Intelligent Design banned...right or wrong?

Great Debates
101

Long your post may be, but it realy still just avoids the basic, well, fact, that people use the word fact all the time in perfectly justified ways, intelligible to seemingly everyone but yourself, Blake. Empiricism, which is pretty much the only epistemology going in most cases, never permits 100% certainty, or even a certain percentage measure of certainty. Either you allow that to let you discard the word fact, or you don’t. If you do, then fine, but it really is a silly semantic game you aer playing then, because most people, including most scientists, don’t.

If you wish to toss out DtC statements that evolution, including macroevolution, are facts, then you must also toss out as illegitimate every other instance of the use of the word fact, including from everyday life.

Meanwhile, everyone else will understand that facts are things claimed to be known with extreme levels of certainty… and yet, like everything, the claim of fact could indeed be wrong. But, until that time, it’s still perfectly legitimate to claim that this or that is a fact, and the vast majority of the planet will understand what you are saying. I suspect that even you will understand what is being said… you just might pretend not to to be difficult and disgressive.

102

And will support you to the hilt in that debate because it’s so obviously true.

But why I object to the idea that a theory like speciation can be termed a fact in the manner that DtC used it is because it’s not compatible with fighting ignorance IMO. It’s a way of quashing debate by saying “This is immutably true”, which is what fact means. The Audiatur et Altera Pars of saying that “fact” wasn’t meant that way when it was used in rebuttal to a claim that speciation isn’t supported by incontrovertible proof is just plain dishonest.

Speciation isn’t a fact, it’s damn good theory. But spingears was justified in saying there was no incontrovertible proof to support it. As soon as a process is supported by proof that can’t be contradicted then that process ceases to be scientific.

103

Observated phenomena have a higher claim of truth value than deductions based on those observations. Different people have different colored skin – this is not a “fact”, it’s a theory based upon our sensory perceptions. It is subject to falsificaton. However the likelyhood that this particular “theory” will be falsified is extremely low.

Speciation is in the same category of “theory”. It is an observed phenomenon.

Of course it’s epistemological. It’s a particular philosophical position on how knowledge is constructed.

Because it’s not a model, it’s an observation. The truth value of an observation is provisional – any methodology can potentially be demonstrated to have been in error. But since there no evidence that that is the case with regard to the observed instances of speciation we’re justified in accepting these particular observations as provisionally true.

I think it should be obvious based on my last few posts that I’ve read your writings in this thread. I’ll be more blunt. Do you personally dispute that the talk.origins observations of speciation are accurate? Or are you merely arguing over the difference between a “fact” and an “observed phenomenon”?

104

Long your post may be Apos, but it still ducks the basic issues, which are who decides what is a fact if we accept that nothing is certain, and how healthy is such mangling of the language to the fight against ignorance.

The first problem is simple enough to phrase, but damn difficult to answer it seems. Am I permitted to say that global warming is a fact for example? Who gets to tell me that it is not? And why can’t I tell you that speciationis not a fact? Who decides on your “extreme levels of certainty”? You are simply being an apologist for ignorance with this persistence that sloppy use of grammar is acceptable when your vocabulary is insufficient to produce the correct term.

The second problem can be easily demonstrated simply by looking at DtCs use of the word. Spingears claims that speciation is not supported by incontrovertible proof, which is of course true if we are discussing science. Diogenes counters with the claim that it is ‘fact’. Why would he bother if he simply meant that it is supported by a reasonable degree of evidence? Spingears never contended that it wasn’t supported by reasonable evidence, but that it wasn’t supported by incontrovertible evidence.

As for your assertion that one would need to toss out every other usage of the word, that is nonsense. There can be facts in many fields of discourse, but there are no facts in science. A fact means that something is known t be true. That’s not a problem in philosophy or even history. But in science everything must be open to being proven false. Everything must admit to doubt. Thus the objection to facts WRT science clearly doesn’t require anyone to toss out the usage f the word fact outside of scientific discourse.

In the meantime it’s still perfectly legitimate to claim that this or that is a fact, just not within science. I don’t doubt that the, and the vast majority of the planet will not understand that, the vast majority of people don’t understand most things.

Of course you may understand all this already and simply by trying to be clever or disingenuous yet again.

105

LOL, historical “facts” are on far shakier epistomological ground than scientific “facts”. Many scientific “facts” are the result of direction observation. ALL historical “facts” are conclusions derived from fragmentary evidence.

106

The fact of evolution is that species die out and are replaced by other species which weren’t there before. The fossil record tells us this fact, just as photos from space tell us the fact that the Earth is round.

Speciation is a fact: new species do appear. The *mechanism[/i for speciation is a (rigorously well tested over decades and centuries) theory.

If the possibility of error is enough to remover the word “fact” from the dictionary, so be it. I’ll use it while I live in the real world.

107

Observated? Perhaps you mean observed? Or observational?

No argument here. It’s a theory

Well of course it is. Everything is somewhat epistemological, this is no exception, which is why I said it wasn’t * particularly * epistemological. This is primarily concerned with the application and dissemination of knowledge rather than construction.

