View source for Logic of possibility

'''The Logic of possibility''' is a peculiarly imaginative, inventive mode of argument. Unlike conventional logic, where the compound of possibilities does not result in a greater possibility or probability, but in a lesser one, the logic of possibility is one by which possibilities are assumed to add up to probability.<ref name="Hedtke">{{cite book
|author=Randal Hedtke
|title=Secrets of the Sixth Edition
|publisher=Master Books
|place=Portland, Oregon
|year=2010
|pages=26
|isbn=978-0-89051-597-6
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gvyHquVubDoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hedtke+The+secrets+of+the+sixth+edition&source=bl&ots=VQBk7unu95&sig=3-pYZsIj2vzBHgcIbYEpexlVc9s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FsOGUO2kCIKJ4gS-tYCoBg&redir_esc=y}}</ref>{{#tag:ref|cf.''"But were I to make such a claim I would observe, as Richard Dawkins does, that to the extent that simultaneous and parallel changes are required to form a complex organ, to that extent does the hypothesis of random variation and natural selection become implausible. It is one thing to find a single needle in a haystack, quite another to find a dozen needles in a dozen haystacks at precisely the same time. Surely the [[burden of proof]] in such matters is not mine. I am not obliged to defend such mathematical trivialities as the proposition that as independent events are multiplied in number, their joint probability of occurrence plummets."'' (David Berlinski)<ref>{{cite web|title=A Scientific Scandal? David Berlinski & Critics|author=David Berlinski|publisher=Center for Science and Culture(originally: Commentary)|date=July 8, 2003|accessdate=May 15, 2013|url=http://www.discovery.org/a/1509}}</ref>|group=note}} Effectively, the logic of possibility [[Fog displacement|replaces one unknown mystery with another]].<ref name="DeniableDarwin"/>{{#tag:ref|For example, the assumably unknown causes of homosexual behaviour are replaced by insisting that such behaviour is result of operation of so called '' 'evolutionary enigma' ''.<ref>{{cite web|title=Homosexuality as a Consequence of Epigenetically Canalized Sexual Development|author=William R. Rice, Urban Friberg and Sergey Gavrilets |publisher=The Quarterly Review of Biology|date=December 2012|pages=343–368|acessdate=03.03.2013|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/10.1086/668167.pdf?acceptTC=true|quote=This paper argues that sexually antagonistic selection can also be involved in epigenetic effects and explain the enigmatic high prevalence of several ﬁtness-reducing human characters. ... Homosexuality is frequently considered to be an unusual phenotype because it represents an evolutionary enigma —a trait that is expected to reduce Darwinian ﬁtness, yet it persists at substantial frequency across many different (possibly all) human populations.}}</ref> Cf. [[explanation in science]].|group=note}} 

[[Darwin]] was criticised for using this method in [[The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection|The Origin of Species]] for there in it is assumed that ''the mere possibility of imagining'' a series of steps of transition from one condition of organs to another is to be accepted as a reason for believing that such transition has taken place.<ref>{{cite book|title=Darwin and the Darwinian revolution|author=Gertrude Himmelfarb|publisher=Peter Smith|year=1967|page=273,274,334|url=http://books.google.no/books?ei=StgxUcXSEMSK4AS9qoBg&id=C0OTeANFU88C&dq=himmelfarb+Darwin+and+the+darwinian+revolution&q=transitions#search_anchor}}</ref>{{#tag:ref|cf.''"Today it is simply unscientific to claim that the fantastically reduced entropy of the human brain, of the dolphin's sound lens, and of the eye of a fossilised trilobite simply "happened", for experimental experience has shown that such miracles just do not "happen"."''<ref>{{cite book |title=The natural sciences know nothing of evolution|author=Wilder Smith|publisher=Word for Today|year=2003|page=146|isbn=978-1931713504|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qbr7AQAACAAJ&dq=The+natural+sciences+know+nothing+of+evolution&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bJozUcalHemL4ATj-4CoAQ&redir_esc=y}}</ref>|group=note}} 

Adopting the logic of possibility is an unscientific way of avoiding criticism of a [[hypothesis]] and attempt to free it from the [[burden of proof]] because a critic could reply to conjecture and imagination only with conjecture of his or her own, what would pointlessly lead nowhere.<ref name="Hedtke"/>{{#tag:ref|cf.''"As my colleague, the physical chemist Peter Atkins, puts it, we must be equally agnostic about the theory that there is a teapot in orbit around the planet Pluto. We can’t disprove it. But that doesn’t mean the theory that there is a teapot is on level terms with the theory that there isn’t"'' Bertrand Russell (1958), quoted in Ars Disputandi<ref>{{cite web |title=Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist’s Teapot|author=Brian Garvey|publisher=Ars Disputandi|year=2010|volume=10|issn=1566-5399|acessdate=03.03.2013|url=http://www.arsdisputandi.org/publish/articles/000339/article.pdf}}</ref>|group=note}} The logic of possibility is native to [[postmodern science]] and [[scientism]], respectively; and it violates the borderline, until recently respected with dignity by great scientists, between what is known and what is not.<ref name="DeniableDarwin"/> The counterfactual reasoning inherent to logic of possibility should not be confused with [[Gedanken experiment|Gedanken (thought) experiment]], an legitimate device of the imagination used, inter alia by brilliant practitioners like, for example, [[Galileo]], [[Descartes]], [[Newton]], [[Leibniz]], and [[James Maxwell|Maxwell]]{{#tag:ref|For example, [[Maxwell’s intelligent agent]], referred to by secular scientists as '[[Maxwell's demon]]', was a [[Gedankenexperiment]] to help us to understand the dissipation of energy in [[nature]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Information and Information Flow: An Introduction|author=Manuel Eugen Bremer, Daniel Cohnitz|publisher=Ontos Verlag|year=2004|page=17|isbn=978-3937202471|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NSsUhHlysrcC&pg=PA17&dq=Maxwell's+thought+experiment+dramatized+the+fact&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7G4zUe3JMOmk4ATJsIHQDw&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Maxwell's%20thought%20experiment%20dramatized%20the%20fact&f=false|quote= This thought experiment was intended by Maxwell to dramatize the fact that the second law is a statistical principle and that it is not certain that the entropy in any case increases.}}</ref>|group=note}}, to investigate the nature of things without making factual claims about what had allegedly happened in their unobservable [[Historical science|history]].