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Talk:Falsifiability of evolution (view source)
Revision as of 14:25, June 7, 2008
, 14:25, June 7, 2008→Edit summary: Evolution is too flexible to be falsified.
If you read Whitten's quote carefully, you'll not he speaks about challenging "the robustness of a prevailing worldview like evolution" and not about evolution per se. The article is about the institutional bias against challenging established viewpoints. In his original quote, you note that he states "they may happen to stumble across facts which would seem to conflict with its predictions." If it's even possible to test these predictions, clearly evolution is falsifiable! [[User:Xyrophile|Xyrophile]] 08:56, 7 June 2008 (EDT)
If you read Whitten's quote carefully, you'll not he speaks about challenging "the robustness of a prevailing worldview like evolution" and not about evolution per se. The article is about the institutional bias against challenging established viewpoints. In his original quote, you note that he states "they may happen to stumble across facts which would seem to conflict with its predictions." If it's even possible to test these predictions, clearly evolution is falsifiable! [[User:Xyrophile|Xyrophile]] 08:56, 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.
: As for "research" supporting a theory of a multicellular organism, the paper you linked to seems to be very short on actual research! Rather, it is wild imagination, a just-so story.
: The wheels and magnets ''are'' in biological structures. The rest of that paragraph of yours basically tried to explain away the fact that a proposed falsification of evolution ''was'' put to the test, evolution failed, but evolution was not thereby falsified! So if falsification tests manage to falsify, but the theory stands anyway, why should we believe that any ''other'' proposed falsifications would actually have the potential to falsify evolution? I've had several people put to me that finding dinosaur fossils in recent strata would falsify it, but I have absolutely no doubt that if such were found (and something equivalent ''has'' been found), evolution would not be falsified, because it would be quite easy to simply say that they didn't die out 65 million years ago after all, without discarding evolution itself.
: You make an interesting point about the difference between logically-possible and logistically-possible falsifications. I'm not disagreeing, but wonder where that leads. Does that mean that 6-day creation 6,000 years ago is falsifiable because, logically though not logistically, we could one day invent a time machine and go back and observe it happening (or not happening)? Or does the falsifiability of creation depend on current thinking about the theoretical possibility of time travel (which has wavered between it not being possible to it being theoretically possible)?
: I understand what you are getting at with potential falsifiability and accumulation of mutations, but let me put an absurd example to you so that I can see how you explain it. Creation (the alternative to evolution that so many say is unscientific because it's not falsifiable) predicts that we exist. Because we can test if we exist, creation is therefore falsifiable. I could probably think of a slightly less absurd example, but hopefully that makes the point.
: I understand why the platypus is not a true chimera, but the point of the chimera example is that evolution supposedly cannot explain it. Neither can it adequately explain many other similarities not due to common descent, but evolution is not thereby falsified, because someone can always invent ''some'' explanation, no matter how fanciful. Also, the chimera example says "chimeras ... unable be explained by lateral gene transfer or symbiosis". Is such a thing ''possible''? That is, is it ''possible'' to have chimeras ''unable to be explained'' in an evolutionary context? I doubt it, and that's part of the example being contrived. If they occurred, evolutionists would come up with ''some'' explanation. That's the point: it's so flexible it can explain ''anything''. So the argument amounts to saying, "Evolution would be falsified if there something was discovered that couldn't be explained by evolution". Duh!
: Your "explanation" of the direct observation of creation does not explain why evolution would be falsified.
: And the dissimilar DNA argument is just as silly. It basically says that if two organisms were found to be more similar than expected according to the evolutionary family tree (i.e. common descent), then evolution would be wrong. But this has been found numerous times. All that happens is that the family tree is rearranged (you said yourself that the "next step is to adjust the theory to account for the discrepancies") rather than evolution being discarded.
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 10:25, 7 June 2008 (EDT)