The Nature of Scientific Inquiry; Is Evolution Science?

OK, Mark, I'm finally getting back to your Post #12. Sorry I've kept you waiting so long.

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I'd like to tackle two points, the "what is science" bit, then evidence of macroevolution if I may.

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Science is simply a logical methodological construct that allows hypotheses to be supported or falsified. Data that becomes available that supports a hypothesis is by definition evidence for it, & vice versa.

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You cannot prove anything that happened in the past

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Science doesn't "prove" anything, it simply piles on the evidence to such a point that it would be foolish to deny the theories veracity.

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Well, then, tell everyone to stop claiming that science requires falsifiability, testability, replicability, etc., all the methods of old-fashioned laboratory science.

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In order to be scientific, a theory must be open to revision in the face of new data, yes? Not even creationists deny that. If this is the case then it therefore obvious that one cannot prove a theory to the point where you can state it with absolute 100% certainty. If you do, then you are stating that no new data could possibly be considered, which is of course contradictory, & no scientific theory would or could be held in this regard & still be considered scientific.

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Not sure of the relevance of this, it seems obvious actually, but I'll answer yes.

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If a theory hypothesises that something happened in such a way in the past, & data supports that theory, then that data is evidence of it, by definition.

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Of course. The question is whether the data in question really does support that theory. Most of the creo-evo debate is about interpretation of data, not different data.

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It matters not one iota whether that data supports a real-time experiment in a lab, or a hypothesis that Egyptians preserved their nobility for an alleged afterlife by embalming them. Nowhere, & I mean nowhere, in any scientific or philosophical literature does it state that past events cannot be inferred.

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Nor did I say they cannot. I said that all one CAN come up with is plausible inferences for past events. I said the theory of evolution, and the Geo Timeframe or Old Earth Theory, both THEORIES about what happened in the past, are what cannot be tested, falsified, replicated and so on.But of course many things can be inferred, and then the question is how good is the inference and can the inference --- which, come to think of it, is really a theory or hypothesis, isn't it? ---- be proved or corroborated? An inference about, say, some details in a crime scene, and even the solution to the crime itself, CAN sometimes be pretty much proved if there's lots of data, lots of evidence to check out. But an inference about the distant past cannot be proved, or an inference about any event for which there is no independent evidence.

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This notion is simply an illogical tactic invoked by creationists so they don't have to consider data. It is of course ridiculous that creationists insist that data in support of a theory isn't evidence of it, but there you go!

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I think you have misunderstood the creationist argument. Evolutionists are always challenging creationists to come up with new data but this isn't the problem that faces creationists. It's interpretation of the existing data. The claim is that the data doesn't actually SUPPORT evolutionism, it can merely be more or less plausibly fitted into the concept. The fossil record LOOKS like plausible evidence for evolution but it can't be tested or falsified, it simply remains a plausible inference. Etc. To a YEC the fossil record looks like plausible evidence for a humungous flood. This too can't be tested or falsified. I'm not sure how the ID people deal with the fossils. In any case, all we can do is battle plausibilities back and forth -- and let me hasten to concede that the evolutionists are ahead in the plausibilities war.

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Now, on to the juicy stuff. This is technical, but I hope I've done a reasonable job in simplifying the concepts.

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Cladistics is a method by which we look at as many characters as possible in a given species, & compare them to other species. In such a way we can assess similarities between species & more easily classify them. The result is a diagram like this...

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You may note that the most similar organisms are likely to be the most related, according to evolutionary theory. Therefore, the resulting cladogram, as well as being an objective method of classification, also shows us relationships between taxa if evolution is indicative of reality. If so, we can think of a cladogram as being akin to an evolutionary tree.

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A very big "if", I hear you say!

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Right you are. I just said it.

