Re: Evolution and Observation Gap


Jack Crenshaw wrote:
Richard Forrest wrote:
Jack Crenshaw wrote:

There is a huge body of scientific knowledge supporting the Theory of
Evolution. It includes everything from biochemistry to genetics to biology
to ecology to paleontology to geology. Let us know when you have some
contradictory evidence.



You are making a serious mistake when you try to defend a historical
science like Evolution by equating it with a hard science like physics.


You are seriously confused about the nature of science if you make such
a distinction.

Yeah, right. Now you're going to educate me about science?

No, that's up to you. However, your misconceptions about the nature of
science revealed by your posting suggests that you need it.


Evolutionary science is no more or less an "historical"
science than is physics. We can observe evolutionary events happening
in the present. In evolutionary theory as in physics, inferences about
events which happened in the past (and in the case of physics in a far
more distant past than that covered by evolutionary theory) by
observation and experiment in the present.

Haven't you forgotten something? It's true that, in ASTROphysics we
infer what may have happened in the far distance past, by observing
nature today. In ASTROphysics we can do that, because Nature obligingly
gave us a finite speed of light. The events we observe in ASTROphysics
may have happened long ago, but we are observing them _TODAY_.
Directly, not by inference.

So are you now asserting that astrophysics is not a branch of the
science of physics?
In any case, we do not observe events in the distant past directly.

Furthermore, a knowledge of the events that happened in the very
distant past, in the first few fractions of a second after the big bang
are fundamental to our understanding of the physics of energy and
matter at a very fundamental level. This is not just astrophysics, but
quantum and relativity theory, which between them model the behaviour
of matter and energy at very small and large scales.


Of course, in most branches of physics the topic never even comes up.

So now you are demonstrating your ignorance of the science of physics
as well.

As nearly as we can tell, the nature of an electron hasn't changed since
there were first electrons.


And this is relevant why, exactly?



It's a commonly used practice, but also one that is logically, if not
intellectually, bankrupt.



What is "intellectually bankrupt" is the assertion that such a
distinction can be made and has any relevance to the validity of the
evolutionary sciences as science.

I don't believe I mentioned "the validity of the evolutionary sciences
as science" at all, at least not directly. I was talking about a
philosophically dishonest argument, not about the ToE.

To quote "You are making a serious mistake when you try to defend a
historical
science like Evolution by equating it with a hard science like physics.
It's a commonly used practice, but also one that is logically, if not
intellectually, bankrupt. "

This is not talking about a philosophically dishonest argument, it is
making a false distinction between "historical" and "hard" sciences.




As someone else on this thread has noted, physics (and math, and
chemistry, and other hard sciences)are based on the Scientific method.


So are the evolutionary sciences. Incidentally, not everyone agrees
that mathematics is a science. It operates under a different set of
rules, and does not test hypotheses against the evidence as do what
some consider to be "real" sciences.

Good point. But I think most mathematicians would be surprised to learn
that math is not a science, but evolution is.

I think that few mathematicians would be surprise to be told that many
scientists do not consider mathematics to be a science. It is, after
all, a view held by many mathematicians.

Here's one such mathematician:
http://euclid.trentu.ca/math/sb/misc/mathsci.html

and another:
http://dna-view.com/math.htm

I suggest that you do a google search for "is mathematics a science?".
You will find many sources on both sides of the argument.

As for the status of "evolution" as science, I doubt that you can find
more than a handful of mathematicians who don't consider it - or
rather, the scientific investigation of evolution - to be as sound a
science as any other. I doubt even more that any of that tiny minority
hold such views on any other basis that religious conviction.




The essence of the scientific method is the sequence, Hypothesis,
Experiment, Observation.


No. The essence of the scientific method is the formation and testing
of hypotheses. These tests can be carried out as experiments, or by
observation.

Didn't we say the same thing? The only difference is the order of the words.

No. You asserted that it includes both experiment and observation.
Those are the tools used to test hypothesis. You don't have to use
both.


Incidentally, both means of testing are used in the
evolutionary sciences, as they are in physics.

When Newton developed his Theory of Gravity, he didn't do it overnight.
He proposed the theory (along with his three laws of motion), then he
and other folks effectively said, "Ok, let's see where this leads us."
They did their math, made predictions, then observed to see if the
predictions came true. Each time that a prediction proved true, it
added to the confidence in the theory.

