Science Icon Fires Broadside At Creationists

London Times vis The Statesman (India) ^ | 04 July 2004 | Times of London Editorial

[js1138]

it all comes back down to chemical reactions, no one has ever been able to recreate.

That's a biased, but reasonable statement. The question is, what is signified by our inability to recreate something. Does it mean it is impossible? Or does it mean we don't know everything?

A hundred years ago we could neither understand nor create nuclear fusion. So what did that mean?

[RadioAstronomer]

No, it equals 1⁷²⁰

ROTFLMAO!

[js1138]

...the induction is NEVER used to prove anything. Instead, induction's role is limited to "extrapolating"...

Extrapoaltion is pretty much a matter of applying mathematics and algorithms. What happens in induction is not really understood. The phrase "jumping to conclusions" comes to mind. Calling it a creative process seems circular.

[RadioAstronomer]

And everyone knows that a circle is not an ellipse.

Are those wildly elliptical ellipses? hehe

[AndrewC]

Not to pick nits, but in the Popperian formulation of science, the induction is NEVER used to prove anything. Instead, induction's role is limited to "extrapolating" from limited data a possible explanation that would be universally applicable. And thus an hypothesis is born.

Whether or not it survives to acheive the status of "theory" is entirely a deductive affair, assuming the hypothesis is amenable to falsification.

• Bone A looks like bone B.
• Therefore bone A comes from a descendent from an ancestor of the animal which possessed bone B.

That sounds like airtight "deductive" logic.

[longshadow]

Extrapoaltion is pretty much a matter of applying mathematics and algorithms. What happens in induction is not really understood. The phrase "jumping to conclusions" comes to mind. Calling it a creative process seems circular.

Yes, which is why I used "extrapolation" in quote marks.

Whatever it is, it is the step of going from the data of a finite number of cases to proposing some sort of general priciple that applies in all cases.

[RadioAstronomer]

Never mind the man behind the curtain. It's just RA making inane posts again. :-)

[PatrickHenry]

Not to pick nits, but in the Popperian formulation of science, the induction is NEVER used to prove anything. Instead, induction's role is limited to "extrapolating" from limited data a possible explanation that would be universally applicable. And thus an hypothesis is born. Whether or not it survives to acheive the status of "theory" is entirely a deductive affair, assuming the hypothesis is amenable to falsification.

Yes. I wrote to hastily. What I had in mind, but didn't say, is that the hypothesis needs to make some predictions, which are then verified as indeed being so. Which means that the hypothesis has verifiably survived a falsification test. I trust that Popper will now cease spinning.

[js1138]

Trolling for suckers tonight?

[js1138]

[MacDorcha]

i already mentioned moles. this has chemical applications, and so, it does. thanks though :)

[MacDorcha]

i do think i found why its so hard for your people to go with what i am saying. i am using a real world application, that is, science and philosophy. you are only working in science. this is my bad for not recognizing the blend when showing math.

I'm not going to bother with checking if i used the word "circumstance" or not. if i did, i shouldn't have. its not under a specific way of looking at it if they are equal, its more a matter of whats "good enough" for a specific application.

cutting an apple into thirds by hand is not exact, but it can be "good enough" to be fair. i am also not stating i support one thing over the other, i am showing that things aren't always what we claim. it is an unbiased observation, not an opinion.

Kerry swings his opinion like a hammer (a single war, which has not changed circumstance, he has gone back and forth supporting) i am steadfast that math is subjective depending on the application involved. (an idea of numbers is different, depending on the usage)

its like the joke about the man in the woods who has a philosopher, an engineer, and a physicist walk in and see his wood-burning stove is 3 feet above the ground.


the scientist looks at it and says "ah, this man knows heat radiates, so he wants to spread the heat as far as he can by raising it."

the philosopher says "no, he obviously wanted the heat and light to provide him with a new view of life, so he raised it to look at things in a new way."

and the engineer said "no, no, no, you both got it wrong, he raised it because it gets real cold here at night, he sleeps under it to keep warm at night"

the man speaks up at this point, and points out "actually, i just ran out of pipe."

[MacDorcha]

ah, you qualified it though. "real line"

please, what is the exact value of the square root of -1? you cant come up with a simple single value.

[RadioAstronomer]

please, what is the exact value of the square root of -1? you cant come up with a simple single value.

square root(-1) = i

[PatrickHenry]

Negative Placemarker^1/2

[Ichneumon]

the reason you cant get a yes or no is because there is not one.

Not one what?

this is a mathematical principle. .999... approaches 1, but is so close, it is often used as 1.

What's 1.0000... - 0.9999...? It's 0.0000..., right?

[Ichneumon]

Negative Placemarker^1/2

Oh, get real.

Negative Placemarker^1/2

[MacDorcha]

yes, "i" is the square root of -1. now, whats its value? "value" is an amount or numeric quantity, a representation of an amount is just that, a representation.

[MacDorcha]

why yes it is. where does the 0 end though? each 0 must account for every two 9's.

[Ichneumon]

Bone A looks like bone B. Therefore bone A comes from a descendent from an ancestor of the animal which possessed bone B. That sounds like airtight "deductive" logic.

No it doesn't, nor does it sound like anything resembling what paleontologists actually do to establish phylogenies. Troll.

(So far, we have a 1-to-1 correspondence between posting in colored fonts and being disingenuous.)