I still don't understand your obsession with this.

In attempting to reach a scientific understanding of events that happened long ago, what Mayr has proposed is perfectly reasonable. You have not been able to articulate any objection to this and are (permanently, it seems) stuck on "it's not science", which is not true (but you seem to like the obfuscation of repeating this statement) and which is simply ignoring or willfully misreading just about all of Mayr's thinking on the subject.

amusement, not obsession

And no valid objection.

You never were able to articulate why you think Mayr was wrong or his thinking invalid when he said that evolutionary biology was a science, not a philosophy; instead you stooped to willfully pretending Mayr said the opposite of what he said. That indicates a massive lack of confidence in your own position.

The scientific understanding of events long in the past comes with certain obstacles - which are not insurmountable, but do require an appropriate approach. If you can suggest a better one, go ahead.

creeper:

That's the point, there is no better one, you just have to accept it isn't science. It's no big deal, science isn't the be all and end all.

Why should I accept that when it isn't true? Mayr's approach is valid. The theory of evolution is a scientific theory. That doesn't mean that no one can find fault or mount objections, but if there is any validity to those objections, then they will be examined and the theory will be revised or replaced accordingly. That is how science works. As it stands at this point, however, the modern theory of evolution reflects the best of our scientific knowledge on the subject.

The theory of evolution also does not negate religion or disprove God - it simply does not necessitate God as part of the explanation. You are free to believe in God's existence, and even some churches do not see any problem in combining current scientific understanding and religious faith into a coherent world view.

It is only when people try to bring religion into science (and conversely, science into religion) that things get fishy – when people speculate about God fidgeting with a flagellum or try to find scientific proof or disproof for God's existence, for example. There is no need for this, since both religion and science can easily be part of a coherent whole.

I have never quite understood why a religious person doesn't see how demeaning it is to cast God in such a nuts-and-bolts role. Insisting that God created the flagellum is simply the flipside of a scientist trying to prove or disprove God's existence, and isn't God supposed to be ultimately unknowable?

The simple word for your approach of presenting baseless and unsupportable positions, on the other hand, is simple obscurantism:

n 1: a policy of opposition to enlightenment or the spread of knowledge 2: a deliberate act intended to make something obscure

I don't understand what purpose you think it serves.

You shouldn't. Everyone has to have faith in something.

And your faith lies in obscurantism? Wow.

We'll find out where his faith lies when his kids get sick. Really sick.

I bet he doesn't take them to church first.

Harry:

He did.

Hope it wasn't contagious.

creeper:

It is.

Talking about the need for refutability and independent confirmation (implying repeatability) is useless when one defends a theory that one doesn't want being refuted, and demands a mulligan when it comes to independent confirmation and repeatability. All this so that Evolution can be called a scientific theory, and bask, on the cheap, in the same glory that General Relativity earned the hard way by running the refutablity, confirmation, and repeatabilty mine field flawlessly and with very little adjustment.

General Relativity won the Olympics.

Evolution won the Special Olympics.

Except that Relativity is bunk too.

Or fulminating.

If it's fulminating, church is the last stop, too.

First stop. Atheism is always the last stop.

Ptah,

you act as if the modern theory of evolution came out of the blue and is supported by nothing. There is nothing "on the cheap" here. In the word's of Orrin's favorite evolutionist, Ernst Mayr:

Around the year 1800, three different authors, the French zoologist Lamarck and two Germans, introduced the word biology, referring to the study of the world of life. These authors called for the development of such a science, but it did not yet exist. There could not be a science of biology until one had first learned a great deal more about the living world; the major biological disciplines had first to be founded. This took place in the 38 years from 1828 to 1866: embryology (Von Baer, 1828), cytology (Schwann-Schleiden, 1830s), physiology (Claude Bernard, Helmholtz, 1840s), evolution (Wallace-Darwin, 1858-1859), and genetics (Mendel, 1866).

