News and Politics Forum

MC Escher wrote:

zukiphile wrote:

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

What's the distinction?  Organic and inorganic are semantic human categorizations, nothing more.

As is every distinction described in any language.  How can that be an objection to the distinction?

Matt, he's not talking about a semantic difference.

Perhaps not, but that is the objection he raises to the distinction.  What ambiguity do you see in the bolded language?

Turbo wrote:

Buho wrote:

In fact, that the bees can communicate despite being separated by allegedly 60 million years raises problems for the theory.

Not really.  Why should it?

The question is off-topic, but I think you can see why I would say that.  Your explanation is malleable like plastic, so common in evolutionary literature, not backed by observation at all.  In other words, it's a hypothesis parading as observation.  This is what glf calls a "just so story."  Feel free to call anti-evolutionists on them yourself if you see them, but in my experience, the anti-evolutionists are much more cautious about committing this error.

Anyway, by your silence, you apparently agree that the three sentences I quoted were utterly useless to the actual science being performed.

Turbo wrote:

You seem to have the erroneous idea that speculation, extension, and explanation have no place in science, which I respectfully disagree with.

So do I!  But you have to scratch your head at this:  150 years after Darwin proposed his theory, scientists are still speculating on what this theory is?  Many of us lay-folk have been thirsting for payout, where speculation is confirmed through observation, but time and time again scientists tack on evolution at the end. 

Turbo wrote:

What, exactly, are your criteria for "design"?  No offense, but I usually find that the hallmarks of "design" used in claims of irreducible complexity are typically highly subjective, qualitative, and dependent on human aesthetic preferences.

Did you read the article?  The words "design," "factory," "mechanism," "re-engineer," "complex," "nanomachine," "two-stroke motor," etc. are all over it and it doesn't mention evolution once.  Ask them what they mean.  Again:  how useful was the theory in performing that science?  Zip.  Design was detected (however that works), and the secrets of the magic TRiC were discovered.  No pond scum "just-so" stories needed.

Turbo wrote:

You seem a little hung up on the Darwinian paradigm

Meh.  I was trying to keep things simple.  I'm familiar with where things are today.  If you take a second look, you'll notice an absence of any molecular explanation for the origin of the mechanisms to prevent sunburns as well, or what we know of plant evolution directing their research into unknown areas that turned out to accurately confirm predictions.  No, what we know of evolution was not useful at all in discovering what they did, which supports my opening thesis (see the bolded below), as all the others did.

Turbo wrote:

Buho wrote:

In every case, fields one would expect to benefit from evolutionary insights, either are hindered by the theory or are not directed by evolutionary predictions.  After all, if nature is purposeless, random, and full of "mistakes," what usefulness and purpose can we expect to find in nature?  (This is ideology/philosophy in play.)

A strawman again.

I don't care so much about the ideology part.  How about the bolded part?

Thanks for considering my post, Turbo!

In any case, I see an inherent misunderstanding at work here that I'd like to address. 

I was once very active in the field of astrobiology, though my concern has shifted to conservation and management.  My good friend David Grinspoon - the only Jewish Rastafarian astrobiologist I know - wrote a really fun, immensely entertaining book called "Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life."  And in it, he made an important distinction between science and natural philosophy. 

Science concerns itself with the concretely testable, the falsifiable hypothesis.  It is methodologically materialistic - not philosophically, mind you, as it is inherently incapable of making no statements about that which is not falsifiable.  It is an intellectual tool that attempts to corral our subjectivity and imagination to help us be more objective in understanding and quantifying that which is concrete and quantifiable.  It is a remarkably unimaginative discipline, concerned more with p values and the elimination of bias than anything else. 

The lesser-known yin to the scientific yang is natural philosophy - the storied discipline of Hooke, Liebniz, Newton, and the luminaries of the Baroque Age.   It's usually defined as the predecessor to science, but I believe that's incorrect.  It's science's companion, the mechanism by which a scientist can dream.  It's the mechanism of starting with what you know, with what science has made clear, and then extending that knowledge into the realm of that which we do not know.  Some here reject it with a sneer as "just so stories", and the pejorative drift of that epithet troubles me - because I believe that it is just as essential as science.

