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Journal pudge's Journal: Demarcation 54

Journal by pudge

People keep telling me ID is not science.

They are unable to say why. Every one of them.

Well, they make some attempts. They say ID is not falsifiable. But then again, neither is evolution: can you come up with any imaginable experiment to show that evolution is false? (No, you can't.)

They say ID is not testable. Well, testability has its own problems, which is why Popper invented falsifiability. Which doesn't work.

Demarcation, as I noted recently, does not work. Do not tell me ID is not science because it doesn't fit some preconceived criteria, because you are just demonstrating that you really don't understand the issues involved.

People say ID is not science, it is philosophy; the problem with this is that science is inherently philosophical itself. Science is about conducting experiments, making observations, drawing conclusions, and forming hypotheses.

How do you conduct an experiment without some philosophical idea of what makes for a proper experiment, following certain guidelines that will lead to reasonable results?

Collecting data and making observations may be mostly empirical, but you have to have some idea of what to observe and which data to collect.

As to drawing conclusions and forming hypotheses: that is nothing *but* philosophy. Reason, logic, imagination are all philosophy.

I don't know if ID is science. But I do know that the people who tell me it is not don't know what they are talking about.

This discussion was created by pudge (3605) for no Foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Demarcation More

Demarcation

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  • The same could be said for Phrenology.

    Why are you fighting this battle? And why here where even those who are likely to see eye to eye with you politically are just goig to reject ID out of hand?
  • So here's my shot. ID is not science because it is metaphysics. Note that I KNOW most people say it is philosophy (even *I* do, when I'm being lazy), but what they really want to do is discuss the difference between science and metaphysics which, as you point out, are both subsets of philosophy.

    So here goes, from a physicist's (me) point of view:

    Science has to do explaining natural phenomena and HOW they work and WHAT they do.

    Science does NOT explain WHY things work.

    WHAT?
    science: you get a static shock w
    • That's better, but I remain unconvinced. You're talking about the Big Picture of ID, and I agree with you there. But there's also the "science" of ID, which is a bit of a different thing.

      Let's say that we have a biological structure. Science can look at that and try to determine HOW it evolved. What if the answer is that it did not, and could not, have evolved? How is that not science?
      • I wouldn't think they would phrase it that way. They would say "how do things come to be as they are biologically" and the answer would be "natural selection," "advantageous mutations," etc. These things are collectively called "evolution."

        Now, if it came about through some other process, then when evidence emerges that contradicts these evolutionary processes to show them invalid, then you can say that evolution was incorrect (but not that it wasn't science). If the answer is, as you hypothetically posi
        • I wouldn't think they would phrase it that way. They would say "how do things come to be as they are biologically" and the answer would be "natural selection," "advantageous mutations," etc. These things are collectively called "evolution."

          Right, but what if it were shown that it did not, and could not, have come about through evolution? Is that "showing" science?

          Now, if it came about through some other process, then when evidence emerges that contradicts these evolutionary processes to show them invalid,
          • > What I am getting at is whether the quest to show that these things did not,
            > and could not, have come about through evolution is itself science. Because
            > that is what "ID science" is, that which you separate as metaphysics, but which > you seem to accept here is science.

            I see what you are getting at, now, with this part (I think). Yes, I would say that the questing itself IS a science. If you want to separate the principle of ID from the quest to show evolution false, then that's fine. BUT
            • Being able to predict behavior, however, is something ALMOST everyone agrees on as being part of science. I was surprised, in fact, to see that you don't hold that as part of your definition.

              I reject *any* attempt at demarcation between science and pseudoscience. As noted philosopher of science Larry Laudan noted in his book Demise of the Demarcation Problem, "If we could stand up on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like 'pseudo-science'...they do only emotive work for us."

              If we really wanted to
              • I reject *any* attempt at demarcation between science and pseudoscience.


                I guess I'm confused, then. What is the point of having two different words? Do you reject all demarcation, and can any word can mean anything? Is there no way to tell the difference then? Or do you just want to use a Justice Brown "I know it when I see it" definition?

                Or am I reading you wrong? While you may not be a moral relativist, are you currently claiming to be a "science relativist"?

                How would YOU tell the differenc
                • I guess I'm confused, then. What is the point of having two different words?

                  Because we are lazy.

                  Do you reject all demarcation

                  Yes.

                  and can any word can mean anything?

                  No. But a word might not be useful, or accurately descriptive.

                  What if evolutionary science comes up with something that is hard science (as has often happened)? Do we have a label for saying a discipline is part hard science, part soft science? What good are the labels, what purpose do they serve?

                  Is John McCain conservative? Is Joe Lieberman
                  • Hmm. I guess we just disagree. How can you say something is "lazy," when we're not allowed to demarcate things (I know, we can do it because we're lazy)?

