SCIENCE: -- "observational science" vs "historical science" vs ... science.

Why do you think that is? Why do you think that radiometric dating largely confirmed ages established by conventional means?ABE: And why does it work in the Archean where there is not firmly established sequences?Edited by herebedragons, : No reason given.

Or maybe it's a trick of the devil.Or maybe there is a more rational, logical explanation ... I don't think he expounded on it too much, just mentioned that to work on Archean rocks he needed to use radiometric dating to help resolve an issue (is how I think he put it).HBD

Your right, sorry. I shouldn't have snarked. But honestly, it being a trick of the devil is as silly a reason to me as: But still I shouldn't have snarked. I will try to watch it. Now is this snark, because you say this right after saying: Just seems kind of ironic to me.HBD

LOL. Was this from Message 406? It seems she edited out this little bit of love.HBD

I'm sure that would be fine; mix and match as you wish, as long as it reflects negatively on your character - which is of the course the important part.HBD

Do you define "stupid knee-jerk unthinking straw man post" as anything that doesn't agree with you? Cause if that's the case, then yea, good prediction!

That must be why at the beginning of every science class I had, the instructor would swing a golden watch back and forth and say "The earth is old, the earth is old."

I would add that all science is observational AND interpretive. It doesn't do any good to make an observation unless you can determine what that observation means. One of the examples I used to try and point this out was how the double helix of DNA was determined. Sure the observation was made of the x-ray diffraction pattern, but without being able to interpret that pattern, it is totally meaningless.In fact, I would say that most science today, at least at the primary research level, is on phenomenon that we cannot directly observe but we observe the results of some treatment and those results always need to be interpreted.The paper Faith cited (actually came from roxrcool) that to her seemed to say that geology was not a real science but was distinct as a historical science actually made the opposite point. The days of direct observation are pretty much gone, those discoveries have been worked out. Today's sciences rely on a tremendous amount of inductive reasoning, a skill that geology has perfected. The authors argued that for this reason, geology was a model for other sciences to follow. Far from the claim of being "inferior."I can't find the source, if someone else remembers where it is link it, otherwise I may try to find it later.HBD

Thanks petrophysics,I too am really busy right now. I will look over those links as soon as I have the time, probably within the week.HBD

Actually you bring up a very good point. It addresses the idea that in science we don't deal with proof, we deal with evidence. Even the most highly controlled experiment will not be convincing unless the data is analysed with the appropriate statistical methods and actually shows a statistical significance. We even talk about confidence intervals, meaning that for instance, we can be 95% confident that the results of an experiment are due to the treatment and not due to natural variation. There is not such thing as a 100% confidence interval.I think that non-scientists fail to realize how important statistics are to supporting our conclusions.HBD

Faith's position regarding the "unwitnessed past" is just plain dumb since it contradicts her position that there is NO unwitnessed past, since ALL of history has happened since humans have existed. What she must mean is that when a conclusion about a past event puts it into a category that would make it unwitnessed, then it is not a valid conclusion, since no one was there to witness it. I have called her on this contradiction before, but it wasn't really addressed.I have been thinking about my response to you the other day (Message 457) and I think that if I were to separate science into two categories I might suggest to divide it into that which can be statistically analyzed and that which cannot be statistically analyzed. "Observational science" would be that which relies only on observation and cannot be statistically verified. The other type might be called "Analytical science".I have thought for a while that there are some scientific pursuits that provide more confidence than others, but it has nothing to do with historical verses witnessed. Data that can be replicated and statistically analyzed should provide more reliable conclusions that that which cannot be replicated. Certainly much of geology would fall into this category of "observational science" (that which cannot be statistically analyzed), which is not to say that it is unreliable, just does not provide as confident of conclusions as that which can be statistically analyzed.What do you think? Does that make sense?HBD

Yea, the campground I was staying at had a very slow internet connection (reminded me of 56k dial-up) and I didn't want to spend my whole weekend just waiting for a page to load I am not advocating distinguishing between entire fields of science and trying to say for instance that geology is inferior to biology. I did mention geology, but did not intend for it to be a sweeping generalization of the whole field.I guess I have this intuitive sense that some scientific pursuits lend themselves to more reliable conclusions than others. The idea that those "less reliable" pursuits are everything in the historical past is just plain silly, but I was trying to consider what would be a better way to delineate this idea about that distinction. I was also kinda thinking that it would be a more objective and reasonable way for someone like Faith to make the distinction that they are considering.So, the thought that lead me to thinking about what I said was that in the work I do, I would not dare to draw conclusions without analyzing my data with statistics. One-off events don't lend themselves to this type of analysis and so conclusions must be based on simple observation. Is that as reliable? That's what I was thinking. Keep in mind that the structure that Watson and Crick proposed was hotly debated for about 25 years after their publication. It wasn't until data upon data was collected and observation after observation was made that critics were silenced. Statistics certainly came into play during that whole process. So while W & C may not have used or published statistical data, in the end, it was that data analysis that finally brough their structure to the level of fact. I was using confidence strictly in the sense of statistics. I would agree that doesn't translate directly into a confidence level of a particular field or piece of knowledge.I think there is a difference between what I termed "observational science" and "analytical science", however, I will recant that that distinction can categorically say anything about reliability.I am short on time right now, but I hope that sort of clarifies what I was trying to say.HBD

I don't know, that crane looks so ridiculous and cartoon-ish. It looks to me as though Monty Python provided the inspiration for that crane design. HBD