Evolution was tailor made for the Ignoramus

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
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Evolutionary theory is the latest in a series of historical world views. And as such will eventually be overturned by another thought system. Its fate, like that of “world views” before it, is to viewed by some future generation as being naïve and ignorant.

Those who insist that “Evolution” is ultimate and final word on the subject are deluding themselves. They do this not for scientific reasons; for there is abundant evidence that evolution is deeply flawed. Instead they hold religiously to evolution for selfish personal reasons – to live in the illusion that they are “right” and to avoid at all costs the pain of personal growth. They live in and are nurtured by the flattery that they are the most intelligent and enlightened people to have ever lived. Their narrow minded and self “righteous” attitudes make meaningful dialog all but impossible.

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here’s 1 quick analogy so that you understand what evolution is.
Priest - the earth is flat
Ptolemeus - the sun goes around the earth
Galileo, Copernicus, Kepller - the earth goes round the sun
Newton - the earth goes round the sun because of gravity
Einstein - the earth goes round the sun because space is bent by gravity/mass

All the previous theories (exept Ptolemeu) were only incomplete and the fact that people constructed new theories to better explain the old ones does not change the fact that THE EARTH GOES ROUND THE SUN.

Its exactly the same with evolution; the basic ideea mutation/natural selection will ALWAYS be true.

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Nice try but not valid. For example Newton would be considered a “priest” today. He considered his work on the Book of Revelation (number systems and predictions) to be one of his greatest works. The list goes on and on.

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tell me :slight_smile:

World views, i should think, are a representation of the things that are known.
I guess, in the future, evolution will probably become part of a much larger theory on genetic behaviour or be split up in a large number of fields who consider evolution from the population-biological side, the genetical side, the historical side… and so on.

In fact, evolution has already fundamentally changed a couple of times in the past and it is still changing as we speak… each change according to the knowledge of the time. so, unlike you claim, evolution theory is not a scientific dogma.

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I know Newton was a religious person; i never said he wasn’t… however if HE was to say he wasn’t the church (at the time in control of EVERY academy and library) would have pushed him aside.

But nevertheless… you haven’t come even close to explaining how science in the future will reach the conclusion that the sun goes around the earth.
And thats what you need to proove to show me that the basic fact of evolution will also be changed 180 degrees.

As knowleddge moves forward science adds to the complexity of existing theories all the time but rarely if ever anymore, changes them completly… thats what you folks don’t understand.

The discovvery of random events in quantum physics didn’t turn the world upside-down; all the Newtonian laws of physics still work, the science is merely more complex now.

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The growth of scientific models is like the building up of a sine wave by adding successive powers. The first few “humps” are soon established, and remain unchanged as the boundary between order and chaos (so to speak) is pushed further and further outwards.

Hence, as Carpathian says, we won’t eventually realise that the Sun goes round the Earth, and we won’t realise that the electron is more massive than the proton, etc etc.

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Not on the quantum scale, they don’t…

What a pointless thread. Every generation of scientists contains a few that say ‘this is a fact and it will always be true’. This is a fallacy at least as old as Bertrand Russell’s early work. Science is like all other knowledge forms, and it will eventually be overcome. Evolution, Newton, Einstein, Bohr - it’s all going out of the window sooner or later. Why? Because that’s what knowledge does…

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what he said

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Yeah, evolution does have some holes in it, and probably will be overturned by a new theory which better describes how organisms change over time and how new species develop.

But it’s the best thing we’ve got. Science develops theories that approximate reality, but the evidence from reality eventually contradicts the theories. Then a new theory is developed, and it is compared with the observations of nature, and in some ways verified, in some ways contradicted. And then a new theory develops which is better than that one. And so on, and so forth.

But right now, evolution is our best description of how species change over time. It’s a picture, not a perfectly clear one, but never the less the best one we have. There are problems with it, problems that should be overcome by future scientists, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It means it’s up to the best minds to come together and try to modify the theory to better fit the data.

Theories are models constructed by humans, based on observations of nature. They all have limitations, but just because they have limitations doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It just means scientists have more work to do and aren’t finished yet. The theory with the fewest limitations to it is the “correct” theory, until a new theory comes a long which is better than it.

Oh, and even if evolution is completely wrong because it’s a “historical world view” doesn’t mean one of the half-baked competing “theories” like Intelligent Design or Creationism is correct. If evolution is not “correct” then it does not follow that Intelligent Design or Creationism is.

Oh, and just a thought; couldn’t Creationism or Intelligent Design be viewed as “historical world views”? I don’t know, what do you all think?