By contrast, Darwin proposed a theory. All of his followers said
"Sounds good to us," and have been saying so ever since.


If you can write this with a straight face you are either profoundly
ignorant, or a bald-faced liar.

My dear mother, rest her soul, told me that if my opponent in an debate
resorts to name-calling, it's because he has run out of rational
arguments.

I didn't call you names.

I pointed out that you are demonstrating a monumental ignorance of the
history of evolutionary theory by making such stupid assertions.
"Bald-faced liar" was offered as an alternative to ignorance, but I'll
give you the benefit of the doubt.

Thank you for confirming that you have nothing useful to
contribute, though I must say, it sure didn't take you long. I was
hoping for something with a little more substance than 17 lines.

What's wrong with my little history lesson in the following paragraph
which puts you right on your evident ignorance of the subject?

Incidentally, your assertion that all evolutionary scientists have been
doing since Darwin formulated his theory of natural selection is saying
"sounds good to us", and by implication never bothering to test
Darwin's hypothesis is profoundly insulting to evoltionary scientists
such as myself. Do you you honestly think that we are so stupid,
ignorant and blinkered?


Various evolutionary theories had been proposed before Darwin. If you
bother to read the Origins, Darwin lists them at the beginning of his
thesis. What all those theories lacked was a mechanism which could be
used to form hypotheses, and make predictions which can be tested
against the evidence. Much of the research in the sciences of biology,
palaeontology and more recently genetics has been testing predictions
made by Darwin's theory and its subsequent modifications and
elaborations. It is noteworthy that in spite of 150 years of effort,
the basics of Darwin's theory are still sound.


Show me your math; show me your predictions; show me how your
observations match your predictions. Otherwise, stop going on about
your "science."



http://tinyurl.com/g2dps
http://tinyurl.com/fkrbb
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/76/10/5269
http://tinyurl.com/nc4hs

Try a search in google scholar. It gave me over 800,000 links.

So I guess that you will now withdraw your claim that the evolutionary
science are not real sciences, or demonstrate that each one of those
800,000 links is irrelevant to your assertion that the evolutionary
sciences do not make predictions, and do not use mathematics.

Nice try. It's easy to post URL's, especially when you get them from
ther web sites.

The trick would be to post URL's which don't come from web sites. What
on earth has the facility of posting links to do with the validity of
my response?

How about answering my question.

You asked me to show you the maths. I did. That's answering your
question.

Incidentally, if you doubt that evolutionary theory is supported and
informed by mathematics, I suggest that you investigate the work of R A
Fisher, an evolutionary biologist whose work profoundly influenced
statistics.

You might start with this link (which is to a URL, incidentally, and
which I copied very easily.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fisher


What do you predict
will be the next new species? What changes to existing species?


That's not the nature of prediction in science.

Physics cannot predict where the earth will be in its orbit 200 million
years from now, any more than it can predict the position and behaviour
of individual molecules in a gas.

Evolutionary theory cannot predict specific events, any more than can
many other branches of science. Meterologists cannot tell you with any
degree of certainty what the weather is going to be in your back yard
on Thursday of next week.

Having said that, evolutionary theory can make quite specific
predictions about what happens to populations of organisms in
controlled envirionments. For example, bacterial strains exposed to
antibiotics will evolve resitance to those particular antibiotics. What
happens in the extraordinarily complex interactions of populations of
organism is far harder to predict. However, there are general sets of
predictions which can be made, for example that animals of the same
species living in a range of enviroiments will have a range of
physiological adaptations to each of those envirioments. In the case of
human populations, those living at high altitudes have adaptations to
cope with low oxygen levels. Interestingly, the high altitude peoples
of the Andes, and those of the Himalayas both have such adaptations,
but based on different genetic mutations.

As for predicting "the next new species", that is a rather silly
demand. Speciation is a gradual event, and there is no clear-cut line
at which a new species suddenly appears. There is no single definition
of a species in biology, and each of the several we have are fuzzy
round the edges.

I suggest that you extend your reading to species concepts in biology.


Well, that would be the act of someone with intellectual honesty, but I
guess that we need to make allowances for the fact that you're a
creationist.

See quote from mama, above.

Jack


And note my response.

RF



RF



Jack



.

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