No, it’s not. Speciation is used to explain things, that makes it a model.

Before we go any further Pochcacho tell me, how much science have you studied so I know what level I’m pitching this at?

Please provide a reference that observed instances of speciation have a statistical confidence value of 1.0. Because that is what you just claimed when you said that there is no potential for error in the methodology.

That’s just not possible. There is always potential for error in methodology in any science. Period.

So were lying when you said that you couldn’t find my answer to your question on observed speciation? Perhaps you mean that you read them and didn’t understand them? I find that hard to believe given the structure of the answer.

If the latter then there is no practical difference and I still can’t be bothered covering old ground. If the former then I really have no desire to discuss anything with you at all. You have gone form disingenuous to openly dishonest.

Do you still beat your wife?

That may be right, but I’m not primarily arguing epistemology, as I have pointed out.

Really? So when Winston Churchill wrote his memoirs his conclusions were derived from fragmentary evidence, because that was history. But when Pauling wrote up an experiment from the previous year that was the result of direct observation?

You have created a totally meaningless and artificial distinction. Scientific “facts” are based on historical records, if only of the previous day. What ever the failings of history WRT to basis they are also the failings of science. And many historical facts are also based on direct observation.

The pertinent point is that history, when distinct from science, does not require falsifiability.

108

It’s 3:30 in the morning, give me a break!

Uh, reread what I wrote. I said that “any methodology can potentially be demonstrated to have been in error”. Maybe you should go to bed too?

There’s no need to be nasty. I’ve read your posts and I can’t find where you’ve said whether you truly believe or disbelieve that scientists have, in fact, observed speciation. Chalk it up to the lateness of the hour.

Jeez, just point me to the post number! Are you arguing that you don’t think scientists have observed speciation, or are you merely arguing that it’s incorrect to use the word “fact” in scientific discussions? This isn’t some trick question!

Hey, you’re the one claiming that historical facts are “known to be true”, not me! I would say that historical “facts” are provisional and are subject to falsification if contradictory evidence is presented. Just like scientific “facts”.

Good night.

109

Incidentally, Blake, if the appearance of new species isn’t a fact, is eg. the deforestation of the US, say, a fact?

It sounds like you might have a little trouble serving jury duty. :slight_smile:

110

Let’s just see if I’ve understood Blake’s position correctly.

  1. A fact is “the worldly correlate of a true proposition” (Source: The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, sv. “fact”).

  2. All scientific propositions are subject to falsification, and are therefore tentative, and cannot, by definition of “tentative”, be true.

  3. A valid syllogism (Cesare) then gives us:

No scientific propositions are true propositions.
All facts are correlates of true propositions.
No facts are correlates of scientific propositions.

  1. We can express the conclusion “No facts are correlates of scientific propositions” in an abbreviated form: “There are no facts in science”.

So, this is as far as sophistry can get us in the scientific enterprise. Amusing intellectually, but not of much practical use in the real world.

111

To insist on such a strict definition of ‘fact’ renders it a useless entity, like ‘dragon’ - we can talk about its properties to our heart’s content, we just can’t find one.

112

I would like to see, and I must ask pardon for possibly missing it before, Blake’s evidence that there is, in fact, a difference or barrier between the method or process of microevolution and macroevolution. As I understand it, macroevolution begins at the point at which a species differentiates into a new species, while microevolution is all evolution before that point.

To simplify with a practical example, let us take the Hyena. As I am sure you are aware, it has genital characteristics such that females look remarkably like males.

Let us hypothesize that two populations of hyenas are seperated by distance and terrain. One finds some evolutionary advantage for more… complicated genital hooding, and males that do not have a right angle bend in their willy die out.
The other happens to have males with very small tools, and thus, the females with hooding die out.

The two populations of hyenas can no longer interbreed, physically. Is this a sufficent cause to consider it speciation? If not, we can continue for a few million years, until they can no longer interbreed, genetically.

That said, why would those populations no longer continue to change, over time, once they can no longer interbreed? At which point do they fail to continue to evolve? I fail to see a barrier, but I do see a continium.

113

You have provided no such evidence.

I cited every factual claim I asserted.

I never said that speciation was not a process, I said it was not a mechanism.

Speciation would correlate to “entering the building” in this analogy, not to “opening the door.”

An assertion I haven’t made. I’ve said that speciation is not a mechanism, which is an entirely different assertion.

I won’t bother to respond the rest, as it is content-free.

114

Evolution is a theory that explains the **fact **that all living orgnanisms are derived from earlier forms. For example, the theory of evolution explains that **fact **that humans and chimps shared a common ancestor sometime in the past (probably about 6M years ago).

The theory of gravity explains the **fact **that two bodies of non-zero mass are attracted to each other with a force that varies as the inverse square of the distance between the two bodies.

Sorry, Blake, but there is nothing wrong with those statements. You cannot tell me that you would correct a scientist giving a paper at a scientific conference if he made any of those statements.

