This thread is about dead, I think, but I’ll go ahead and post here anyway. I’m sorry it took me so long to respond — I’ve a newly minted “crawler” who is getting into everything and making it hard for me to spend any substantial time on “grown up” stuff. Post a response here, or feel free to send me an email if you’d like to continue this conversation any further.
Anyway:
You said, back at Post 448: “Evolution does not predict that the algorithm would produce the same results on a second run, so evolution is not obligated to explain the exact list of things currently alive. All that evolution seeks to describe is the process by which a branching tree forms.”
I disagree. You assume that evolution is a simple mathematical exercise in algorithm development. We have the algorithm and the rules, and the outcome is irrelevant because assuming that the rules are true then the outcome — whatever it may be — must be true. Further, you assume that evolution is a “one-shot” algorithm - its rules are valid only for one run, so the algorithm only has to run one time and is under no obligation to repeat itself. It couldn’t be more simple than that.
My observation - -and therefore, the assumption driving the process of scientific inquiry — is that we have an outcome, and that any attempt to describe it must be able to successfully reproduce it. Therefore, we are not starting with abiogenesis — where time=zero and and then simply conducting a mathematical exercise that does not care about the outcome. Rather, evolutionary theory is about starting with now and working backward (e.g. through morphology studies, genetic studies, etc.) and forward (e.g. through archaeology and paleontology) to prove the outcome.
That’s not about algorithm development and rule sets. That’s a modeling effort. In this application, they are very different.
And, as I’ve been saying, thus far not only have our attempts to develop the model failed but so too have our attempts to find all of the variables, rates, and validation data needed to even run it.
And despite this, despite the fact that evolutionary science — and I use the term with skepticism — has failed to meet even the minimum requirements of the scientific method, we have adopted it as the unifying theory for all of biology.
And, broadening the scope, because popular culture has embraced science as some sort of false god, not only is evolutionary theory the unifying theory for biology but it has been misappropriated for use as some sort of “personal” unifying theory to explain all sorts of things it was never intended to explain — the origin of life, meaning, purpose, yada yada yada.
So is weather. Evolution and weather are physical phenomena that require no supernatural interventions, but outcomes diverge quickly based on initial conditions.
I agree that models of evolution are not adequate to explain or replicate every feature of life. I draw no philosophical conclusion from that. Do you?
I see attempts by some to conclude from the inability to explain everything right now, the argument that the methods and assumptions of science are wrong. The problem with this argument is that there is no point in the history of science in which this could not be argued. It is the time honored trick of placing dragons on unexplored regions of the map. Or asserting that there are things mankind was not meant to know.