                    Also, I think we MUST allow any word to mean anything if we are never allowed to demarcate them. Your "yes" to my "do you reject all demarcation" could mean lots of things because you are not allowed, by your own rule, to demarcate what "yes" can mean!

                    I think THAT is entirely unuseful. It sounds like the Liberal who claims that all opinions are vali
                    • Hmm. I guess we just disagree. How can you say something is "lazy," when we're not allowed to demarcate things (I know, we can do it because we're lazy)?

                      Because labelling is all about convenience.

                      (Look out, here comes my communication degree! You're not the only one with a degree of relevance to this discussion!)

                      Every label is borne out of laziness. Not words, but labels. I am called Chris Nandor, because calling me "the third son of the second son of the man who ..." is a lot of work. The question is h
              • I said:
                Or rather, I include evolution, cosmology, primordial geology, sociology, psychoanalytic theory, &c. as "soft" sciences. I guess I would say that sciences which are not falsifiable are "soft" sciences and those that are falsifiable are "hard" sciences.

                You said:
                Yes, but you're a physics bigot! I don't think such demarcation is useful except as a means to make you feel superior. Which isn't to say it is unuseful. :-)

                But there IS a use in it: since there IS a difference, how is it not usef
                • But there IS a use in it: since there IS a difference, how is it not useful to point it out?

                  Because HOW you point it out is NOT useful. Again, evolutionary science is "soft," according to you. But what about the great deal of "hard" science that has come out of evolutionary science? How is it useful to just label all of evolutionary science as "soft" when much of it clearly isn't?

                  Isn't it useful to be able to describe the difference between a hit, error, third-strike passed ball, walk, fielder's choice,
                  • Because you are wrong to find it useful. :-)

                    Ha! But seriously, as long as I say what I mean, then it can be useful; which is why even though it is obvious what so many common terms mean, Hobbes spends almost the first half of Leviathan defining terms. If I preface any discussion with "this is what I mean by hard and this is what I mean by soft," then there can be no arguments about it because it is an operational definition.

                    By the bye, I had NO idea that you were disliking "hard" versus "soft" until
                    • I don't dislike the terms in general ... as long as people recognize they are only somewhat useful conveniences and not actually meaningful when you get to specifics. So fine, say physics is hard and psychiatry is soft, but DON'T then use those definitions to say "we can't teach about these results measuring brain activity because it comes from a soft science."

                      Ya dig?
                    • Of course. The reason you ignore psychiatry isn't because it's soft, it's because over half of the studies are done on white, American, adventurous, sophomore males who are willing to submit to psychological testing for pay...not exactly a normal distribution of the public at large....

                      I'd put a smiley at the end if I were joking!

                      Nandor
        • I wouldn't think they would phrase it that way. They would say "how do things come to be as they are biologically" and the answer would be "natural selection," "advantageous mutations," etc. These things are collectively called "evolution."

          Now apply this to the bird.

          Can you imagine what the creature would look like, being "between" phases? Longer arms, no useful claws, hollow bones, cannot (yet) fly... Easy targets. Wouldn't survive long.
          • I'm the LAST person to be an evolutionary apologist, but I'll whack at this hanging curve ball so that you don't try to bring it up in a real arguement and get yourself slaughtered.


            This explanation comes with little or no thought, so I have no idea what the prevailing opinion actually is in the evolutionary community:

            Proto-bird reptiles, small ones, gain an advantage with having skin flaps stretching from their arms to the bodies, similar to what today's sugar gliders or flying squirrels have. The adv
            • This explanation comes with little or no thought, so I have no idea what the prevailing opinion actually is in the evolutionary community:

              It's pretty close to what they say, actually. Read on...

              Proto-bird reptiles, small ones, gain an advantage with having skin flaps stretching from their arms to the bodies, similar to what today's sugar gliders or flying squirrels have. The advantage is that they can glide from tree to tree to escape predators. Enhanced flaps increase survival rates, until (what we call)
              • My biggest argument against evolution in general is "time".

                No need to convince me. I'm certainly not an advocate of speciation (evolution, in general (that species change over time) is, of course, obviously true and observable). We've never observed or been able to record animal speciation (plants are a different matter, since essentially every plant can mate with almost any other plant). I'm not precisely against it, either. But you'll never hear me advocate for it until there's some evidence for it
                • [gibbering about giraffes, their necks, and aqcuired traits]

                  I'm not sure what your point is.

                  I didn't know if you were actually asking me a question about that. I've heard some pro-evolutionists argue that the giraffe is an example of "natural selection", but the ability to stretch one's neck is largely an aqcuired trait, and it doesn't explain why the giraffe's neck has the same number of vertebrae as the human neck (the bones are larger in the giraffe's).

                  MY point is that it is much harder to explain how
      • What if the answer is that it did not, and could not, have evolved? How is that not science?

