How could you falsify macroevolution?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

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

That assumption is equally illogical, because it assumes that based on past examples, something is more likely than the other right NOW. The outcome of 10,000 previous coin tosses never changes the probabilities of the current coin toss.

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

And since that center of mass happens to be the sun, there is no working difference.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by GePap


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.



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.

that is not what science is talking about

JM

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap
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?

Sigh. "God's blueprints" is a metaphor - a concept I thought you humanists were familiar with. What's meant is simply the actual rules the universe obeys.

Whether they exist or whether man can comprehend them is beside the point - the question is whether he can know them, and know that he knows them.

I have expressed no opinion whether he can attain such an enviable state. It's quite clear, tho, that he cannot do so by scientific means.

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.

That's what conditional truth is all about; we assume something is true till we have reason to think otherwise.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap

And since that center of mass happens to be the sun, there is no working difference.

Point of order: a centre of mass is a point. The sun, having some considerable spatial extent is not, and can thus not be the centre of mass.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
Sigh. "God's blueprints" is a metaphor - a concept I thought you humanists were familiar with. What's meant is simply the actual rules the universe obeys.

Whether they exist or whether man can comprehend them is beside the point - the question is whether he can know them, and know that he knows them.

I have expressed no opinion whether he can attain such an enviable state. It's quite clear, tho, that he cannot do so by scientific means.

If not empirically, how could such a state be attained?

That's what conditional truth is all about; we assume something is true till we have reason to think otherwise.

How could you assume it true? If you know it is probably not true anyways, then why not claim we accept it as the current model?

Truth is a loaded term. If modern scientists have trully abandoned the idea that you can attain truth whatsoever, maybe they should stop using the term.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Point of order: a centre of mass is a point. The sun, having some considerable spatial extent is not, and can thus not be the centre of mass.

And yet, if that point happens to be within the spatial extent of the sun, then for all practical pursposes that have any meaning to human beings, as opposed to being simple mathematical concepts (such as the concept of a point), the sun is the center.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap


If not empirically, how could such a state be attained?

If I knew, I wouldn't be aiming for a PhD in physics.

How could you assume it true? If you know it is probably not true anyways, then why not claim we accept it as the current model?

Difference being? Maybe I expressed myself poorly.

When you build an electron cannon, you build it as if QED was true. We realize it can't be The Truth, because it it neglects gravity, but it's close enough for present purposes.

Truth is a loaded term. If modern scientists have trully abandoned the idea that you can attain truth whatsoever, maybe they should stop using the term.

Well, I believe it was you who brought it into the discussion.

[Nostromo]

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.

Not sure I understand your point. But assuming that our current model of solar system will eventually be overturned
by another one, most probably still an heliocentric one, seems reasonable to me. I'm not saying that the claim that the Sun is at the center of the solar system must be false. In fact, I doubt it. But that doesn't mean that our current model of the solar system will not be overturned eventually.

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).

The claim that the Sun is a the center of the solar system is, surely, a core claim of our heliocentric model of solar system, but the heliocentric model is much more than that. You actually have to work out the details. Copernic's and Kepler's heliocentric models are quite different one from the other.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap




And yet, if that point happens to be within the spatial extent of the sun, then for all practical pursposes that have any meaning to human beings, as opposed to being simple mathematical concepts (such as the concept of a point), the sun is the center.

Not really. The Sun's movement around said point is measurable, and meaurements thereof have some applications in astronomy.

[KrazyHorse]

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.

The Sun isn't at the center of the Universe. There is no center of the Universe.

To a good approximation (in terms of the solar system) the center of the Sun is an inertial frame of reference, and the planets orbit around it (again, only an approximation)

But you are correct as to the fact that this is a falsifiable hypothesis. If we started firing out probes and they were following weird trajectories then this would be an indication that things were different than we thought they were. Luckily they don't, thus our knowledge of the concentration and movement of mass in our solar system is relatively good. It's consistent with a number of small bodies orbiting a large body.

[Nostromo]

I meant to say to say at the center of solar system, of course. If you don't believe me look at my last post

[GePap]

Originally posted by nostromo


Not sure I understand your point. But assuming that our current model of solar system will eventually be overturned
by another one, most probably still an heliocentric one, seems reasonable to me. I'm not saying that the claim that the Sun is at the center of the solar system must be false. In fact, I doubt it. But that doesn't mean that our current model of the solar system will not be overturned eventually.


The claim that the Sun is a the center of the solar system is, surely, a core claim of our heliocentric model of solar system, but the heliocentric model is much more than that. You actually have to work out the details. Copernic's and Kepler's heliocentric models are quite different one from the other.

Whether the exact model is correct or not is not relevant to the question of whether one could state that it has been verified that the earth and the other planets of what we consider the solar system revolve around the sun. How they happen to do so is a secondary concern.

Or even if one wants to be like LC, has it been verified that the bodies of the solar system rotate around the center of mass of the system? Has this been verified? Has it been shown to be true? Or is it simply to be accepted as the current conditonal model?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Well, I believe it was you who brought it into the discussion.

How could it be kept out of a discussion on the nature of science?

You can't hold a discussion while purposefully ignoring the 800 lb gorrilla in the room.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by GePap
Or even if one wants to be like LC, has it been verified that the bodies of the solar system rotate around the center of mass of the system? Has this been verified? Has it been shown to be true? Or is it simply to be accepted as the current conditonal model?

Well, what they actually do, as far as we can tell, is follow geodesics in bent spacetime. This model is better than the Newtonian centre of mass one, because it gets a tiny term in the rotation of Mercury's perihelium - amounting to a fraction of a second of arc per century, if memory serves - right, which the Newtonian model does not.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Well, what they actually do, as far as we can tell, is follow geodesics in bent spacetime. This model is better than the Newtonian centre of mass one, because it gets a tiny term in the rotation of Mercury's perihelium - amounting to a fraction of a second of arc per century, if memory serves - right, which the Newtonian model does not.

And is that a fact? Or simply a recap of the current conditional model, for which you will vouch only so long as it lasts?

This is why I brought forth Everest. As long as define what the "height" of a mountain is (distance from what point exactly), you can with certainty state what the height of any point on earth was at any one given moment in time. That factoid is true, in so far as it just IS.

So, can this state of knowing what simply IS, be reached with other situations? Is there any question left, for example, as to what the main purpose of the heart is? Have we discovered the truth about its main fuction, or do the scientists in you all out there tell you that, no, in fact, that is simply what we happen to think now, and perhaps in 2000 years we will have found out that the primary purpose of the heart was something other than as a blood pump?