Astrobiology is natural philosophy; by applying what we know of terrestrial ecology, biology, and biogeography, we attempt to guide our search for extraterrestrial life to the most likely locations.  It's no accident that the latest Mars probe landed at the north pole of Mars, where abundant water ice may support microbes.  Cosmology, etiology, mechanics, probabilistics, and the study of physical quantities and qualities are all natural philosophy.  A great deal of macroecology, conservation biology, and ecology is too.  All of them are united by the theme of making the most educated guess possible about what we don't know or cannot know, on the basis of what we do.  Science began with natural philosophy, back when the most elementary facts of the world were yet unknown, and serves as science's conscience, guide, and leader. 

Hypotheses of abiogenesis, intelligent design, and evolutionary history are all natural philosophy in whole or in part.  Will we ever be able to observe, measure, or quantify exactly how life began on Earth - if it began on Earth?  Of course not.  Even if some future Nobel laureate creates life in a test tube, it will be a second genesis, not a replicate of the first one.  Will we ever sequence the DNA of the last universal common ancestor?  Again, of course not.  Will we ever be able to prove that a given structure is designed versus evolved?  Of course not; no matter how sure you are that a structure is irreducibly complex, there is always the possibility that it's entirely natural - and vice versa. 

A great deal of evolutionary biology does fall under the realm of science; it's absolutely clear that the informational content of the metagenome has increased over time, and that biological systems have followed suit.  It's absolutely clear that speciation occurs, and that ecosystems and ecological processes have gained complexity over geological time. 

A robust store of facts underlies the natural philosophy of evolution, but to expect that any field concerned with history - anthropology, archeology, evolution, geology, history itself - should concern itself solely with science is to doom that field to nonexistence or irrelevance.  Without the freedom to wander into natural philosophy, to perform extension and interpretation - the ability of science to perform a useful role is almost entirely hobbled, because the utility of natural philosophy is that it allows us to knit together the dry facts of science into a coherent narrative of the nature of our universe, our place in it, and the history and context that have shaped us.  This, ultimately, is my answer to the central question of this thread.

So I support evolution, and the evolutionary narrative.  I will continue to do so, and I support its teaching in schools.  I do not believe that intelligent design meets my personal requirements for scientific rigor to be taught in schools, and support its omission from school curricula.  The treatment of evolution in pre-college schools is exceedingly basic, mechanistic, and sanitized in any case, and little of the field's natural philosophy is made explicit.  As the predominant hypothesis of working science, I believe it is most appropriate to teach in a science class.  If parents - or the students themselves - wish to include intelligent design in their studies, I believe that should be their own prerogative but I do not support it. I am also troubled by its philosophical origins - not in science but in religion, and with people seeking to rationalize their religious beliefs.  It seems that it was arrived at by people who already made up their minds that a personal God existed, and sought to rationalize that belief as a rival to an idea that seemed to threaten the concept of God - and then developed its own casuistry of the "designer" to distance itself from the truly scientifically bankrupt propositions of creation myths. 

The coherent historical narrative of evolutionary biology, and the "designer" hypothesis of intelligent design, both fall into the realm of natural philosophy.  They both attempt to imagine the unknowable on the basis of fact.  In my personal opinion, intelligent design is the least intellectually rigorous of the two; I believe that a hypothesis should be formed with maximum parsimony, and invoking a creator does not seem in keeping with Occam's principle.  I've spent a long, long time studying chemistry, biology, ecology, and evolution - I'd easily wager that my experience in this topic is the most comprehensive on this board.  I've seen nothing at all that I feel must be explained by design, and I have seen too many theoretically workable alternative solutions to design to be tempted to invoke that explanation. 

I'm most troubled by the dead-end nature of the designer hypothesis; even in theory it cannot be falsified or supported by evidence, and by nature it discourages curiosity and progress.  By invoking a creator, other possibilities are quashed, and further progress or inquiry is rendered irrelevant - because why bother?  It's an end, an artificial closure for a story that will never end.  It is, I suppose, of equal validity to the evolutionary narrative, but  does not possess the same merit, in its incuriosity and finality.  Ultimately, it leaves me unsatisfied, as it fails the mission of natural philosophy; it serves not as a torch shining into the light of the unknown, guiding our way forward in a search for facts, but rather as a brick wall, solid and impenetrable, at which we must stop.  As a scientist and natural philosopher, I refuse do to so, and will continue wandering off into the darkness until all other possibilities are utterly exhausted.