        Do you have an example? Earlier you said that evolution isn't falsifiable. Here you seem to be contradicting yourself.
        • I am not contradicting myself, because the actual science of evolution does not say that every biological structure MUST have evolved. The science of evolution asserts that structures do evolve, and do so in certain ways. The notion that everything must have evolved is a philosophical belief unwarranted by the science. So how do you falsify evolution, when even if you come up with a structure that did not evolve, you can still say, "well, other things did?"

          I suppose in theory you could come up with recor
          • But in the same way, you could come up with records for every biological structure to show they DID evolve, thereby proving ID science to be false.

            How would that prove ID to be false? You can still say that the evolution was guided or planned. Again, do you have an example?

            I personally believe in God-guided evolution, which probably qualifies as a form of ID, but I really don't see the problem with teaching only evolution in schools and letting people draw their own conclusions for the causes. We certain
            • How would that prove ID to be false?

              It wouldn't. Earlier I differentiated between ID principles, and ID science. The latter is the attempt to show that something did not evolve, but was created/designed more-or-less spontaneously. Sorry for the confusion here, not sure how else to differentiate the two distinct, though related, things.
  • I'm not real up on what 'ID Science' actually is, either, but here's my take. Attempting to disprove evolution is definitely science. Different versions of ID may or may not be mutually exclusive with evolution (the ID that you often talk about seems to be able to coexist with evolution). That said, I'm not aware of any arguments supporting ID that strike me as scientific ("Science? I'll know it when I see it"). OK, big cop-out here, but basically I'm thinking of some kind of evidence that positively s
    • OK, big cop-out here, but basically I'm thinking of some kind of evidence that positively supports ID (i.e., more than deciding that evolution can't be the explanation).

      If it is not evolution, what other possibility could there be, other than design?

      I don't know if there is no answer, but I've never heard of one.

      Well, OK, I have heard of one, but atheists abandoned it long ago: chaos. Both ID and evolution assume there is order in the universe. If there is not, if we live in an unpredictable chaotic syste

      • If it is not evolution, what other possibility could there be, other than design?
        I don't know if there is no answer, but I've never heard of one.

        True. I haven't heard anything that credibly disproves evolution, and I think a better statement is that I don't think anyone is going to disprove evolution, so there'd better be a real argument for ID.

        That's the point: it is not a religious argument, not at the level where it is attempting to show a biological structure could not have evolved. Such arguments

        • These sorts of arguments leave me far from convinced. The only thing they prove is that they don't understand how the biological novelties happened.

          No. You are coming into this assuming that every biological structure has evolved. What I am saying is that it may be possible to prove that a structure could not possibly have existed through evolutionary means, not merely that those means are not understandable.

          You don't have to be convinced this is possible. Far from it, you should be skeptical. You just

          • You are coming into this assuming that every biological structure has evolved. What I am saying is that it may be possible to prove that a structure could not possibly have existed through evolutionary means, not merely that those means are not understandable.

            My assumption is based on the theory and the evidence that has been assembled to support it. I'll agree that it may be possible to be proven. I was just saying that they haven't done it yet, nor have I seen a promising approach to this. re: proof,

  • The main demarcation for things that cannot be verified through repetition is peer-review followed by general acceptance of the relevant scientific community. So because ID has not been accepted by the community at large, it is not science. The real problem, it seems to me, is that ID is just a blanket over Darwin to fill all the holes and gaps at once by saying that they were all guided by a supernatural intelligence. Scientists aren't interested in that because regardless of why it happened ID doesn't
    • The main demarcation for things that cannot be verified through repetition is peer-review followed by general acceptance of the relevant scientific community. So because ID has not been accepted by the community at large, it is not science.

      Defining science by popularity poll is silly. What we can say from this is that it is not generally accepted as science, not that it IS NOT science. Were Einstein's theories science before they were generally accepted as such? Of course they were.

      The real problem, it
      • Defining science by popularity poll is silly. What we can say from this is that it is not generally accepted as science, not that it IS NOT science. Were Einstein's theories science before they were generally accepted as such? Of course they were.

        No it's not, it's the way it's done [wikipedia.org]. And it's part of the legal definiion [wikipedia.org] of science as well. Einstein's theories were scientific, and there was never a broad scientific community saying they were false. But that's beside the point because his theories were

        • No it's not

          Not silly? Yes, it is.

          it's the way it's done

          Actually, no, it's not. Again, peer acceptance does not define what science *is*, it merely defines what is *generally accepted* as science.

          And it's part of the legal definiion of science as well.

          Yes, because people are stupid. There is no reasonable justification for the law defining, in general, science. There could be a federal law that defines science *for the purpose of* getting federal grant money, but that definition may only extend to those
          • Now you are changing your story. Before it had to be accepted before it could be science. Now you are saying it has to be rejected before it is not. Which is it?

