Re: The Medea Hypothesis - review

TomS wrote:
"On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:28:03 +0100, in article
<h233vi$9i7$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Burkhard stated..."
TomS wrote:
"On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:33:29 -0400, in article
<7rm945ts2grtpbun3fmjlreu4tdd9d04em@xxxxxxx>, Matt Silberstein stated..."
On 26 Jun 2009 03:57:29 -0700, in talk.origins , TomS
<TomS_member@xxxxxxxxxxx> in
<256013848.00013acb.041.0001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:36:01 +0100, in article
<RL%0m.97807$RJ.65145@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Spence... stated..."
"Richard Harter" <cri@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:4a444deb.136789312@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Lovelock
In case anyone wants to investigate the issue:
I heard Lovelock on BBC Radio 4 the other week saying that all scientific theories have a limited life, and that in his view Darwinism was 'a theory
whose time was past'... But what he said after that was a bit garbled and suggested a lack of understanding of the topic...

Anyone know more about this? Does he go into this in any of his books...?

Sp.

I wonder when he expects Pythagoreanism - the scientific theory that
the earth is round - to reach the end of its limited life.

Or the scientific theory that Hesperus is Phosphorus - that is really
due for retirement. (I don't know who first proposed that theory, so
I can't give it a name of N-ism.) Someone should point out that there
is a barrier between them which no possible single observation can
cross.
I think it depends on what you mean by "theory" and "life". Darwinism
has been replaced by the Modern Synthesis which was changed by Neutral
theory and is being transformed with our understanding of Ev/Dev. So
in a very real way the *Darwinism* has past its prime.

(And the theory that the Earth is round has been replaced by
observations of the specific shape of the Earth. Meanwhile we have
gone from the center of the Universe to orbit around the Sun to a
minor start on the outskirts of a typical galaxy to being made of
different stuff than the vast majority of the Universe. So, yes, I
think that old theory has hit its life as well.)

I haven't heard what Lovelock said, and my comments are an irritated
response to the sort of ignorant irrationalism that I've heard all
too often, not necessarily what Lovelock said.

Because I realized that someone would point out that we have since
discovered that the earth is not a perfect geometric sphere, I decided to bring up the example of Hesperus and Phosphorus.

Hesperus was the ancient Greek designation for the planet Venus in
is appearances as the evening star; Phosphorus for it as the morning
star. It was at first not realized that they are the same object. At
some time, there was proposed a scientific theory that they are the
same object. The planet Venus cannot be directly observed in its
transition from evening star to morning star to evening star, because
it makes the transition when lost to sight in the glare of the sun
(in fact, passing behind the sun).

As far as I know, the scientific theory that Hesperus and Phosphorus
are the same object has never been superseded, even though it is one
of the oldest scientific theories, and I would be quite surprised if
anyone can imagine that it will ever be considered to have outlived
its limited lifespan. It is a counter-example to the statement that
all scientific theories have a limited life.

I also suggest that it is an example of a scientific theory which,
despite its near-universal acceptance for a couple thousand years,
had no possibility for direct observational evidence. Not until we
could get observations outside of the vicinity of the earth could
there be observations of "Hesperus" "changing into" "Phosphorus".
When was the first direct observation of Venus on the opposite side
of the Sun from the Earth? Some time well after 1950, I'd say. Yet
I suspect that even flat-earthers, geocentrists, and various other
crackpots never got so far out of contact with reality as to doubt
the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus as Venus.

Maybe I'll have to use this identification as an example for the
creationists who insist that all science always needs direct observation. Of course, this does assume that creationists have a
long enough attention span to follow this example.

I just checked Wikipedia, and there is brief mention of the identification of Hesperus with Phosphorus (1) in the article
"Hesperus", where it is discussed in the context of its being an
example in semantics, (2) in the article "Venus", under the heading
"Early studies", where it cites Pliny the Elder - I'll have to look
that up.


I'm not sure a simply identity statement like this qualifies as a "scientific theory". It "may" be a theory about historical word use, but as such it would be falsifiable and might therefore have a limited shelf life after all ( we could find new documents that show that people in the past actually did not mean Hesperus, but another star roughly in the same place but further away, for instance.

Here is the relevant text from Pliny the Elder, Natural History, II.
vi.36 (Loeb Classical Library, tr. H. Rackham):

"Below the sun revolves a very large star named Venus, which varies
its course alternately, and alternative names in themselves indicate
its rivalry with the sun and moon - when in advance and rising before
dawn it receives the name of Lucifer, as being another sun and bringing
the dawn, whereas when it shines after sunset it is named Vesper, as
prolonging the daylight, or as being a deputy for the moon. This property of Venus was first discovered by Pythagoras of Samos about the
42nd Olympiad, 142 years after the foundation of Rome. Further it surpasses all the other stars in magnitude ... It completes the circuit
of the zodiac every 348 days, and according to Timaeus is never more
than 46 degrees distant from the sun."

This seems to me to be a clear scientific statement that the planet
that we call Venus appears some times as the morning star and some
times as the evening star. That is something which I rather doubt will ever be challenged in science. It is not simply a report of
observations, but an explanation of those observations by assuming
the existence of one object to account for two distinct observations.
And it is not just about the use of the words, it is about objective
reality: it could be false, but it isn't.

It is indeed normally used as an example to explain Frege's distinction between the extension and reference of a term, and its intension or meaning (something Ray always gets confused when he makes claims of the type: atheism and Darwinism are synonymous" Hesperus and Pospherus are co-extensional, but the terms don't have the same meaning/intension (arguably, pace Kripke and his theory of "rigid designation of proper names"). But these are not empirical theories.




If people had not erroneously believed them to be two objects, woudl you still consider it a scientific statement? If not, then the theory is entirely dependant on a previous mistake. It is a correction in an observation, but is it really a theory? Does it make predications? Does it support some more general law like relation? Now if there were some underlying general reasoning , e. g.: always when we observe a celestial object at time X in position Y, it will reappear at time X+1 in the position Y+1, the H-P identity would be a derivable consequence, and together they would form a theory. Obviously, that theory woudl be much more "in danger" since some celestial objects could behave differently, e.g. when too far away

.

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