How could you falsify macroevolution?

[Seeker]

"a more advanced animal coming before a less advanced one"

nonsense.

Evolution is about what lives and reproduces. Not what is most 'advanced'.

Creatures that seem entirely successful may be wiped out by changing circumstances.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Popper's theory isn't falsifiable, thus by its own definition, it isn't scientific, thus we can disregard it.

Popper's "theory" isn't a theory, and makes no claims to be such.


I suppose the standard example of something that would falsify evolutionary biology is a hare in a Cambrian stratum.

[Provost Harrison]

Don't even bother. The argument is long since over - it's only the crazy fundies who hark back to this argument that no one would bother discussing any more if it wasn't for their silliness

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Seeker
"a more advanced animal coming before a less advanced one"

nonsense.

Evolution is about what lives and reproduces. Not what is most 'advanced'.

Creatures that seem entirely successful may be wiped out by changing circumstances.

This is true, a better example might be suddenly discovering bird species out of nowhere during a timeperiod when essentially all life was still sea life, or chimpanzee fossils which are clearly dated at 200 million years old, for which no possible ancestor can be found in the fossil record.

Basically if he fossil record started contradicting instead of supporting macroevolution, that would potentially falsify macroevolutionary theory and require a new scientific theory to explain it.

(Last Conformist covered my point a bit more quickly right before me.)

[Boris Godunov]

Some possible falsifications of evolution would be:

-A static fossil record
-absence of a nested heirarchy of life
-The existence of chimeras (a mermaid)
-Observed instances of creation
-Discovery of some mechanism which prevents accumulation of small changes to make big ones

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Re: Re: How could you falsify macroevolution?

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
That doesn't falsify macroevolution. Macroevolution doesn't have anything to do with the origin of life.

That's not what I said.

[Kuciwalker]

You mentioned the spontaneous generation of species. That's not inconsistent with macroevolution. What's important is what happens after that.

[Nostromo]

Popper's theory isn't falsifiable, thus by its own definition, it isn't scientific, thus we can disregard it.

Man, you don't even make a dent

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Seeker
"a more advanced animal coming before a less advanced one"

nonsense.

Evolution is about what lives and reproduces. Not what is most 'advanced'.

I admit that the wording is not optimal, but if you found complex organisms before even evidence of single celled life as per my example that would pretty well kill evolution.

Creatures that seem entirely successful may be wiped out by changing circumstances.

Hence the "barring the extinction events" comment.

[Nostromo]

Creationism isn't science AT ALL. Defining "science" is not that hard. It is based on the belief that rational man can, thought their own observation and reason, discover the truth of the world. That knowledge is aquired, not revealed to you by an authority. That facts should be questioned, scrutinized, not accepted without question, faithfully.

Creation is a STORY. It is told to you. You either accept is as truth, or you don't. Nothing more is asked, or required of you. For that simple reason it is in no way science.

There are at least two issues.

First, whether so-called creation science is science or pseudoscience. I'm not talking about the creation myths we can find all around the world, but about those people who are trying to make a science out of what we can read in the Bible. But in order to find out whether its science or not you need a definition of science. And like Michael Ruse pointed out

It is simply not possible to give a neat definition - specifying necessary and sufficient characteristics - which separates all and only those things that have ever been called "science". The concept "science" is not as easily definable as, for example, the concept "triangle".

I agree with you that creation science is in fact pseudoscience, but if you ask me for a neat definition of science, I'm afraid there's no answer to that. For example, your definition, while interesting, is too vague. Based on your definition, for example, philosophy would be a science. I'm pretty sure some people here wouldn't be happy with that. Maybe I could give you a workable, fuzzy definition, but nothing more.

The second issue is whether creation science is crap or not. Again, I'm not talking about the Bible, but about the work of "creations scientists". Most people agree that creation science is crap.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Odin
Why, might I ask? It always made sense to me.

Because I would argue that certain scientific facts aren't falsifiable. Only an idiot would deny that the sun is the center of our solar system. It's absolutely true and impossible to falsify. Under Popper's philosophy, this wouldn't be considered science. It's rather inconceivable that one might someday be able to devise a test to disprove this. The same goes for certain elements of math, but no one could seriously claim math isn't scientific.

If Popper meant that science is testible, i.e., claims of results can be reproduced (or disproven), then I would agree. But he didn't because he meant there was a certain amount of uncertainty and that it's possible that in the future we might supercede "known" facts or "proven" theories. In as much as that goes, I agree, but he posits that this is always the case, when it is not.

[Jon Miller]

che, you lack some understanding about science

the sun being the center of the solar system is still falsifiable

JM

[MORON]

The point is that if a idea is false, it is possible to identify it.

If an idea is true, there is no need to make it false is there?

[chequita guevara]

No, I just have always disagreed with Popper and his Poppercock. I think that there can be settled scientific fact that cannot be refuted. We might find later that it is limited but hardly incorrect.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by MORON
If an idea is true, there is no need to make it false is there?

Popper would say that nothing can be considered true, only not yet proved to be false.