Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both?

I actually did quite a bit of research on this, and this turns out not to be the case. While its for the most part true that, given any modern technology, you can probably find a precursor in the sci-fi literature that predates it, a fair bit of this can be ascribed to the "shotgun" effect - if you have enough writers making different predictions, some of them are bound to come true. Consider all the ridiculous, impossible sci-fi "predictions":1) Artifical gravity fields
2) Energy/force shields
3) Teleportation
4) Faster-than-light spaceshipsYou get the point. I've tried to pick things that aren't simply as-yet-uninvented, but are actually physically impossible as we understand the universe. These predictions simply won't pan out in the universe we know.For that matter, a fair number of these "predictions" are simply statements that we, from the vantage point of the future, have retrodacted beyond their original or obvious meaning. For that matter, sci-fi fandom considerably intersects with technical expertise in most fields. I mean, naturally, the tech nerds at Motorola must surely have been thinking of Star Trek when they designed a generation of compact cellular phones:Prediction? Or "self-fulfilling prophecy"? Does the Star Trek communicator so resemble our cell phones because Gene Roddenberry had a sixth sense, or because the designers of our phones were influenced by an adolescence of Star Trek reruns?Sci-Fi as a genre, moreso than any other genre, largely concerns itself with human technologies, science, and the future. Exotic locales and advanced toys. The purpose of sci-fi is not, however, futurism - it's not about what will be, but what might be; we shouldn't be overly surprised when some of those might-be's turn out to be what is. If you make enough different guesses, eventually one of them turns out to be right. Hit vs. miss, sci-fi isn't really any better at prediction than anything else.And if that's not enough, there's usually someone so excited about some piece of fictional gadgetry that they want to try to take it off the page and into reality. That's a testament not to the predictive power of sci-fi, but to its power to capture and excite the imagination. I think that you're far too generous in describing these influences as "metaphysics." That implies a considerably greater degree of rigor than is actually present. Scientists get weird ideas from all different sources; some turn out to be right but the vast majority turn out to be very, very wrong. When a scientist's hunch or dream does pan out, that's a testament to their ability as a scientist, not to the value of whatever idle midsummer's fancy sent them down that direction in the first place.Like I said I don't particularly contest your position, but I don't find it particularly earth-shattering, either. In regards to the creationism debate, creationists aren't simply advancing their doctrines as an inspiration for scientific inquiry, but as a replacement for it.

I guess I'm a bit slow on the uptake, because I've only just now figured out where you're going. Your arugment is that pseudo-science has made significant contributions to scientific progress in the past, and that by returning to pseudo-scientific practices the progress of science can be enhanced.There are a few significant problems with your viewpoint:

1. Your examples of past scientific efforts incorporating what is known today to be pseudo-science haven't held up to scrutiny. Alchemy was your first example, and as was pointed out, the impossibility of transmutation of elements by chemical means wasn't known at the time. When judging whether past efforts involved pseudo-science one must use the level of scientific knowledge at the time as a measuring stick.
   ​
2. Other times you've claimed error represented pseudo-science, but this hasn't held up either. Lord Kelvin once judged the earth to be no more than a hundred million years old based upon thermodynamic considerations. The discovery that the earth was much older didn't render Kelvin's work pseudo-science, it just meant that the contribution of radioactivity was unknown when he did his measurements and calculations.
   ​
3. Other times you've claimed unscientific sources of inspiration represented pseudo-science. But the source of ideas is not what makes something science. If the phenomena being investigated is natural, if the evidence being gathered is natural, if the work is replicable, if the proposals are testable, then it is science. It makes no difference whether the original inspiration came from a scientific talk or a dream.
   ​
4. Science studies the natural world, and it seeks natural explanations of phenomena. The criteria for acceptable scientific explanations is not whether something avoids metaphysics, but whether it is natural. Anything that is objectively testable is, by definition, natural.