Last edited by Turbiodiesel! (07-11-2008 05:09 PM)

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

<Long post redacted for convenience and readability.>

I only wish I could have said that as well as you just did.

Turbo -

Would you say that it is fair to say that "Science" may change it's mind as new facts/information come to light, or that entire models may be discarded because some new bit of knowledge caused a complete reinterpretation of previously known facts; but that it's theories and models are always based on facts learned through observation and the application of the Scientific Method"


"Science is quotated because I am using it as a pronoun for all the individual fields of science.

The ideas you got from David Grinspoon, they're quite novel.   I find them very intriguing, and I think they have some merit (perhaps more).  I'll be thinking about them for some time.  I agree with MC Escher:  very well written!  Thanks for sharing them with us!

A few point-by-points that drew my attention...

Turbio wrote:

it's absolutely clear that the informational content of the metagenome has increased over time, and that biological systems have followed suit.

Clear as mud.  Only if you assume that which needs to be proven.  This has never been observed.

Turbio wrote:

It's absolutely clear that speciation occurs,

Clear as day.  We have observed this repeatedly.

Turbio wrote:

and that ecosystems and ecological processes have gained complexity over geological time.

Clear as mud.  Only if you assume that which needs to be proven.  This has never been observed.

Turbio wrote:

This, ultimately, is my answer to the central question of this thread.

But the question was "is evolution needed to further the advances of science?"  Only by equivocating "evolution" and "science" can what you said be considered an answer (and then, a tautology).  It seems to me that the "dream" (your word) of evolution is hindering the acquisition of scientific facts.

Turbio wrote:

I am also troubled by its philosophical origins - not in science but in religion, and with people seeking to rationalize their religious beliefs. It seems that it was arrived at by people who already made up their minds that a personal God existed, and sought to rationalize that belief as a rival to an idea that seemed to threaten the concept of God - and then developed its own casuistry of the "designer" to distance itself from the truly scientifically bankrupt propositions of creation myths.

Anti-evolutionists are troubled by evolution's philosophical origins - not in science but in the philosophy of uniformitarianism and materialism, and with people seeking to rationalize their adherence to it.  It seems that it was arrived at by people who already made up their minds that a personal God did not in any way interact with the universe, and sought to rationalize that belief as a rival to an idea that seemed to threaten the concept of methodological materialism - and then developed its own cauistry of the "tinkerer" to create their own origin myth that satisfies the beliefs they prefer to hold.

Turbio wrote:

I've seen nothing at all that I feel must be explained by design

It's interesting to note, then, that you ignored most of the examples in my earlier post.

Turbio wrote:

I'm most troubled by the dead-end nature of the designer hypothesis; even in theory it cannot be falsified or supported by evidence, and by nature it discourages curiosity and progress.

I'm interested how the theory of evolution can be disproven.

My examples posted earlier heartily refute the idea that the designer hypothesis is a "science-stopper."  Dawkins himself has acknowledged that it was creationists who helped usher in the modern scientific era.

Turbio wrote:

Buho wrote:

Many of us lay-folk have been thirsting for payout

Which you'll never get from a scientist; stop asking.

I beg to differ.  The science surrounding evolution is a different animal than the science surrounding other fields of science.  Your retort would absolutely not fly in the early years of NASA, who got us to the moon.  According to you, we should still be dreaming of nozzle cones, theorizing, and finding vague trends in things.

Turbio wrote:

It's one example, but I think one of the best.

Compelling, but has it benefited science yet?  A paper or two would help support your case.

Hey Turbio, I just wanted to say again that your recent posts here are a marvel of clarity of thought and reasonableness.

Last edited by Buho (07-11-2008 10:22 PM)

Aah, time!  Our shared enemy   I'll get to your two links this weekend.

Turbio wrote:

But would anybody at NASA say that they'd designed the perfect nozzle, that the Saturn 5 was the pinnacle of rocket development, and that, at the conclusion of the Apollo program, they'd learned everything that was important to know about the moon?

