How is it possible that Animals and insects evolve ...

Philosophy Forums Science, Technology, and Math
21

Willem,

Hardly. We have abstraction, we have metaphysics, we have language, we have speculation. All of these are involved in science…

Says the person using a computer, which would not be possible without logic…

The fact is that you don’t know enough about philosophy to make such statements

We don’t even have a rational basis for predictability. For science to hide behind the metaphor of reason while completely misapplying it is a joke. That is has so much authority is today’s world despite doing this is even more laughable than the fact that people once saw Catholic priests as moral leaders…

Hiding behind something that in fact contradicts it does make science less valuable and meaningful. That scientists don’t even admit that their knowledge is a discourse like any other is pathetic…

That isn’t what he’s saying.

A supplement to the physical

It’s a metaphysical construct, an abstraction. Read the article on Hume’s Fork

As an example of a massive assumption in the scientific discource, among other things…

Of course.

22

… but not meaningful without perception, or science, for that matter
afaic anyway

… or science, which applied the logic to make a computer possible
logic is a tool, nothing more :slight_smile:

well d’uh :slight_smile:
thus, a tool, nothing more… there’s no truth in it, or value, on it’s own

probability, as you undoubtely know, is based on experimental data… i thought philosophy didn’t make use of such discourse :stuck_out_tongue:

please elaborate… i have a hard time making any sense out of all your meaningless one-liners ^^

don’t accuse me of ignorance when you’re the one spamming up the threads about evolution, a subject you obviously havn’t studied very far
as far as i’m concerned, we’re here to learn,
i’m argueing with you because i find this interesting and i appreciate your insight

obviously i havn’t studied philosophy very far either, so that’s why i asked you if you could explain
yet, an answer composed of one-liners doesn’t make me much wiser

then again, i might have done exactly that in the past as well :frowning:

greetz :slight_smile:
willem

23

Willem,

The point is not that we don’t need empirical experience (conceived scientifically or otherwise) to be meaningful, of course we do. The point is that science, just like religious beliefs, is only made possible by metaphysics. Since science as a discourse relies on metaphysics but knows next to nothing about it I’d consider this a major flaw. You, because you’ve been taught as a scientist not to consider the presumptions of the method that you are using, do not consider this a major flaw. Just an observation…

You can invent all the silicon chips that you like, without logic they won’t do anything of any use.

You see, it’s this sort of thing that makes me not want to give you more than one line responses…

Science needs maths to have a truth on it’s own…

Depends on the type of philosophy (I’m not doing your work for you)

I didn’t ask for your literary evaluation of my posting style and I don’t consider your opinion on such matters to be worth a fig. When you know about more than watching bacteria breed under a microscope because you’ve set it up that way (voila! evolution! - for fuck’s sake) then maybe I’ll give a toss.

I know a darn sight more about evolution than you do about the method you use to evidence the theory, that much is pretty clear. When you actually have some idea of what reason is and can explain to me how the method you use and the speculations that you make are reasonable then I’ll happily concede the point. So far all I’ve got from you is ‘if you take all this for granted then the dogma makes perfect sense, and no, I can’t actually reason for any of this’. This is exactly what I expected because that’s all you really get from scientists without an education in anything else…

I’m not, I’m here to dictate and insult

If that were true then you’d have learnt something by now

That’s because I’m not here to do the homework of someone who never acknowledges when his arguments have failed. I’ve never heard from you ‘oh, actually you are right, we scientists do make all sorts of assumptions that we can never justify or explain and that makes us identical in some regards to those we are always slating’ or anything of the sort. You accuse me of ‘spamming’ threads on evolution when what I’ve actually done is subject something you take for granted to proper scrutiny and found it wanting.

That you feign politeness at the end of this post is laughable when you’ve insulted me and my posting style and accused me of spamming. This stuff is all out there for you to find, if you genuinely want to learn then I suggest that I’m not going to be an effective teacher because I’m far too laden with bias and passion regarding such issues.

24

siatd,
I’m very interested in the argument you’re advancing… but I have a couple of questions.

If this is so, then aren’t all claims about the nature of the world metaphysical? One definition of metaphysics is:

“A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.”

If this is the case, what is the role of science?

cheers,
gemty

25

The trouble with people who quibble about evolution is that they lack the imagination to take in (a) the numbers involved and (b) the timescale.

There is some weirdo stuff about whole alternate templates stored in introns and lateral transmission of genetic information via tailored viruses, essentially linking the individuals of a species into a large separate-node super-neural-nettwork allowing ‘fast’ evolution in response to species-wide stress… But that is way out there with the fairies.

SIATD - are you just doing the ILP equivalent of twiddling your thumbs here, or do really disbelieve the theory…?

26

SIATD

Lol… Physics is meta-physics…HAHAHAH

Science is a methodology, your interpretation of the epistimology or utility of this methodology is not part of it.

27

gemty,

Yes, exactly. Science is simply a variation on a theme, what used to be called natural philosophy and before that just ‘philosophy’. If we actually stuck rigidly to that for which we have evidence then no theory of the nature of the world would stand up. Even the second law of thermodynamics has been suspended, albeit temporarily.

