Re: Misconceptions about Parsimony


Paul Crowley wrote:
> "Jim McGinn" <jimmcginn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote

> > > > A little test for you, Ross. What's better:
> > > > a) having no hypothesis at all;
> > > > b) having a hypothesis that nobody can dispute?
> > >
> > > Unquestionably (a). If you think you have (b)
> > > you are simply fooling yourself. It would be
> > > worse than thinking you have a perpetual
> > > motion machine. (b) is an oxymoron.
> > >
> > > No one should put forward an hypothesis
> > > without saying how it could be disproved.
> >
> > Why in the world would somebody put together a hypothesis
> > that they can disprove? Paul, I think you misread Popper.
>
> As you wrote to Rick Wagler:
> >>|> How about Newton, Copernicus, Einstein?
> >>|> Were they kooks also?
>
> They were not kooks, but (unlike you) were
> desperately concerned about the mehods of
> proof and disproof for their theories. They
> proposed many experiments.

Really not a fair comparison. This is because evolution is a
historical science. With a normal science you do an experiment and you
create new evidence. With a historical science the evidence already
exists. All you can really do is propose a hypothesis and then "test"
it by way of reason along he lines that it either succeeds or fails to
"predict" the actual evidence.

IOW, if you want to dispute my hypothesis all you can do--all anybody,
including myself, can do--is try to find evidence that one can argue
could not possibly be predicted by my hypothesis and/or evidence that
one can argue should be evident but isn't.

A good example is the continuing AAT nonsense. It's brain dead easy to
find evidence that is not predicted by AAT and/or evidence that should
be predicted but is not evident.

Let's take your hypothesis, for example. It predicts significant
fluctuations in sea levels at ?mya. If and when you fill in the blank
on when this happened we'll be able to look at the paleoclimatic
evidence and confirm or fail to confirm your supposition.

That you all are having difficulty "testing" my hypothesis is the best
testimony I can get for it's validity.

>
> > > If it can be disproved, then it's not an hypothesis.
>
> Sorry, bad typo. I meant to write:
>
> "If it can't be disproved (i.e. in theory),
> then it's not an hypothesis."

In another post to Jason I listed 4 things that one might investigate
to dispute my hypothesis.

Jim

.

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