See, I really disagree with everyone saying it’s not faulty logic. It is faulty logic, in the classical sense. It’s a syllogism with two of the 3 statements hidden, or implicit:
Statement 1: The statements ‘humans evolved from apes’ and ‘automobiles evolved from horse-drawn carriages’ are fairly comparable.
Statement 2: Obviously automobiles didn’t evolve from horse-drawn carriages.
Conclusion: Humans didn’t evolve from apes.
Does anybody seriously disagree that that’s the point Quasi’s CD’s statement was making?
Agreed. Also keep in mind that there’s no such thing as a perfect analogy. There are similarities between whatever is being compared, but since they are two different things they’re not going to be exactly the same, so the more detailed you look at it, the less the analogy works.
IF you’re using the analogy to demonstrate “We start with one form, make some minor changes, then a few more minor changes to that, and a few minor changes to that, and eventually after enough iterations you get to the end result,” it works perfectly well. If you’re using it to propose that biology and manufacturing are just like each other, eh, not so much.
So, colloquially, I’m on board with the idea that the auto “evolved” from the horse cart. If you mean to use strict definitions of the words, then of course it doesn’t work.
Or else a completely different implicit conclusion, which is that since a designer was involved in the “evolution” of wheeled transport from horse cart to car, therefore a “designer” must have been involved in human evolution, too.
Or else they were using “evolution” in the colloquial sense as I discussed above.
Impossible to know what they meant without greater context.
I agree that that’s probably the point the CD author is trying to make.
But, if you assume that statement 1 (above) is correct, is the logic itself faulty? I thought not. I thought it was a case of a false analogy, or a false premise, but the logic itself was sound, i.e.,
A derives from B in the same way that C derives from D.
C does not derive from D.
Therefore A does not derive from B.
It’s the premise that’s faulty, but the logical structure remains sound. No?
I didn’t expect (the Spanish Inquisition) a yes or no answer, and as usual y’all did not disappoint me, thanks!
I take the point about the word “logic” and agree that I should have used “analogy” in its stead.
cmyk: No I am not saying that, because I do not know that for sure. I was saying that you cannot have the progression from horse drawn carriage to automobile if you don’t factor man into the thing, and the author of the original statement is telling us that man did not evolve from apes so therefore how could the automobile come from the horse drawn carriage? That’s why I thought the whole statement stupid. Sorry, don’t mean to offend anyone.
Frylock, I will listen again and get the answers you asked for. It was just that when I heard him make that statement, i thought to myself “Huh?”, and tuned him out afterward.
The problem is the usage and definition of the word “evolve”. Because the word can have different meanings it is accurate (in a grammar/linguistics sense) to say that ‘lower apes —> human’ and ‘horse-drawn carriage —> automobile’ are both examples of evolution. But they are not the same kind of evolution therefore they cannot be compared in a meaningful way (for the purpose of this thread).
I am not a evolutionary biologist so I do not know the proper term for the evolution of species. I suspect, however, that calling it “evolution” is merely a shorthand term used in everyday discussion. The “evolution” of wheeled transport is an entirely different type of “evolution” though the two phenomena share some, but by no means all, common traits (e.g. usually, improved efficiency).
Perhaps we should use different terms if we want to meaningfully compare the two. Maybe we could call the evolution of species via natural selection "EvolutionX" and the evolution of technology via unnatural means (i.e. artificial or man-made) “EvolutionY”. They really are two totally different concepts that just happen to use the same English word to describe each.
This is merely a matter of semantics. Apples and oranges indeed.
