Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

[Phys-L] Re: ID defenders (response Part I)



At 11:43 -0400 8/26/05, R. McDermott wrote:

But, Hugh, they AREN'T all testable. For a long time, many of Einstein's
predictions were untestable. I don't know how you would go about
testing string theory or any number of other things that we lump
into "science".

The point is that these ideas are not untestable *in principle.* We
may not be able to test them now, because we haven't the technology,
for instance to build accelerators of the energy needed, or perhaps
because no one has yet been clever enough to come up with some result
within the theory that is testable now. One of the reasons that
string theory hasn't taken over physics in spite of some very
interesting results is just the issue of testability. If and when
someone comes up with some definitive tests we will be able to settle
the idea of whether string theory is a fruitful effort or not. Until
they do, it remains speculation, regardless of how interesting it
might be. But it does not have its untestability built into it, as ID
does.

[snip]

Or do you mean Darwinism as the mechanism? I find it hard to
believe that anyone would dispute that organisms change over time!
It is so easy to demonstrate that it is inconceiveable to me that
anyone would have a problem bringing a doubter around.

It is just that argument that has convinced the ID people to abandon
that aspect of young-earth creationism. It is easy to hold argue
against any type of change with time if you believe that the earth is
only about 6-10,000 years old. Read Duane Gish, or any of the
writings out of the Institute for Creation Science, in San Diego to
see the people who really do believe that change over time is a
misreading of the fossil record.

For example, we have extrapolated from observations that there was a
"Big Bang". However likely that extrapolation is to be true, I
can't for the life of me see how that can be tested!?

It is tested by looking for the logical consequences of it, like the
cosmic microwave background and the expanding universe. There is more
to it, of course, and there have been lots of surprises along the way
that have led to some major modifications of the idea (like
"inflation', dark matter and energy, and accelerating expansion). And
"testing" in this manner doesn't "prove" that the big bang is *the*
way things happened, but it does show that it is a plausible
explanation of what we see. That is the best that science can ever
do. New data that we don't know about now can always come along and
force us to make big changes in the current theory, or completely
abandon it in favor of something new.

When I teach special relativity to my classes, I point out that the
simple thought experiments that we use to "derive" the properties of
the Lorentz Transformation are not "tests" of the theory, but means
of devising what the consequences of the Einstein postulates. The
validity of the theory comes from looking at the consequences (time
dilation, mass-energy equivalence, etc.) that we can observe in the
real world. In principle that is doing the same thing as we do when
we "verify" the big band theory by looking at the consequences in
today's world, of what happened 13 billion years ago or so.

But we routinely PHRASE what we say in such a way as to obscure that
little detail. The public doesn't automatically add the qualifier
that a scientist does mentally: "What we observe leads us to believe
such and forth. Subsequent testing has not shown this to be in
error, so we have a 75% (or 90%, or whatever) level of confidence in
our speculation. We do not KNOW that this is correct, but we
strongly (or very strongly) believe that it is. If it's shown to be
incorrect tomorrow, we will cheerfully drop this speculation in
favor of a different one." The public doesn't underst and that
concept, and it is incumbent upon those who DO to make it clear at
some point in what we say and write. It's just carelessness on our
parts.

Who is this "we," kimosabe? I cannot speak for others. I only know
what I do, and what I urge others to do as well, and that is to make
clear in every breath the limitations on our knowledge of what *is*
and what *might be.* Those active scientists that I know also do the
same thing. Unfortunately, we all sometimes get a little sloppy in
our language, but usually we quickly correct ourselves when we do.
Many of those who are using the truly misleading language are in two
groups: 1) the popularizers and reporters of science, mostly
journalists, whose training in science is minimal and who mostly have
missed this subtle point, and 2) those anti-science people who are
bent on distorting what science is by setting up straw-men to tear
down. Now if we could just get editors to recognize when the writers
who work for them are distorting what science is, half the battle
would be won, and then we could concentrate on the enemies of science
and wouldn't have to worry about our friends who are doing so much
damage.

> So far all anyone has is some rather vague
possibilities, which need to be subjects to some rigorous
experimental testing, much of which may still be technologically
beyond our capability, or may depend upon knowledge of the early
> conditions on earth that we do not know well enough.

Again, if we are unable to convince people that organisms change
over time, then we're poor educators.

But those who believe in a young earth are hard to convince. They
find it easy to believe that their god created everything to look
like it changes over time, but it really doesn't. Apparently they see
this a somehow a "test" of their faith. However, most students don't
have a problem with the change over time idea. It's just a surprise
to them when they hear it, since they had never seen it presented
before. Many of them have heard only the young-earth creationist
ideas and think that evolution is how it was painted by their
fundamentalist preachers, who have had much more time with them than
we will get.

