Replies

Agreed, but it is the table, not the data, which is falsifiable. I was not saying that changes to the periodic table falsified the whole thing.

Don't get sidetracked. What is at stake here is whether historical events can be falsified. I contend that they only can by using known historical events which cannot be falsified. Ultimately, we can know history, but we cannot falsify it without some external measure of comparison like written historical records.

I am hoping you have as persuasive of an argument against this as you did in exposing my arguments against natural history in general.

I think you can make "predictions" and verify them. But falsification is contingent upon other known history. The known history must be accepted as true as a premise (axiomatically) in order to falsify other historical events.

Take, for example, some historical figure. If there is little evidence of his existence, how would you go about falsifying it? Perhaps we could falsify the claim of Johnny Jones being the thirtieth president of the US, because we know there is only one president and it was not him. But can we falsify Mr. Jone's existence altogether? Can we falsify the claim Mr. Jones went shopping in Little Rock on New Year's Eve, in 1900? How?

If we cannot falsify as simple of a historical claim as this, how do you propose that BIG HISTORICAL claims (like abiogenesis) can be falsified? I don't mean falsifying theoretical predictions about what historical evidence will be found. I mean, history itself. How can it be falsifed without relying on non falsifiable historical claims?

Agreed, but it is the table, not the data, which is falsifiable..........

Stop posting paragraphs where a sentence would work.

Your objections are just as much of a reach as they were to begin with. If you uncover data you didn't look at before you formed your thesis, that data is just as "scientific" as data you didn't look at before you plugged in your oscilloscope. Astronomy is a science that can claim to be doing experiments (or just as good as) just as much as chemistry. And abiogenesis, evolutionary theory, and paleo-geology are in the same bag. If you're going to throw one off the science team for being willing to consider newly uncovered evidence as potentially capable of falsifying a theory, you have to throw them all off, and then your crackpottery becomes obvious, doesn't it?