Talk:Falsifiability of evolution

Misconceptions about the Theory of Evolution

Many people assume the "Theory of Evolution" is a single theory. It is not. Rather, it is a collection of 1,000,000+ theories, papers, experiments, observations and tests, all of which contribute to the overall theory of evolution". The Bible is similarly comprised of a collection of books which are a collection of verses.

A common false assumption made is that disproving one of the underlying theories, invalidates the entire theory of evolution. Unlike the Bible, evolutionary theory does not claim to be Inerrant. An error in a single theory does not disprove the larger body of knowledge. Falsifying the "Theory of Evolution" would require disproving thousands of supporting theories.PerpetualAngst 16:23, 20 June 2007 (EDT)

So you are agreeing that evolution per se is not falsifiable? Philip J. Rayment 09:43, 21 June 2007 (EDT)

With apologies to Mr. Rayment, I must take issue with Angst's claim that "The Bible claims to be inerrant." It makes no such claim. And even if it did claim to be inerrant, finding an error would only disprove the individual proposition of inerrancy -- it would not prove that everything in the Bible is wrong. Ungtss

Correction accepted. The Bible makes no claim to be inerrant. Instead, others make this claim of the Bible. Similarly, finding an error in the theory of evolution would only disprove the individual proposition -- it would not disprove evolutionary theory in it's entirety. PerpetualAngst

The Theory of Evolution is still falsifiable. Tens of thousands of papers and supporting theories would need to be refuted before one could claim the larger evolutionary theory has been refuted. PerpetualAngst

Okay, that's your position, but clearly it's not something that even all evolutionists agree on. And I did notice the error in claiming that the Bible claims to be inerrant, but whilst the Bible doesn't directly explicitly claim that, I believe that is a reasonable deduction from what it does claim, and furthermore it wasn't the key point that PerpetualAngst was making, so I decided to ignore that point (which is not to suggest that there was anything wrong with Ungtss responding to it). Philip J. Rayment 10:30, 21 June 2007 (EDT)

The Theory of Evolution is still falsifiable. Tens of thousands of papers and supporting theories would need to be refuted before one could claim the larger evolutionary theory has been refuted.

Could you be more specific in defining what "Theory of evolution" could only be falsified by disproving all the papers and supporting theories? Do you mean the idea that all life evolved from a single protocell? Or do you mean the idea that all life changes gradually as the result of variation and natural selection? If you mean the latter, I think you're right -- there are a lot of papers showing that life changes over time by variation and natural selection, and it would take a lot of work to disprove it. But if you mean the former, then explain what you mean: what papers are out there providing scientific evidence for universal common ancestry that would have to be disproven? How would you falsify the proposition that all life evolved from a single protocell? Ungtss 19:24, 21 June 2007 (EDT)

Without an answer to my question above, your argument fails. Creationists don't dispute the falsifiable, scientific, and obvious proposition that life changes over time by variation and natural selection. They dispute the unfalsifiable and unscientific proposition of universal common ancestry. Ungtss 08:10, 22 June 2007 (EDT)

See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html for a much more detailed argument in favor of common descent.

According to Steven J Gould: "Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory - natural selection - to explain the mechanism of evolution." - "Evolution as Fact and Theory", May 1981.

http://www.google.com/search?q=evolutionary.biology

http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcevolbiol/ PerpetualAngst

But my friend, that wasn't the question:). I know there are arguments out there in favor of universal common ancestry. There are also arguments against it. But is the proposition falsifiable? What experiment could be performed to prove it wrong? That's the issue here. Ungtss 15:34, 22 June 2007 (EDT)

My original point was that there is no single potential falsification test for evolution, the same as there is no single falsification test for particle physics. For example, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html gives a falsification test for each of its 29 predictions. There is no single test to falsify the proposition that all life evolved from a single protocell. Instead, you would need to refute the lines of evidence with lead to that conclusion. (See link).