If we expect them to accept extrapolations as "fact" when they fly
in the face of their strongly held beliefs, then we're deluding
ourselves.

Well, I don't expect them to see any explanation, whether scientific
or religious as "fact." And I emphasize over and over again, the only
things we can even remotely ascribe to "fact" (and even that is
suspect), is what we directly observe. It is difficult to get
students to stop reporting conclusions that they have been taught as
"facts" instead of the observations they actually make. When they see
something fall to the ground, instead of saying that they saw
something fall to the ground, they start blathering about gravity,
even though, at that point in the course, they know absolutely
nothing about gravity except that people have told them that it is
what "makes" thing fall to the ground. This is a habit that is hard
to break.

You say we see fossils that we can fit "nicely into patterns". Well
that is what we do as thinking organisms. We see patterns.
Sometimes we see pattens where none really exist (I make it a point
in my classes to be very careful to avoid unintended "patterns" for
the kids to pick up on as a short cut to solving physics problems -
They are amazingly creative about the patterns they detect <g>). AS
I've said, for me personally, I have no problem with change over
time. Frankly, I don't really care what the mechanism is, or if
there is more than one at work. I confess to being skeptical about
all life evolving from a single-celled organism that itself derived
from non-living chemicals. I grant that it is a perfectly ok
explanation of what we see, and as long as that is how it is
presented, I have no problem with it.

You are quite right, that humans are pattern-seeking animals, and
they often will find patterns where none exist, or patterns that are
in conflict with other, often better ones. One of the things we need
to do as science teachers is to help the students to learn to
distinguish between real patterns and false ones. It is a very subtle
skill.

Scientists tend to look for patterns that help them to explain what
they observe at a deeper level. Sometimes those patterns turn out to
be false, but that realization usually comes after new information
comes in that doesn't fit their presumed pattern. What students, and
others not familiar with a scientific approach to the world often do
is apply pattern-recognition only superficially, thus seeing patterns
where a closer look would show something different.

[snip]

I find both equally at fault. Many biology teachers with whom I am
acquainted are careless in making the distinction, and they are not
aided in the task by prior science teachers. I'm sure that there
are a few people out there who feel the need to "debunk" religion
doing the same thing. For most of us, I think it is no more than
careless phrasing.

Frankly, coming from the other side of the issue of religion, I find
many more teachers promoting various religious views in their
classrooms than I do debunking it. Given the current national
opinions regarding those of us who do not profess religion, I see the
hue and cry about "Christianity under siege" to be a red herring of
the first order. With polls indicating that 85-90% indicating belief
in some sort of deity, I find it hard to think that our measly 10-15%
(and less than that if you include only those few activists) can
mount a very effective "siege."


>As I have stated many times here and elsewhere, evolution
> is not about the origin of life, only about the mechanism of its
change.

If everyone agreed with your very correct definition, in what they
say and write, we wouldn't be in the position in which we find
ourselves. That's my opinion anyway, for whatever than may be worth
<g>.

Again, in my experience, the idea that evolution is about the origin
of life itself comes not from the scientists or science teachers, but
from those opposed to the very idea of evolution. To the extent that
this idea is repeated by others, it is most likely because they have
heard it so many times from evolutions opponents, that they seem to
have come to the conclusion (by osmosis, I assume) that that is what
evolution must be all about.

While many of us are convinced that life must have had a natural (as
opposed to a supernatural) origin, we recognize that it is a separate
issue from evolution as such, and remains speculation, until such
time a a means creating it naturally is devised.

I would point out that the belief that life could spontaneously
appear from non-living matter was common among scientists and the
general public in the nineteenth century, before the development of
our present knowledge of microscopic microbial life developed, due
to, among others, the work of Louis Pasteur. Something that seems so
mundane to us now as the apparently spontaneous appearance of maggots
on decaying meat was thought to be an example of spontaneous
generation of life. The idea that flies could lay eggs that hatched
within hours and grew quickly into the little worms that were soon
found crawling around on dead animals and the like, was highly
controversial at that time. Most people scoffed at the idea, claiming
that it was "obvious" that the maggots were examples of spontaneous
life creation. this was not a religious issue. Spontaneous creation
of life was believed by the religious and non-religious pretty much
equally. It was only with the acceptance (reluctantly) of the "germ
theory" that the creation of life in general became a religious issue
(when combined with the Darwinian idea that humans were lineally
descended from the lower forms of life).

What we tend to forget is that these issues that seem so fundamental
to us all today, and are dividing us so deeply are relatively recent
in origin, dating pretty much from the turn of the 20th century, give
or take a decade or two, and the origins of Christian fundamentalism.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Never ask someone what computer they use. If they use a Mac, they
will tell you. If not, why embarrass them?
--Douglas Adams
******************************************************