Evolution is a basic, biological process

Thank YOU. I look forward to your reply. (BTW: I think it was this thread, around page seven or so.) Keep your head down!

Excellent reply. I hope you've read some of the more recent posts about law vs theory. This is really the meat of what I'm arguing about. /agree /agreeWould you mind reading some of the earlier posts in this thread about laws vs theories?I still don't equate evolution with gravity. They don't hold the same weight (pun).Do you agree that evolution (no semantics, you know what I mean..not is change happening/ed, but did species evolve into other species over x time) is just as absolute (or reasonably so...we know its not absolute) as gravity?

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Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Isaiah 6:8
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Both the fact that gravity sucks and that new species have evolved are equally solid facts.The current theory of gravity (general relativity) looks pretty good but since it hasn't been reconciled to QM it is a bit suspect. The ToE is much more solid than the current theory of gravity.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 01-07-2005 10:34 AM

my two sense:the discipline of evolution is composed of theories and facts. the theories are the concepts of how things happened, and the facts are the observed instances, both in the labs and in the field, in the present and in the past (fossil records, etc.)thus evolution is {discipline \ theory \ fact} ... all three, but each with different {connotations\overtones}.we could talk about the discipline of evolution and the "law" of natural selection, and all the facts that back it and the lack of exceptions. or we can talk about the theory of natural selection. what we call it has no effect on the behavior of the process: the result is the same.it is semantics at one level of understanding, but it is also true that the promotion of theory to law was arbitrary. no law was passed, and no concept found was absolutely correct.the term "law" was applied in the time when it was felt that everything was knowable and all we needed to do was to determine what the "laws" were that the universe operated under. scientists no longer feel this way.the problem is not trying to promote theory to the level of a universal "law" but that the existing theories that are labeled "laws" don't measure up to that standard.from Law Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com You have to get to #12 before scientific laws are mentioned ... and while {12.a.} is a pretty strong statement, it can certainly be applied to natural selection. The more relaxed {12.b.} can also be applied to many of the theories within the discipline of evolution, such as "punctuated equilibrium" (even though scientists argue about it).Notice that the "law of gravity" does not explain the observed rotation of all galaxies. To make observations fit the "law" we have to assume massive amount of unobserved {"dark"} matter and {"dark"} energy to the point where over 90% of the universe is unknown {"dark"} stuff. Not too good a showing for an invariable relationship ... eh?and we can also go to
Theory Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com I submit to you that there is no difference between {LAW_12b} and {THEORY₁}, that often the {THEORY₁} of today fits the definition of {LAW_12a} (ie - natural selection) and further that these are the definitions used in science.The problem is not the semantics but the connotations most people have of "law" as absolute and of "theory" as conjecture -- both {invalid\incomplete} in the world of science.Making observations fit the {law} is not the scientific process, and thus the preference for theory these days as a descriptive term (albeit one with flaws as well). At least it has the connotation of {changeable based on more complete information or better understanding}.enjoy.This message has been edited by RAZD, 01-07-2005 10:35 AM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

When you observe your hand are you taking in all the details at once? or are you building up a picture with some details {remembered? fresher?} than others?

Boy, all this confusion just because of definitions.Strictly speaking, a law is just a theory. Some theories we call theories, some we call laws. There are no formal rules of nomenclature regarding whether a theory is referred to as a theory or as a law, but in general, the more mathematically and precisely a theory can be expressed, the more likely it will be referred to as a law.But this is not a hard and fast rule. We still refer to Newton's Laws, even though they were shown inaccurate for velocities above a significant fraction of c (speed of light) by Einstein's theory of relativity. Imagine that, a law superceded by a mere theory. Of course, it's incorrect to characterize it this way. We call them Newton's Laws because we've always called them Newton's Laws, and we're not going to stop calling them Newton's Laws just because they were found lacking under some circumstances.Because laws are just theories that we happen to call laws, there are no special rules regarding them. One cannot claim that theories can be challenged and laws cannot. Whether we call them laws or theories, they're both just tentative frameworks of understanding built upon a body of data. Conflicting data can invalidate a law as easily as a theory.That's not to say that some theories are not more firmly established than others. Geocentric theory (the sun and planets orbit the earth) has no remaining evidence whatsoever and has been completely invalidated. String theory (from particle physics) is still struggling to produce sufficient evidence to become accepted, and it might yet end up on the scrap heap of scientific history. Einstein's theory of relativity is extremely well established and very widely accepted because it has made predictions that have been verified at every turn. (And yet we still don't call it a law!) Thermodynamic laws are extremely well established and verified, and are also very mathematical, and calling them laws seems to make sense.You could further verify how irrelevant the theory vs law label is by finding how various theories and laws are referred to in other languages. I'll bet you'll find a great deal of variation, that in some languages some theories that we call theories are called laws, and vice-versa. Some languages might have fewer or greater labels of distinction. But theories and laws are like snow. Whether you call it hardpack or powder or mash potatoes or any of a number of different terms, it's still snow.In other words, the hierarchy of certainty that would place law above theory does not exist.And finally, to bring this back on topic, this discussion of theory began when you responded to JonF with "Allegedly and Theoretically" in the other thread. I responded in Message 262, and I hope you had a chance to read it because it contains some useful information regarding the nature of theories, and some suggestions for how to respond constructively to JonF.--Percy

