...a "proper scientific proof" of an issue that is not properly a matter that falls within the range of the scientific method.
If there is such a thing as historical science, and I think there is, it seeks to answer questions of the form, "What happened?", or " What cause this event, etc. to arise?". The answer to these types of questions involves the use of abductive inferences.
On the other hand, nomological or inductive sciences involve questions of a different sort relating to how nature normally operates or functions.
I think both methods are legitimate avenues of scientific inquiry. What do you think?
Cordially,
There are several such sciences, including: astronomy, geology, anthropology, paleontology, climatology, archaeology, criminology, and cosmology. And of course, evolution.
Hi Diamond! Sorry to be so late to the party. Yes, I think both approaches are legitimate, for the human mind just naturally works in both modes.
However, I do have higher confidence in the findings of the nomological/inductive sciences; for at the end of the day, they are based on direct observation and experience. I.e., their premises are "testable," directly falsifiable.
The historical sciences are necessarily more speculative. Their findings primarily depend on reasonable assumptions, not presently testable evidence -- which time has "erased."
But the "reasonable" part is a lot dicier than may at first appear. We may get into a situation where we anachronistically "backload" a whole lot of personal and cultural freight onto past events, that may or may not be germane to the actual facts of the situation we are trying to explore -- and that "freight's" actual applicability to the problem under investigation, of course, cannot be verified from the present point of observation.
Plus inevitably there are "gaps in the record" that presumably contain significant events/evidence that may well have a bearing on the actual course of events and, thus, on the validity of any conclusion we reach. But we don't know what these are. We may find out more with the passage of time; or maybe not. We can't know what we don't know. What we end up with, in historical sciences such as archeology, anthropology, etc., is "a likely story," at best.
The technical term for that sort of thing is: Myth. Not science -- at least not in the sense of the nomological/inductive/empirical/testable model of science.
I suspect that archeology's account of the construction of the Great Pyramids is a myth, and only a myth. We may not ever be able to say with certainty, from this great temporal remove, how those suckers were actually built. But the human mind needs to have something that can credibly explain such things. And that's precisely the function of "the likely story," the myth -- any myth: To "explain" the things we cannot know from direct, contemporaneous observation of entities of the physical world.
In closing I'd just like to note that, IMHO, biology and evolutionary biology are two completely different types of science -- the former is on the nomological/inductive/empirical/testable model; the latter is "historical science," by virtue of its subject matter. I think it's safe to say that any science that attempts to deal with "origins" is, in principle, an endeavor dedicated to the construction of a myth. FWIW.
What do you think?
Thanks so much for writing, Diamond.