Rocket science is progressive.  I see nothing of the sort surrounding evolution.  Trees are destroyed and rebuilt, theories bounce back and forth on details (eg, punctuated equilibrium and OOL), and there has never been any payoff as seen with men on the moon.  Most of what you know about evolution today will be wrong in fifty years.  That's not progress.  With no progress, the "journey" becomes pointless.

Last edited by Buho (07-11-2008 10:54 PM)

Hi Turbio.  Your "Evolution of novel metabolic pathways for the degradation of chloroaromatic compounds" paper from 1997 I am not familiar with.  In short, they found some bacteria acquired the ability to eat something they normally cannot eat.  Comparing these new strains with the parent strain shows that there is a change in genetics.  Previously-existing genes were recombined to produce a new feature.  This paper is stretching my expertise too far (I'm not a trained biochemist).  On outward appearances, it looks like you have a contender.  It would be interesting to see what has become of this research in the last decade.  Why is it this old paper isn't trumpeted by Dawkins et al to shut up the Discovery Institute?  I wonder if there is more than meets the eye.

The second paper, Contemporary evolution meets conservation biology," you presented as an example of how the grand theory of evolution can be useful/beneficial to science, particularly conservation efforts.  It is notable that the paper does not talk about the grand theory of evolution at all, but specifically "contemporary evolution," which, from what I gather, is observed genetic variation, adaption, and speciation.  This is a paper a creationist could get behind.  It is decidedly not talking about anything remotely close to the soup-to-nuts evolution that glf challenged in the OP.  They don't care if the endangered exotic bird came from a dinosaur or not.

Turbio wrote:

I disagree, however, that such is pointless; with every redrawn tree and taut exchange of debate, we gain new insights that can be applied to more concrete fields like conservation.

An analogy of what you're trying to say is that, by bouncing around like a ping pong ball in a tumbler, we can gain a fuller understanding of the extents of the tumbler container.  Did you see my "destroyed and rebuilt" link above?  I'm not quite understanding how this new bird tree helps us understand anything, particularly when the prior ping pong ball collision must be erased and dismissed as incorrect.  Further, this re-assemblage has caused all sorts of new problems and conflicts, particularly with morphology and features, which invokes "convergent evolution" way more often than before.  (By the way, "convergent evolution" pretty much falsifies the grand evolution theory but no committed evolutionist wants to admit this.)  I don't see progress of any kind toward the grand theory of evolution.  I see acquisition of information (particularly with genetics and development), but the theory itself is like watching ping pong balls in a tumbler:  chaos.  This is not what I would call a scientific discipline.  And I wouldn't call evolution a "pure science," either.  It draws on dozens of different scientific disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology, zoology, etc.).  It seems to be a meta-discipline that produces meta-science, which I would call "philosophy."

Also, you seem to be describing the "shedding light on evolution" phrase that so often appears in papers.  How exactly does this mystical flashlight work on our understanding?  No doubt, if "living fossils" were found, this would help us better understand the evolution of the organism.  Somehow.  No doubt, if a fossil placoderm were found giving birth to live young, this would "shed light" on evolution.  No doubt, if complex, information-rich features were found in "primitive" organisms, this would bring a greater understanding to how things evolved.  No doubt.  The question is, how exactly?  And what evidence, if any, can possibly falsify the theory?  A theory that explains everything explains nothing.

Turbio wrote:

If it could be shown that biodiversity and ecological systems today are not substantially different from any other period in history, that'd be a good start [to falsifying neo-Darwinian evolution].

A few things:  First, that's it?  Is that the only thing that can falsify neo-Darwinian evolution?  I would have expected something...I dunno, more robust.  Second, as I said above, how sure are you that exceptions to this rule will not be "explained away?"  Third, how familiar are you with the phrase "morphological conservation?"  Or "living fossils?"  Have you heard about the recent platypus find that pushes its line back 200%, and the fossil is essentially identical to living platypuses?  Fourth, have you heard of the "Cambrian explosion?"  It seems to me that the biodiversity at this point looks to be identical to what we have today in the oceans.  So, is evolution falsified?

Sorry, I'm rambling....