Science needs metaphysical constructs like mathematics and reasoning to be able to construct theories, without them all science can be is ‘ooh, look at that… ah, look at this… ooh, look at that other thing…’, indeed this is all ANY theory of nature can be.

To be frank that definition is a heap o’ sheet. Scientific analysis relies on metaphysical constructs, the separation of science from metaphysics is one thing that I’m attacking as false. The way I see it is that science is a discourse, like all discourses (inc. philosophy) it contains a set of presumptions and rules without which we wouldn’t be able to distinguish it from (e.g) Christianity as a discourse or Zulu witchcraft as a discourse. I am trying to demonstrate that a lot of the conventional ways of distinguishing between these discourses (and therefore creating a ground whereby we can rank them) don’t stand up to scrutiny.

As I’ve pointed out before, religions have been dealing with political and ethical questions (as an authority) for millenia. Science has been dealing with these sorts of question (as an authority distinguished from religion) for a couple of centuries and has brought us Soviet Communism, the Nazi Holocaust and the Atomic bomb. No offence to science as a whole, it has also done a lot of good things. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to accept scientific dogma any less critically than religious dogma, philosophic dogma, political dogma and so on.

When I watch the BBC news they almost invariably (regardless of the issue) turn to a scientist for a statement on some ethical quandary. Now of course the BBC will pick a scientist who will say what they want to say, and s/he’ll say it because they want to be on national TV. Why the hell should I take their opinion any more seriously that I would that of a person in the street wearing a sandwich board saying ‘the end is nigh’?

28

Tab,

I’ve never seen anything like a convincing argument for the timescale necessary for evolutionary algorithms to work their magic. I’m willing to be shown one on this issue because I really don’t have a clue.

I’m twiddling my thumbs to make a point - have those supporting evolutionary theory cited evidence? Have they used reasonable arguments? Have they conformed to the very rules that they claim are the foundation of science? No, have they fuck. I’ve been slandered, insulted, misrepresented and accused of spamming because I’ve actually bother to try to provide some opposition and curious criticism. This is totally unscientific and makes my point better than I ever could - that any method is only as good as the people using it.

Do I really disbelieve the theory - yes, until someone presents a form of it that actually makes sense to me and is obviously derived from evidence. When you’ve got evolutionists left, right and centre saying that the fossil record is an inadequate demonstration but decrying every counter theory as an attempt by the religious right to take over science then you don’t have a very convincing discourse. A short search last night revealed comments (as yet unverified as I couldn’t find the original papers) from 3 different Nobel prize winners who said that the theory was little more than speculation that bends the facts to make them fit. All of them were/are atheists or agnostics.

To me this remains a pretty open question, all this talk of it as ‘the best theory that we have so far’ seems like a roundabout way of saying ‘most of thing will be abandoned when we get around to it’.

29

Look, science is not an attempt at absolute truth nor even truth for that matter. It is an on going dialogue that evolves and changes as we refine our practices and discover new things. The laws of nature are called laws only because they have yet to be refuted, and more importantly because every test ever done has affirmed them. The only reason you can claim science is metaphysical is because you are an idiot that doesn’t understand what science is. When you develop a decent definition of science and put it in its proper context come back and we’ll continue the discussion.

Fortunately for us, making sense to you isn’t a prerequisite for legitimacy.

30

someoneisatthedoor

Poor little siatd got called an idiot, what a random and rude thing to happen.

Terrific counterargument you’ve got there. Feel free to try again once your philosophical balls have dropped.

Since you haven’t provided a decent definition of science, we’ll use mine.

Science: Look, science is not an attempt at absolute truth nor even truth for that matter. It is an on going dialogue that evolves and changes as we refine our practices and discover new things. The laws of nature are called laws only because they have yet to be refuted, and more importantly because every test ever done has affirmed them. Science as a methodology.

Tell me what is metaphysical about this and we’ll go from there, idiot.

31

did you know that dna changes if bombarded by solar particles or during recombination into a new zygote? and that scientists can calculate how often this happens and it isnt really very rare? why is that not evidence? if the probability of the random changes evolution predicts will happen is large enough such that life can have gone through enough of them in 4 billion years to produce humans, wouldnt that prove evolution as much as proving that your computer works (which apparently is impossible to prove)?

32

i’m pretty sure i agree with that one

earlier you said “science IS metaphysics”
which is entirely different…

as for my previous post in this forum…
i didn’t mean offense, but i guess i wrote it… musta caught the virus from spending too much time here :stuck_out_tongue:

cya

33

Fair enough, assume that I meant either ‘science is metaphysical’ or that ‘science is on an epitemological par with metaphysics’. Yes, to say ‘science is metaphysics’ is highly misleading if not inaccurate.

