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To: ks_shooter
Highball,

You are performing a clever rhetorical two-step by equivocating on the definition of "science". For a theory to be "scientific" it much only be testable by scientific methods, it doesn't have to be correct. When the mood suits you, you use the term "science" to only include theories that have been shown to be correct. This approach leads to a paradox in which no theory could be examined by science until it was first proved to be correct.

The theory that galactic gravitation forces influence our destinies is with near certainty WRONG, but it does fall within the realm of concepts that can be scientifically tested. In that sense astrology IS science. It is just extremely likely that it is a INCORRECT scientific explanation. Behe's only point is that it is not an INVALID scientific explanation, only a bad one.

I'm doing no such thing.

Astrology is not falsifiable. It fails the test of the word "theory".

199 posted on 12/22/2005 10:24:03 AM PST by highball ("I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -- Thomas Jefferson)
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To: highball
Scientific theories make predictions based upon experimental conditions. Adherents to astrology read these "predictions" everyday in the their newspapers. These predictions either occur or they don't. Sounds falsifiable to me.

The exact mechanism is not in question, but the results. Scientists do this all the time. Explain how a graviton works, for example.

Is the Theory of Evolution falsifiable? I don't mean proposed neo-Darwinian mechanism of mutation and natural selection. I mean the idea that life arose from non-life and that a single creature is the ancestor of all life on this planet. If so, what type of evidence would it take to prove it false?

It appears to me that the paradigm is structured such the "Theory" of Evolution is actually the "Axiom" of Evolution. Any attempt at a countering theory is declared "unscientific" (i.e. "untrue") and ruled out of bounds. If the descent of lifeforms is assumed a priori, then Evolution is not a theory it is a philosophical assumption.

BTW, the validity of the Scientific Method is a philosophical assumption also. There is no way to PROVE that the same experiment performed 1000 thousand times with the same results will not yield a different result on the 1001th experimental. It is a meta-physical assumption (dare I say faith?) in the inherent rationality of the universe that allows us to take comfort in Science.
233 posted on 12/22/2005 11:12:43 AM PST by ks_shooter
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