            I was going under the assumption, and thought you were too, that if a theory can be proven through emperical evidence then it's scientific. What we're talking about is evolution which is not a theory that can proved by reproducing it.. and in those cases we're left with consensus as the only deciding factor.

            You're absolutely right though - sci

            • I was going under the assumption, and thought you were too, that if a theory can be proven through emperical evidence then it's scientific.

              Well, no, because scientific theories cannot be proven.

              What we're talking about is evolution which is not a theory that can proved by reproducing it

              Well, no, it can't be proven. And it is a theory.

              and in those cases we're left with consensus as the only deciding factor.

              But it is not a deciding factor. Consensus does not define what science is, ever. It only defines wh
              • Sorry for my extreme lack of clarity -- I am aware that theories are not facts and can't be proven. What I mean to say is that if a theories statements can be proven to be completely falsifiable (e.g. because they are based entirely on emperical evidence) it is scientific by default. All of Einsteins theories fall into that category -- they use assumptions from other theories and known facts as a basis to model the theory.

                The other category of scientific theories consists of those that contain statement

                • Are you two really arguing under the premice that evolution is not an emperically verifyable phenomenon?
                  • Macro-evolution cannot be emperically verified because it can't be reproduced. It is the only truly scientific theory to explain the process by which all of the organisms on earth came to be, and it is widely accepted, but it's not verifiable.
                    • Macro-evolution cannot be emperically verified because it can't be reproduced.

                      Are you saying speciation can't be reproduced, or something else?

                    • Are you saying speciation can't be reproduced, or something else?

                      Yep. If you know of a study that demonstrates "speciation in a bottle", I'd love to read it. But as far as I know there has never been any controlled experiment where a (multi)generational evolutionary change results in distinct species. There is plenty of reproducible evidence for microevolution -- but none goes as far as true speciation.

                      I'm in favor of the modern theory of evolution. And just because it's not reproducible doesn't m

                    • Then you would love to read these:

                      "Speciation via disruptive selection on habitat preference: experimental evidence," by W.R. Rice and G.W. Salt in The American Naturalist, vol. 131 (1988) pp. 911-917; and

                      "Laboratory experiments on speciation: What have we learned in forty years?" by W.R. Rice and E.E. Hostert in Evolution, vol. 47 (1993) pp. 1637-1653.

                      The reality of what people with religious beliefs about origins are trying to do to the teaching of biology is absurd. Maybe something like this will [nwcreation.net]

                    • Then you would love to read these:

                      Why? Do they actually observe speciation?

                      The reality of what people with religious beliefs about origins are trying to do to the teaching of biology is absurd.

                      It's a direct response to absurdity *from* people who are teaching biology, who parrot Dawkins' vapid notions that evolution helps show God doesn't exist. To frame this as a one-sided issue, religious wackos against sane scientists, is nonsense.

                      I believe that God intended us to use our brains and not parrot myths wh

                    • Do they actually observe speciation?

                      Yes, and it's entirely within the lab. They took fruit flies, put them in a maze with three different choices such as light/dark and wet/dry, and placed each generation into the maze. They took the resulting sets of flies which came out of two of the eight exits, and let them breed with each other. After something like 35 generations, not only would almost all of both groups come out of their expected maze exits, but the two groups and all their offspring for months

                    • the two groups and all their offspring for months (hundreds of generations) would not breed with each other when they were put back together.

                      That's the same sort of relatively uninteresting "microevolution" thing12 was talking about. We've been having observed such evolution in dog breeds for thousands of years. But that is not the sort of thing that thing12 was talking about. Call it what you want -- speciation, whatever -- but it is not what thing12 was asking for.

                      There are a lot of things which help s
                    • That's the same sort of relatively uninteresting "microevolution" thing12 was talking about. We've been having observed such evolution in dog breeds for thousands of years. But that is not the sort of thing that thing12 was talking about. Call it what you want -- speciation, whatever -- but it is not what thing12 was asking for.
                      What was thing12 asking for? Chiwawas can and will mate with great danes.
                    • What was thing12 asking for? Chiwawas can and will mate with great danes.

                      The fruit fly thing is cool, but it's really no different than breeding dogs. Just because the breeds of flies didn't choose to mate each other doesn't mean that it was impossible -- and the fact that they chose to breed again hundreds of generations later means that they were never separate species. One of the key things that separates species is whether they can mate to produce viable & fertile offspring (hybrids not withsta

        • Sorry, I want to clarify something: when I said "only because people are stupid," I meant stupid in that they take this legal definition and apply it to things OTHER than what evidence should be legally admissable in an expert witness testimony.

          For example, using Daubert to say that ID cannot be taught in a science classroom because legally it is not science is nonsense. Daubert only sets a standard for what testimony shall be admissable, it does not actually define is and is not science.

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