Posted on 08/13/2005 3:49:15 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
The cover story of the August 15, 2005, issue of Time magazine is Claudia Wallis's "The evolution wars" -- the first cover story on the creationism/evolution controversy in a major national newsweekly in recent memory.
With "When Bush joined the fray last week, the question grew hotter: Is 'intelligent design' a real science? And should it be taught in schools?" as its subhead, the article, in the space of over 3000 words, reviews the current situation in detail. Highlights of the article include:
While Wallis's article is inevitably not as scientifically detailed as, for example, H. Allen Orr's recent article in The New Yorker, or as politically astute as, for example, Chris Mooney's recent article in The American Prospect, overall it accomplishes the important goal of informing the general reader that antievolutionism -- whether it takes the form of creation science, "intelligent design," or calls to "teach the controversy" -- is scientifically unwarranted, pedagogically irresponsible, and constitutionally problematic.
Direct observation is demonstrably unreliable.
But somehow we are supposed to swallow reasonable conjecture over circumstantial evidence to conclude man is derivative of a common, basic, biological predecessor, then teach it to all generations and rest assured it is real science.
Whatever it is you and your cheerleaders are trying to peddle I'm not buying. Apparently a good number of folks who see through the intellectual smokescreen are not buying it either.
All hard evidence is either direct or indirect observation. Direct observation is something you can see with your eyes. Indirect observation may need some kind of instrumentation, telemetery, computer-assisted display, etc. This was not contested.
But we have to deal with the unreliability of our senses and brains, yes. Fester's sneer was unwarranted. I will deal with Fester directly however.
Your compulsion to fire back even when out of ammo is not of interest. You were just sneering at a statement that human perceptions are both limited and totally fallible as if this statement were false. This statement is true, easily demonstrable, and demonstrated.
You do not have it in you to acknowledge a true thing if it would upset the voices in your head. This is a shame. I realize that it's hard to fire off a response when all the evidence and all the logic are against you. You reach back and fire off a response, anyway. Most people, in the same situation, rethink what they are doing. I suppose they'll go to hell for that, though.
Science does not hold direct observation in high regard, unless done by instruments or in carefully controlled double-blind experiments. Human observations are generally duplicated by other, unrelated investigators.
I don't know of any consistent standard by which reliability of data is judged. Obviously peopley with established reputations get an audience faster.
But science is iterative, and instances of error and fraud are eventually detected. Even when the forger is Isaac Newton.
I haven't been following it closely either, betty boop, but it certainly seems to me that science puts a premium on direct observation. The best science, however, also considers the observer.
Hello, Alamo-Girl! To me it is a wondrous situation to observe the scientists here, hacking away, not merely at the branch on which they sit, but the very root of the tree of science itself....
What can be left for science to do, if its own practitioners -- its "observers" -- doubt the "truth" of its fundamental basis?
Can we say "the observer" quails in the face of his task here? Or is there another explanation?
Whatta world we live in.... Hugs, dear sister.
Good grief, js1138, how tendentious can you get???!!! With or without instruments precisely calibrated for our purposes or otherwise, observation is necessarily still observation. It's nice to have nifty, high-tech instruments that allow us to extend our "vision." At the end of the day, I think probably mathematics helps us do the same thing.
But the point is, in the final analysis, it all boils down to this: HUMAN OBSERVATION. No more, no less.
FWIW. Thank you so much for writing, js....
What makes science different is the iterative process of observation, analysis, speculation and testing. Observation by itself is never enough.
But only in those cases where science reveals design and purpose. When it comes to reasonable conjecture over a pile of circumstantial evidence, unreliability is not a scientific issue. What a crock! Who sold it to you?
Simple. You've never witnessed macroevolution. No one has. Not once. Yet it is stated to have happened and that it can happen as a matter of faith. It has never been observed. On the other hand, limits of microevolution or variation within a kind of animal have been observed. And any farmer who has involved themselves in breeding animals can attest that there are definite limits to what can happen in selection. So, the whole concept of macroevolution must be taken on faith and in absence of anything observeable or falsifiable, believers in the guise of scientists merely invoke the concept that time will make something happen that thus far has otherwise proved impossible. You can't stand on the earth and physically touch the surface of the moon with your outstretched hand. But if it were a precept of evolution, though absurd and impossible, the beg-off would likely be a matter of a textbook equipped statement to the effect of "after standing on the spot for millions of years, one's outstretched hand adapts and touches the moon's surface."
That's right, the miracle creator of evos is their god of choice - TIME. Can't see macroevolution - that's because it takes great time. There of course is no proof of this, it's just stated as if it were so. It's offered in place of, well, science.
If that's the case, perhaps you should consult the rabbis of Judaism and let them know that they've had it wrong for several thousand years and nobody is supposed to be working for the next mill plus.. nobody. Really, there seems no limit to the absolute absurdity that people will straghtfaced posit as though it really made some sense. Lest we forget, man was supposed to rest on the sabbath day because God rested on that day - the seventh.
I suppose next it will be posited just how plants which require light and polination are going to survive when created absent any sunlight (which they need to survive) and absent any bugs (needed for pollination), etc for millions of years until God got around to the next creation day. Remember, the observeable. You can't find plants on this planet that can survive weeks without light, muchless millions of years. Yet, this foolishness would be postulated as though it made perfect sense. Stop trying to crap up other people's religion just because you've crapped up your own. This is nonsense and deserves to be discarded.
Still twisting and shouting. You're supposed to be better than this, Betty!
Here's the original text with Fester's Twister-Attack target highlighted in red.
