But much of paleontology is experimentally verifiable.
For examples, radiometric decay rates and closure temperatures are tested & confirmed in labs.
DNA analyses and comparisons are done in labs and high-speed computers.
Also, by definition, a scientific hypothesis can be confirmed through making predictions which are later found true.
In the examples of paleontology, geology, evolution and other related sciences, all have made innumerable predictions which are confirmed by scientists working in those fields daily.
To claim otherwise is just willful ignorance.
Of course, all science is based on assumptions, such as: 1) natural explanations for natural processes, and 2) processes we see today behaved the same in Deep Time.
But these assumptions are tested and confirmed in every related scientific study.
There's no confirmed evidence to remotely suggest falsification.
Therefore, your idea that the past cannot be known unless physically seen is ludicrous, and if taken seriously would eliminate the forensics on which innumerable court trials and convictions are based.
captain_dave: "I don't see how any sort of hypothesis can be tested when the only evidence is fossilized bone and tissue."
First of all those are far from the "only evidence".
In fact there are innumerable other sources of evidence from every related science, you name them: geology, astronomy, biology, organic chemistry, physics, DNA studies, radio-metric dating, etc., etc.
And all that evidence supports basic hypotheses regarding age & evolution of Universe, Earth and life.
Second of all, testing hypotheses is done in such cases by making predictions from what is known about what is unknown.
If future found evidence supports the predictions, that's valid confirmation of scientific theories.
But if, as often happens, future evidence falsifies a hypothesis, then it's "back to the drawing board" to devise a better explanation for what is newly found.
That's what science is, it's how science works.
captain_dave: "In this sense "science" means a body of knowledge of the world around us."
But today's science is not just any old "body of knowledge", because lots of knowledge is not scientific.
Modern science, by definition and by law, implies "natural science" meaning as mentioned above: 1) only natural explanations for natural processes, and 2) processes we see today behaved the same in Deep Time.
captain_dave: "All the sciences make assumptions.
Established geology assumes the uniformitarian theory of how the layers of the Earth formed.
The other geological theory is Catastrophism, which posits that the Earth 'has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope' "
Of course, geological records are chock full of evidence of catastrophes, major and minor.
Of the five largest mass extinctions, dinosaurs 65 million years ago were only the most recent, and least serious.
Other mass extinctions, hundreds of millions of years ago each wiped out 80% to 90% of life on earth.
And for every major extinction, there is evidence of many smaller events.
But that's not what you're talking about, is it?
You have a very different catastrophe in mind, don't you?
However, your idea is in no sense a scientific theory, or even hypothesis, because it's based on nothing which can be tested or confirmed and indeed is falsified by every genuine scientific data we know.
It's more honest proponents even confess that has little to do with natural-science and is more an effort to support their meta-scientific religious beliefs.