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=D> =D> =D>

…

The funny thing is, we’ve probably already hit it. I mean, we can try and be witty and speculate as to how far the government is ahead of the public realm of research and technology, but i think it’s safe to say that they are in fact ahead.

What would you do if you woke up tomorrow in a completely different paradigm? They don’t have bullshit detectors at the threshold so you might bring in something which just shouldn’t be there.

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Fair point SIATD, and one that I agree with.

Except that it is always getting narrower.

Evolution as we understand it will be total bullshit in 30 years. . . .

But evolution will still be true. It is like Newtonia physics. While Newtonian physics may be ‘technically false’ as Plantagena says, they are still more right than they are wrong. As time goes on, we see how right they were and at what a subtle and sub-relevant level they were wrong.

Evolution is the same. While our current understanding will be shown to be ‘technically false’ within the next 30 years, it will still be much more right than anything else.

I’m willing to bet L100 on it. You wire me L100 and if in 10 years ID or any other evolution-alternative has been widely acepted by scinece (we’ll define this as one article in both Nature and Science that supports a non-evotionary view of life) I’ll wire youi L1,000 if that happens.

Let’s both hope that inflation stays at .02%.

You game? 'Cuase if you are, PM me. I’ll do that wager anyday.

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Xunzian,

You seem to have made a recent reappearance here at ILP. If so, then it’s good to see you back. If not, then I’m sorry for having thought you’d gone away when you hadn’t.

Good good

You mean that the number of possible theories that can explain the data can only decrease as the total amount of data increases? This is something my uncle put to me the last time I saw him, and I’m somewhat unsure either way. Logically, it makes a lot of sense. But there remains the possibility of a ‘wholly new’ paradigm, an ‘epistemological break’ or whatever you wish to term it. That is to say, unless we’ve already considered all the possible theories (as the militant atheists tend to believe that we have, hence their ‘last man’ nihilism), we cannot answer the question either way.

Of course, I could have misinterpreted where you are going with this.

Or, put another way, ‘evolution’ will not have the same definition in 30 years as it has now, but it will still be believed by the vast majority of scientists as the best explanation for the diversity and adaptation of life. Indeed, to think otherwise is unscientific
a) because thinking otherwise is an unfalsifiable claim - gotta love those non-scientists taking scientific knowledge way too far because of their own shameless intellectual hypocrisy and lack of maturity
b) because historically that’s usually what happens

Unless we’ve made a crucial mistake somewhere and are still massively wrong - which has to be a possibility, epistemological.

We’ll see.

Let’s just make it a beer. I’ll wire you a beer.

I’m certainly considering it, though I’m curious as to why you chose 30 years as your timeframe. Letting you choose the timeframe certainly plays into your hands in terms of odds…

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Actually, Britain has some truly awesome beers that I don’t have access too. Let me do some research, since most of them are cask-conditioned and, uhhh, those don’t survive a cross-atlantic trip, unless you’re willing to pay for shipping on a firkin, in which case you are 1) awesome 2) independently wealthy in the Jane Austin sense, which is also cool if you’ll send me a firkin.

As to 30 years, at a recent lab meeting I called a collegue out on his research. It was all really awesome, and really had the potential to save a lot of lives, but it assume the existance of tumour-specific antigens. I don’t think tumour-specific antigens exists. I made him a wager that every year he pays me $10, and if (at any time) a TSA is discovered, I will pay him double back, at that moment. It was in the middle of a lab meeting. He turned red. He tried to defend his research, and then later on spoke to me about the bet. We agreed 30 years was a reasonable timeframe. He didn’t want to pay into his pension, since he wants to go back to Korea eventually and he (possibly incorrectly) believes that $10US will still be worth something at that point.

As for my absence . . . Wnt5a is a fucking whore. I’ve moved on to greener pastures, but for a while that was sucking up all my time. Then there was the World Cup. Additionally, I bought some texts to read. First read philosophy by people who know shit, then spew shit on internet. I’ve read some, still reading more. Now I’m back. Tilling the field keeps the mind fertile, and ILP is great for tilling the mind. Lots of fertilizer here too, which is good. You are a particularly good resource. Always willing to name a worthwhile read. Fucking PETA doesn’t respect Hume and my death-as-endpoint objectives . . . grrrr, fucking LARC . . .
I lurked for a while, waiting for a good Daoist discussion and the true ying brought me back. Since I was back, I may as well play Darwin’s housecat.