Yet a real synthesis did not take place until 75 years later. Until then the workers in functional biology (physiology, embryology) ignored the achievements of evolutionary biology (and genetics) and vice versa. Indeed, major controversies within each of these fields had to be settled first. As far as evolutionary biology is concerned, in the early 1930s there were two factions, on one side the experimental geneticists, mostly interested in the mechanism of evolution and studying variation within a population as well as the achievement and maintenance of adaptation, and another faction consisting of the naturalists, systematists, and paleontologists, primarily interested in the study of biodiversity, that is, species, speciation, and macroevolution. In the years 1937 to 1947, a synthesis of the two fields was achieved owing to a mutual understanding of each others' views. The result was the so-called evolutionary synthesis, actually very much of a return to classical Darwinism, evolution as variation and selection.

The next major event was the founding of molecular biology through the discoveries of Avery and of Watson and Crick, between 1944 and 1953. One might have expected that this would result in a major revolution in evolutionary biology, but this did not take place. What molecular biology made possible was a fine-grained analysis but it did not result in a refutation of the underlying Darwinian theory. Molecular biology indeed made some magnificent contributions to our understanding of evolution—such as that the material of inheritance is nucleic acid rather than proteins and that the genetic code is the same for all organisms from the bacteria up, indicating a single origin of life—but it did not touch the basic Darwinian framework.

It is people like Orrin who would like to see the theory of evolution discredited just on their say-so and some baseless spurious speculations (skull shape being a function of height, anything outside our solar system being 'supernatural' etc.). This is trying to argue against the theory of evolution 'on the cheap', without putting any work into it - with predictable results.

Ptah,

you act as if the modern theory of evolution came out of the blue and is supported by nothing. There is nothing "on the cheap" here. In the word's of Orrin's favorite evolutionist, Ernst Mayr:

Around the year 1800, three different authors, the French zoologist Lamarck and two Germans, introduced the word biology, referring to the study of the world of life. These authors called for the development of such a science, but it did not yet exist. There could not be a science of biology until one had first learned a great deal more about the living world; the major biological disciplines had first to be founded. This took place in the 38 years from 1828 to 1866: embryology (Von Baer, 1828), cytology (Schwann-Schleiden, 1830s), physiology (Claude Bernard, Helmholtz, 1840s), evolution (Wallace-Darwin, 1858-1859), and genetics (Mendel, 1866).

Yet a real synthesis did not take place until 75 years later. Until then the workers in functional biology (physiology, embryology) ignored the achievements of evolutionary biology (and genetics) and vice versa. Indeed, major controversies within each of these fields had to be settled first. As far as evolutionary biology is concerned, in the early 1930s there were two factions, on one side the experimental geneticists, mostly interested in the mechanism of evolution and studying variation within a population as well as the achievement and maintenance of adaptation, and another faction consisting of the naturalists, systematists, and paleontologists, primarily interested in the study of biodiversity, that is, species, speciation, and macroevolution. In the years 1937 to 1947, a synthesis of the two fields was achieved owing to a mutual understanding of each others' views. The result was the so-called evolutionary synthesis, actually very much of a return to classical Darwinism, evolution as variation and selection.

The next major event was the founding of molecular biology through the discoveries of Avery and of Watson and Crick, between 1944 and 1953. One might have expected that this would result in a major revolution in evolutionary biology, but this did not take place. What molecular biology made possible was a fine-grained analysis but it did not result in a refutation of the underlying Darwinian theory. Molecular biology indeed made some magnificent contributions to our understanding of evolution—such as that the material of inheritance is nucleic acid rather than proteins and that the genetic code is the same for all organisms from the bacteria up, indicating a single origin of life—but it did not touch the basic Darwinian framework.

It is people like Orrin who would like to see the theory of evolution discredited just on their say-so and some baseless spurious speculations (skull shape being a function of height, anything outside our solar system being 'supernatural' etc.). This is trying to argue against the theory of evolution 'on the cheap', without putting any work into it - with predictable results.