--Percy

Ok...I see what your getting at. My apologies for not being clearer.Actually, I offer big apologies because, looking back, I should have noticed that this perception was what others thought I was saying long ago.I'm not trying to suggest by any means that all of science is based on pseudoscience. It seems to me that about 80% of true scientific inquiry comes from raw experimental data employing the scienctific method -- and all things that are associated with it.It is the other 20% that is more difficult to define -- and this is where the question of inspiration, pre-science, pseudoscience, theoretical propositions, science-fiction, dreams, and even "serendipity in conjunction with keen observation" often comes into play (it might even be found that 20% of this difficult area to discern might even be considered false science, pseudoscience or pre-science by todays standards).I guess I see this as a similar analogy to a management principle/technique otherwise known as Pareto's Law.As others have noted, in the late 1800s, economist and gardener Vilfredo Pareto established that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. While gardening he later observed that 20% of the peapods in his garden yielded 80% of the peas that were harvested.It was from these observations that a theory was born which many consider to have generally withstood the test of time and scrutiny. Pareto's Law (or the 80:20 Rule) has actually proven its validity in a number of other areas.For example, when applied to meetings, it is often observed that 80% of decisions come from 20% of meeting time. Similarly, when applied to managerial headaches, it is often noted that roughly 80% of your managerial problems and headaches are caused by just 20% of your problems. Likewise, when applied to salespeople, it is again often noted that roughly 20% of a sales force will develop 80% of the annual results.Back when I used to play pool a lot, I knew a fellow who was a crack shot. He could play like you wouldn't believe. One time when I was playing against him (and losing badly many times), I asked him how he was able to become such a good shot.His answers rather surpised me.He said that being good at pool was 80% shooting and 20% positioning.What he meant was that he wasn't so much a good pool player for being able to sink the balls. Rather, what made him good was that he was able to position the cue ball more accurately for the secondary shot as he shot the initial ball in.He also clairfied that being able to shoot the ball definitely wasn't a bad thing -- because if one couldn't shoot the ball into the right pocket in the first place, it almost* didn't matter where you left the ball later._{*He said "almost" because sometimes, if one didn't have a clear shot, some people would just shoot the ball into a place that would be very difficult for their opponent to get a clear shot at it.}In other words, if one can't make the shot, then, unless they can somehow position the cue ball effectively after they miss the target ball, then it doesn't really matter -- although they can still certainly learn from their mistake in that, with further repititous practice, they eventually refine their shooting skills.Coming back to my initial point, it seems to me that induction should count for about 80% of the scientific research conducted -- and that deduction should count for about 20% of the scientific research conducted.In the above analogy, I suppose I see induction as being akin to one's skill at shooting in a game of pool -- whereas deduction is akin to one predicting where the cue will be after it has been shot.Having said that, within our modern era, it seems as though it has become commonplace to presume that the more important of the two sides of the faculty of reason is induction -- and that a 100% inductive process might actually have all the answers to our scientific endeavors.However, if I'm correct in this general observation, I think this post-modern view of science may be potentially flawed because it could possibly neglect the "more creative" aspects of science which tries to actually solidly predict via deductive "inspirations" that many others might intially dismiss as a pseudoscientific model.In addition to this, often the verified experiments of the inductive process seem to redefine the future of deductive research insofar that anything that appears to contradict it (or even just doesn't fit into its scheme because it advances causes that are outside the scope of the initial verified proofs) can be summarilly excluded.However, if indeed 20% of the deductive research performed is indebted in some way to unverified inspirations that lay well outside our body of inductively verified evidence, relying solely on the 80% of deductive research that comes only from this inductively verified evidence may ultimately limit our ability in the future to conduct further open minded inquiry based on creative hypothesis that call for searches into areas that science feels it simply cannot touch.This message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-18-2005 04:00 PMThis message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-18-2005 04:10 PMThis message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-18-2005 04:14 PM

Ah, much akin to the Discordian's Law of Fives:

quote:

---

The Law of Fives states simply that: ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR ARE MULTIPLES OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO 5.

---

It turns out that, if you look hard enough, the Law of Fives will never turn out to be wrong.

Kind of.My arugment is that pseudo-scientific inspirations have made significant contributions to scientific progress in the past, and that by allowing pseudo-scientific inspirations (in addition to but not replacing valid scientific inquiry) the progress of science may be enhanced.It might even allow science to prove various modern day scienctific phenomena inaccurate much faster than just dismissing them as being meaningless to scientific inquiry.For example, as Ted Peters and Marty Hewlett note in their book Evolution from Creation to New Creation: The Controversy in Laboratory, Church, and Society the late Stephen Jay Gould, who advocated punctuated equilibrium, offers an argument that supports Darwinian gradualism over against what ID proposes. This is how the debate should proceed. It need not be spiced up by dismissing ID as just one more disguised voice for creationism.An article reviewing their book goes on to say:

quote:

---

Both creationism and ID complain that evolutionary theory is bad for society, that the ideological values that accompany evolution are corrupting young people's minds and hence our wider culture. Today's liberal community finds it easy to dismiss such complaints as vituperations of cranky right wingers who support bigotry and all other conservative prejudices. Again, this rush to simplicity hides its own enormous intellectual blindness if not dishonesty.

