How could you falsify macroevolution?

[Last Conformist]

And the grounds for this disagreement are?

(Please stick to ideas about the nature of the empirical world. The reality of mathematical truth is a quite different question.)

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
And that's what I disagree with.

That seems to be an odd thing to challenge. After all, it's the same as saying that science says things are true conditionally. We can never possess all the information there is, so saying something is true is conditional on the facts available.

It's similar to the notion that we can't disprove an omnipotent god. After all, if it's truly omnipotent, it would have the power to make itself invisible to any means of detection. Ergo, no matter how much we discover about how the universe works, we can never fully discount the possibility that there is such a being behind it all.

Do you think there is a capital TRUTH science can discover? That's religious dogma, not science.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

As has been shown, this is not the case.

If you don't want to be accused of not understanding science, then you should stop saying things like this.

Oh Boris, you leave NYC, and everything goes to hell....



We have had three interesting responses to that statement (your not included), one form Krazyhorse saying he doesn't look for it, one from Nostromo saying that even Popper hasn't given up on finding a truth. So, what has been proven?

Oh, and newsflash for you, and the art of debate. Making outrageous or unverifiable claims about your opponents wins no points. Only makes you look like an ass. Look into that.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


That seems to be an odd thing to challenge. After all, it's the same as saying that science says things are true conditionally. We can never possess all the information there is, so saying something is true is conditional on the facts available.

It's similar to the notion that we can't disprove an omnipotent god. After all, if it's truly omnipotent, it would have the power to make itself invisible to any means of detection. Ergo, no matter how much we discover about how the universe works, we can never fully discount the possibility that there is such a being behind it all.

Do you think there is a capital TRUTH science can discover? That's religious dogma, not science.

Science is not about saying that truth is conditional. The first scientists most certainly believe in there being an absolute truth.

Science is one path towards gaining truth- a path in whcih man throught his rational faculties seeks truth from the sensual world, not one in which man accepts revealed truths faithfully.

That you experiement for the truth in no way invalidates the notion of their being A TRUTH. There is a point at which people do stop experimenting. Does anyone still carry out experiments solely for the point of trying to disprove entropy? NOw, if some experiment came about in which entropy was challenged, then epople might start doing it, but currently, anyone out there gaining grants to test rigorously the laws of thermodynamics?

[Nostromo]

@ Che an GePap

Like I said earlier, there are two parts to Popper's demarcation criterion, a logical part and a methodological part.

The logical part says an idea is scientific if its logically possible to refute it. If Earth was at the center of the Solar system, that would have refuted the heliocentric hypothesis. The fact that the Sun is at the center of the solar system is beside the point. Popper only asks one thing: it should be logically possible to refute it based on observation or experiment.

Now compare this with ideas that are logically impossible to refute:

(a) At any given place or time, either it rains or it doesn't rain
(b) All bachelors are unmarried

Its logically impossible to refute these statements because in order to refute them, you would have to observe things or events that are logically impossible. For example, you would have to observe a case where, at a given place and time, it rains and it doesn't rain, which is of course logically impossible.

Another thing. You seem to assume that our current heliocentric model of the solar system is the Truth. Remember that Copernicus' heliocentric model was refuted and replaced by Kepler's and that Kepler's was eventually replaced by the one we have today. And our current model will most probably be replaced by another one eventually. I'm not saying we will eventually return to geocentrism: its dead and buried. I'm not even saying that we will one day doubt that fact that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. I'm just saying that our current model will most probably be replaced by another one.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by GePap
Oh Boris, you leave NYC, and everything goes to hell....

Well, I'm sorry NYC has gone to hell without me. Perhaps it's the fault of too much Gepapism?

We have had three interesting responses to that statement (your not included), one form Krazyhorse saying he doesn't look for it, one from Nostromo saying that even Popper hasn't given up on finding a truth. So, what has been proven?

Eh, read what nostromo wrote again. It doesn't contradict what I or KH is saying. That scientists seek to understand how the universe works is a given. The issue was whether they seek "THE TRUTH" or truth, which are two separate things. As Popper noted, we can't ever be 100% certain something is THE TRUTH. We can only believe that something is proven based on what we know and observe.