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How can we test the assumption that relationships between organisms on a cladogram are evolutionary in origin? Two ways, take different data sets & see if the cladograms broadly match (they do), or test the cladograms order of divergence (the point where lineages diverge are called "nodes" on a cladogram) & see how well it matches the rocks. This is the beautiful bit, at a stroke it shows the geologic column to be indicative of reality, as well as evolutionary principles. The matches aren't perfect by any stretch, but when taken en mass, they show a correlation that far, far exceeds what would be expected by chance alone.

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OK, I can only follow this so far. It's clever. I get your interpretation and how it's arrived at but I can't follow the specifics well enough to test it for myself. I studied the diagrams and they appear to be four identical diagrams slightly differently drawn, with one rotated 90 degrees, so I don't see why four were needed and that starts me off wondering what's going on. Then I note to myself that there may be some subjectivity involved in the ascertainment of morphological similarities. The fossil record is of types that no longer exist, so some interpretation has to be involved. Then I wonder if this particular cladogram you've reproduced is THE "proof cladogram" as it were, and if other possible comparisons based on the fossil record don't score so high. {EDIT: This you've probably dealt with in your discussion of SCI variables though.In the end I'm not really sure you've proved anything more than is already inferred from the appearance of the fossil record itself -- that is, the appearance of a hierarchy of morphologies represented there, which is what suggested the idea of evolution in the first place. What the cladogram does is refine this basic inference. I'm really not sure it's added anything new. Maybe I'm just not understanding it well enough, and it is suggestive, even interesting.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-10-2005 02:53 AM

The term was originally yours, in case you have forgotten. Anyway, I have no problem with this distinction. The theory is plausible enough not to present problems to most scientific work, which is involved with the data, with observations, with objects, with sites, with facts. The theory supplies explanations for all kinds of things so you just apply the relevant explanations where necessary and it seems to make a fit, though it isn't that the data have supported the theory, simply that the theory has supplied a likely explanation for the data. If a fit between theory and data isn't obvious you simply think around it, assuming it does fit even if you can't see it yet. This kind of thinking is quite normal and understandable, so scientists who do it aren't dunderheads, just very convinced of the theory, and besides they simply like their work, in the lab or the field or the classroom or wherever, and that preoccupies them, and everybody knows that creationists are dodos, so that sure nips THAT line of thought in the bud if such an errant thought ever DID arise. Basically come up with a way -- a very far-out Plausibility -- to save the theory when they started finding too many things wrong with it? Actually I think this is closer to a tautology than a proof of anything, along the lines of Mark's cladograms, but I'd need you to spell out what is meant by a "genetic tree of life."

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If we had not seen such a convergence, and there had been significant differences between the two trees, Evolutionary Theory would have been seriously compromised.

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But why WOULDN'T there be a convergence between morphology and genetic patterns in ANY case? Seems to me I'd expect that too, and that it doesn't prove anything about evolution, simply that similar Design principles are to be found at both levels.

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Do not confuse "unfalsified" with "unfalsifiable." The ToE is the former, not the latter.

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We can replicate many, many observations regarding Evolutionary Theory, of course.

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Some observations can probably be replicated. Just not the theory itself and not anything in the past.

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Remember, it's not the events which need to be replicated (although many experiments, such as gene sequencing, can be replicated), it's the observations that are replicated.

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It's the THEORY that can't be tested or proved or falsified, not particular observations or events.

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Remember it is the THEORY that I'm saying does not meet these normal standards of scientific method, not any given scientific observation.

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Yeah, what I said.

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So, are you saying that the hundreds of thousands of scientists over the last 150 years are complete dunderheads because they have never recognized that the underpinnings to their entire field of study was actually not scientific at all?

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See first comments above. No more idiotic than the scientists who accepted various theories over the centuries before they were proved to be wrong. Pretty much science as usual, and it can be pretty hidebound, but that's normal too. Yes, this is science in action. It has absolutely nothing to do with the theory of evolution though. It can be practiced quite well without the theory. One could certainly observe a mutation without believing that it must occur in a long line of evolution from species to species. I might raise some questions about whether this is actually a mutation or simply a natural genetic variant in that particular population myself, but in any case you don't need the theory to understand the genetic facts. It no doubt has a lot to do with the direction of inquiry and the terminology generated, but the actual body of knowledge of genetics itself, no. Not according to me.