---

It further discusses the following based on Peters' and Hewlett's book:

quote:

---

What this book makes clear is that never was there a time when evolutionary theory could distinguish the pure research science from social ideology. Even before Charles Darwin published Origin of the Species in 1859, Adam Smith's version of capitalism was providing a scheme for understanding economic competition that Darwin used to frame his descriptions of competition between species. Also, in 1851 Herbert Spencer promulgated a vision of evolution that applied to both nature and society. Once Darwin had entered the academic scene, Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" and Darwin adopted it as the equivalent of "natural selection." For the social Darwinism that followed, it meant government should encourage the rich and powerful to survive while letting the weak and unfit fall by the wayside. Thomas Huxley, who held a more egalitarian ethic than Spencer, still capitalized on Darwinian biology in his campaign to support materialism and to get the church out of the British university. It was Huxley who declared war against religion in the name of Darwinian science. Huxley, Darwin's contemporary, paved the way for Richard Dawkins more than a century later to remark in The Blind Watchmaker (p.6), "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

​

What this means is that the Western religious community has never had access to evolution as simply science. Evolution first came already shrink wrapped as a capitalist ideology that supports the rich over against the poor and as a materialism that assaults the beliefs of the traditional church. In addition, late nineteenth century Darwinism was accompanied by a theory of racial hierarchy-that is, white English society was said to be more fully evolved than other races. So, when social Darwinism went to Germany it offered justification for the will-to-power, militarism leading to World War I, post-war eugenics, Rassenhygiene, death camps, and World War II. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler directly lifts up Darwinian evolution in his appeal to nature to justify what would become the Nazi ideology backing Aryan racism. So, when creationists and others trumpet that social values are at stake, they appeal to an ominous history. If our society is to honor Christian inspired values such as the responsibility of the rich toward the poor, love and care for those deemed unfit, or racial equality -- creationists are not supporters of bigotry despite what is said of them-these values are incommensurate with those deriving from social Darwinism.

​

Because of this checkered history, theologians should try to distinguish between Darwinism [or Neo-Darwinism] as science and as philosophy. Materialist ideology and social Darwinism should be distinguished from the history of our planet's biology. The science should be separated out from the larger Darwinian complex. If religious thought in general and Christian faith in particular is to take up a working relationship with science, then it must discriminate between evolutionary biology with its accompanying disciplines such as molecular biology from its philosophical siblings such as social Darwinism and ontological materialism. Theologians must also distinguish the research science from Darwinism's contemporary progeny such as sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. This book recommends that a healthy dialogue between science and religion should focus first on the biology and related laboratory research areas; and it should avoid blessing or baptizing the various forms of social Darwinism that are subject to such a values critique.

---

This message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-18-2005 04:42 PM

But...um...I did quote the source that reflected this exact same reasoning: In other words, in quoting this source once again, I don't actually believe that science-fiction "predicted" anything.Whenever it was accurate, it seems more likely to have "inspired" future generations to emulate what they saw -- and the "educated guesses" that were later considered "inspirations" were almost certainly most likely not the result of someone remembering the future.

quote:

---

note in their book Evolution from Creation to New Creation: The Controversy in Laboratory, Church, and Society the late Stephen Jay Gould, who advocated punctuated equilibrium, offers an argument that supports Darwinian gradualism over against what ID proposes. This is how the debate should proceed.

---

this is certainly possible.For me it seems to come up to Croizat's use of orthoselection vs orthogenesis in SpACe TIME AND FORM @ GOuld's ^spectrum^ of orthogenesis focusing on Gould's citations of Fisher and the 2nd law as Dirac had made it VERY clear (to issue of mathematical beauty) that ket and bra vectors combos can say something material about orthogonality!oN PAGE 352 of THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY Gould lists

quote:

---

1. Some prominent non-Darwinians may justly be designated as "theistic evolutionists" - St.George Mivart and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, for example. But orthogenesis does not fall into this category. Rather, and entirely to the contrary, all leading orthogeneticists insisted vociferously that their arguemetns for internal directionality included no teleological or theistic component. Most leading orthogeneticists held strictly mechanistic views in the mainstream of the highly deterministic late 19th century scientific consensus. They argued that internal channels arose as products of conventional, physical causes, based upon properties of hereditary and developmental systems. (These properties may have been unknown, hence "mysterious" in the vernacular sense, but certainly not spiritual or teleological.)

---

I still prefer a noncontronfrontational multipolarity in a feeling that all is not as apodictic as Gould acertains but if a debate IS this does seem to be one. I would argue for quantum mecahincal parallels in 1-D symmetry connections that are revealed orthogonally to BE IN Kant's term "physical teleology". To do this designs would need to be blueprinted. It may not be that orthogenesis that contains the preparation to theology but instead orthoselection which was. I have not made up my mind because I have not made a final judgment on Penrose's ROAD TO REALITY. The road is certainly not new.

