freediver wrote:This is why.
I see. I assumed you deliberately left out the word scientific.
No not deliberate.
freediver wrote:I thought you agreed that "evolution is the currently accepted theory...." and therefore is a "scientific theory".
Level of acceptance dictates whether it is a hypothesis, theory or law, but has nothing to do with whether it is scientific.
I don't agree. It is an accepted Scientific Theory. I will address later.
freediver wrote:Also it will be a victim of any shift that disproves it as a valid theory. The issue is that it is broadly on the right track and could be right in its fundamental constructs so I can see why you would think it will not fall away.
No, it is down to the type of theory it is.
I don't understand that statement.
freediver wrote:Theories are constructs having both explanatory and predictive capacities
Can you predict when a beneficial mutation will occur? Can you predict when we will have a universal common ancestor? Every genuine prediction ever made by the theory turned out to be wrong - eg punctuated equilibria.
No and No. The following in italics is stolen from this interesting report in New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... tml?page=1
First, life evolves from common ancestors. Second, it evolves by means of natural selection and adaptation. The first part has been accepted as a basic premise of biology since 1859. The second is more controversial, but has come to be accepted over the past 150 years as the principal mechanism of evolution.
The evolution of life has many characteristics that are typical of non-linear systems. First, it is deterministic: changes in one part of the system, such as the mutation of a DNA base, directly cause other changes. However, the change is unpredictable. Just like the weather, changes are inexorable but can only be followed with the benefit of hindsight.
Second, behaviour of the system is sensitive to initial conditions. We see this in responses to glaciations in the Quaternary period. The exact circumstances of the beginning of each interglacial determine the development of the whole period, leading to unpredictable differences between interglacials
Third, the history of life is fractal. Take away the labelling from any portion of the tree of life and we cannot tell at which scale we are looking (see diagram). This self-similarity also indicates that evolutionary change is a process of continual splitting of the branches of the tree.
Fourth, we cannot rewind, as Stephen Jay Gould argued in Wonderful Life. Were we to turn the evolutionary clock back to any point in the past, and let it run again, the outcome would be different. As in weather systems, the initial conditions can never be specified to sufficient precision to prevent divergence of subsequent trajectories.
Life on Earth is always unique, changing, and unpredictable. Even if certain patterns can be dimly discerned, our ability to do so diminishes with time, exactly as for the weather. Consider any moment of the geological record of life on Earth: to what extent were the changes of the next 10 or 100 million years predictable at that time? With the benefit of hindsight, we might be able to understand what happened, and construct a plausible narrative for those events, but we have no foresight.
This view of life leads to certain consequences. Macroevolution is not the simple accumulation of microevolutionary changes but has its own processes and patterns. There can be no "laws" of evolution. We may be able to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the evolution of any given species or group after the fact, but we will not be able to generalise from these to other sequences of events. From a practical point of view, this means we will be unable to predict how species will respond to projected climate changes over next century.
Evolution can be likened to the description of human history as "just one damn thing after another", exactly as Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini have argued.
We still have much to learn about how life evolved but we will not develop a full appreciation until we accept the complexity of the system.
The issue here FD is we can not accurately defint the initial conditions just like we cannot model the exact engery level, position an direction of every molecule in the atmosphere to predict weather. We cannot model the output of the sun and every ray of energy that hits the planet. We cannot model such complexities.
So we can predict things will happen but we cannot predict when and what in absolute detail.
However: Consider this
"Can you predict when a beneficial mutation will occur?"
I can when you consider that man via genetic engineering is under controlled conditions generating mutations. They have to be seen as predictable. These mutation, particularly ones for resistence to pests would be seen as beneficial just man made. They are now in the ecosystem to the horror of some.
Once these mutation are released we can monitor if they meet predicted or expected results.
freediver wrote:that are built on inferential sets of logic (consilience of inductions, abductions, and deductions), models, and syllogistic schemes or laws that can be falsified through well designed experiments
The author muddled falsifiability there. It does not mean falsified.
I have already explained it is falsifiable.
freediver wrote:Also, can you design an experiment to generate a beneficial mutation?
As above. I can generate a beneficial mutation in the lab.
Also they have observed flies ...etc and how mutations work.
So, yes.
freediver wrote:Can you design an experient that would disprove universal common ancestry if it were wrong?
I don't think I can. Probably because it is not wrong.
freediver wrote:You also warmed to the notion that it is a meta theory. That too is a scientific theory. It is just an unbrella over other sub-theories. That doesn't make it less scientific.
I have been pointing out from the beginning which components of the theory are scientific and which are not. You cannot call it all scientific just because it has a bit that is scientific.
I am saying it is all scientific. It clearly meets the defintion. Consider the definition below.
What part of this is not met?
A scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.Scientists create scientific theories from hypotheses that have been corroborated through the scientific method, then gather evidence to test their accuracy." As with all forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and do not make apodictic propositions; instead, they aim for predictive and explanatory force.
The strength of a scientific theory is related to the diversity of phenomena it can explain, which is measured by its ability to make falsifiable predictions with respect to those phenomena. Theories are improved as more evidence is gathered, so that accuracy in prediction improves over time. Scientists use theories as a foundation to gain further scientific knowledge, as well as to accomplish goals such as inventing technology or curing disease.
Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge. This is significantly different from the word "theory" in common usage, which implies that something is unproven or speculative.