Oh, and newsflash for you, and the art of debate. Making outrageous or unverifiable claims about your opponents wins no points. Only makes you look like an ass.

So you outrageous claim that Popper was essentially saying that the height of Mt. Everest wasn't falsifiable would be...?

Or we can even go to this statement you made about Kuci:

Sad really, that someone so young is a poster child for the enemies of science when they point at someone so stuck in dogma they might was well call themselves priests.

What happens with the unexplored life-what is missing from a well rounded one.

I don't see how you could possibly have a basis to make such a sweeping claim about a guy you don't even know. Therefore, under your own maxim, you are an ass.

[GePap]

Originally posted by nostromo

The logical part says an idea is scientific if its logically possible to refute it. If Earth was at the center of the Solar system, that would have refuted the heliocentric hypothesis. The fact that the Sun is at the center of the solar system is beside the point. Popper only asks one thing: it should be logically possible to refute it based on observation or experiment.

Now compare this with ideas that are logically impossible to refute:

(a) At any given place or time, either it rains or it doesn't rain
(b) All bachelors are unmarried

Its logically impossible to refute these statements because in order to refute them, you would have to observe things or events that are logically impossible. For example, you would have to observe a case where, at a given place and time, it rains and it doesn't rain, which is of course logically impossible.

Another thing. You seem to assume that our current heliocentric model of the solar system is the Truth. Remember that Copernic's heliocentric model was refuted and replaced by Kepler's and that Kepler's was eventually replaced by the one we have today. And our current model will most probably be replaced by another one eventually. I'm not saying we will eventually return to geocentrism: its dead and buried. I'm not even saying that we will one day doubt that fact that the Sun is at the center of the universe. I'm just saying that our current model will most probably be replaced by another one.

Its is just as illogical to assume the current model must be false because previous models were as it is to state that the modern model must be true because it replaced previous ones.

On another point, for me, the difference between the concept of geocentircity vs. Heliocentricity is based more on which body everything reovlves around, not the exact details of how they happen to revolve. So the question becomes, what exactly could come up to show that the planetary system we live in is not based on planets orbiting the star Sol, but them orbiting something else. That would refute the notion of heliocintricity. I would not say that changes to what exactly revolves around the sun, or what revolves around it change the notion that the planets reovlve around the sun (heliocentricity) as opposed to around the Earth (geocentricity).

[GePap]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
I don't see how you could possibly have a basis to make such a sweeping claim about a guy you don't even know. Therefore, under your own maxim, you are an ass.

Who on thios board is not?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
So you outrageous claim that Popper was essentially saying that the height of Mt. Everest wasn't falsifiable would be...?

Based on your inability to read the whole of an arguement? Yeah, that seems right.

[Last Conformist]

I don't think nostromo's position is really different from KH's or mine in practice; the iterative movement towards truth he describes is the errection of successively better predictive models. And if one accepts Popper, you can never positively know you've found the truth, making searching for it no different from seeking an approximation that holds up to the limits of observational accuracy.

nostromo will have to speak for himself, but Popper certainly did not think we could have certain knowledge of "God's blueprints" in the way many thought that classical mechanics were, back in the days before Einstein, Planck, et consortes came and wrecked everything.

[chequita guevara]

I don't say our model of the solar system is the truth, but rather it is beyond the realm of reasonable doubt that we live in a heliocentric system. Just because previous models were incomplete didn't change the basic scientific fact that the sun is the center of the solar system. We might learn to better explain the mechanics of that arrangement, but heliocentricty is irrefutable.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
I don't think nostromo's position is really different from KH's or mine in practice; the iterative movement towards truth he describes is the errection of successively better predictive models. And if one accepts Popper, you can never positively know you've found the truth, making searching for it no different from seeking an approximation that holds up to the limits of observational accuracy.

nostromo will have to speak for himself, but Popper certainly did not think we could have certain knowledge of "God's blueprints" in the way many thought that classical mechanics were, back in the days before Einstein, Planck, et consortes came and wrecked everything.

Why must one assume a devine precense in order to imagine there bieng a TRUTH out there, with regards to how the sensual world behaves, or the ability of man to comprehend the workings of the sensual world FULLY, as opposed to partially?