Sorry about the double post, I got an error message the first time.

creeper:
You misunderstand the entire argument. Your Mayr quotation is a recounting of the history of a scientific idea, not science itself. His facile reference to molecular biology is disingenuous -- it has revolutionized biology, despite his protestation that it did not affect the Darwinian framework, because we can now start calculating the probabilities involved. His statement that "the genetic code is the same for all organisms from the bacteria up, indicating a single origin of life" could equally well be interpreted as indicating a common design of life -- it all depends on what you take as your a priori axioms (i.e., articles of faith) -- and therefore this fact is irrelevant to the argument.

The problem is that molecular biology finally reveals the vast combinatorial space of the organic molecules involved in life, and that random mutation and natural selection (i.e., Darwinism) are insufficient to provide for a single instance of any protein, let alone the complex system of proteins and other organic molecules required. If you postulate optimum conditions on billions of planets in billions of galaxies, the chance of synthesizing any particular protein is still almost zero, because the protein space is so large. Darwin got away with invoking vast periods of time for his processes, but we now see that the "known age" of the universe is statistically insufficient for such a simple hypothesis. Science is not simply a " historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain", but rather a detailed sequence of processes leading from one state to another, and one which is statistically probable.

Orrin is neither a supporter of Darwin nor Intelligent Design. I, following Russell, believe that when a theory is so obviously insufficient we should be humble enought to suspend judgement and admit our ignorance.

You got my point, JD.. He answered the charge that a historical narrative (which is what Evolutionists can construct) is not as rigorous as physics experiments with...a Historical narrative.

However, I don't believe Molecular Biology has progressed to the point where we can compute probabilities, although the submission of a field's experts to the FULL rigor of mathematics, in ALL situations, and not when it just happens to suit them or supports the occasional assertion, is the main criterion I'd apply to saying that field is "SCIENTIFIC". Lots more work to do there. My point is this: Darwin's confident predictions about the fossil record have been so wrong that another "just so" story/narrative has to be constructed to account for it? On the other hand, Einstein's theory has needed very little revision, has lot more proof, and is an important component of other theories whose proofs have been established by REPEATABLE experimental findings.

However, I came across a very interesting article in the print edition of Scientific American yesterday: the one highlighting the Mars Rover. It had an article discussing the microbiology of Parkinson's disease. Incredible. Did you know you needed a special cellular organelle to ASSEMBLE proteins from amino acids in accordance to RNA? And that the proteins are not properly "kinked" when they come out? And that they do not kink into the proper shape by themselves? That they have to go through a SECOND organelle to kink into the proper shape? That misshapened proteins are a THREAT to the cell? That a THIRD organelle exists that DISASSEMBLES those proteins that are misshapen via a special enzyme that attaches to the misshapen proteins (but NOT the well-shaped ones) as a marker? The model we use to illustrate the probabilities of a protein coming to be at random (a sea of amino acids combining willy-nilly into proteins) is WRONG because it is TOO NAIVE: Microbiology is telling us that the protein assembly process is MORE COMPLICATED than that, driving the (already astronomically small) probabilites down to the near infintesimal.

Microbiology is SCIENCE. Repeatable. Observable. TRying its damnedest to be mathematically desribable and predictable.

THAT'S SCIENCE.

Using scientific terminology, using scientific instruments, taking advantage of physical phenomena to prop up JUST SO stories and narratives, is dressing up.

Orrin. I was a skeptic too on Special Relativity, but I figured out the hole in my argument about the Twin Paradox.

Yet evolutionary biology keeps making predictions that keep being demonstrated experimentally.

The alternatives do not do that.

(Ptah's summary is a good example of the argument from imperfection against design. Thanks, pal.)

Eppur se muove.

It doesn't make predictions. It says that we must do this now because of that then. Only a person so deeply commited to the faith as to abandon reasoning could possibly buy it.

Cha-ching.

Ptah:

The hole is C

Actually, no, OJ. The hole is that the distance travelled lies entirely within the stay-at-home's frame of reference.

Harry, produce the link or give a citation. THEN we'll see how it stacks up, hmm??