Posted on 02/22/2007 6:22:34 PM PST by Boxen
In a thought-provoking paper from the March issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology , Elliott Sober (University of Wisconsin) clearly discusses the problems with two standard criticisms of intelligent design: that it is unfalsifiable and that the many imperfect adaptations found in nature refute the hypothesis of intelligent design.
Biologists from Charles Darwin to Stephen Jay Gould have advanced this second type of argument. Stephen Jay Gould's well-known example of a trait of this type is the panda's thumb. If a truly intelligent designer were responsible for the panda, Gould argues, it would have provided a more useful tool than the stubby proto-thumb that pandas use to laboriously strip bamboo in order to eat it.
ID proponents have a ready reply to this objection. We do not know whether an intelligent designer intended for pandas to be able to efficiently strip bamboo. The "no designer worth his salt" argument assumes the designer would want pandas to have better eating implements, but the objection has no justification for this assumption. In addition, Sober points out, this criticism of ID also concedes that creationism is testable.
A second common criticism of ID is that it is untestable. To develop this point, scientists often turn to the philosopher Karl Popper's idea of falsifiability. According to Popper, a scientific statement must allow the possibility of an observation that would disprove it. For example, the statement "all swans are white" is falsifiable, since observing even one swan that isn't white would disprove it. Sober points out that this criterion entails that many ID statements are falsifiable; for example, the statement that an intelligent designer created the vertebrate eye entails that vertebrates have eyes, which is an observation.
This leads Sober to jettison the concept of falsifiability and to provide a different account of testability. "If ID is to be tested," he says, "it must be tested against one or more competing hypotheses." If the ID claim about the vertebrate eye is to be tested against the hypothesis that the vertebrate eye evolved by Darwinian processes, the question is whether there is an observation that can discriminate between the two. The observation that vertebrates have eyes cannot do this.
Sober also points out that criticism of a competing theory, such as evolution, is not in-and-of-itself a test of ID. Proponents of ID must construct a theory that makes its own predictions in order for the theory to be testable. To contend that evolutionary processes cannot produce "irreducibly complex" adaptations merely changes the subject, Sober argues.
"When scientific theories compete with each other, the usual pattern is that independently attested auxiliary propositions allow the theories to make predictions that disagree with each other," Sober writes. "No such auxiliary propositions allow … ID to do this." In developing this idea, Sober makes use of ideas that the French philosopher Pierre Duhem developed in connection with physical theories – theories usually do not, all by themselves, make testable predictions. Rather, they do so only when supplemented with auxiliary information. For example, the laws of optics do not, by themselves, predict when eclipses will occur; they do so when independently justified claims about the positions of the earth, moon, and sun are taken into account.
Similarly, ID claims make predictions when they are supplemented by auxiliary claims. The problem is that these auxiliary assumptions about the putative designer's goals and abilities are not independently justified. Surprisingly, this is a point that several ID proponents concede.
###
Sober, Elliott. "What is Wrong with Intelligent Design," The Quarterly Review of Biology: March 2007.
Since 1926, The Quarterly Review of Biology has been dedicated to providing insightful historical, philosophical, and technical treatments of important biological topics.
Give me your testable model for abiogenesis! I didnt think so!
There is no entity called science all the word science means is to know or knowledge. If I was walking down the beach and I saw a sand castle, and saw no one for miles around would you conclude that the wind and the waves made it? Where did mass and energy come from? And who made the laws of physics and why? Why is there an atmosphere around the earth? How come there is air inwhich we just happen to need? and water? and food? who set the moon and the sun in their perfect places? How come storms as terrible as they can be they dont destroy us? who steadys the levels of the ocean that they dont rise so high to destroy us? How come we have two symetric arms and legs and yet they are opposites? and how come they are facing forward as are eyes are also, if think evolution is the case then what told your eyes to be in front and your hands? which came first from your point of view? your hands or your eyes? where did your eyes come from? a freckle? How ridiculous!!!!! where are your testable models? But you say it was intertwined and woven! Genetic change? you say? where? it is fact that genetics in is all you get out! Its funny how your claims have been made and propagandised but now that we can see what we have already known that evolution is completely bad science and the cameras are rolling, that evolutionists want to change their tune. Evolution is nothing more than a modern day thinking of the earth being flat, the difference is when they thought the earth was flat some realy believed it. The bible said that man sits on the circle of the earth before they could prove it.
respectfuly disagree, but you gave not a fact with evidence but a hypothetical with no evidnce for certainty.
gummybearlegs you are just bitter that evolution has no real science behind it
"Not really. Evolutionary theory is thoroughly, and crucially, entwined and woven together with numerous "auxiliary" principles, as Sober calls them, which render it rich in testable implications. See, for instance, 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution."
Thanks, Stultis. That's an intriguing discussion. It will take me a while to digest it. Once I've done that, perhaps there will be some useful further discussion to follow. Meanwhile, thanks for sharing the reference. Here's a paper that I've been attempting to decipher recently. The discussion at your link seems likely to provide a helpful supplement to the explanations in this article:
SIREV Volume 49 Issue 1
Pages 3-31, ©2007 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
The Mathematics of Phylogenomics
Lior Pachter and Bernd Sturmfels
Abstract
(Received May 29, 2005; accepted September 30, 2005; published January 30, 2007)
The grand challenges in biology today are being shaped by powerful high-throughput technologies that have revealed the genomes of many organisms, global expression patterns of genes, and detailed information about variation within populations. We are therefore able to ask, for the first time, fundamental questions about the evolution of genomes, the structure of genes and their regulation, and the connections between genotypes and phenotypes of individuals. The answers to these questions are all predicated on progress in a variety of computational, statistical, and mathematical fields. The rapid growth in the characterization of genomes has led to the advancement of a new discipline called phylogenomics. This discipline results from the combination of two major fields in the life sciences: genomics, i.e., the study of the function and structure of genes and genomes; and molecular phylogenetics, i.e., the study of the hierarchical evolutionary relationships among organisms and their genomes. The objective of this article is to offer mathematicians a first introduction to this emerging field, and to discuss specific mathematical problems and developments arising from phylogenomics.
http://siamdl.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=SIREAD&Volume=LASTVOL&Issue=LASTISS
Let's see ... you've demonstrated beyond any rational doubt that you don't know anything about the English language. You've demonstrated beyond any rational doubt that you don't know anything about science.
Your unsupported assertion demonstrates what I've just posted. Go ahead -- claim victory. Your ignorance is not only invincible, it is well nigh all-encompassing.
As always, there are exceptions to the rule...
May I conclude that you failed to understand the analogy?
Youve yet to show one specific valid point
As if you'd recognize one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.