When I'm looking at my hand, I can see details of the skin. When I said "every detail of the skin", I didn't mean all of them at once, but every detail I choose to focus my eyes on. When I try to remember my hand, I can't shift my gaze all over the picture and look at the details, because there hardly is a coherent picture, let alone a detailed one. All I see in my mind's eye are fragments, and even they are fleeting.But you are probably right, the brain can do some awkward tricks when it comes to vision. Research has shown that sometimes the brain inserts details that aren't even there. On the other hand, it can also leave out details that you'd say are hard to miss.Funny thing, a brain.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

I have read them. I've been following this thread fairly closely. I agree with what Para wrote: Really, "scientific law" is an archaic term that is pretty much no longer in use. It was VERY common during the 19th Century. Just about everything that could have some math attached to it, or seemed to have a lot of evidence (or even good solid logic) behind it was termed a Law of Nature. The Victorian Era gave us a lot of "laws" -- some of which have turned out to be garbage with new information or new technologies, etc. (I'd have to dig a bit to find specifics - it's been awhile since I researched this particular topic - but I'm willing to if you want). Once the idea that a Law of Nature wasn't necessarily immutable came around, we started looking for new ways to describe ideas that had a lot of support. "Theory" became the word of the day. Unfortunately, the word "law" remained in the lexicon. It's one of those oddball facts that science tends to stick with the first name for something, whether species or ideas (it has to do, IMO, with the ethical "primacy of authorship" which scientists tend to very scrupulously adhere to). So even if we think, or have even shown, some early "law" is not immutable, the term tends to stick.Obviously, this leads to HUGE confusion. Heck, when I was in high school (back in the Late Paleolithic ), I was taught the erroneous "hierarchy of science" which seems to remain the way most people look at it: observation => hypothesis => theory => law. It was only way later when I started working that I was not-so-gently informed that this was BS. I think in most cases "theory" seems to be the most-used term these days for something that is so well supported by multiple lines of evidence, so many different observations, and ties in so many disparate fields and explanations, as to be for all intents and purposes factual.However, even here, scientists STILL throw the term around when it may not be justified. One example from my own field: back in the 1960's two brilliant scientists named Robert MacArthur and Edwin Wilson came up with a truly revolutionary idea in ecology. Up to that point, ecology had been mostly a descriptive science, with very little underpinning. These two guys developed the first general (and mathematical) explanation of how various factors regulated the ecology of populations. They tied in many lines of evidence, lots of observations, and gave us some really strong mathematical rules for why species are distributed in an ecosystem the way they are. They called this the Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography. It was a brilliant piece of work. Unfortunately, it appears their conclusions were wrong (or at least very incomplete). More detailed examinations - using the ETIB as a starting point - show that ecosystems are likely never in equilibrium. The pattern is more a dynamic disequilibrium. If we were to use a strict constructionist view of "hypothesis" and "theory", the ETIB would be the EHIB. However, we retain the "theory" part of it both for the reason I mentioned above, and for the arguably valid reason that it DID meet most of the criteria for a theory: it tied in numerous observations, it linked disparate data into a coherent explanation, it tied together multiple explanations into a theoretical framework, and it spawned many fruitful lines of investigation - and even new sciences (it forms the basis for the sciences of landscape ecology and much of conservation biology, not to mention being the springboard for much of our modern understanding of biogeography).No wonder people get confused about "theory" in science! Really, the best thing to do is simply ignore the semantics (i.e., theory vs law vs whatever), and look to the underlying evidence. Don't sweat what people inside or outside of science call something. Look to see how well supported it is. THEN decide whether it's worth accepting or rejecting. In many ways, this is an apples and oranges question. However, taking it in the spirit I think you intend, I'll try to give you my thoughts.Gravity is one of the dirty little secrets of science. Everybody on the planet can see the effects - you drop something, it falls. Physicists have come up with wonderfully complex mathematical equations to describe what happens and how bodies interact. But not one physicist on the planet can tell you why it happens. They simply don't know what gravity IS, and they have no mechanism for how it works. Try and pin 'em down sometime. They'll babble about particles and waves (sometimes one, sometimes another) and undefinable forces. They'll get shifty-eyed and mumble about quantum effects. They'll fill entire blackboards with abstruse equations that nobody but them can understand. But they can't give you a concrete mechanism to save their lives.Evolution, on the other hand, actually has an embarassment of mechanisms. Unlike gravity, however, many of these mechanisms can be isolated and their effects observed. If we want to test different ideas about how, say, metazoans evolved from single-celled organisms, we can set up lab experiments that show how colonial organisms can spontaneously arise under predation pressure. If we want to see what the effects of environmental change have on populations, we can sit on a beach for 35 years like the Grants did and see it in action day by day and year by year. We can knock out genes in mice or induce mutations in flies and see the results. IOW, our ideas about how evolution works are testable (not always, obviously, but most of the major mechanisms are and have been). Moreover, the same patterns we get from observations in the lab and in the field can be detected in the fossil record (or at least in enough cases) - so we can state fairly convincingly that what we see now happened in the past - even though we can't directly observe it. The patterns are the same.This is not to say that the mechanisms of evolution are "proven" in any juridical sense. In fact, the most fascinating arguments in biology are about the relative importance and/or existence of certain hypotheses on mechanisms. If you think biologists all agree with one another, I hope you'll have an opportunity some day to sit in on a major scientific conference where a controversial paper is being presented. The arguments and rhetoric in the EvC arena are like a ladies' tea party compared to some of the arguments in a few conferences I've attended. Of course, scientists are generally more "polite", and it seldom comes to violence. However, it's rare entertainment to watch some guy spend 15 minutes politely telling another scientist the semantic equivalent of "you're an idiot". So to wrap up your question: evolution is actually a much stronger theory than gravity. Of course, neither are "absolute" in any sense whatsoever.

