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Talk:Falsifiability of evolution (view source)
Revision as of 15:44, June 7, 2008
, 15:44, June 7, 2008→Edit summary
:::::: Er, the only person named there is Darwin, who is hardly representative of current evolutionary science. [[User:Wandering|Wandering]] 11:12, 7 June 2008 (EDT)
:::::: Er, the only person named there is Darwin, who is hardly representative of current evolutionary science. [[User:Wandering|Wandering]] 11:12, 7 June 2008 (EDT)
::::::: Yes, he's the only one ''named'', but they also refer to the promotion of the peppered moth example of natural selection being used by evolutionists as evidence of ''evolution''. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 11:31, 7 June 2008 (EDT)
::::::: Yes, he's the only one ''named'', but they also refer to the promotion of the peppered moth example of natural selection being used by evolutionists as evidence of ''evolution''. [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 11:31, 7 June 2008 (EDT)
A lack of clear definition is certainly a problem, and I agree that natural selection is distinct from evolution (although many evolutionists conflate the two), but common ancestry is a key part of the definition of evolution. Without it, you don't have evolution, but something else, such as creation. On the other hand, this is one of the problems with evolution: The term is so flexible that it can cover almost everything, whether that be descent from a single common ancestor or descent from multiple common ancestors, descent with modification or merely a change in allele frequencies. The term is so flexible that everything (except creation) comes under the umbrella. Thus you can potentially falsify key parts of evolution, such as descent form a common ancestor, and you still haven't falsified evolution, because it can mean something else quite different! In other words, the concept cannot even be nailed down enough to be able to falsify it.
The concept CAN be nailed down enough to falsify it, because every one of the definitions is falsifiable! If evolution is a change in allele frequencies within a population over time, observation of a mechanism that prevents the hereditary passing down of genetic information would falsify evolution. This alone makes ALL of evolution falsifiable, because ALL of evolution would be falsified were this the case.
I'm not arguing that I necessarily agree with everything in the paper, but it serves to support the point that common ancestry does not necessarily descent from a single protocell; it simply means descent from a single gene pool.
The discovery of wheels, magnets, or even nuclear reactors would not disprove evolution unless no evolutionary path could possibly account for them. That being said, this is a really weak falsification, because it presupposes that we never will discover such a path in the future. It's an argument fundamentally based on ignorance, and it's part of the reason ID is so derided.
The arguments about strata are weak too, because there are a host of processes that could account for the distribution of anomalous fossils, one of which is a simple misunderstanding of when species went extinct.
6-day creation 6,000 years ago is eminently falsifiable; the discovery of anything over 6000 years old logically falsifies this. The reason creationism is unfalsifiable is because it relies on supernatural causes.
Creationism does predict (correctly!) that we exist, but presupposes the existance of God, which is not even hypothetically falsifiable.
To qualify as a true chimera to a degree sufficient to disprove evolution, an organism would have to incorporate elements of multiple organisms that are widely separated phylogenetically. This means completely identical; it's perfectly normal for two organisms facing the same pressures to develop the same adaptations. It would falsify evolution to come across a centaur and discover its genome was composed of sections of human DNA and horse DNA, because both evolutionary lines diverged. However, finding a centaur with a unique genome would not falsify evolution.
Evolutionary would be falsified in my example of direct evolution because evolution predicts that organisms inherit characteristics or their progenitors. If two blondes had a brown haired child together, evolution would be disproven, as no possible combination of genes from two blonde haired persons combine to form a genotype for brown hair (this is of course discounting mutation) Essentially, the argument is that if direct observation contradicted evolution's model of heredity (currently the mendellian genetic model) evolution would be disproven.
The phylogenetic tree predates evolutionary theory actually. It's primarily based on morphology (observation of similar characteristics.) The reason that it's important to evolutionary theory is that evolution predicts this sort of heirarchy, predicts that it's because of common descent, and predicts that the distance on this tree will be reflected on the genetic tree of life. While rearrangments have occured, and continue to occur, these are generally due to errors in taxonomy. However, testing the genetic distance between organisms we are reasonably certain are correctly classified and comparing it to the phylogenetic distance allows us to test evolution's prediction that genetics will reflect phylogeny.
While the current theory of evolution could be falsified by any of these observations, such a falsification wouldn't mean evolution would be discarded, with the exception of an observation that refutes the most basic definition of change in a population over time. Instead, the current theory would be modified to account for the new observation, synthesising a new theory of evolution. This new synthesis would still retain the aspects of the previous one that were not affected by the implications of the observation. [[User:Xyrophile|Xyrophile]] 11:44, 7 June 2008 (EDT)