Re: History of Science question re ToE

Bobby D. Bryant wrote:


It sounds like he's arguing that since we didn't have a full
explanation when the theory was introduced, we shouldn't believe
it now.

I suspect it's the norm for theories to leave lots of details
unexplained when first introduced.

A very good observation. Science develops incrementally and one of the drivers of innovation are the questions that the older theories raise, but do not answer. Kepler got a very good kinetic description of how planets move about the sun, but it took the dynamics of Newton complete with force laws to show why the planets move as they do.


but I can't help wondering if he had a point. I know Darwin was a
very careful and methodical collector of data, but was his case to
support his theory really that much stronger than Wegener's was for
his?


FWIW, some scientists *did* reject Darwin's theory.

And mostly because Darwin did not have a gronding mechanism for his hypothesis of mantural selection from variable types. He had no theory of variation. In fact he, like many other of his time, believed heritable characteristics blended. Darwin alluded to a dynamic of use and disuse in his -Origins- so he did not completely purge the Lamarckian ideas from his thinking. What drove Darwin to lay emphasis on selection was the analogy with what animal and plant breeders do with their wild stock. He postulated that nature does selective breeding, which it does, in a manner of speaking. But the underlying dynamics are devoid of purpose.

Most of what happens in nature is continent or accidental.

Bob Kolker

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