Re: Children at Play in the Schoolyard

Brian Pears wrote:
Renia <renia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Nobody but you is talking about publishing science. A reminder that this is a genealogy newsgroup, being a branch of history, not science.

There is very little difference. In both we devise an hypothesis
which fits the known facts - we make a testable prediction based
on that hypothesis - we test the prediction. If the prediction
proves true we gain a little confidence in our hypothesis, and
try out another prediction and test. If the prediction proves
false we scrap or modify the hypothesis and move on. Only when
an hypothesis has stood up under several cycles of prediction
and test, can we treat that hypothesis as probably true - but,
no matter how many tests have been passed, a single prediction
which fails is enough to prove the hypothesis false and in need
of modification or scrapping. As in science, so in genealogy.


The difference between a scientist and an historian is in the interpretation of the evidence.

To take a simple scientific example, if you heat up ice, it melts. It always melts. Never fails to melt. Does it every time. Science is built up of empirical knowledge using basic axioms, such as heating ice will melt it. The more complex and intricate the science becomes and the more it homes in on the detail, the chance there is of a theory remaining exactly that, at theory. But much of our scientific knowledge is about absolutes.

Genealogy and history are not like that and cannot be compared to it.

Your birth certificate says you are the son of your mother and your father. But you will never know whether your mother had an affair or whether your mother was actually your sister/aunt/mother's best friend. Not unless she tells you. And so it is for every generation behind us.

To find the truth, we may have to turn to science and get a lab to study our DNA.

In genealogy, there is no absolute truth, only theory and the interpretation of the available data. It's the best we can do.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: What is science?
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    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Science causes religious decline?
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    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Science causes religious decline?
    ... suppose one reads the statement about faith and the rain ... Prediction: whenever one has faith, God makes it rains that very day. ... Modern science and technology is impossible without math, ... follows we cannot subject them to the method of controlled experiment. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: OT- Another split in the Global Warming debate
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    (sci.military.naval)
  • Re: Invulnerable logic [Was:Re: How Our Brains Ignore Unpleasant
    ... Evolution is not history. ... so we can add "prediction" to the list of concepts whose meaning ... *as used in science* you have misunderstood. ...
    (talk.origins)
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