No source of inspiration is disallowed in science. You already have your wish.Your book quote advocates keeping the scientific issues of evolution separate from the philosophical, which is pretty much how most evolutionists here already view things.--Percy

This quote shoots itself in the foot:

quote:

---

Both creationism and ID complain that evolutionary theory is bad for society, that the ideological values that accompany evolution are corrupting young people's minds and hence our wider culture. Today's liberal community finds it easy to dismiss such complaints as vituperations of cranky right wingers who support bigotry and all other conservative prejudices. Again, this rush to simplicity hides its own enormous intellectual blindness if not dishonesty.

---

The problem here is that the writers have assumed a priori that eviolution is most important for its ideological content, and its impact on society.Now, who is it that complains about the decay of society and the corruption of morality? Why, that would be those cranky right wingers and the doctrine of conservatism.The very fact that both ID and Creationism start from the assertion that evolution is "bad for society" demonstrates they are trying to play a game of consequences and moral blackmail, rather than an honest investigation of reality as we experience it.

Contra my Friend,
That is NOT true. I hope you take this in a constructive way (I have just been mostly kindly corrected by EZ about plant-insect relations in a quite informative way).There IS a "rush to simplicity" apparent. It is not the "ideological" content that causes the subreation but the LACK OF very obviously possible PHILOSOPHICAL IMPROVEMENTS in the largely liberal universities. It is of course not that people dont know that they exist but that they are not being developed. They are not being significantly developed in humanities departments either.Kant wrote down THIS complaint quite well with

quote:

---

We may then suppose the case of a righteous man[e.g. Spinoza], who holds himself firmly persuaded that there is no God and also (because in respect of the object of morality a similar consequence results) no future life; how is he to judge of his own inner purposive destination, by means of the moral law, which he reveres in practice? He desires no advantage to himself from following it, either in this or another world; he wishes, rather, disinterestedly to establish the good to which that holy law directs all his powers. But his effort is bounded; and from nature, although he may expect here and there a contingent accordance, he can never expect a regular harmony agreeing according to constant rules (such as his maxims are and must be, internally) with the purpose that he yet feels himself obliged and impelled to accomplish.

---

audible complaining(now continuing with Kant again...

quote:

---

Deceit, violence, and envy will always surround him, although he himself be honest, peaceable; and kindly; and the righteous men with whom he meets will, notwithstanding all their worthiness of happiness, be subjected to nature, which regards not this, to all the evils of want, disease, and untimely death, just like the beasts of the earth. So it will be until one wide grave engulfs them together (honest or not, it makes no difference) and throws them back- who were able to believe themselves the final purpose of creation - into the abyss of the purposeless chaos of matter from which they were drawn. The purpose, then, which this well-intentioned person had and ought to have before him in his pursuit of moral laws, he must certainly give up as impossible.

---

It didnt matter that these things surrounded me in high school but it apparently made) every difference once I started at Cornell. I simply then made the choice to not just be said righteous man but to believe in righteousness (as i already gave an oath towards) and not bear ANY EVERY OR ALL false witness. I suspect this might have been how BRussel came to the saying "when I die I shall rot!" & said he was trying to find something 'certain'.If you think that Kant is merely making a trick about "chaos" read his System of Nature
new material on Kant
I was thinking of his first book. I think it was his first but this one is probably better.
. He is not.These quotes are from CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT @87.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-19-2005 09:53 AM

My apologies guys. I got caught up in another thread. I'll be reurning to this thread soon.Brad, that's interesting stuff in post 86 on the developments of Maxwell (it was similar to some of the stuff I was going to post as a later refinement of previous scientific theories -- all the way back to Thales).Was there a point for posting that? Just curious.This message has been edited by Magisterium Devolver, 04-21-2005 03:31 PM

I had said in mess18

quote:

---

Maxwell wrote up Faraday's ideas and gave them an imaginary existence and equations but it was never applied. It seems that Herz discovery of em waves took physics down a different alley. I have analyzed it, perhaps incorrectly, to Farady's noticing that there was a bipolarity but no multipolarity. The enumeration of chemical combinations seems to be a reason it has not gotten a better hearing but the standard view is that the "line of force" does not exist so that then this notion would not. Ill edit some more here as well.

---

but this only gives my opinion. I did not give you the info for you to make up your mind on it on your own.Did you forget your
http://EvC Forum: Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both? -->EvC Forum: Evolution: Science, Pseudo-Science, or Both?
?
Perhaps you thought you already covered it.
I try to give info that is as unbiased as I can.
In responding to TUSKO i had to support the imaginary as real.
I guess this is still the "state" the matter is thrown into if indeed it moved there.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-21-2005 04:07 PM

Crashfrog, Disconcordian rule of fives aside, does the 20/80 law clarify what I was trying to explain better in regards to the development of science?

Thank you for the contribution Brad. This would be appreciated, if that is what you are offering.