What test could you perform to determine its age? Isn't radiometric dating the only possible empirical test and really, how does anybody know that that is reliable as it can't be tested either beyond historical time. Anyway, in a crime scene you have LOTS of clues that are testable and falsifiable. Not so much for the age of a frozen mammoth.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-10-2005 04:25 AM

Stage Left or Stage Right?Actually, it is hard for me to get this formulated properly, but it's not that there aren't things we know, it's that a theory about what happened can't be verified for sure because there is simply no way to test what happened in the past. Even in the best understood crime scene you can't have perfect proof of what happened even though there is LOTS of evidence to make inferences from and lots of ways to cross-check the inferences and build a really good case. But all you have in the distant past is, say, a rock with fossils in it. YOu can compare it to other rocks with fossils in them. You can describe what it's made of. You know pretty well how it got formed, out of what and under what conditions. But you don't have a way of KNOWING how those fossils got there or when. All that is speculation, theory, the stuff that can't be proved or falsified.

Hi Faith, Not a problem, I understand that you are replying to lots of people. Your comment doesn't follow from mine. How did you get from the tentativity of scientific conclusions, which you accept, to the non-requirement of testability, falsifiability, & replicability? What I said does not require that testability et al be surrendered. But I have shown you a study that does exactly what you say cannot be done. The ToE is objectively tested with cladisics against stratigraphy. And the odds of evolutionary expectations being due to chance being 5.68*10^323:1 doesn't constitute high quality evidence to you? That's just an example so you can visualise what a cladogram is. The actual study conducted by Benton correlates 300 (now over a thousand) cladograms against stratigraphy. Just to clarify, I'm not attempting to show you the tree of life, just that individual, independant cladograms match stratigraphy against the odds, & that it is therefore statistically significant. I'm not sure how you can come to such a dismissive conclusion. I really don't think that you understand the significance of the evidence. If I can pick up on the notion that the evidence only restates an original premise of evolution, that is that there is a heirarchy of morphologies. This is false, the original observation was that there were specific biotas associated with specific relative age groups. The inference being that biota A got to biota B via evolution. What I have presented to you confirms that a morphological ordering occurs in the rocks consistent with evolution. It does so by noting that the stratigraphic ordering is actually what is expected by evolution, by studying the grade of morphological dis/similarities, objectively determined by cladistic methods. This is extremely unlikely to be the case unless evolution occurred (5.68*10^323:1). In other words, if evolution hadn't occurred, then we wouldn't expect the specific stratigraphic locations of fossils to correlate with cladograms.But they do correlate, & overall, they do so spectacularly. And as I noted above, this is statistically significant evidence of evolution in general, & where the cladograms test taxa that are significantly different morphologically, is significant evidence of macroevolution.MarkThis message has been edited by mark24, 04-10-2005 09:30 AM

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

You did not answer my question.Do we know the earth exists?Also, repeat after me. Science is not about absolute PROOF.Everyone who has heard that stated before raise your hands.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

So, what you're saying is that, our conclusions about what happened in the past might have to be... tentative? Well, it can't be proved, but it can certainly be falsified. If the fossils weren't arranged the way they are, that would certainly falsify the historical evolutionary model.

Several different radiometric dating methods are consistently pointing to the same results. If radiometric dating didn't work, you wouldn't expect that.On top of that, radiometric dating is corroborated by other dating methods. For example, C14-dating - of special interest here, since you can use it for dating a frozen mammoth - is corroborated by tree-ring dating. That's your assertion. There's no reason to assume that the age of a crime/death scene is a hinderance for gathering evidence. It's true that some evidence can be gathered only at recent scenes, but if a scene is older, you will simply have to look for other types of evidence. As science and technology progress, more and more ways emerge for scientists to evaluate data and use them as evidence for their theories.

