY that I'm saying does not meet these normal standards of scientific method, not any given scientific observation.
So, are you saying that the hundreds of thousands of scientists over the last 150 years are complete dunderheads because they have never recognized that the underpinnings to their entire field of study was actually not scientific at all?
You see, no matter how you try to soften it, you are basically forced to portray these hundreds of thousands of scientists as being such knuckleheads that they didn't even know that their own theory wasn't even scientific!
What a bunch of idiots!
Especially those Geneticists who figured out that many people who have partial to full immunity to the AIDS virus can be traced to a particular village in Europe, a number of residents of which also survived the Black Plague. It turns out that the Plague survivors have a genetic mutation which made them immune to the Plague virus, and this mutation has been passed on to their descendents, which has rendered them immune (full mutation) or partially (half mutation) immune to the AIDS virus.
Clueless dupes, the lot, eh?!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by Faith, posted 03-30-2005 12:00 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by Ben!, posted 03-31-2005 3:15 AM nator has replied
 Message 47 by Faith, posted 04-10-2005 5:12 AM nator has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2170 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 17 of 86 (195673)
03-31-2005 8:22 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by Ben!
03-31-2005 3:15 AM


quote:
A large number of people believing something does not make it true, false, likely to be true, likely to be false.
Of course.
I am not claiming that the Theory is true because so many scientists accept it.
But 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.
In fact, it is unreasonable.
It is similar to the reaction to the Creationist argument, "If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes around?"
This is often said with such conviction as if it is such an obvious truth, but if the evidence really showed that evolution worked this way, if it was so incredibly obvious, wouldn't at least one scientist in the last 150 years have noticed this to be the case? Isn't the only logical reason none of them would have noticed this is because all several hundred thousand of them are dull knuckleheads?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by Ben!, posted 03-31-2005 3:15 AM Ben! has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 23 by Ben!, posted 03-31-2005 4:38 PM nator has replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2170 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 19 of 86 (195680)
03-31-2005 8:36 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by JonF
03-31-2005 8:25 AM


Ah, that is exactly what I was trying to explain to Ben, but you did it so much better, thanks.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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nator
Member (Idle past 2170 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 24 of 86 (195866)
03-31-2005 7:46 PM
Reply to: Message 23 by Ben!
03-31-2005 4:38 PM


Yeah, I didn't express myself very well in that post, sorry.
It was good you and others wrote because clearly I was, well, unclear.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 23 by Ben!, posted 03-31-2005 4:38 PM Ben! has not replied

  
nator
Member (Idle past 2170 days)
Posts: 12961
From: Ann Arbor
Joined: 12-09-2001


Message 62 of 86 (198303)
04-11-2005 12:28 PM
Reply to: Message 59 by Faith
04-11-2005 11:38 AM


Re: OK Faith, so how about it?
quote:
The idea was that a theory about what happened in the past like the Geo timetable and ToE are not testable, that certain observations that support those ideas may be testable but in fact you can't test the theories themselves and can never verify {edit: meant "falsify"} them.
Yes, you certainly can test them.
We simply make a prediction based upon the theory. For example, we might predict that if the current understanding of the Theory of Evolution were correct, that we should find greater genetic similarity between species which are considered to by cladistics to be more closely related, and vice versa. We should also find similar genetic errors and "broken" genes in closely realated species as determined by cladistics. This is strong evidence of descent with modification, and thus, evolution.
This prediction has been borne out, but it didn't have to be. We could have found that the genetics were unique for each species. We could have found that there were actually completely different shared "broken" genes among different but related species, instead of identical ones, or no "broken" genes at all.
quote:
YOu list evolution along with "Relativity, gravity, wave/particle duality of light, quantum theory, radioactive decay, Maxwell's laws, cosmological expansion," but what I would point out about these things is that they are not about historical events but about ongoing physical facts that are exactly what CAN be tested.
Any cosmological observations are observations of historical events.
The light we see from distant galaxies and stars is, in many cases, millions of years old.
OTOH, we can observe the principles of descent with modification right here and now, and observe it in real time, if we use an organism with a fast enough generational turnover.
quote:
Historical events on the other hand are by definition past and cannot be replicated.
But, as I have explained previously, the observations of the evidence left behind by those events can be replicated.
For example, can we observe the volcanic mountain above Pompeii and note the old lava flows and ash layer, and dig up the buried city and see the multitude of artifacts. the evidence, which gives us clues about what happened?
Or, do you reject the notion that we can conclude that there was a volcanic eruption at Pompeii that buried an entire city because we cannot replicate the event here and now?
quote:
The whole approach to proving past events is entirely different from what you can do with the physical phenomena addressed by the theories you list -- evolution and the Geo Timeframe are unprovable in an entirely different sense. I will have to give this more thought later but that is closer to what I meant than what you made of it.
I am looking forward to reading what you think this "different sense" is.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 59 by Faith, posted 04-11-2005 11:38 AM Faith has not replied

  
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