Re: A FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 01:10:26 -0400 (EDT)
"g" gillawton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
"wblakesx" wblakesx@xxxxxxxxx wrote:-
> >>Be careful of cognitive masking, there is a great deal of paradox in
> >>the world which May become explicable in the proper frame. The human
> >>mind has some serious weaknesses outside it's customary niche, the
> >>temporal aspect of evolution is well outside it. What's logical in the
> >>parish can be very false in the world.
> > JE:-
> > This is why Popper required any _scientific_ theory to remain refutable.
> > Using this requirement "cognitive masking", "paradoxes", "serious
> > weaknesses" and "what is logic in the parish" simply dissolve into
> > irrelevancy.
> John,
> I've never read Popper but have read and heard from innumerable sources
> that
> scientific theory must be refutable for so long -- and it is so deeply
> internalized in all my thinking -- that I cannot recall ever having not
> believed it.
>
> Somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to recall that Isaac Newton and
> others were quite adamant about it, so it seems odd to me that we would
> need
> to cite popper.
JE:-
Popper actually took considerable time and trouble to provide a _formal_
version. He did so because he became acutely aware that even the most
intelligent of his colleagues appeared quite capable of providing just very
clever spin for any idea that they just happened to like (which in this case
was communism) even when the empirically based facts were entirely against
their favored idea. Before Popper the idea that an empirically based
refutation must always be available for any valid theory only remained
anecdotal.
The process of refutation is much more complex than it seems at first
glance. Unless careful thinking is applied a related but entirely different
concept of non verification becomes confused with refutation on just a
routine basis. Many of the criticisms of Popper can be resolved when this
critical difference is more fully understood. I reworked Popper's principle
of refutation to propose that any scientifically valid theory must provide a
refutable maximand. A maximand is just anything that remains maximized. In
Special Relativity this is the velocity of light. In Darwinism it is the
number of fertile forms a parent reproduces into one population. Just like
the velocity of light cannot be reduced to something less that what it can
be the total number of fertile forms reproduced into one population cannot
be selected to be reduced. If either prohibited observation is actually
observed in nature then each respective theory stands refuted.
> Have you ever heard the allegedly true story about the debate (back in the
> 15th century, I think it was) over how many teeth horses have. I need to
> track it down, because it is hillarious. The most scholarly men of the
> time
> met to debate various important issues, and this was one of them.
> In the back of the auditorium sat a young monk who -- after the debate had
> become very tedious -- spoke up and said, "There is a horse tethered
> outside. Why don't you just go out there and count and see how many teeth
> it has."
> As the allegedly true story goes, he was physically attacked and thrown
> out
> bodily.
> My thinking is like that young monk's. Only I would have recommending
> counting the teeth of several horses, and, if all the samplings did not
> match up, than count the teeth of a large number of horses and average
> them
> out.
JE:-
It was only after Darwin and Wallace the concept that each horse remained
biologically unique actually became formalized within a refutable theory of
nature so that the number of teeth for any member of this supposed species
just becomes reduced to a useful contestable category (an evolutionists
absolute assumption) and not just a dictated category (a non evolutionists
absolute). The epistemological heart of the dispute between evolutionists
and non evolutionists was only this. Also, this question lies at the very
heart of one of the largest problems the world faces today: racism. Any
solution entirely depends on what somebody decided to define was a member of
a species and a sub species. Even if everybody decided the same so that they
all agreed this does not mean that nature agreed with them (but god help any
individual who dared to say so). It is nature that has the final say and not
man. Speciation and sub speciation must follow a long evolutionary history.
This history remains well hidden in nature and must be _empirically_ and
very painfully rediscovered bit by bit and not just dictated to suit some
favored idea. This is what separated Darwin and Wallace from almost
everybody else at that time. Sadly, today, Neo Darwinists attempt to dictate
what nature is via the misuse (please note: misuse and not overuse) of non
empirically based models. If Darwin and Wallace were alive today they would
be appalled at such misuse. Popper would have argued that he has seen it all
before: very intelligent men and women just very intelligently supplying
spin in order to protect a politically favored idea and thus their own jobs.
One of my chosen examples (many actually exist) which I am prepared to
dissect bit by bit is the ongoing protection and misuse of Hamilton's
oversimplified and _non empirically_ based rationale for the evolution of
_empirically_ based "altruism" in nature over about 50 years.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxx
.
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