115

While I hate to dive into such an otherwise…fascinating…discussion, I do think this macro-/micro- thing should be addressed. One the one hand, it is true that micro-level changes can produce macro-level results, given enough time. But, reality is much more complicated than that, in that not all macro-level events can be traced back to a micro-level process. The shapes of many branches in the Tree of Life have as much to do with differential survival of entire lineages as with adaptive change within populations. The dinosaurs allegedly getting smacked down by a giant meteor are a great example of a macroevolutionary change that simply cannot be coupled to microevolutionary processes. It’s got little to do with adaptation, or a lack thereof, and more to do with bad luck and timing. Similarly, one might conceivably argue that there are not more extant species of Homo, not because other lineages were poorly adapted, or our own better adapted, but because our own was simply more savage.

Changes in developmental timing can have profound effects on morphology. It is often said, for example, that humans are simply neotenous apes; the fact that our development has been greatly extended (compared to other apes) has had more to do with our subsequent evolution than has simple mutation and adaptation. Similar profound developmental changes are thought to have played a role in the dinosaur-to-bird transition. Even the reduction in number of digits from early tetrapods (which had 8 or 9 digits) to the current pattern of 5 or fewer can be explained better by a “simple” decoupling of two Hox gene suites involved in limb formation than any adapative or selective advantage.

Speciation, which has been a focus of some…disagreement…here in this thread, is thought by some to be a stochastic process, which may or may not involve adaptation, but is nevertheless not driven by adaptation. If it is the case that speciation is, indeed, most often decoupled from natural selection, then the current state of diversity cannot be simply explained as adaptation to specific niches.

So, the point is that there is not always a nice continuum between microevolution and macroevolution. There are a multitude of forces at work, at different levels, which can have profound influence on the future of a given lineage, and these forces are not always nicely scaleable. I suspect that much of the distaste (and, possibly, confusion) over the terms microevolution and macroevolution come from the misuse of the terms by creationists. But they do represent valid terms within evolutionary biology, and they are not simply different ways of looking at a phenomenon.

116

Darwin’s Finch,

Thank you for attempting to inject some sanity back into this thread. I have a few questions for which I hope you can offer some clarification.

  1. Is it accurate to say that, at its most fundamental level, all evolution is a result of inherited mutations or do I have that wrong? I understand that it may not be accurate to say that all those changes are adaptive. I understand that different pressures can apply to those inherited mutations and that not all changes are necessarily “selected” for in the same way. I’m only asking whether every change can fairly be ascribed to inherited nutation. Are there any changes which are not the result of inherited mutation. Would it be fair to say that inherited mutation is responsible for both micro and macro events?

  2. Is speciation, in itself a “theory?”

  3. Is speciation, in itself, a “mechanism?”

I thank you in advance for your answers.

117

A good point, Darwin’s Finch. Of course, I’d expect that from you.
I should have said ‘no inherent barrier’ and ‘potential continium’. Of course, a simple mutation can result in gross effects. Not ignoring the potential physical effects created by the environment of the embryo, of course, and various other things. (Which, by the way, might be an example of evolution not caused by inherent mutations, but by environmental influence. If a flock of bald eagles move into a field contaminated by Thalidomide, and become penguinlike, yet stay there year after year, generation after generation, and the mutation passes down, that would also be evolution.)

The point which I was attempting to make was that there is no necessary barrier between the two, and that it is possible to have macroevolution as a result of microevolution. They do not have to be different in origin.

118

Ah, but is there crying in baseball?

I for one think the court did the right think in banning the teaching of ID as science.

119

Talk about your observed phenomenon!

120

I would say that every change which persists in a population for multiple generations is the result of a mutation. Some change can occur developmentally, and even persist for a few generations, but such instances genrally don’t influence the gene pool and subsequent evolution of a population.

However, again, when we are talking about entire species, dramatic changes can be wrought “from the outside”, so to speak. Giant meteors, sudden and cataclysmic eruptions, and so on can wipe out many populations in an instant (and not even a geological instant!), thereby significantly affecting the subsequent evolution of the remaining populations. For the survivors, of course, subsequent mutations will play a significant role in determining their future. But, very generally speaking, extinction is an evolutionary event which is often not the result of mutations (or even of the associated adaptations); mass extinctions even less so.

I’ve not seen anything in print that explicitly says as much, no. If one accepts common descent as given, however, then one must necessarily accept speciation as a given. So I would say that inasmuch as common descent can be considered a fact (and that species exist as identifiable entities), so too must speciation be considered a fact.

I would say no. Speciation is the process whereby new species arise. The mechanism which drives this process is reproductive isolation. And, there are several models for how this isolation can occur. These models, then, are where the bulk of the theory surrounding speciation lies.

I agree that they can scale, and that that may even be the case in the majority of instances. However, there are several phenomena wherein they do not scale, which is why I posted my clarification. To put it another way, based on the history of life as we know it, it is not the case that that entire history can be explained solely by scaling mutation & selection (or associated mechanisms, such as genetic drift…) upward. Much, yes; all, no.