Atoms cannot be seen, if seeing requires vision, because they do not interact with photons in a way that can be used to produce an image visible to the eye. Atoms can be studied in ways that produce pictorial representations of their properties in a way that we call "seeing" them. The pictures show distinct entities that can be located in space, manipulated, and behave exactly as if they are real objects. Hence we talk about seeing. We are looking at representations, not reality. In that sense, we have "seen" atoms and even inside the atom. We have indirectly measured the properties and all the results are consistent with our models of the structure.The section in GREEN which immediately follows the Fester bloviation impact point makes it absolutely explicit that Harshman is making exactly the point about the limitations of human perception which has been demonstrated on this thread and that you and I have seemingly agreed upon.More important, this whole discussion of "directly seeing" is completely irrelevant to the original point. We have an enormity of evidence to convince even the most sceptical (but still rational) observer that atoms do exist. We do not have to observe them "directly" to draw that conclusion.
My impression of John Harshman's question: "Have we observed atoms" is simply to point out that we cannot "see" them directly. However, we have "observed" such a quantity of evidence that the existence of atoms is beyond question. Evolution works the same way.
r norman Exactly. Good statement about "direct observation" too. The reason we think seeing is direct observation is that all the inference necessary to turn a bunch of photon impacts into a picture of the world is done automatically by our brains, and we never have to think about it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't think about it. "Direct observation" is a hallucination courtesy of your brain. As you point out, optical illusions are clues to the types of shortcuts and abstractions our brain goes through in creating what we choose to call "direct observation"; the shortcuts and abstractions work just fine under most conditions, but they can fail spectacularly. Further processing (what we generally call memory) can add more distortions. And that's why science demands objective, repeatable evidence.
John Harshman
And still you are at least pretending to understand that science is cutting down its own trunk here. Too much of creationist discourse involves blithely flinging the dung after all justification has been removed. The necessity to fire something back trumps all other considerations.
For Lurkers: The original post (as far as I can tell) which introduces the "doubt" factor of science is at post 464.
The point raised there is epistemology – how do we know what we know and how do we value the different types of knowledge. There was another thread on that very subject: Freeper Research project.
IMHO, the natural sciences historically rely on sensory perceptions – whether strictly biological senses or augmented by instrumentation. Moreover, whether direct or indirect in form, those perceptions are subject to mental interpretation and (very sadly) mental presuppositions of what is to be observed and/or considered.
To me, this is the tree which is sawed when a scientist casts doubt on sensory perceptions per se.
Mathematicians and physicists, by contrast, put a premium on the theory itself (including logic, math, geometry, form, etc.). Such considerations reach beyond sensory perceptions to completeness, the observer, consistency with the body of theory, etc.
The "doubt" factor here is impersonal applying only to the theory itself which either becomes more established or fails with the accumulation of data over time.
The issue is very much relevant to our ongoing assertion that any presupposition of naturalism – whether methodological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism or scientific materialism – will bias a conclusion. The admission of the weakness in strictly sensory perceptions supports that view. To be epistemologically pure, the natural sciences would need to approach the investigation like physicists do – putting the emphasis on the theory rather than the evidence.
We have to deal with the unreliability of our biological mechanisms, which were not evolved to perceive some of the things we now want to know. We do. We go around. We use other eyes, other brains, of our own devising and keep on truckin'.
This is only an issue because someone fastened upon a flight of metaphor, waved it around out of context, and tried to claim the emperor has no clothes. This is my real problem with militant advocacy of any sort. Stupid lawyer tricks have begun to really revolt me.
RWP made a nice post somewhere recently where he mused upon exactly this. Scientists learn over time to present their case cautiously, anticipating objections, noting discrepancies, striving for accuracy of presentation above all. They learn--sometimes the hard way--that anything else smacks of dishonesty or incompetence and costs credibility points with the audience.
Creation/ID isn't there yet. It's still argued in the manner of the trial lawyer looking for that reasonable doubt, the DNC whipping up the faithful, the carnival barker extolling the marvels of the headless woman and the Siamese twins.
Is anyone anywhere doing a better science by presuming magic, or at least discarding good old methodological naturalism, which comes down to saying that you can understand things in terms of lawful cause-and-effect relationships? There is no science at all without that presumption. And it's another discussion, not the one we were having.
Where are the great discoveries of ID? Where is the intellectual content of ID? What other "theory" is a grab-bag of screeches that another theory is wrong?
Which essentially entails observations by other observers. Without observation, there can be no science.
Direct or indirect, faulty and distorted that observation often is, science is premised on observation. That was the only point I was making.
Niels Bohr said plainly enough that if one has not observed a thing, then one really can have nothing to say about it. It's an epistemological thing, having something to do with scientific rigor....
I really don't understand why you should find this controversial, VR. How did we get to this "tempest in a teapot?" What am I missing here?
There are unseemly people on every side of this neverending debate - nevertheless, betty boop and I have made every effort for many years to be respectful - and as you put it, to present our "case cautiously, anticipating objections, noting discrepancies, striving for accuracy".
The reason for this tendency is that many people equate "nature" to "matter in all its motions", the corporeals in space/time.
Therefore, the investigations into self-organizing complexity which assert intelligence as an emergent property adds to the body of theory and evidence - because, after all, creatures do frequently choose their mates. Likewise, the investigations in autonomy, semiosis, intelligence and information (successful communications) in biological systems - all contribute to the body of theory and evidence.
Concerning public education, the intelligent design movement is not asking to either replace evolution theory or be taught alongside it but rather that the controversies be taught.
Seems to me that it is a good idea - in any subject - to reveal such opportunities for discovery to the kids before they decide what they want to become. Some might be interested in pursuing science to answer those questions.
Weaknesses, controversies and missing elements could apply to other subjects as well: history, archeology, politics, philosophy, etc.
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