As for never knowing, to me that seems almost being stuck with Descartes. After all, no individual can ever KNOW everything you do and see is true either. BUt that gets ridiculous. At some point, you have to lay your foot down and say "this is real", and go with it.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by GePap
Science is not about saying that truth is conditional. The first scientists most certainly believe in there being an absolute truth.

Whether they did or didn't is irrelevant, it is the question of what science is capable of doing. Science is incapable of establishing anything other than conditional truths, it's as simple as that.

Science is one path towards gaining truth- a path in whcih man throught his rational faculties seeks truth from the sensual world, not one in which man accepts revealed truths faithfully.

No disagreement, this speaks nothing to whether or not scientific truth is conditional or not. In fact, is supports it being conditional, as only FAITH can allow to believe a scientific theory is THE TRUTH.

That you experiement for the truth in no way invalidates the notion of their being A TRUTH.

Nor did I say it was. They aren't logically related. That there is a TRUTH out there is not something we can ever disprove. But we also can't prove that we have the TRUTH, either. It's not a scientific concept, it's a religious one.

There is a point at which people do stop experimenting. Does anyone still carry out experiments solely for the point of trying to disprove entropy? NOw, if some experiment came about in which entropy was challenged, then epople might start doing it, but currently, anyone out there gaining grants to test rigorously the laws of thermodynamics?

This is proving my point, not yours. We accept that entropy is true, but you say right here that there is a possibility that someday, somebody might devise a way to disprove entropy. That means we don't know for sure it's the TRUTH, it's simply the truth unless a different/better explanation is devised.

I have no idea if anyone has grants to test thermodynamics now, but neither do you. Whether or not something is currently being tested doesn't change whether or not it is the TRUTH or not, because by definition, the TRUTH is an immutable concept. And given the nature of science, it's something we can never be sure of knowing.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap


Its is just as illogical to assume the current model must be false because previous models were as it is to state that the modern model must be true because it replaced previous ones.

He didn't say it must be false, but it that it probably is false.

(Nonetheless, if by the current model is meant general relativity, it is necessarily false - or incomplete, if you prefer - because it fails to account for phenomena at the quantum scale.)

On another point, for me, the difference between the concept of geocentircity vs. Heliocentricity is based more on which body everything reovlves around, not the exact details of how they happen to revolve. So the question becomes, what exactly could come up to show that the planetary system we live in is not based on planets orbiting the star Sol, but them orbiting something else. That would refute the notion of heliocintricity. I would not say that changes to what exactly revolves around the sun, or what revolves around it change the notion that the planets reovlve around the sun (heliocentricity) as opposed to around the Earth (geocentricity).

Well, as a matter of fact, the earth doesn't orbit the sun, but the centre of mass in the earth-sun system.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Whether they did or didn't is irrelevant, it is the question of what science is capable of doing. Science is incapable of establishing anything other than conditional truths, it's as simple as that.

No, that is Poppers theory. I find it funny, you making absolute statements of truth....

No disagreement, this speaks nothing to whether or not scientific truth is conditional or not. In fact, is supports it being conditional, as only FAITH can allow to believe a scientific theory is THE TRUTH.

You have faith in the process. That is different from having faith in the outcome. You would not folow the process if you did not believe in it.

This is proving my point, not yours. We accept that entropy is true, but you say right here that there is a possibility that someday, somebody might devise a way to disprove entropy. That means we don't know for sure it's the TRUTH, it's simply the truth unless a different/better explanation is devised.

I have no idea if anyone has grants to test thermodynamics now, but neither do you. Whether or not something is currently being tested doesn't change whether or not it is the TRUTH or not, because by definition, the TRUTH is an immutable concept. And given the nature of science, it's something we can never be sure of knowing.

You can never be sure of anything- you could never be sure there is no God, and that what you are currently experiencing is nothing but a delusion brought about by a fever. There is no logical set-up you can devise to know with 100% certainty ANYTHING, even your own name. But is the situation is that absurd, then to a certain point, its irrelevant, and therefore there is no difference if we decide to ignore it and behave differently.