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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

Hi Faith,I'm just replying to your most recent post, not to anything specific you say in it.I've read your posts from today, and there are three themes you address that I'd like to comment on:

1. Evolution can't be proven.
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2. Evolution isn't testable or replicable.
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3. We can't learn what happened in the past.

About the first one, yes, you're right, evolution can't be proven. But evolution is not alone in this sorry state. Relativity, gravity, wave/particle duality of light, quantum theory, radioactive decay, Maxwell's laws, cosmological expansion, and on and on through all the theories of all of science are in the same sorry state as evolution: they can't be proven. That's because all scientific theories are tentative. Something that is proven could not at the same time be tentative. Something proven could not be science.The confusion derives not because this is a difficult or subtle point (it isn't), but from simple differences in meaning. It all depends on what you mean by "proven". Like most words, "proven" has more than one meaning. One common dictionary definition of "proven" comes from GuruNet: Obviously this definition of "proven" is not compatible with being falsifiable. How could something that has been "verified without doubt" be falsifiable? So anyone speaking scientifically should not use the word "proven" with this definition in mind.But that's not the final word on the topic. There are more colloquial uses of the word "proven", and scientists and the people here are as prone to use the word in this way as anyone else, at least outside of technical papers. When someone speaking on matters of science says that something can be proven, they only mean that sufficient evidence can be produced to the point of being very persuasive. It is important to keep in mind that use of the word "proven" does not mean they believe something can be demonstrated or verified beyond doubt. No one familiar with science would ever imply this when speaking scientifically.So when you say evolution can't be proven, whether we agree with you or not depends upon how you define "proven". If by "proven" you mean demonstrated or verified beyond doubt, then we absolutely agree with you, evolution can't be proven. No scientific theory has been or ever will be proven.But if by "proven" you mean that convincing evidence cannot be produced, then we disagree with you. Mountains of very persuasive evidence for evolution are available.Now I'll move on to your point that I listed second, that evolution isn't testable or replicable. I can see by your reply to Schraf that you understand that it isn't events themselves that are replicable, but experiments and/or observations. You then conclude that therefore evolution isn't testable or replicable, but this misunderstands completely what a theory is.A theory is not a list of all the events that follow the theory. For example, Newton's Laws of Motion are not a list of everything we know has happened following these laws. Newton's Laws are precisely the opposite of such a lengthy and boring recitation. They are general principles expressed by simple mathematical formulas, like F=ma. Newton's laws are a way to interpret and make sense of the universe around us (Newton's laws must be augmented by relativistic considerations for high speeds or masses, but I want to keep the analogy simple).As accurate as Newton's laws are, that doesn't mean it allows us to figure out every event. For example, why did the most recent comet to visit the inner solar system come when it did? Was it pushed out of its orbit by a collision? By gravity from the close approach of another object? Is it just in a highly elliptical orbit of a very long period? We don't know. We may never know. There's simply not enough evidence to know. But we of course do not question Newton's laws just because there are some things for which the evidence is missing or unavailable to us.Unavailable evidence for specific situations is completely aside from any theory's validity. The power of a theory, in other words, its degree of acceptance within the relevant scientific community, is based upon the supporting evidence, which for Newton's Laws is massive.In the same way as Newton's Laws, the theory of evolution is not a list of things that have happened in evolutionary history. The theory of evolution, like Newton's Laws, is a set of general principles. Expressed simply, the theory of evolution is only descent with modification and natural selection. There is a huge amount of evidence supporting these principles. They were developed to explain the evidence. That is one purpose of theory, to help explain and understand evidence. A theory that doesn't correspond to the evidence is useless.There are many events of biological history we will never know because the evidence no longer exists. We have a general picture of a small part of evolutionary history based upon life today, the fossil record, cladistics, and genetic analysis. But so much evidence has been destroyed or permanently buried that the picture will only grow incrementally more detailed. You'll always be able to ask unanswerable questions, from small issues like what did Hyracotherium eat for breakfast, to profound questions like how did the human sense of curiousity and wonder evolve. The theory of evolution is an interpretive framework for evidence. About things for which is is little or no evidence we can only speculate. But that there are huge areas of missing or unavailable evidence is aside from the question of the validity of evolutionary theory. The theory of evolution is nearly universally accepted within the biological community because of the wealth of supporting evidence and because of the power of its explanatory framework.Now I'll address your point that I listed third, that we can't learn much about the past. I think I agree with most of your observations, which I think can be summed up as the further back in time something occurred, the less likely there is to be evidence sufficient to figure out what happened. But I can't see how any general conclusion can derive from this observation. Sometimes there's no evidence for a crime committed fifteen minutes ago. Sometimes entire frozen mammoths emerge out of the permafrost from 20,000 years ago, complete with fur, contents of stomach with local flora and DNA. Sometimes there are entire ecosystems that will be forever unknown to us, such as ancient upland regions which never get buried and leave fossils. And sometimes we find complete Tryanasaurus rex fossils with their last meal included.In this particular thread we're asking whether evolution is valid science. An assessment of your three points that I addressed in this post can be summarized as follows:

1. Evolution can't be proven.
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   Assessment: not a valid criticism.
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2. Evolution isn't testable or replicable.
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   Assessment: False.
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3. We can't learn what happened in the past.
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   Assessment: False.

--Percy

Actually, I'd say the problem for creationists is coming up with ANY data that is meaningful. For instance, the oldest tree on earth tells you nothing about the age of the earth, and yet we hear this argument all the time. Nonsense. YECs ignore data all the time. Radiometric dating, for instance. No. The concept is fit to the data. That is what a theory does. It explains a set of data. Whether the data are complete or not, a theory explains the evidence we DO know and not the evidence that we don't know. Nonsense. It 'looks plausible' because it is based on the data. Additional data could, if you were correct, falsify the explanation. This has not yet happened. Here is your problem. To you the evidence is plausible. Actually, it is the scenario that is plausible or not. You have clearly arrived at your conclusion before the 'plausible evidence' is even considered. So, you agree that the theory of evolution is more plausible than YEC?

Hi Faith, Message 54 is actually for you - I somehow clicked on the reply button for Mark24's post.--Percy

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I'm not sure how you can come to such a dismissive conclusion. I really don't think that you understand the significance of the evidence.

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Well, I said I might not understand it and that it is suggestive. and actually I was a little reluctant to come to such a conclusion, as it seemed awfully dismissive to me too, but unfortunately as I continue to think about it I simply keep arriving at the same conclusion.

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If I can pick up on the notion that the evidence only restates an original premise of evolution, that is that there is a heirarchy of morphologies. This is false, the original observation was that there were specific biotas associated with specific relative age groups. The inference being that biota A got to biota B via evolution. What I have presented to you confirms that a morphological ordering occurs in the rocks consistent with evolution.

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At first when I read it, it did appear to be saying something significant as you claim, but after thinking about it twice now I don't see that. We ALREADY acknowledge that "a morphological ordering occurs in the rocks" that is interpreted to be consistent with evolution. Seems to me you have only confirmed that the apparent morphological ordering that appears in the rocks is also reflected in detailed morphological comparisons between the species represented there. In other words, what you have confirmed is that the morphological relationships between the species as suggested in the rocks really ARE the morphological relationships suggested.The interpretation that it is evolution from one to the other that accounts for this ordering is no closer to being proved with your tests than it was with the reocognition of the ordering in the rocks in the first place. Morphological similarities that can be arranged in such a graded fashion just don't prove evolution from one to another. They don't prove it from the stratigraphic presentation and they don't prove it from the more detailed comparisons you have made between the same species represented in the rocks.

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It does so by noting that the stratigraphic ordering is actually what is expected by evolution, by studying the grade of morphological dis/similarities, objectively determined by cladistic methods. This is extremely unlikely to be the case unless evolution occurred (5.68*10^323:1).