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

In eukaryotes, you're absolutely correct.  In bacteria and archaea, you're totally incorrect; in those organisms the genome is a free strand of DNA with no protein infrastructure.  Also, the informational content of the genome resides entirely within the organic acids; while histones and whatnot form a scaffold, they do not directly encode information.

Really?  That's odd...  The information I have seems to indicate that DNA is contained in structures made of proteins, peptides, and amino acids...  None can exist without the others.

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

Abiotic amino acid polymers - too short to be proteins - have been found in meteorites.

Reference?  I believe that this has been debunked...

Turbiodiesel! wrote:

When you say (so easily) that "ribozomes catalyze their own reproduction independently..." you fail to deal with the complexity, the level of cellular machinery and interweaving of cell processes that MUST occur.

Not so.  A ribosome is not a cellular entity.  It requires no cellular machinery, no external source of information, no proteins.  Tom Cech, the discoverer of ribozymes, has demonstrated their ability to self-synthesize in nothing but buffered water with some dNTPs added.

You have not been keeping up with current research on this issue...  ribozomes require the signals from the nucleus in order to act.  It is a complicated (like everything in the cell) act of balance between chemical messengers and cell needs.  I'm getting this info from 2008 published works that I'm reading currently...

glfredrick wrote:

Turbio wrote:

Abiotic amino acid polymers - too short to be proteins - have been found in meteorites.

Reference?  I believe that this has been debunked...

I wouldn't push this one, glf.  They've found amino acids floating in gas clouds in space, according to spectral signatures.  Big whoop, though.  It only takes like a dozen atoms to create an amino acid.  Glycine I think was found in space.  One of hundreds of difficulties for OOL is the chiralty problem.  Also, keep in mind that the simplest protein takes hundreds of these amino acids in a specific arrangement, which is orders of magnitude more complex than simple amino acids.  What's the mechanism to "naturally" tend toward this complex order required before life can even begin?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mTEwilp1NU

Regarding "just-so" stories, my post #79 had this definition which I think is a little better definition that glf's:

Buho wrote:

Your explanation is malleable like plastic, so common in evolutionary literature, not backed by observation at all.  In other words, it's a hypothesis parading as observation.

The way I see it, we have observations X, Y, and Z.  The three observations are then connected by a story:  "X produced Y because we see Z."  But where's the lab work that observed "X produced Y"?  The story is a good starting point for further research (confirmation, falsification), but so often lines like this are left unjustified in evolutionary literature.  Also, so common, another researcher comes in behind the first guy and says "Z produced X because we see Y" and nobody blinks.  Such is the value of "just-so" stories.  That's why they don't fly with me (or glf).  They're not science.

Buho wrote:

The way I see it, we have observations X, Y, and Z.  The three observations are then connected by a story:  "X produced Y because we see Z."  But where's the lab work that observed "X produced Y"?  The story is a good starting point for further research (confirmation, falsification), but so often lines like this are left unjustified in evolutionary literature.  Also, so common, another researcher comes in behind the first guy and says "Z produced X because we see Y" and nobody blinks.  Such is the value of "just-so" stories.  That's why they don't fly with me (or glf).  They're not science.

Doesn't that beg the question of what science is?

If you can't gather your observations and set them within an explanation, or understanding, of those observations, how would science ever increase our understanding of the world?

Buho wrote:

You mean circular logic or just that the definition of science was left hanging?  I don't see the former, but I do see the latter.

The latter.

Buho wrote:

As I said, hypotheses are crucial for science to progress.  What I (and probably glf) have a cow about is when hypotheses are used as evidence.  Hypotheses need to be tested.

If they can be.  At some point, any hypothesis will come to rest on unproven or unprovable metaphysics and other more mundane assertions.  Does that mean the whole idea is unscientific?

Buho wrote:

Untested hypotheses used to support additional (untested) hypotheses are like building a house on jello -- highly unstable.  Yet so often in the media (which tends toward embelleshment), these houses of jello are trumpeted as fact (or near so).

Mmmmm.   J-E-L-L-O.

I concur on the error of equating science with undoubted fact, but this leads me to two questions: 

1.  Is there anything inherently unfair it stating an untestable hypothesis with which a subset of the data is consistent, but for which other explanations of the data also are proposed?

2.  Doesn't a criticism of evolution for being imaginative restate the error of equating science with certainty?