Re: Beliefs and Theories


"John W Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:f5pb3b$2u9n$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

JE:-
[snipped reference to what D and W might have propoed]
drift and selection (like mutation
and selection) do not compete, they compliment.

They don't! They *compl_E_ment*. :-|

Otherwise I agree. :-)

I don't see the notion/concept/meaning of "natural selection as being a
label on a process in its own right.

It is only a slapdash heuristic notion of natural interactions producing
whatever patterns (including of course genophenotypic patterns) that can be
perceived by us to have prevailed - but with plenty of
exceptions/punctuations/transiences thrown in (to the mix of what can be
called the Evolutionary Pressure Totality).

String theory, for
example, is sometimes touted as a possible theory of everything; but
AFAIK
string theory assumes that the strings vibrate without explaining why
they
do so. In my view, this would eliminate string theory as a theory of
everything.

That is to me an absurd unrealistic attitude! (I know it is not yours, John)


JE:-
In my opinion it does a lot more than that: it eliminates string theory as
a
valid theory reducing it to be just a belief. This does not matter to Post
Modern epistemology because it does not even attempt to separate theory
from
belief (simply because it cannot do so).

What then is a belief without the backing of any kind of objectively
testable theory behind it?

(I suggest it is a phylogenetically evolved pain/fear-suppressing
neuropsychological state/functure.)

P


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