Re: Thanks for the welcome... and white spots on wrapper?

Alex W <ingilt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:nsayf2zr1502.1lmrmj8gcha9q.dlg@
40tude.net:

That is plain wrong.
To begin, a palaeontologist may tell you that a particular
bone is ABOUT 300,000 years old. He will not insist on a
precise and specific age as he will know and freely admit
that his dating techniques are not that accurate. However,
he will have subjected this find to a whole range of dating
techniques for mutal corroboration, both direct and
indirect.

You're not paying attention. The "mutual corroberation"
is the circular part of the logic. This isn't bad,
necessarily. These sorts of sciences are really only
concerned with internal consistency. They put together
some coherent picture and if it holds together, then
most folks are happy.

Hard science, on the other hand, is externally
consistent. It has to be, because it's applied
to externals. Physics makes statement like
"Whenever <blah> then <meh>" and is able to prove it
by doing <blah> and then observing that <meh>
happens. What's the paleontological equivalent
of that? "Whenever comets hit the earth, all
the giant lizards die". To prove this in the
hard scientific way, they'd have to mock up some
earths, have life evolve into giant lizards, and
then whack the planets with comets.

--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
.

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