Pah, I get insulted and offended all the time, my posting style inspires it. I’m well aware of that and do not hold any grudges regarding that. You are actually one of the best posters here for avoiding personal conflicts and sticking to the discussion so to hold anything against you would be futile and childish…

:smiley:

34

FM,

Genetic mutation is evidence for genetic mutation, not one species turning into another. There’s a massive difference. Show me the latter…

35

well the difference between species is nothing besides their dna being different and its clearly possible for mutations to cause those same differences. especially when the differences that we see most often (virtually always) just so happen to be the ones that would be selected by a process called natural selection.

you do agree that if it were possible for beneficial mutations to arise, natural selection IS UNARGUABLY what would happen, right?

i mean, if you dont think natural selection is necessarily what happens, then you dont think that animals necessarily reproduce more when they are better at catching food, digesting it, having babies etc. and you know that makes no sense.

your problem is believing that solar radiation and reproduction errors cause beneficial mutations? even though weve seen bacteria and pesticide-avoiding insects and the common cold do it for decades?

36

siatd

Like I said, science is a methodology.

link would be nice

Lets see, second law is something to the effect of entropy in the universe increases over time…And it is somehow proven wrong in a closed system? Are you seriously saying this?

Lol, you make some asenine claim about science being metaphysics, and then I tell you to give one example and you run like a bitch to the moderators. Go ahead tell them that I called you an idiot, just hope they don’t read the thread and discover that you really are.[/b]

37

Hey SIATD,

Something that I was thinking about last night - It’s a bit “common-sensey” but perhaps supports the evolutionist views:

There’s the laying out of bones with significant simularities into chronological ‘arrays’ of development - illustrating change with time. But that’s arguably subjective especially if the scientist in question is working toward a foregone conclusion, and generally very jigsaw-puzzley.

How about just looking at diversity in the kingdoms, bearing in mind evolution takes a bloody long time to work.

Say everything starts from scratch - the bacteria/microbes → marine plantlife/plankton/coral → land plants/fungi/‘water insects’/cephalopods → crustacea/fish → Amphibia/ ‘true insects’ → reptiles/mammals/birds → homids.

ie: your basic ‘complex things come after simple things’.

And: The basic tenents of evolution:

*constant change over incredibly stupifying amount of time.
*conservation of changes suitable to external conditions.

→ any form of life has only a finite amount of ‘changiness’ available to it in a given amount of time. Given by the “TabEvolutionaryConstantFormulaâ„¢” (T x MR) = TPC

[size=75][T= time, MR = mutation rate, TPC = Total potential Changiness for any given form of life][/size]

A bit sketchy but serves for illustration.

logically - the longer a basic kingdom of life has been around, macroscopically unchanged, you’d expect a greater degree of microscopic change/diversification within that kingdom, as evolution apparantly can never just twiddle it’s thumbs. It has had a longer time to work on, say, bacteria, than it has had to work on the apes, simply because they’ve been around for oodles and oodles of years.

What I mean is, we still have examples of the most ancient types of life existing - microbes/bacteria, which have conserved their basic form down the ages. life found a form it was happy with, and rather than evolve ‘upward’ to greater complexity, stayed simple, and spread laterally - diversifying - spending their ‘total changeiness’ going sideways that the more complex forms spent going ‘upwards’.

And what do we see around us…? A Gazillion types of bacteria, a squadrillion types of ‘plant’ life, a bazillion types of insects, a ton of fishey thingies, a whole hell of a lot of 4 legged beasties, quite a handfull of flying stuff, and… not very many homids at all.

There you go, an evolution you can see. An evolution you can eat, become infected by and teach not to shit on your carpet.

Do you believe now…?

Tab.

38

Tab,

Hence why I brought up the issue of the former Director of Paleantology at the British Natural History museum - he said something about such arrangements of fossils being no more scientific than Greek mythology. Now he may have been incorrect but since we cannot verify the ages of any of these fossils I’d say that any attempt at arranging them chronologically will be too subjective for it to be acceptable scientifically. Of course I’m not a scientist, but if I were then I wouldn’t accept this ‘tale’.

But again, we are speculating as to how such diversity came about. I won’t bang on about diversity being a human construct rather than something objectively derived from nature…

Sure, but what evidence do we have that bacteria/microbes precede fungi other than that if we take evolution for granted there’s no other way to explain it?

This seems more like an excuse for why we cannot actually see evolution taking place before our eyes (we see mutation, not evolution) than an argument for evolution. It seems to be ‘if we take evolution for granted then…’

This could be a function of your ‘common sense’ tone in this post rather than the arguments themselves. For me it is a little hard to tell.

Hence, as you are about to point out, why there are a lot more different types of bacteria than there are types of ape. This is where you are starting to convince me…

So there are two different sorts of evolution?

Not yet, I still have a lot of issues with the leaps being made and the unreasonable assumptions. For something so obviously political in its construction I do wonder at why it is described as a scientific theory, or more precisely why science doesn’t openly acknowledge its politics.

39

earth is not a closed system, siatd :slight_smile:

40

Perhaps not, but do you take my point about it (the second law) being a natural law that has actually been contradicted in an experiment yet is still accepted due to the preponderance of evidence?