On 26/01/2009, at 7:38 AM, dsummersmi...@comcast.net wrote: > >> Empirical observations of patterns occurring within a limited scope >> can >> shed no light on the state of things outside that scope. > > If you really believe that, then you would throw most of evolutionary > theory out, beause we've only been making good scientific > measurements over > a very limited scope of time, say the last 150-200 years.
>Given that it's the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin >this year, and that built on a couple of decades of research by >Darwin... Most of evolutionary theory was built in the last 100 years, >once the mechanism of heredity was worked out and the statistical >tools were developed to actually test Darwin's ideas. You would not >throw out "most of evolutionary theory" at all, by your criterion. >Really, it's amazing how much of what most people think they know >about biological science, particularly evolutionary biology, is >completely wrong. I think that I didn't clearly communicate my point. I read the paragraph you wrote above and there is nothing that contradicts the understanding I had when I wrote my post. I was getting at another point entirely. For evolution to make sense, you have to have millions of years of time over which it occured. If the observations we have made since, say, 50 years before Darwin, shed no light at all over what happened before that time, how do we understand evolution? If, for example, fusion wasn't found, we'd be scratching our heads because we couldn't reconcile the maximum length of time that the sun could possibly shine with the intensity it does (I think about 6,000 years without nuclear physics) and the length of time needed for what we see now to evolve from the most primitive form of life. All evolutionary models that I've seen have > 1 billion years between the time that life first existed and now. There are no young earth evolutionary models that are real scientific theories (well maybe there is a falsified theory that I don't know about, but you know what I mean). The model extends over a time frame that is many orders of magnitude than do the observations. That's all I was saying. I understand that evolution is the best means we have to understand biology, and it's not just a means to understand fossils, and that fossils are in no way essential to the theory. >Fossil record, for example. It's nice that the fossil record is there >and is so detailed, but it's entirely superfluous to evolutionary >theory. There are nice overlaps, but evolutionary theory explains the >fossil record, not the other way round. Yea, models are verified by observations of all kinds. If they don't match observations, they aren't good models. The more data to check the theory against the better. The smaller the difference that falsifies the model, the better. (BTW, like most physicists, I see scientific theories as models of observations) But, my point is that our understanding of life as it exists now is an evolutionary theory that describes a process that took far longer than the time scale over which scientific observations were made. Thus, if this is verbotten, then evolution wouldn't be accepted by the person who wouldn't accept that process. To summerize the arguement I was trying to make: Evolution is accepted as a well verified scientific theory (I knew Doug accepted this). Evolution is a theory that describes a process that requires far more time than the time frame over which observations were made. Therefore, if one rejects theories that require time scales that are greater than the time range of observations, then one must reject valid scientific theories, like evolution. None of the other stuff you were argueing against has anything to do with the point I was making. Dan M. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web LIVE – Free email based on Microsoft® Exchange technology - http://link.mail2web.com/LIVE _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