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Not really. It is only unlikely if the judgments that were made of the apparent morphological gradations in the rocks were extremely faulty to begin with. The cladograms simply confirm the observations of such gradations that convinced so many of evolution in the first place and are so well known to us now, confirmed in other words the intuitive grasp of the ordering by the scientists who observed it in the first place. Not so. You are arguing in a circle. You are comparing the ordering in the strata with the exact SAME ordering of the SAME species, only in a more detailed and controlled fashion than has been done. You find that they are awfully awfully similar. Actually I'm surprised they aren't closer to 100% than they are since all you are really doing is comparing McIntosh apples with McIntosh apples.But just out of curiosity, what are the various morphological characteristics you compare from one to another?

Hi Faith,I'll let Mark24 deal with the specific cladistic issues. I think you asked just the right question at the conclusion of your post, about the specific morphological differents that are measured. I only wanted to comment on this portion to reinforce what I wrote earlier: The word "prove" or "proved" appears quite a bit in this passage. I won't belabor this since my previous post spends some considerable time on this point, so I'll just briefly reemphasize that we agree with you if by "prove" you mean verified beyond doubt. We only view the evidence from cladistics as verifying a specific prediction of evolution, that the succession of species found in the fossil record should follow an ordering that represents a hierarchical branching. The ability to make successful predictions like this is what gives a theory its power and cogency.There's a pattern to your posts where first you say you look at all the same evidence evolutionists do, you just interpret it differently, and then a short while later you say you don't accept the evidence. The way to properly assess competing theories is by contrasting how well they explain the various relevant evidence. This probably won't be possible for you if you dismiss all inconvenient evidence.The specifics of your posts lead me to the conclusion that the superficial you accept, the detailed you deny. You accept that fossils are in the geological layers, but you deny there's any order to them. You accept sedimentary layers, but deny that we can tell how they were deposited. You accept that radiometric elements are found in the ground, but deny there's any pattern with increasing depth.I think a healthy skepticism is a good thing, but be careful you don't cross the line from skepticism to denial and delusion. You are just as human as the scientists you think prone to judgmental error. Scientists do not have any monopoly on error, nor do Christians seem any less prone to error than anyone else.The only way you can determine if the evidence is wrong, or whether it really leads to evolutionary conclusions, is to examine it and evaluate it. If you instead dismiss evidence by convincing yourself that scientists are just assigning interpretations to evidence that lead to forgone evolutionary conclusions, then that would definitely be, in my opinion, a significant mistake.--Percy

I believe what I said, or if I didn't say it clearly enough will say it now, is NOT that we can't learn what happened in the past depending on circumstances, which you lay out, as I thought I said very clearly that of course we can know many things. The idea was that a theory about what happened in the past like the Geo timetable and ToE are not testable, that certain observations that support those ideas may be testable but in fact you can't test the theories themselves and can never verify {edit: meant "falsify"} them.YOu list evolution along with "Relativity, gravity, wave/particle duality of light, quantum theory, radioactive decay, Maxwell's laws, cosmological expansion," but what I would point out about these things is that they are not about historical events but about ongoing physical facts that are exactly what CAN be tested. It may not be possible to arrive at proof in many senses with those theories too, but they are in principle replicable as their content is ongoing, always available for observation.Historical events on the other hand are by definition past and cannot be replicated. The whole approach to proving past events is entirely different from what you can do with the physical phenomena addressed by the theories you list -- evolution and the Geo Timeframe are unprovable in an entirely different sense. I will have to give this more thought later but that is closer to what I meant than what you made of it.This message has been edited by Faith, 04-11-2005 10:40 AM

Hi Faith, If you acknowledge that a correlation exists, then why are you saying there is no evidence of macroevolution? This is extremely puzzling. If data that supports a theory is by definition evidence of it, which you admit in post 46, then by making the above admission you are implicitly admitting that evidence of evolution exists.My job is done. If you accepted the correlation anyway, all I have done is to show you that this correlation pervades all levels & resolutions of the fossil record, micro to macro, at colossal odds of it existing by chance. It is not a trivial discovery.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't