To comment on the divide between theory and law, you also have to recognize that the philosophy of science has changed over the last 400 years. At one point, Bacon was the leading scientific philosopher. In his system of science everything must be positively observed. In other words, a law was something that was absolutely proven true. This is where "laws" came from, a set of DIRECT observations that were invariably predictable and mathematically explainable. As new theories came along, most notably Evolution, a new philosophy had to be created. Evolution was not directly observable as gravity, thermodynamics, and other laws were. Before, laws were derived from deduction, direct support from observations. Now, a new way of deriving theories had to be constructed, namely an inductive method. This new philosophy was constructed by Popper and others. This method, which is used today, does not look for direct observations. The new philosophy can be summed up in the phrase "true statements should not have false consequences". Popper felt that nothing could be proven true in an absolute sense, but theories can be absolutely proven false. Therefore, experiments are not attempts to prove theories true but attempts to prove them false. If a theory can not be shown to be false, then it is tentatively held to be true. This is a major shift in scientific investigation, but Popper's method has been shown to be the best. The weakness of Bacon's philosophy is best seen in the falsification Newton's Laws, as mentioned above.

I think it is part of the "soft" connections that leave things fuzzyIt may be that this is what allows creative thought, and thus has been selected for (in humans more than in others? apes more than non-apes?)hm.

All this discussion of the illusion of the mind has gotten my mind confused and tired. So what I have is a confused and tired illusion.My confused and tired illusion exists but it does not exist the way I think it exists. My brain is lying to me--whatever "me" is--and telling me that I have a mental mind when I really have a physical mind and moreover not informing me that it is merely an ongoing event
rather than a confused and tired little world of its own.My brain and I are not on good terms right now. I'm rather annoyed with my brain for lying to me.

Your brain is not to blame. It's you, remember? You haven't been yourself lately. Actually, you haven't been yourself ever.Mindboggling, isn't it?

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

What a dreadful idea. Might as well blow our brains out.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-07-2005 15:36 AM

Brain begs to differ. Would be putting cart before horse, Brain says.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Well, let's have it, Para. I know you have a theory about the "self" up your sleeve. Give it to me straight. I can take it.