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To: Doctor Stochastic

Yes, Occam, died in 1350, studied at Oxford. I had to go back and check my college text. Google had the misspelling.
Occam's claim is that we should not multiply our entities beyond necessity. A fair and helpful admonition.
Occam argues, specifically, that we can not know more than the observable specifics of a thing. Thus, the categorizations of living things is unacceptable to Occam. He says that only the name of the thing is valid, not its extensions. What we know of Homo sapiens is sapiens. Homo is not observable.
By this logic he would find evolution an unacceptable extension of reason beyond observable data. Evolution is not science but metaphysics. So is theism.


135 posted on 09/23/2005 3:20:55 PM PDT by Louis Foxwell (THIS IS WAR AND I MEAN TO WIN IT.)
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To: Amos the Prophet
"He says that only the name of the thing is valid, not its extensions. What we know of Homo sapiens is sapiens. Homo is not observable.
By this logic he would find evolution an unacceptable extension of reason beyond observable data. Evolution is not science but metaphysics. So is theism.

You go from a method of taxonomic ordering which is simply a system of labeling designed to help us more easily understand relationships, to evolution not being a science? Where the heck is the logic in that?

Given the continuity of nature, the taxonomies we currently use are about as simple as we can make them. In fact, a number of taxa have been added since Linnaeus to help us classify previously unknown organisms.

161 posted on 09/23/2005 5:52:30 PM PDT by b_sharp (Science adjusts theories to fit evidence, creationism distorts evidence to fit the Bible.)
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