As for the specifics of the wager, I’ll let a whole new paradigm count, I thought I made that clear. As for defining such because it has always been defined so . . . I disagree that such a situation is valid. Newtonian physics is still taught because it still very adequately model reality. At certain (quatum) points, it starts to break down, but for everyday concerns, Newtonian Gravity works just fine. Evolution is the same. It’s come a loooooooong way since Darwin. I don’t think anybody here is debating Darwinian evolution. Still, that was the foundation and it is a worthwhile foundation. Similarly, our molecular evoltution is a worthwhile theory that will be improved upon as time goes on. Molecular evolution is more specific (more evidence, more specific evidence) than Darwinian evolution. As out equipment improves (most advances in science are really the fallout of advancement in equipment. Hello van Leeuwenhoek!!!), so too will our understanding of evolution. Additionally, so will our understanding of the term ‘species’. The current micro/macro evolution debate is a semantic, rather than scientific issue.

That’s what I mean by ‘narrower’. Better definitions of ‘species’ may allow for multiple definitions of ‘species’, but they also refine the definition of evolution making it much clearer. We lose specificity in one area to create more in another. Even that isn’t really true, it’s more about shatterning common sense, which science has a harder time justifying that philosophy.

So, I’ll take a firkin now, and I’ll ship you a keg (we are tragically short of firkins here) when evolution as we presently understand it is 1) totally overturned (think helio- vs. terracentric models) or 2) is undergoes a paradigm shift to such an extent that it renders our present understanding of evolution moot (Darwinian evolution is still useful. Flawed, but useful).

So, what do you drink? It’s impossible to find a dark mild in the US worth drinking.

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You might have added that we will NEVER realize that evolution is not a fact. The universe will end before that can happen. In the strictest meaning of never.

That is because evolution states that ALL THINGS CHANGE GRADUALLY. Period.

The gradual part rules out miracles of the type that just happen suddenly, which is actually the most scientifically questionable part, given speculations about worm holes and such. (Miracles of other kinds are not ruled out by science). Change is a requisite of time, as you can’t have one without the other. So we have gradual change over time, one quantum moment to the next, forever.

In the field of biology, given its concept of ‘species’, Darwin proposed biological and environmental mechanisms for HOW species might evolve.
This is a biological theory, meaningful only in the universe of biology. Its success, completeness, range of applicability, etc. are purely scientific issues.

Since evolution is a fundamental fact, directly traceable to the second law of thermodynamics, theories of evolution should be possible for every field of science, whether cosmological, particle, chemical, molecular, psychological, sociological, or whatever else.

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Xunzian,

I’m not wealthy, particularly not in the Austin sense. However, I do have homes in both Lancashire and Yorkshire, home to some of the finest ales that money can buy. Indeed, should you ever find yourself near the three peaks (Inglebrough, Penyghent and Wernside) I can strongly recommend the Martin Arms, near Ingleton. It has possibly the greatest selection of beers, including many taps that change beer on a regular basis, that I’ve seen.

This is a good yarn, I must say. I’m already thinking of how to build such a dialogue into a short story.

As are you. ILP is great, even in the silly summer months. It’s very, very hard to avoid responding to posts here because there are so many conflicting and competing ideas. I’ve never come across a more inspiring board.

Without naming names, there are a few here who insist that everything that Darwin wrote is irrefutable fact. Bizarre, I know.

This is something I’ve only really understood in the last year or so, and it has set me off on a series of ideas that led to the novel I’m writing at present, about genetically manipulated footballers. Regardless of science, evolution is theoretically very interesting because it forces open certain definitions (while keeping others closed) of being human, and the possibility of overcoming. It is conceptually interesting, which possibly explains some of the moronic dogma that sometimes accompanies it.

Well, there would seem to be no inherent or necessary block to use dissolving the difference. Whether that makes it merely a semantic issue, I’m not so sure. Certainly, it’s not here to stay.

You may have to wait until I’ve sold a book or two, but given the sufficient financial ability, I’ll happily ship you a firkin.

I tend to alternate between mild and bourbon when out, though of course clubs never have anything but pisspoor lager and overpriced generic vodka with some sort of artificial fruit juice in tow. At home, I drink G&T with ice, lime and lemon when feeling particularly civilised, and bottled lager when I’m feeling particularly uncivilised, but only export strength. I never drink canned beer anymore, and tend to only drink favoured lagers when I do drink that (i.e. Budvar, Grolsch, that sort of thing). I used to drink red wine but got out of the habit. I should probably get back into the habit, it’s better for you than spirits.

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ditto